Story of Your Life

Summary: The problem isn't that Neil is dying. The problem is that Neil doesn't dare to hope, and Eva refuses to let go. The problem is that Neil and Eva are both equally bad at honesty and asking for help. The problem is that Neil knows how the story ends. In the end, the middle is all that's left.

Act I. The Important Thing

"The ending isn't any more important than any of the moments leading to it. The important thing is that over here, they are happy." –Dr. Eva Rosalene

i. burnt norton

"They say a man doesn't know himself until he faces death for the first time…I don't know about that. It seems to me that the person you are when you're about to die isn't as important as the person you are during the rest of your life. Why should a few moments matter more than an entire lifetime?" –Warbreaker, Brandon Sanderson

The recruitment brochures for life-generation agencies often emphasise the singular opportunity that is memory traversal. Memories, after all, are unique: each memory is inextricably tangled in the warp and weft of the person. A pair of identical twins with the same memory of a skip-rope game will notice different things, and these details translate themselves into the differing textures of their memories.

After years on the job, Dr. Neil Watts thinks that the recruitment brochures could do with a little more gritty realism. Travelling backwards in a dying patient's memories is often strangely akin to watching a train-wreck in reverse: there's no stopping it, and you know how badly it's all going to end, if only because extremely content and happy people don't generally sign up for life-generation. It's the people with gnawing regrets on their deathbed that do so, and that means some pervasive unhappiness, or: train-wrecks.

Weddings are the worst; there's all that happiness and promise and joy and glowing faces, except he already knows how it's going to end, like skipping forward to the ending and then re-watching the episode all over again.

Thing is, of course, it's not that straightforward: when it comes to memories, leapfrogging backwards from one memory to another is half chasing butterflies, and half piecing together a murder from clues at the crime scene. The earlier memories give the ending context: without context, it's almost impossible to make sense of the ending.

This is how it ends: with the stars overhead, like billions upon billions of lighthouses, blazing at the far end of the sky; the constellations drawn out line by line in cold brilliant light, traced by his grandfather's hand. The Northern lights burn, sheets and sheets of eldritch green dancing in the night in eeriely beautiful streamers.

Before them, the lake is cool and pellucid and black; part of Neil is thinking about that proverb about still waters running deep and also, that he really, really wishes his grandfather'd lived, that he could've taken his grandfather here to see this, the sight that makes his breath catch in his throat, that steals it all away in beauty and glory.

Eva takes his hand. There are no words.

"Don't," he says. His smile is as crooked as his spectacles. "I kinda figured it was gonna end like this."

This is not the beginning, but it is a beginning: a way to begin to understand the end. It doesn't matter, you see, that there is an ending, that the ending exists even now, right now; even while they live and laugh, even while the universe rushes towards inevitable heat-death.

The point isn't so much what the ending is; the point is to understand it.

So: Eva Rosalene (not yet a doctor) scribbles note after note, keeping up effortlessly with the lecturer. Two rows down, Neil slouches in his chair and doodles on his writing pad and breathes in the heated fumes from his styrofoam coffee cup.

"When working with memory alteration," Prof Cho says, "We typically don't work directly with the patient's memories." She taps her laser pointer against the palm of her open hand. "Reasons?"

The girl a row behind Neil offers, "The results of memory alteration generate confusion: the patient is presented with two sets of conflicting memories. But altering memories is itself messy and if done directly as a live process to the patient's memories, would inflict more distress than strictly necessary."

"A decent answer," Prof Cho agrees, with a nod. "The ethical concerns associated with memory alteration procedures are serious ones. We'll be covering this more in your Professionalism module. Anyone else?"

Eva will later admit this: that Neil surprises her, by drawling, "'Cause the technology won't let us."

Prof Cho's dark eyes flick over to focus on him. "Explain."

"Explain to whom, Prof?" A note of challenge enters Neil's voice.

If Eva were sitting right next to Neil at this moment, she'd have elbowed him. Except that abruptly the world freezes—or at least, Prof Cho does, and at least half the lecture theatre, and she supposed she should have noticed, this, except she'd forgotten just about everything while trying to keep up with the lecture.

"Good," says another voice, and the air ripples, that's the best word for it; ripples lazily like the illusion of water on a running track on a hot day, and another Prof Cho materialises, slowly descending the steps until she's side by side with her counterpart at the lectern. "Tell me, when did you figure that out?"

Neil shrugs. "I'm awesome like that," he says, artlessly. "Oh, and you were pretty much giving the exact same lecture as in the recordings from last year."

Prof Cho gives a bark of a laugh. "So I see. I'll have to keep that in mind. Well, then. Let's briefly return to your comment. Why won't the technology let us edit memories directly?"

Neil quirks an eyebrow. "Probably 'cause it's messy, like what she said just now," he gestures towards the girl, frozen now, with the rest of the memory. "But also 'cause the technology doesn't work that way. It scans the patient's mind and sort of traces it to produces an incomplete copy, like a read-only program. It's only after we generate a new, alternate life that the entire thing can be written back to the patient."

"Well," Prof Cho says, turning to regard the entire lecture theatre. "Today's lecture, as you might have been able to guess by now, is going to revolve around the differences between a memory-trace algorithm and the actual person. The most superficial difference is that you can rewind a memory, resetting the algorithm, which behaves as it does at the very beginning of the memory. For instance—"

Someone groans, audibly.

Prof Cho smirks. "Don't worry, I'm not going to make you sit through the entire lecture again." Muted laughter greets her remark. "Or at least, I won't if you can show me you remember what you've covered with Dr. Nguyen. So what are the main differences?"

Tentatively, Francis offers, "If an algorithm is read-only, then it can't change, right?" He's a lanky guy with an easygoing smile, and has a predilection for dorky T-shirts that would put even Neil's loudest, most embarrassing shirt to shame.

"Qualify that statement," Prof Cho urges. "An algorithm is capable of reacting to unexpected circumstances." And this time, she does unfreeze one of the algorithms, namely her own. The memory unspools again, or so Eva imagines, as the algorithm looks right at Prof Cho and stammers, "You...this…what—"

Prof Cho freezes the algorithm again as she calmly continues, "The algorithm did not expect to meet the original. Yet it was capable of reacting and processing known information."

Neil surprises Eva by speaking up. "Ryle and Christensen refer to this as the hard limits of simulation," he says. "They argue that the differences between memory-trace algorithms and actual persons are concrete ones; we can chip away at them with technological innovation, but eventually, our efforts will plateau. I disagree."

"That's all very well, Neil," Prof Cho remarks. "But that doesn't help us when it comes to distinguishing algorithms from human beings." She frowns at him. "For the record, at this point of your studies, you aren't in a position to agree or disagree with established researchers. Your main focus should be on demonstrating a grasp of the material."

"Sure," Neil agrees, and Eva notices that he's sitting up straight, now. "And they mostly think so because by definition, people are much more complex and complete than algorithms are. Thing is, Prof, I've known kids in high school who're about as complex as an amoeba."

Laughter ripples through the lecture theatre, and even Prof Cho's stern expression cracks for a moment, and Eva catches a flash of amusement.

"Again, I will repeat, your main focus at this point should be on understanding the material," Prof Cho says, firmly. "When you demonstrate an understanding of the material that rivals your grasp of sarcasm, Neil, then you may begin to think about criticising Ryle and Christensen."

Neil opens his mouth to argue further, but he's cut off by another student, who suggests that one of the differences to keep in mind is that memory-trace algorithms are fundamentally incomplete. "It's kind of like what Neil said about the amoeba, Prof," the student ventures. "They behave like you and me, but on the inside, there's just nothing going on in there."

