Delivered by ghost pigeon

Delivered by ghost pigeon

When I Spacetime Roman he’s in a meeting in Shoreditch. He extricates himself and talks to me from the pavement outside. ‘Let me get this straight. Bernard Zborowski used your Secret Diaries to create dreamhacking bots on the Sweet Dreams platform. And BigSky knows about this?’

‘I don’t think so. I think O took everybody for a ride, including Meera and Bernard. But she had a certain moral conviction that what she was doing was the lesser of various evils.’

‘Yeah, well, that’s going to complicate things here. I’m going to need to confirm where O is and what condition she’s in. I’ll notify Donato of the situation and I’ll head over there myself. Meanwhile, you should stay in the flat and make yourself scarce with everyone. Where’s Shandy?’

‘I’ve left her to work in my room. I don’t want her to get in trouble with her boss.’

‘And you trust her?’

‘More than I trust you, mate.’

‘OK, fair enough. I think I trust her, too.’

He promises to contact me once Donato has got to the cottage and checked in on what he finds. But then he Spacetimes me two hours later, while I’m on the train en route to Dorking in defiance of his advice. I edit my environment so that he thinks I’m still at home, but as it turns out, he’s on a plane with a bad connection, so we only hear one another’s voices.

‘Well,’ he says. ‘Donato’s there now. She died in her sleep. The will is just as you said it would be. So I guess that means everything you dreamed was true. Congrats, Charlie. You have an evolving piece of tech in your head that can be operated remotely.’

‘So it would appear,’ I whisper into the link. ‘I’m a monster, Roman. A monster in progress, no less. I will probably be accused of killing O, but I didn’t do it. The Agency ordered it. And of course I can’t prove that!’

‘Do you think the Agency and BigSky are one and the same?’

‘I don’t know what to think. Every time I think I know anything, I’m wrong. But I’m not giving up. I’m going to get to the bottom of the Agency.’

‘Do me a favour and stay out of trouble until I can get back, all right? This is a very fast-moving situation. Maybe you should contact Meera, though.’

I already have. I’ve asked her to come round tonight, but I don’t tell Roman that. I like him a lot, but he’s not going to be able to keep up with me from here on out.

‘Take care, mate,’ I tell him. ‘Good luck explaining things to Donato.’