Unknown 9 by Layton Green (each kindness read aloud txt) 📕

some of the fundamental questions of the universe, or even raise new ones. Was the Fold another dimension, a parallel world, heaven or hell, or someplace in between?

If it truly existed, he had to know more.

Nor was he convinced the Society possessed those answers. Even if his superiors had greater knowledge of the Fold, and might have even glimpsed it, he felt sure they did not understand it.

Else why send him after Ettore in the first place?

On a bright Tuesday morning in the spring of 1977, not long after Jimmy Carter was sworn in as president, and over five years since Ana had appeared in the Midtown bar, Dr. Corwin hurried into his office at Columbia, shutting the door behind him and clutching the letter his secretary had just handed him, postmarked from a bookseller in Buenos Aires.

He quickly sliced open the envelope, careful not to tear it, and extracted the handwritten letter with the bookstore’s name—Libreria Nueve Musas—embossed at the top. On Dr. Corwin’s last visit to the Argentine capital, he had dropped off a photo of Ettore in the major bookstores servicing the universities, along with a handwritten note asking anyone who had seen the man in the photo—an important physicist—to write Dr. Corwin at his office. He had hoped the Columbia address would lend an air of gravitas.

Over the last three years, he and his investigators had delivered similar photos and letters in cities around the world. Searching for Ettore was a daunting, arduous task that most people would have given up on long ago. In fact, the Society had already lost interest.

But Dr. Corwin was not most people. He eagerly scanned the meticulous Spanish handwriting, wishing Ana was with him. What had started as a passionate affair, enflamed by rival allegiances and a cat-and-mouse game of espionage, had blossomed into something deeper that neither of them knew how to handle. According to Ana, her disillusion with the Ascendants continued to grow, though she still had not left them. He knew she was afraid, and for good reason.

What they had wouldn’t last forever, he knew. Soon they would be found out, or she would be forced to choose a side.

And he didn’t know what would happen, or how he felt about all that.

Enough. Focus on the task at hand.

Expecting another rejection or a false lead—there had been plenty of both—Dr. Corwin clutched the letter with growing excitement.

Yes, I am quite sure I recognize this man. He visited my bookstore at least twice a year, and always, as you surmised, once the new textbooks were released. He would browse the latest offerings in physics and mathematics, often making a purchase, and at times would select a book of poetry as well. I would be happy to discuss further in person or at the below number.

Atentamente,

Sr. Diego Quiroga

After reading the letter three times, Dr. Corwin started writing his own note: a memorandum to his secretary with instructions on how to proceed during his impending absence.

Shanghai   17   

As Daiyu waited for her Oracle to deliver an answer to her inquiry, a spasm of pain arced along her lower spine and continued into her legs, liquid fire racing through her nerve endings. She gasped and clutched the arms of her chair.

Though not yet thirty, her scoliosis had pressurized her spinal disks and constricted her nerves so badly she was practically disabled. Being hunched over a computer night and day did not help, which was why she had developed the hologram keyboard and took breaks for long walks in the smog-filled city. The pain was always there, a matter of degree, and she had accepted her suffering as part of life.

Eastern philosophers seeking transcendence worked hard to escape the bonds of human fragility to achieve an enlightened state of being. Daiyu knew those philosophers did not understand chronic pain, because true suffering of that sort could not be escaped, only managed. Chronic pain was a cruel enslaving tether to Mother Nature that denied the freedom-seeking soul its due.

Chronic pain was the shining star of mortality.

No, Daiyu did not seek transcendence or enlightenment, or better drugs, or even a surgical solution. She had seen enough. She did not want to be mortal at all. She longed to exist in the digital realm and roam the superhighways of knowledge, unchained from her hateful mortal coil, free at last in the realm of pure imagination.

“And what knowledge do you await?” said a voice from behind, startling her. She had thought she was alone in the room.

The neutral inflection sent a shiver of fear whisking through Daiyu. She spun in her chair to find the Archon standing five feet away in the small room. Daiyu had never heard the door open.

“I didn’t hear . . . I didn’t know you were coming,” she managed to croak, stunned by this personal visit and wondering if her mind was an open book to her visitor.

The Archon opened a palm toward the keyboard hologram hovering above the desk that supported Daiyu’s laptop, monitors, and snarl of wires and equipment. On the central monitor, a series of flashing images and computations were appearing and disappearing too fast to follow. “Does this prophet of yours have a name?”

Inspired by a variety of sources, including Isaac Asimov’s psychohistory, Daiyu had developed a predictive analysis algorithm that she consulted at least once a day for various inquiries, often philosophical or theoretical—but sometimes concrete.

Yet the algorithm, like all true prophets, did not speak in plain language. The symbols and images it emitted were a digital Rorschach blot that required a leap of faith to decipher.

She waved her bio-bracelet to dispel the keyboard but left the program running. “I call it the Oracle.”

The unchanging golden mask observed the monitor. “I see you’ve added to your wardrobe.”

In addition to the key around her neck, Daiyu had started wearing a dozen black jade bracelets on each arm, suspended a few millimeters above her skin and attached with ultrathin, nearly