"But that can't be right," Francis says, frowning. "If algorithms were empty of…well, I guess, of experience, then algorithms wouldn't be reacting with shock to discover they are algorithms. Just look at what happened just now with Prof Cho."

"No," counters the other student, "You're still assuming algorithms have any kind of secret inner life, or experience. Algorithms just play themselves out based on the constraints of the memory. They're basically just stage-puppets, or shadows in a play. Just because the shadow moves and talks and acts like a person doesn't mean it is a person."

"If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and swims like a duck," Neil argues, "Then why the heck shouldn't it be a duck? You're raising the bar for personhood unnecessarily high."

"And you're lowering it," snaps the student. "The point is that you can't draw an inference from a subject's external behaviour to anything that's going on in there." She taps her head, emphatically. "Behaviourism is dead and buried for a good reason."

Prof Cho clears her throat. "We're wandering far afield," she says, a note of warning in her rough, husky voice. "Let's return to Francis's contention, that algorithms are set in stone and thus incapable of change. How can we best qualify this statement?"

"Algorithms can't alter themselves beyond the bounds of the memory," Eva says, tentatively. "They're time-slices of a person at a particular point in their lives. A person might respond to a car accident by developing a fear of cars, or by losing confidence in their driving skills. An algorithm isn't capable of such change in virtue of its very nature as a time-slice: the traits, beliefs, and mental states of an algorithm are fixed, unlike a person's."

"Better," Prof Cho says, and now Eva is on the receiving end of an approving nod. "You might, in fact, go so far as to say that people are capable of rewriting themselves; any capacity to change that an algorithm has is already written into it."

Neil, Eva notices, is frowning. But he doesn't say anything.

Afterwards:

"Since when do you watch recordings of lectures from past years?" Eva demands.

Neil pretends to be deeply-hurt. "I'm totally capable of buckling down and studying when I want to!"

Eva just rolls her eyes. Maybe it's true—she remembers those awards from the various projects he's done over the years at science fairs—but they both know that most of Neil's report cards also include the comment that Neil would do much better if he actually applied himself to his work rather than coasting along.

"Well," he admits, eventually, "It was 'cause of Brian and Yvette."

"Who?"

He smirks. "I play D&D with them on the weekends. You should come by, it's pretty cool. I'm a wizard, I throw fireballs and shit." He poses dramatically. "Kamehameha!"

Eva really doesn't know what to say. "And you watch past year recordings because of them?" she asks, sceptically. She can all but imaging Neil downloading one of the recordings, and almost-immediately deciding that watching it's just too much effort, and switching to an episode of The Big Bang Theory instead.

"Naw," Neil says, dismissively. "Wild horses couldn't make me do it. But I saw 'em both in the lecture, and thought that was really weird. I mean, they're graduating soon, what're they doing in an introductory lecture?"

"Huh." Eva would have admitted this made sense—if they hadn't known all along that it was a memory recording. "You are so full of shit, you know."

"Hmm?"

"It was a memory recording. We all knew it, going in. What we didn't figure out was who the algorithms were, until Prof Cho froze everything."

Neil sighs. "I was really hoping you'd give me this one," he admits. "Okay, fine. So, what d'you think she had us stick on those helmets for? And don't give me that 'it's practice' crap—this isn't a lab class."

Eva frowns; as much in thought, as at his swift pre-emption of her instinctive response. Instead, she offers, "So you figured she was trying to have us pick out the differences between algorithms and people?"

"What was the lecture about?"

She has to admit he has a point, there. It's right down in the lesson plan, even.

"And the lecturer?"

Neil shrugs. "Imagine you're Prof Cho," he says. "Imagine you wanna pull off something so badass that you'll have the entire freshmen batch reeling. Whatcha gonna do, have them figure out which of their fellow students are algorithms? Not very impressive, is it? But to reveal to them that the whole lecture on the limitations of algorithms was being delivered by an algorithm all along…" He slams a fist into his open palm. "Bam. Bamboozled!"

Eva nods, reluctantly. "Okay, fine. It makes sense…" That shit-eating smirk only widens, until she adds, "If you think about it in that impressively-convoluted way."

And of course, Neil ignores tone and simply seizes on the adjective. "Why, did I…" he waggles his eyebrows. "Impress you? Elementary, my dear Watson."

"You were Watson," Eva informs him, tartly, most definitely unimpressed. She checks her watch and bites back a yelp of horror. "And I'm going to be absurdly late for practical."

"Better leg it," Neil advises, unsympathetically, pale grey eyes gleaming with amusement. "Prof Mobrand absolutely detests it when people're late."

He would know, Eva thinks, dashing off with a hastily-shouted goodbye.

"It's not cheating if everyone does it," Neil informs her, loftily.

"I didn't do it," Eva points out, tersely, and he waves off her objection. She'd been the envy of their year, entering the Institute with a full scholarship from Sigmund Corporation. Everyone else knew they were going to be fighting on the job market upon graduation: her place, though, was assured, and Sigmund was paying her tuition fees.

"Seriously, though." He hooks his legs around the chair and stares down into his coffee, as if trying to divine the exam questions in the drizzle of syrup and foam. "Sigmund Corporation's hard as hell to get into. I heard the entrance exam has a ninety percent failure rate. But you made it through."

"Yes, and I worked hard," Eva snaps. The idea of helping Neil cheat his way through the entrance exam is downright horrible and she isn't even sure what put that idea in his head in the first place. "It's not impossible, Neil, it's just—"

"—bloody difficult," he completes, his voice soft. "Ninety percent failure rate, Eva. And I'm not looking to copy your answers, I just want to know what the questions on the entrance exam are going to be."

She sips from her coffee and winces. It's absurdly sweet, and she swears she's never going to let Neil order her a coffee again. At least he's buying.

"It's still cheating."

His mouth quirks in an almost-smile. "Not if I give my own answers. Also, that's how Yvette ended up working for Sigmund Corporation. Gavin fed her the questions."

"I'll think about it," Eva says, slowly, ignoring that little unwelcome revelation about their mutual friend, "If you tell me why getting into Sigmund Corporation matters so much to you. They don't have a monopoly on life-generation work, after all." Nevermind that Neil should be perfectly capable of getting in on his own, without asking her to dirty her hands helping him this way. A no-strings-attached research scholarship from the Mnemosyne Foundation of Memory Reconstruction Research? Companies—and the government, for that matter—would be drooling over him. He could go anywhere he wanted. She was tied to Sigmund, at least for the period of her bond. "In fact, why life-generation at all? The world's your oyster, Mr. Research Scholar."

"That's Dr. Research Scholar to you."

"Not until we graduate," Eva reminds him.

He props his chin on his hands, studies her dispassionately, his glasses glinting in the sunlight from the café window. "Hardly a fair trade," he murmurs. "Considering you'll only think about it."

"What's to stop you from fobbing me off with a non-answer, then?"

Neil raises sharply arching eyebrows. "So if I tell you—honestly—why I want to get into Sigmund Corporation, you'll tell me what the entrance exam questions are?"

Eva wrinkles her nose. "And you'll owe me. A big favour."

"A big favour?" Neil asks, almost-mockingly. "Not your weight in dark chocolate? Not my immortal soul? Just a big favour?"

It's her turn to raise her eyebrows at him. "Don't give me ideas. Take it or leave it," she says.

He exhales. "All right, then. Sigmund Corporation is the best. There. Now you know why."

She stares at him, dumbfounded. "That's it?" And her bullshit detector isn't pinging, not quite.

