“You think there could be a way?”

“If there is, it will be a bright, enthusiastic young mind like yours who finds it.” Craftsman Primrose stood up. “I’ll leave you to your studies. I believe Phineas has just unearthed an excellent new book on Ancient Mercia for me. Fascinating culture; the way they looked at the after-life thousands of years ago was in many ways far advanced to our own thinking. Until the last eighteen years, of course, with the introduction of the Imperial Personifate Guild. To people of Ancient Mercia, death was only a temporary interruption, or pause to life. They believed in the existence of a person’s spirit, that there was a unique spiritual characteristic of an individual. They called it the awen; we have come to know it now as the wildspark.”

“So, this is why personifates retain their personalities?”

“Yes, I like to think so.”

“Did the ancients have ghost machines?”

“No, their thinking and technology was greatly different, although they did believe that preserving the body was important because it was believed that the awen would return to it every night to receive new life. If you like, that was their version of our personifates!”

“Ah, here it is! I knew your book would be in the delivery somewhere!” called Phineas.

“Thank you, Phineas.” Craftsman Primrose collected his book then called back to Prue. “Make sure you get back before dark, Frances.”

As Prue read through her books, everything turned over in her mind. She felt she’d taken a big step towards finding out more about memory. She was certain that the answers were already there in the wildspark, she just had to find a way to reach them through building some sort of machine. Prue realized that in order to make real progress, she had needed to start experimenting with equipment, so she’d need a secret space to work in.

She said goodbye to Phineas and left the library. Through the glass ceiling high above, the coral glow of the setting sun tinged the clouds. The atrium below was now empty, and an eerie silence hung in the air. Her footsteps echoed as she took the walkway around the edge to the other side where the design lab corridor was. There were still voices coming from the main design lab, probably craftsmen working on the hundred. She hurried past to the very end, where there were a couple of storage rooms that she’d spotted the week before. One of them looked orderly and neat and the other was in more of a state of disarray, with a layer of dust covering the shelves. It was perfect: stacked with boxes which she could hide her journal in, and she could get her hands on any tools she needed. She opened some of the boxes and looked inside; one had synthetic fur, another had rolls of wire and various tools, and the next box had oddments of machinery marked “faulty”.