Aldera (Cyber-Enhanced Cat, Detective Agency)

DETECTIVE AGENCY LOG — Aldera, Field Unit Assignment: Boundary Anomaly Observation, Marsh Causeway Sector Status: Active — anomaly resolved, observation continuing

The causeway file is closed. This log is not about the causeway.

Subject B (Thorne, G., human, survey) has been running a test on Subject A (Elvira, unclassified) since the night of the failed circle. I logged the first instance and did not know it was one.

Method, reconstructed: he introduces items of Subject A's own private vocabulary into ordinary conversation, without attribution, and observes whether she reacts to them as familiar or as impressive. To date she has reacted as impressive, every time, which he receives without correction and which visibly costs him something to receive.

A test of that design has exactly one purpose. He is not checking whether she knows the words. He is checking whether she remembers giving them to him.

Supporting observation: he has twice adjusted his own posture to a height he is not currently standing at — lower, and to the left of where she is — which in my experience indicates a person unconsciously reproducing the geometry of a remembered conversation. The geometry does not match any conversation the two of them have had in this sector. I estimate the remembered one at a considerable distance in time, on the strength of nothing better than how badly he is doing at it.

Further supporting observation, and the one I would put first if I were writing this for anyone: he is not surprised by her. He is surprised by the date. Those are different expressions and I have had cause to become good at telling them apart.

Assessment: Thorne holds information bearing directly on the open question of what Subject A is. He has not entered it in the survey record. I do not currently believe he is concealing it for his own benefit; the cost profile is wrong for that, and a man concealing an advantage does not look tired.

Agency protocol applies. Volunteered information is dismissed; requested information is retained. Two nights ago Subject A asked me the question she had not asked in three years, and it broke a three-century anchor before dawn, so the protocol is not in question this week.

I will therefore record what I have seen, file it, and wait to be asked.

I note, for the file and without recommendation, that the last time everyone in this sector waited to be asked, it cost three years.

END LOG