"God, what other reason could there be?" Neil demands. He chuckles quietly at her expression. "That's just it. They're the best there is. They pioneered life-generation technology. Hell, I'd say they're right at the bleeding edge, if that didn't sound like such a boring cliché."

"And you want to, what, be right there with them?"

He shrugs. "Yeah. We're graduating at just about the perfect time, you realise, Eva. They're still pushing the limits of what can be done with this technology. You work for some second-rater like Hermann Corporation and you'll be left breathing in their dust. They're that good." He looks at her, as if willing her to believe him.

She doesn't know if she does. Neil's as unreadable as always, for all their long years of friendship, and yet…

And yet he can still surprise her. "I don't think I've seen you get this intense about anything," she comments, and then corrects herself. "Not since that time they were selling tickets to the Doctor Who marathon."

"You wanted an honest answer. Your turn. What are the questions?"

"And why life-generation, then?"

Neil sighs. "Do you know how dirty memory reconstruction can be?"

Eva bites her lip. "I know what we covered in the lectures." Which mostly classify memory alteration and life-generation under the broader umbrella of memory reconstruction. When Neil says 'memory reconstruction' though, she knows he's not referring to the field in general, but one very specific set of applications of the technology.

He stares at his coffee, but he isn't really there; he's thinking, remembering, probably. He'd done his practicum with Mnemosyne, after all. "It's a hole," Neil says, at last. "A deep, filthy hole. You go in there, you sign at least twenty NDAs. Job mobility is non-existent: who's gonna touch you, once you've spent years digging through people's heads, trying to secure convictions? It gets even worse if you go into intel or psych—which won't take me anyway, since I'm primarily specced as an engineer. They're toying around with the idea of using memory alteration techniques in small amounts to adjust behaviour of actual, living subjects right now, as we speak."

"But that's…that's…" Not ethical, she'd wanted to say. Not professional.

"Incredibly fucked up?" Neil gives a harsh laugh. "No kidding. Enough honesty for you, Eva? Want me to violate a couple of NDAs while I'm at it?"

She can't quite put her finger on it, but she can sense his very real frustration; has the idea that this is as much honesty as she can dig up from him for today; maybe this is as honest as he's ever going to be, at least on this.

Eva relents with a sigh. "You realise if they find out I've told you, we're both going to be in for it."

"In for a penny, in for a pound, Eva," he says, matter-of-factly. "Questions. Now."

They both enter Sigmund Corporation at about the same time, which really doesn't surprise Eva. Knowing the questions beforehand is one hell of an advantage.

She doesn't call in her favour yet. She figures it's best to hang on to it until she really needs it.

She's in on the memory traversal agent track; surprisingly, Neil gets in on the technician specialist track, which makes her think he really might've been dead straight with her back in their conversation at that café. They're assigned to different departments, though: Eva's come straight off her practicum, which involved shadowing Dr. Robert Lin on a number of assignments, and so she isn't particularly surprised to be assigned to Fieldwork. Neil, though, winds up right in Maintenance, but takes it surprisingly cheerfully.

"This," he says, waving his offer letter right at Eva. "Is exactly what I wanted. No rummaging about in people's heads, just pushing the envelope of what we can do with the equipment. It's perfect."

They do new employee orientation, trudging around in their oversized white lab coats ("You'll get to do things a little differently once you're done with probation," Yvette Gan says, winking, the same Yvette Neil once played D&D with, apparently) and Eva's head buzzes with all the new names, rules, and regulations to keep straight.

Her office is right across the hallway from Yvette's; Neil's is apparently a shared space down with the rest of the "Maintenance monkeys", he scoffs. "We're crammed four-to-one in terms of office space," he says, cheerily, peeping in on her office. "Seems like no one in Maintenance has ever heard of this mythical concept known as 'personal space.'"

Eva isn't sure whether to regard Neil's cheer as a good sign or not. He's usually far more touchy about his privacy and his space; being stuffed into a small, shared office space should've been a nightmare for him.

Meanwhile, she rubs at her name badge, somewhat self-consciously as she stares at all that new real estate, trying to decide how she is going to make that space hers.

At least a couple of plants, Eva decides. It'd spruce up the place a little; add a touch of green to grey and white.

"Hey, Eva, check this out!"

The door is ajar, and she yanks it open to see Neil scooting by on a swivel-chair and grinning at her. "We can race! This is awesome!"

"Neil, this isn't even our first day. We're on probation."

He just stares at her. "So?"

"You want to keep this job?"

"Spoilsport," he sulks, but obediently returns the chair to wherever he'd managed to steal it from.

Yvette is just looking on, amused, and she finally shakes her head. "You two haven't changed, huh?"

"Can't improve on perfection, Yvette," Neil interjects, having returned sans offending swivel-chair.

"That's one way of putting it," comes Yvette's wry response, and she shakes her head slowly. "Don't let Robert catch you and you'll be fine."

"Robert?" Neil asks. Eva all but rolls her eyes. She can just see Robert and Neil clashing, if they ever run into each other. Thank goodness Neil's with Maintenance, rather than Fieldwork. The two hardly cross paths, except when Maintenance is rolling out a new build, or Fieldwork's sending in their equipment for repairs.

"Dr. Robert Lin," Yvette explains. "He's…" she seems to struggle for words. "Extremely experienced," she says, at last. "He's been here for ages; I think only the McMillans have been around for longer. And he's got a rather…intense personality." She looks over Neil and smirks. "Honestly, I think you two are going to get on like petrol in a ditch set on fire."

"Sounds like a glorious disaster," Neil says. His smile doesn't quite reach his eyes.

"'Glorious' is one way of putting it," Yvette replies. "He's in charge of giving you the briefing on Sigmund Corporation's mission and values later on, so I'd advise you pay attention." That was definitely directed at Neil.

"Why? Is there going to be an exam on it afterwards?" Neil asks, and his amusement is more than apparent.

Eva has had about enough. "You," she says, stabbing a finger at Neil. "Just stop being a pain for a couple of minutes. And you," she turns on Yvette. "Stop encouraging him."

"Just a couple of minutes?" Neil asks, ironically.

"If it wouldn't stretch your capabilities to try for a whole day instead," Eva says, acerbically.

"Ouch," Neil rubs at his chest. "That stings."

Amazingly enough, he does back down into a restive sort of silence, but at this point, Eva will take what she can get without looking the gift horse in the mouth.

She should've known, honestly, but all things considered, their probationary months are spent working separately; Eva's assigned to work immediately with Yvette, and Francis Kellert, the other fresh graduate from the Institute, has been assigned to learn the tricks of the trade from none other than Taima McMillan herself.

She doesn't see very much of Neil during the probationary months. In their few brief interludes between scurrying around the place, she learns he's been set to shadow the more experienced technicians down in Maintenance until he's broken in enough, and yet still, somehow, he's managing to get himself drowned in all the repairs and upgrades and patches that need to be done.

Yvette immediately puts Eva through her paces as she learns the tricks of the trade: all the little details about memory traversal, as much art as science, that they don't tell you about while you're at the Institute.

"Winter is the worst season," Yvette explains, one day. "It's why we take on new hires in the summer—we have the least patients then, so it gives the newbies time to get used to things before the flood of cases come in." She runs a hand through her short-cropped dark hair. "One thing's for sure: by the time winter rolls around, we'll be hopping from patient to patient and wishing we had just an hour of sleep more."

Eva knows, of course, that deaths rise in the winter, but knowing it is one thing: understanding what it meant for them is another.

