yesterday. You deserve more than being stuck sitting here watching me crash for a few hours,” she said.
Diana closed the front door and took off her coat. “Don’t you think you might be a little too tired to be driving around at night? Can’t you wait until tomorrow to work on Cam?” she asked.
“I think he’s waited long enough. Besides, I’m feeling pretty well rested after that little nap. I’ll be okay,” Mara said.
“I’d be more than willing to volunteer to wait, but I’m not sure it would be a good idea,” Cam said. “At some point, the current state of affairs with my systems will degrade, and I’m afraid that may already be happening.”
Mara stiffened. “Degrade how?”
“There’s an interplay that happens between the neural engrams stored in my head and the central core—the main computer, if you will—stored in my torso that sustains my personality or consciousness. The remote connection I’m using is not robust enough to support those processes over the long term. Eventually I will begin to have about as much personality as a toaster, if we don’t do anything.”
“I think you would be a great toaster,” Hannah said. “A talking toaster would be funny.”
Sam smiled. “Yes, it would, but I don’t think Cam wants to be a toaster, bean.”
“Okay, let me throw some soup and sandwiches together, and then you can go,” Diana said, walking from the room, not leaving time for debate.
Mara turned to Cam and said, “I can tell her we can pick up something to eat on the way, if you want to get on the road.”
“I don’t think a few minutes more will make much of a difference,” he said.
Sam pointed to the book Mara was holding. “Ping says you got another haiku. You didn’t mention it before.”
“Yes. I was going to see if Hannah could help me figure out something.” She turned to the little girl and held up the book. “Did your Mara, the older version of me, did she make this book herself or did she get it from someone else?”
Hannah shrugged. “I don’t know where she got it.”
“Why does that matter?” Sam asked.
“The latest haiku makes a reference to this realm’s Chronicle. At first I assumed it meant the Chronicle of Creation, the one that Abby took. But Ping pointed out that that Chronicle was not from this realm. It is from your original realm.”
“So?”
“So, if the Chronicle your Mara brought over isn’t from this realm, I was hoping to find out if the book was referring to itself, to the Chronicle of Continuity.”
“Makes sense, I guess,” Sam said.
Cam interjected, “Can I ask a stupid question?”
“Sure,” Mara said. “Go ahead.”
“If each realm can have a distinct version of a person, why couldn’t it have a distinct version of an object, say, like this Chronicle you are referring to?”
“I don’t know.” Mara raised her eyebrow and thought for a moment. “When I crossed over to Juaquin Prado’s realm where the machines were organic and they interred dead people in lightbulbs, the buildings and landmarks around the shop were recognizable but distinct in some ways. So I guess each realm could have different versions of the same object. Buildings are objects. Why not?”
“You’re saying that there might be a Chronicle of Creation made in this realm? I’m not sure I buy that. My Mara could have picked it up in any number of places. Unlike you, she wasn’t shy about crossing over to other realms.”
“Yeah, but she had to have the Chronicle before she crossed over to other realms, right?”
“That’s true.”
“Then the Chronicle had to come originally from your realm,” Mara said.
“That makes sense.”
“So the question is, who created the Chronicle of Creation?”
“Ned Pastor,” Diana said, leaning against the entrance to the living room.
“What?” Mara asked.
“I bet there’s a Ned Pastor in Sam’s realm, and he made the Chronicle,” Diana said.
“What makes you say that? Ned couldn’t even repair the original one. I had to remount the crystals after he cut them, remember?” Mara said.
“Is this Ned guy kinda tall and lanky, wiry?” Sam said.
Diana nodded.
“There was a guy who made jewelry and icons and stuff for my mother’s cult. He might’ve made the Chronicle. I could see that being the case.”
“What makes you so sure it was Ned?” Mara asked her mother.
“Because Ned called the other day to tell us that he made a duplicate of the Chronicle, remember?”
“He did?”
“Yeah. You said you didn’t care if he mass produced Chronicles and sold them on eBay.”
“I vaguely remember that.”
“So this