They burst out the ARTISTS’ ENTRANCE door and into the bright sunlight. He followed her away from the UniCorp Auditorium and up a hill covered in tall grass that swished against his legs. At the top of the hill was a gathering of pine trees. She led him into the shady center and sat next to him on a wide, many-ringed stump.

“Listen to me.” She held his hand. “Your name is Ambrose Truax. You wear holo-suits and smell like Brussels. We met in Little Saigon, where everything looks old to you. I have a scoot named Nelson.”

Dizziness clouded his vision. He felt nauseated.

“The cops chased us, but we got away.”

He closed his eyes and saw himself riding behind Mistletoe on the back of a rickety scoot. They cruised along a narrow, uneven street at the top of a shanty-stack. The underside of the canopy was a few feet above their heads. Her long blue pigtail tickled his nose. His arms were wrapped around her warm stomach, and it made him happy to be close to her. And then he remembered.

She saved my life. My name—

The scene blinked to a dank, cavernous lab strewn with the guts of pre-Unison machinery. A white-haired man who smelled like mold leaned in close and gripped his wrist tight. The man pushed a single sharp prong through his hand. Pain sliced up his arm. He remembered:

The old man hardcoded a new ID. My name is—

Blink. He was crouched behind a scan-tube next to someone holding a disruptor, someone very familiar who was screaming at him to run.

Blink. A marble hung suspended in the thin air between ESC atmoscrapers, spinning forever on its axis.

My name is Ambrose.

He remembered everything.

“My name is Ambrose Truax!” he said as his mind returned to the clearing in the middle of the pines. He gazed around, wide-eyed. “Wow,” he said. Deep breath. “Okay. The Adam Trevor ID was perfectly in sync with Unison. It completely overshadowed my own consciousness. And it was immediate—as soon as I shimmered in, I lost myself.”

He stood up from the stump and did a quick mental status check. He was dismayed to find that the urge to run back inside the concert hall and sing for his adoring fans was still tugging at his mind, enticing him. But at least he could recognize the impulse and try to ignore it. He paced, repeating his real name to himself.

“My name is Ambrose Truax. My name is Ambrose Truax. My name is—”

“You know you’re saying that out loud, right?” Mistletoe looked around at all the perfectly designed Unison pine trees. “This place is friending weird, by the way. Nice work.”