"Overtime," Yvette says, and Eva gets the impression that a good amount of that cheer is feigned; she's picking up hints of strain behind that white smile. "Lots and lots of overtime, only it isn't really considered overtime. The pay's good, though. Hope you deal fine with irregular shifts. I'm no night owl, and I can't function on all-nighters if I'm not drugged up to the gills with caffeine."

Eva commiserates with a shiver; she's hardly a night owl either, but she imagines Neil gloating all about it, and he practically inhales coffee anyway.

She's barely into her first week at Sigmund Corporation when Yvette picks up a call re-routed directly to them. "Yvette Gan, speaking. Yeah? Uh-huh. Got it, we'll be right there."

Eva's packed her things by the time Yvette hangs up. "We've got a patient, haven't we?"

Yvette nods. "Yeah." Her eyes flick to where Eva's briefcase sits, clasped, by her feet. "You're packed. Good. We need to go, now. Clock's ticking. Patient was in an accident and they're trying to get her stabilised."

Truth to be told, Eva doesn't recall all that much of her first patient.

Your first case sticks with you, sure, but time softens the sharp edges of memory, enough that she stops cutting herself against it. Their patient is middle-aged, an accountant, with the first threads of iron-grey in her hair. Her wish is to become a best-selling novelist which is ridiculously easy since she apparently writes fanfiction in her spare time, so they don't have to plant a new desire, simply reinforce what's already there.

"You're good at this," Yvette murmurs, as they race through the patient's mind, alternatively cajoling cooperation from the memory-imprint, and then searching for memory links to weave into the memento, leapfrogging their way backwards through the memories.

Of course, none of it is real, but more than anything else, Eva remembers the faint smile on their patient's lips, seconds before she flat-lines.

Yvette scrubs roughly at her eyes with the back of her hand. "Good," she croaks. "We're done here. Let's go—we can deal with the forms later."

Neil is surprisingly close-lipped about his work. What Eva does learn, she learns from Francis, mostly. Apparently, "he's awful at this unofficial no-fraternisation policy they have going on," Francis grins; it's a light, easy smile that cuts right through your defenses. Eva imagines he weaponises it to great effect when dealing with a patient's worried relatives or friends. "Maintenance is supposed to keep to themselves, we're supposed to keep to ourselves. Neil, though, he just keeps hopping over as if he wants to know exactly what's going on in the field. Says he'd be in a lot more trouble, but he's awesome and the other new tech monkeys suck butt so they let him get away with it."

Eva finds herself chuckling with fond exasperation, if only because she can imagine Neil using exactly those words.

Still, she finds Neil in her office when she gets back, sitting on her desk, legs crossed at the ankles, nibbling on a bowl of chocolate chip cookies.

"Get off my desk," Eva says, eyes narrowed. "How did you even get in here?"

"Picked the lock," Neil supplies, amused. He munches on a cookie and offers her one. She frowns over at it. "Dark chocolate, don't tell me you're not tempted."

"Fine," Eva murmurs and accepts the cookie and bites down. In fact, there's no nuts at all, which comes as a pleasant surprise. "You just…oh, do I even want to know why you're snacking on cookies in my office, having picked the lock?"

"Eh," Neil shrugs. "Cookies are good. Also, you just got back." He's somehow able to turn that statement into a question.

"Yeah." She helps herself to another cookie. "They haven't sent you out?"

He regards her with a raised eyebrow. "I'm in Maintenance, remember? If they're dispatching me anywhere, something's gone terribly wrong. And when I say 'terribly wrong', I mean the sort of wrong that should make everyone start burning incense. Besides, Francis passed me these cookies. Said the patient wasn't eating them anyway."

"Neil!" she all but shouts. "You mean, you can't just…Francis can't just…"

There is a mocking glint in his eyes. "Gotcha," he murmurs. "Did you really think Francis'd steal cookies from a patient?"

Eva raises an eyebrow and waits.

"Well, I might, possibly," he admits. "Especially since said patient would no longer have need of delicious, homemade cookies. But no—there was a bakery right down the street. I got him to buy me a bagful."

She looks hard at him for a few more moments, but eventually decides that he's not messing with her. "What're you, his mission control?"

Neil laughs, delighted. "Shucks, I've got to remember that one for next time! 'Mission Control to Major Kellert, I demand cookies and a shrubbery.' Hey, what was that for!" He grabs, belatedly, at the crumbly cookie she flung at his face, and picks it off the floor, shrugs, blows lightly, and eats.

"First, that's disgusting, and second, you utterly deserve this for ruining my favourite song."

"Five-second rule, Eva! And what, 'Ground Control to Major Tom, Ground Control to Major Tom, take your protein pills and put your helmet on'?"

Truth is, Neil isn't half a bad singer, especially when he puts his mind to it. He did score that stint as Watson, after all, for that musical back in their high school years. But Eva never has and never will admit it; he'd be insufferable for months, if she did. The cookies are good, though: with just the right amount of crunch, crumble, and fudgey dark chocolate goodness, and Eva can't help her sigh of pleasure as she steals a handful of cookies.

"Whoa, whoa, getting greedy, are we?"

"My office," Eva says, coolly. "And I haven't had anything to eat since the call came."

"Tsk," Neil shakes his head sorrowfully. "What happened to the queen of self-care? All those Microsoft Paint flyers in high school and college, reminding people not to burn themselves out cramming for finals?"

"She got a job," Eva retorts. She drops the briefcase by the foot of her desk and manages a rather undignified slump into her empty swivel-chair. "And became a responsible working adult."

He wags a finger at her. "Ah, ah, ah," he says, and with a toothy smile, manages a fairly decent Count von Count impersonation. "I'll buy responsible, yes, and working, yes, but adult? That might take some finagling."

"Well, this adult," Eva emphasises that last word, "Has forms and reports to fill in. So shoo. Don't you have to do them too?"

"Meh," Neil dismisses that. "Paperwork's boring." Still, he swings to his feet and heads out the door and shoos. It's only after Eva hears the door shut that she realises he's left her the bowl of dark chocolate chip cookies.

She thinks of calling out after him, but…

Ah, well.

She nibbles on the cookies as she boots up her desktop and starts to work on the reports and forms she has to fill from the patient earlier. Hardly the most healthy lunch around, all things considered. But especially with her first patient tackled—some kind of milestone, that—Eva figures she's entitled to a little indulgence now and then.

Winter comes and leaves, taking with it the promised avalanche of patients at every possible hour, both night and day. Even through the closed door, Eva can hear Taima chewing Francis out—mildly but firmly—over gaps in the reports he's been filing and sighs. At least they've all made it through their probationary period.

There's almost always a long queue at the coffee maker in the lounge, and when the entire coffee maker disappears overnight, Eva doesn't even join in the hunt. She barges into Neil's shared office space and pries him off it and relocates it back to the lounge.

"We all need this," she informs him, tartly, and feels half-human again once she can smell the rich, roasted aroma of hot coffee. "Go get yourself one if you really want one."

"See if I don't," Neil retorts, but his heart isn't really in it.

They see less and less of each other in the winter; mostly just murmured greetings as they pass each other in the hallway, and a packet of gingerbread men duct-taped to her door. Eva wrinkles her nose; she doesn't really like gingerbread, but she learns by now that she can get hungry enough to scarf down just about anything when rushing from one patient to another.

She retaliates by taping a packet of chamomile tea to Neil's office door, and adds his name in black whiteboard marker ink just in case.

It's gone the next time she passes by, but she never does get to see what effect her unwanted gift might have had.

The office Christmas party is held—much delayed—in the early spring, and even then, Robert and his partner, Vera, are off dealing with a patient; a last-minute call, Yvette explains, shaking her head. "This always happens," she sighs. "We try our best to schedule the party for when everyone's there, but…"

"Can't predict when someone's gonna die."

That's Neil, strolling over to join them. He offers Yvette a nod of greeting, which she returns. Eva glances around and finds Francis deep in conversation with Taima and Willis.

"In a nutshell," Yvette agrees. "How's work been treating you?"

Neil's grin is lopsided. "It pays the bills," he says, casually. "And I've probably got several gigabytes worth of music ripped from memory audio by now."

Yvette laughs. "Perks of the job," she says. "Gotta love them."

Eva's about to say something when Yvette's mobile rings, and she groans. Yvette doesn't look too pleased either as she checks for caller ID and then picks up.

"Patient?" Neil mouths, to Eva.

"Most likely," Eva replies, and grimaces. It would've been nice, she thought, frustratedly, to actually have time to take a break from the never-ending onslaught of patients, and she'd planned on a dinner with Traci and their parents afterwards, too…

"…All right, we'll be there," Yvette sighs, and hangs up. To Eva, she says, "I know, it's not fair, but unfortunately, we're pretty low on seniority, so we get the job. Time to roll out."

Eva bites her lip. "I've got to call my sister," she says, at last. "Let her know I won't be coming."

"Y'know," Neil says, conversationally, "Maybe you're just getting in your yearly dose of drama early, complete with emotional violin tracks, but you might remember that I happen to owe a certain someone a rather big favour…"

Eva blinks; that's right, she had been saving it, meaning to call it in when she really needed it, but… "You sure about this?" she asks.

"God, would I ask if I weren't?" Neil retorts. "What am I gonna do here, anyway, wander around like a lost lamb 'till they let me go home to chomp on frozen pizza? I'll do it."

"But you're not in Fieldwork."

Neil shrugs. "Eh, how difficult can it be, anyway?"

"Okay," Eva says, sternly. "That does not inspire confidence. I'm doing it. It's what they're paying me for. In any case, you can make yourself useful and call Traci, and then save me some dessert or something."

"Meh," Neil says, philosophically. "Your choice."

"Go get your things," Yvette instructs her. "I'll handle the equipment. And go make sure we have lots of coffee—we're probably going to be on the road for quite a while."

Another year passes; Francis, surprisingly, decides he's had just about enough of working in the field and swaps departments. "He's in Maintenance now," Neil says, when Eva asks. "What's more, they rustled up a new office for Luo and Kadroski, and Byrne left SigCorp altogether, so we're sharing an office now. You have no idea, Eva, how divine it is to be able to stretch—" he mimes an expansive stretch, elbows jutting out to the sides. "—without accidentally hitting someone in the eye, neck, throat, or groin."

"That, I don't believe," Eva informs him. "How the hell do you end up clipping someone in the groin?" Neil opens his mouth, but she adds, hurriedly, "I don't even want to know, come to think of it. So how's he settling in?"

"Well enough," Neil shrugs. "Takes to it like a duck to water. Likes it a lot more than being in the field, in fact."

"Why?" she asks. Sometimes, with Neil, it's hard to figure when he's joking and when he's actually serious.

Neil shrugs. "Eh, you know. What could be more exciting than getting to roll out the next ADG fix and then watching it blow up in everyone's faces when they use it in the field?" He deftly works his disposable chopsticks to grasp a slice of stir-fried beef.

This café is at least half an hour away from the office, but their stir-fried rice noodles are to die for, slathered in dark sauce with a heavy, smoky fragrance.

Eva studies him as she sips some chilled calamansi juice. "Then I guess I'll know who to blame the next time a couple of memories get fragmented."

He snorts. "Please. You'll know who to thank when everything works, exactly as it's supposed to. I accept gratitude primarily in the form of food, but movie vouchers and coffee will do in a pinch."

"You wish," Eva scoffs. "I'll believe that when you stop doing daily battle with the photocopiers in your office. How many has it been, hmm? Five? Seven?" One particularly memorable occasion had Neil cursing up a blue streak that could be heard all the way from Fieldwork, until Taima (of all people!) had come down to Maintenance and firmly told him to tone it down.

Neil'd never done that again.

"Three," he informs her, loftily, "And they deserve exactly what they got." He scoops up a handful of rice noodles. "The first two were barely hanging in there and should've been scrapped at least a century ago. The fact they lasted more than a week with me speaks volumes of my skills with a sonic screwdriver…and the occasional bit of percussive maintenance."

"I know," Eva says, her voice utterly dry. "Yvette heard your cursing and banging all the way from her office. I'm still surprised Robert hasn't dropped in to yell at you yet." She's starting to get the impression that Maintenance thrives on clamour and chaos, all things considered.

"Oh, Bob," Neil waves that off, airily. "We've come to an understanding, Bob and I."

"Does he know you call him that?" Eva wonders aloud, stirring her calamansi juice with her drinking straw.

"Hard not to, if you think about it. After all, I've been calling him Bob everytime we meet."

Eva won't admit this to Neil's face, but she would pay to be a fly on the wall at their encounters. For all she and Neil are theoretically working at the same branch of Sigmund, it seems they don't often run into each other at all during work hours; most of their meetings these days really involve grabbing a coffee at the café just down the street.

Still, her impression is that Yvette was right: something about Neil just grates on Robert, and vice versa. It's probably a clash of strong personalities, all things considered.

She idly picks up several strands of rice noodles from her own plate and changes the topic. "But if Francis is with Maintenance now, then who exactly are you working with? Are you partners?"

"No one," he informs her, and then, on seeing her expression, "It's not that bad, you know. I send him flowers, he sends me candy. Also, I'm pretty easygoing—"

"—Right," Eva mutters. "Because I'm having a hard time reconciling that with the person who went through five lab partners in a semester."

Neil shrugs. "What can I say? Some people don't appreciate competence when they're working with it. Also, for the record, the fact that Travis was billed for all the damages he caused—independently of me—indicates he was every bit the walking human disaster I told you he was. Even Godzilla couldn't have caused as much damage, blundering through Tokyo."

They pay for their food, drop a tip in the jar, and leave, strolling down the street, side by side, in companionable silence.

Eventually, Eva says, "Is it everything you imagined it to be?"

"Hm?"

"Working for Sigmund Corporation."

Neil considers it, for a long moment. "In some ways, yes," he says. "In some ways, no. You?"

"I like the job," Eva says. "I like that I feel like I'm…making a difference."

"A cosmically insignificant difference," Neil reminds her.

It's Eva's turn to shrug, but her reply has a not inconsiderable amount of heat to it. "From a cosmic perspective, we're pretty insignificant. But that's not the perspective we deal with on a daily basis. From a cosmic perspective, the whole rat race from grade school to the grave is a joke, if you think about it."

"Huh," Neil says.

"What?"

"That's…surprisingly cynical." He studies her. "I'm not sure I like it. You're stealing my job."

"Oh, my sweet summer child," Eva croons, "The things you don't know about me could fill an encyclopedia."

Shortly after, as if pride goeth, Eva and Yvette encounter their first—Eva's first, all things considered—failure. The patient dies and Yvette calls the traversal before anything worse can happen and Eva finds herself watching in the flesh as the patient flatlines and secondguessing everything, wondering what she could've done better, if only they could've been faster, more efficient in their canvassing of the patient's memories…

"Here's a new lesson for you," Yvette says, as they drive back to the office with their defeat, and the unhappiness of the patient's relatives hanging over them as a dark cloud. "Take the victories you can; don't let the failures get you down. We can't win 'em all. Sometimes, the doctor calls us out too late, sometimes the patient just can't hang in there in time for us to make the necessary connections. It happens."

"I know it does," Eva replies, and intellectually, she does know that. Failure happens. "I just…" She worries at the words. What does she wish? That it wasn't so personal? That it didn't happen this time? She feels like she's failed the patient, and no longer is it an abstract concept; the patient has a face, and she's seen part of his history.

Thomas Cameron. She rolls the name about in her mind and writes it down on a list, resolving not to forget.

"We all do," Yvette responds, heavily. "But that's the nature of the beast. Care too much, and you find you're unable to carry on with this job, you know?"

Word spreads around the office quickly, and for all Eva wants to bury herself in self-pitying misery in her office, someone knocks on her door. "Come in!" Eva calls out, and honestly, she thought for a moment that it might've been Neil, but it was Robert instead.

"Can we talk?" he asks, and Eva toys with saying no, but Robert's talked her through the basics of the job, and it would've been doing him a massive disservice to be clamming up on him now, so she nods instead.

"I heard about your patient from Yvette," Robert says. "She says you've been taking the setback extremely hard."

"It's someone's life," Eva whispers. "And we didn't do right by him."

"No," Robert agrees. "You didn't."

She blinks. He smiles faintly.

"I'm not here to massage your ego, Eva," he says, matter-of-factly. "You're entirely right that this, from one perspective, is a tragedy. You failed in your duty to your patient. What I'm trying to tell you—what everyone, including your partner Yvette is trying to tell you—is that failure is normal and unavoidable in our job. What matters is how we respond to failure. We can let it kick us to the ground and decide we've had enough. Or we can decide to get up, and to try again. To do better the next time."

"And if we fail again?" Eva wants to know, heartsick at the thought of a string of Thomas Camerons following her through her career.

Robert shrugs. "That might very well happen," he admits. "But I know you, Eva. You care deeply about your patients. That's not a bad thing. You were a good student, and those skills are transferring themselves to the job you're now undertaking. It's extremely unlikely—I would say—that you'll be met with a string of failed patients."

"But if I do?"

"Cross that bridge if you come to it," Robert says, firmly. "In any case, you and Yvette will need to write your reports—I'll talk you through the process—and there will be an inquiry, but this should be a formality, nothing more. I believe in you and Yvette—and I believe you're doing good work here."

He's as good as his word; he takes her out for dinner, too, and in the process, he talks about some of the tougher patients he and Vera have had to deal with, some of which were patients he, too, has failed. It's hard for Eva to think the pain of failure insurmountable, especially when she sees Robert talking gravely about each patient he and Vera failed to successfully tackle, but then (pointedly) about how many more they've helped.

It takes time, for the sting to go away.

Since word travels fast in their small branch office, her colleagues close ranks about her, each offering some small comfort in their own way.

Lisa drops by to let her know she's always welcome for a cup of tea and biscuits, and in fact, Eva does take her up on it once. They have a conversation that is both illuminating and that goes quite some way to easing the ache in her heart, the gnawingly deep and personal sense of failure.

Taima, on the other hand, gifts her a knitted wrap that runs in variegated shades of bright amber, and when Eva protests, Taima firmly tells her she needs a hobby to preoccupy her, this was made with kindness, and to pay it forward, if she must.

Gavin makes her a soothing ginger-and-cinnamon latte which somehow seems to settle with a gentle warmth in her stomach, and claps her on the shoulder, and tells her she's got a long way to go yet.

The work helps; Eva files reports, deals with the inquiry which, as Robert predicts, is a fairly straightforward affair, and then she and Yvette are assigned a new patient. She initiates the traversal with feelings of trepidation, but then it's the job, the job, and when she's traversing memories as fast as she can, there's no room for doubt, there's only focus and their objective in mind.

This one is a success, and she and Yvette exchange weary smiles as they pack up and prepare to leave.

Through this all, Neil leaves a series of increasingly obnoxious motivational posters stuck to her door. Eva finally loses patience at the one with Oscar reading YOU'RE GARBAGE, BUT REMEMBER, IT'S GARBAGE CAN, NOT GARBAGE CANNOT and barges into his office, waving the offending poster about.

"Recognise this, Neil?"

"Oh, hey, Eva!" Neil swivels about in his chair; she notices disassembled pieces of equipment strewn about his worktable. His smile slowly dies when he notices what she's holding. "Oh, uh, ye—maaaybe?"

"Is that a yes, or maybe?"

"Well, it's a yes if you're happy to see me, and a maybe if you're not," he ventures, tentatively.

"Stop leaving these things on my door, you moron," Eva growls and stuffs the poster back in his hands. "How many walls d'you think I have, anyway?"

He uncrumples the poster enough to look at it. "Aww, I thought this one was good! Besides, you can always just stick the new ones on top of the old ones. Look, that's what I do." He gestures to the entirely plastered walls of his shared office; Eva just pities Francis.

"Oh, so that's why I can't see even a shred of plaster in here," Eva says, bitingly.

Neil shrugs. "Hey, posters are meant to be put up, aren't they?"

"Doesn't it defeat the purpose if said poster is buried beneath, oh, I don't know, five layers of posters?"

Neil glances about, cluelessly, at his office walls. "No…?"

"Remind me never to get you posters for Christmas," Eva mutters, as she takes her leave.

His reply is half-muffled by the sound of the office door closing. "You never get me posters for Christmas, anyway!"

A few months later, Neil's one of the technicians picked to head out to a conference in Reykjavík. Eva, though, only hears about it from Francis. "Meh, I'd rather be someplace else—a nice scenic tropical island, shooting the breeze with a cold beer and a barbeque," Neil says, when she drops by his office during her break to mention it. "Instead, we get Reykjavík. D'you know how cold it's gonna be? It's winter!"

Eva tries her best not to laugh. "Reykjavík's not that bad. In fact, if you get the chance, you should go sight-seeing. And anyway, it's a conference, not a holiday."

"Sure. A highly-prestigious conference on memory reconstruction technology," Neil says. He already has a laminated badge on a lanyard lying on his desk: she picks it up and studies it. DR. NEIL WATTS, SIGMUND CORPORATION, TECHNICIAN SPECIALIST, it reads, in neat, dark letters. "Anyone who's anyone at all in the memory reconstruction biz is gonna be there. So why couldn't they have picked somewhere like, oh, Bali? I'd love to fly out to Bali on the company's dime."

"Very official-looking," she comments, setting both badge and lanyard down.

"You betcha!" Neil grins. In spite of his complaints about the conference's location, she can tell he's just happy to have been picked to attend the conference at all. "I'm pretty sure Mnemosyne will have its own representatives. But they can't touch this!" He picks up the laminated badge and admires it, again.

"Okay, I'm going to have to stop you here before you start rubbing it and crooning, 'my preciousss,'" Eva says, tartly. "Besides, what happened to priorities?"

"They went and—wait, what?" He blinks owlishly at her, as her words finally register.

"Priorities," Eva repeats. "Such as lunch."

"You're kidding—oh, God." He checks his watch and blanches. "Where'd the time go?"

"Yeah, yeah, I get it," Eva says, rolling her eyes. "You love it here, you'd like to do this kind of thing twenty-four-seven. Well, the queen of self-care's here to remind you there are important things—like lunch. And like not blowing off your friends."

"Did we—okay, one sec," Neil mutters. He ducks under his desk and somehow manages to emerge triumphantly, with a messy booklet in hand. He flips furiously through the pages until he finds one marked with a lilac post-it. "Okay, Eva, lunch. Let's roll."

"Is that a planner? And a lilac post-it?"

"Lilac? It's just purple. Also, there was a huge pack of them in the discount bin."

Eva resists the urge to introduce her forehead (or Neil's)—none-too-gently—to the wall. "Yes, Neil," she says, letting out a long breath in a quiet sigh. "There are more colours than 'just purple', we've learned something new today. Now, we're going to have lunch, if I have to drag you out of this office by the scruff of your neck. So, are you going to come quietly?"

"All right, all right," Neil grumbles. "Geez, Eva." He sticks the planner underneath the keyboard, with the scarlet bookmark ribbon poking out just so. "So, whatcha got in mind?"

"I was thinking of that salad place down the street—"

"God, no, we've eaten there at least five times, I'm gonna snap if I have to touch another salad. I vote the Turkish joint—the one with the spicy salami pizza."

"You know how unhealthy that is?"

"Don't tell me you don't like it; it's sinfully good."

"Sinful being the key word here."

"So?"

Eva sighs, heavily. So much for eating healthier, she thinks, even though Neil's right: they've been hitting the salads a lot over the past weeks. "Alright," she says. "If you're paying."

Neil thinks about it; she can all but see the relevant mathematical expressions running line by line behind those cool grey eyes, but apparently, as far as he's concerned, paying for a pizza beats eating salad again, inequality established, QED. "Cool. Don't think you're getting out of this one!"

"Somehow," Eva mutters, dryly, "I don't think this was a possibility from the very beginning."

Neil, of course, discovers that Reykjavík has the best dark chocolate manufacturer in the world and starts sending her smug text messages flaunting that fact. Because he's Neil, and he'd never turn down the chance to push someone's buttons, or twist that knife a little deeper.

Aren't you supposed to be working? she texts back.

Multi-tasking is for pros, comes his reply, but he falls silent anyway. She gets one or two emails containing pictures from Reykjavík and the conference, and just rolls her eyes because there's only so many selfies in a chocolate shop Neil can take before it starts getting awfully groan-inducing.

The conference photos, though.

She hesitates over them, wondering, trying to put words to the strange gnawing feeling inside. It isn't quite that she's jealous, of course. But it's hard to look at Neil, grinning infectiously in the photos, or standing sober-faced, among the other conference attendees, their various badges on multi-coloured lanyards about their necks, and wondering about what she's doing with SigCorp.

Is she happy? Neil certainly seems to be.

Eva doesn't quite know, and that thought distresses her a little.

When Neil gets back, there's a new bounce in his step; a sharp, crackling energy to his movements and gestures. He'd go on and on about the different ways the other agencies and companies are eking out every bit of potential from memory reconstruction, if she lets him, and because she's partly amused, Eva does let him for a time.

He even gets her a huge box of dark chocolate from that world-famous manufacturer, and Eva sighs, but crosses out his debt without a grudge. It's hard to remain unmoved by that fantastically huge assortment of dark chocolate. Dark chocolate with toffee, dark chocolate with slices of Seville oranges, dark chocolate with ginger, espresso beans tumbled in dark chocolate…

"How on earth did you even fit it into your luggage?" she demands, eyeing the huge box. It's taking up way too much space on her desk.

Neil winks. "Would you believe me if I told you it's bigger on the inside?"

"No," Eva replies, almost immediately. "I'm convinced it's sorcery of the foulest order."

"Ah, but remember Clarke's Third Law, Eva. 'Any sufficiently advanced technology is—'"

"—indistinguishable from magic," Eva finishes, because of course, they've spent high school fighting over the same sci-fi books; one of the many places their paths crossed, back when there was only one copy of The Caves of Steel in the library, and if one of them got to it first, the other was going to have to wait, and wait, and wait, and deal with all the inevitable gloating in the meanwhile. "So, I take it you're admitting to foul sorcery, then?"

Neil smirks, utterly pleased with himself. "Being a technician is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be unnatural."

Eva shakes her head, sorrowfully. "You were doing so well there, until you quoted the prequels."

"There's nothing wrong with the prequels, they're wonderful."

"Now that's blasphemy right there."

"I'm not a purist," Neil says, sticking out his tongue at her. "I watch to laugh at the emo angst kid and to enjoy the flashing lights and badass lightsaber twirling. Hey, I'm superficial, what can I say?"

She rolls her eyes. "Yeah, I think we knew that since you were practically worshipping Wendy during high school."

"You said you'd never bring that up again!"

"But it's practically a mine of untapped comedic gold," Eva replies, affecting Neil's sardonic drawl. Truth to be told, there was once—when the wounds were still fresh—when she wouldn't have poked at all, but the time was long gone, and now they could both look back and laugh, despite Neil's protests to the contrary, on their teenage years come and gone.

"Ha-bloody-ha," Neil scoffs. "Pick on my adolescent self's poor taste in teenage girls, why don't you."

When did they grow up? She finds herself wondering at the swift passage of time. Adolescence, with its endless insecurities and possibilities had come and gone, seemingly unnoticed, and all of a sudden, here they are, in the bright afternoon of their lives, working jobs a young Eva Rosalene and an equally callow Neil Watts had never imagined for themselves.

You developed—out of necessity—a kind of perspective, working in life-generation. You saw the way people narrowed down from the multitudes of possibilities in the morning of their lives, each glinting like the facet of a complicated lattice, down to the single, tenuous thread that marked the rest of their lives.

"Isn't it a waste?" she'd asked Robert, once. Back when she had only been a student at the Institute, doing her practicum with Sigmund under the supervision of Dr. Robert Lin.

"What is?" he prompted.

She struggled to put the thought into words. "We start out with so many possibilities, so many things we could do with our lives, and then we inevitably end up with only one of them, and all those other lives, unlived…"

"They're gone, of course," Robert said, knowingly. "That's what it means to actualise potential. All those other potential lives gone, in an instant, because we can only ever live one of them at once. But you know what?"

"What?"

"It doesn't matter. At least, not where we're concerned." He gestured towards what seems to be an endless infinity of possible lives; possible selves that might-have-been but would never be, each fragment of self stretching out in an unending chain to the edge of that digital horizon and beyond, each captured and displayed simultaneously by the power of life-generation technology. It's a training simulation, of course, and yet Eva's overwhelmed by the complexity, by the sheer, untrammelled 'what-could-have-been's. "Normally, you won't have to shift from the overworld to the tree of infinity. In fact, it's highly recommended you avoid the tree altogether."

"Why?"

"Because it's mesmerising," Robert explained, calmly. "Hypnotic, almost. You want to make sense of all that complexity, but how do you even go about understanding a single life, with all its contradictions, all the possibilities that will never, ever be?"

You didn't, Eva thought. Or you broke yourself trying.

"The tree of infinity strains the machine's capacity—you can ask Vera for the technical explanation, if you're so inclined—but it produces a visual representation of the many possible lives the machine calculates and weights, given each change you make to a given patient's memories. Sorting through the possibilities takes a lot of time; it's an exhausting method of troubleshooting, and most of the time, you're working against the clock so you don't have the time to go through the various branches to figure out where a change isn't being implemented just right. The tree represents exactly how the machine does what it does—in fact, it's sort of the underlying principle, really—but what we're really concerned with are the specific branches the patient asks for. This is important, Eva. If you go with the tree, you'll notice—" He called up a diagnostic window, entered some commands, and then waited. All of a sudden, the tree shrinks, as hundreds of branches are pruned, leaving still hundreds behind. "What did I just do?"

"You entered in some parameters," Eva guessed. "And in doing so, excluded irrelevant branches of the tree."

Robert favoured her with a smile. "Exactly so. And look—we're still left with hundreds of lives which fit the patient's criteria. At least over half of these lives are going to be what we term 'minimally happy lives', which is to say, they're lives in which—roughly speaking—the patient feels more overall happiness than unhappiness. Now, take a guess. Which of these is the maximally happy life?"

Eva thought about it, cautiously. "Is it even in this set?" she asked, carefully. "And is there only one uniquely maximally happy life?"

"Good," Robert nodded. "You're seeing the problem. If you're lucky, there's more than one maximally happy life. That is, more than one life ties for maximally happy. The bigger problem is: what happens if that life doesn't lie within the set delineated by the patient's criteria?"

Eva frowned. A tricky question, but not much trickier than the ethics case studies thrown at them during the Professionalism module back at the Institute. "I suppose we pick the local maxima, within the set established by the patient's criteria. It's not our job to determine what should make them most happy."

"Exactly," Rob said. "It's the most important rule of life-generation, Eva, so you need to be very clear about this. We are not here to 'play God with the patient's mind'," he crooked his fingers in scare quotes, "Or whatever the latest slogan protesters like to come up with is. We're here to help the patient die well, having lived a fulfilling life—our place is not to judge them for their criteria, nor to tell them their criteria is wrong. Our task is an important one: we are their partners on what might be the greatest journey they are ever going to undertake. We help them die without regrets, feeling as if they've accomplished something. And they have." He folded his arms across his chest, regarding her sternly. "None of this involves us deciding on their behalf that they would be happier given a completely different life trajectory. Given the sheer number of alternative branches, it's trivially true that one other branch is going to satisfy them at least as much, if not more so, than the life you end up generating for them. Your job isn't to second-guess and determine what the maximally happy life will be. We do this for them, Eva. For the patients."

"Yoo-hoo! Ground control to Eva!" Neil carols. "C'mon, it's been a long while since you zoned out on me like that."

Eva blinks free of the memories. "Sorry," she croaks. "I was…thinking."

"My dear girl," Neil replies, dryly, "I think I gathered as much. So, spill it: what was so much more interesting than making fun of my adolescent self's shitty taste in hot girls?"

She doesn't know if she can explain this, or if she really wants to; this darker, heavier direction her thoughts have taken on what is supposed to be a sunlit afternoon, talking to Neil right after he made it back from the conference.

"Just work things," Eva replies, at last.

Neil rolls his eyes. "Seriously? All work and no play is bad for you, Eva. You should do something fun—like a One Piece marathon. Doctor's orders."

"We're not even that kind of doctor, you know."

"Uh-huh. Shiny doctoral degree says otherwise," Neil shoots back. "Plus, you listen to Dr. Dre, don't you?"

"No, who's he?"

"Well, he's not a real doctor, makes awesome music, and gets mad respect. So there."

Sometimes, Eva isn't sure Neil-logic—in all its pretzel-knotted glory—works the same way as regular logic. She also isn't sure it's worth making the effort to follow it, at times.

"'So there?' How old are you, five?"

"You've found my secret—I'm a five year old living in the body of a doctor, and so I'm gonna live forever! Muahahaha!"

"Keep working on that evil laugh, you might get there one day."

"MUA-HA-HA-HA—HOUCH! Goddamnit, Eva, you don't elbow someone in the middle of a truly magnificent evil, gloating laugh!"

"So find something better to do," Eva replies, implacable. "Before someone from your department or from mine wanders in here to yell at us for slacking off. And anyway, these reports aren't going to write themselves."

She and Neil; they fight their battles the same way, but it takes Eva a long time to realise that. She moves from assigned patient to assigned patient, never feeling quite settled, yet never quite feeling…unhappy. Contentment, she decides. Is that the word she's been looking for? Or maybe: equilibrium.

They've been living for a long time in the halocline between the Institute and their student days and their work for Sigmund, and now finally she feels the shallow fresh waters of youth recede, to be replaced by the cold saltwater depths of adulthood.

Is this what she wants to be doing with her life?

Eva doesn't know. Her younger self had always dreamed of being a marine biologist, but passions fade and change and become muted given the relentless passage of time and contact with the unyielding realities of the world. Sigmund's scholarship meant she didn't have to pay for schooling at the Institute, whereas marine biology meant grad school, which meant finding a way to get funding, and even then, crushing debt and decades of uncertainty.

She's not unhappy, she just…

It's a struggle she voices to no-one; not to Yvette, not to Francis, who, if anything, has become quietly content with his transfer to Maintenance, nor to Neil, whose exuberance has become muted as well, though it's only something Eva notes in retrospect, as caught up as she is in work and her own thoughts about the trajectory her life has taken.

Even though Robert has made it clear his door is always open to her, she doesn't approach him about it either. She doesn't feel right, bothering her former mentor about it, and if Eva is to be perfectly honest with herself, she doesn't think he'll quite understand her doubts either. If Robert has one quality that Eva admires, it's that he never doubts; as far as he's concerned, he's exactly where he wants to be, doing exactly what he wants to be doing. He believes in this work: for him, it's a calling, and Eva only wishes she had that kind of pellucid certainty.

She scribbles a lot in her diary, and then keeps it under lock and key, because she wouldn't put it past Neil to barge into her office and read it.

She starts a vegetable garden again, one weekend, as a way of indulging in some purely physical activity. Nothing to do with that mindfulness stuff, not really, but her thoughts and worries have a strange way of trickling out of her mind as she tends to her vegetables, and there's a strange sort of satisfaction at getting to eat the products of her own labours, so she keeps it up.

Some days, she and Neil walk home together, late at night, after they're done with work and dinner. She watches the distant lights—floating, on the river water—and the few pale shimmers of stars overhead, mingled with the electric glow of streetlights, and wonders about being alone in the world, about how it's possible to be around people, talking and laughing with them, and yet feeling completely and utterly alone, completely and utterly lost in a void, apart.

"Hey," Neil says, and she realises he's fallen silent, is gazing expectantly at her. "You all right?"

"Yeah," Eva answers, and it's only half a lie. "I think I am."

A/N: Whoosh. This is the first bit of a huge, spiralling-beyond 50k monster I am calling the 'Neilariad' (probably the last TTM fic I'm ever gonna write in a long while, because holy heck is this kind of epic exhausting) because I don't really know what the heck is going on anymore, so help me writing gods. I may still come back and revise this first bit as I'm not sure I've got it down quite right, and I'm still adjusting as I write.

Scope of this fic can be described as 'Neil and Eva's 'memory traversal school' days, early SigCorp, all the way to whatever the heck's going on with Neil past Finding Paradise' along with huge lashings of sci-fi and friendship and mindcucumbery. Expect the mindcucumbers, this fic has so many mindcucumbers that I've been mindcucumbered even trying to make sense of the plot. (Hint: you may have noticed this is not quite linear.)

Additionally: for the curious, the argument about the 'hard limits of simulation' mirrors an existing debate about: A. what the substrate of consciousness is (if there is in fact one), and B. a thought experiment about a special kind of entity called philosophical zombies, which appear and behave exactly like you and me, but lack any kind of internal experience whatsoever.

One final note to the reader: I have not labelled this as 'romance' or with any pairings. This does not mean that shipping things don't happen; it's simply that: A. I don't think, within the context of the story I'm telling, the tag 'romance' is appropriate as it may lead to certain expectations that aren't quite right, and B. people in previous fandoms have complained that when I write ships, it really falls into the grey area between 'friendship' and 'romance.' Once again, I pick the label that best fits with the story, without leading to unnecessary reader expectations.

-Ammaren.