Morning came, and after a sleepy, romantic breakfast, Tory plugged into his briefcase and went to work. Elin wandered off to do some thinking.
There was no getting around the fact that she was not the metallurgist from Wheel Lab 19, not anymore. That woman was alien to her now. They shared memories, experiences- but she no longer understood that woman, could not sympathize with her emotions, indeed found her distasteful.
At a second-terrace cafe that was crowded with off-shift biotechs, Elin rented a table and briefcase. She sat down to try to trace the original owner of her personality.
As she'd suspected, her new persona was copied from that of a real human being; creating a personality from scratch was still beyond the abilities of even the best wetware techs. She was able to trace herself back to IGF's inventory bank and to determine that duplication of personality was illegal-which presumably meant that the original owner was dead.
But she could not locate the original owner. Selection had been made by computer, and the computer wouldn't tell. When she tried to find out, it referred her to the Privacy Act of 2037.
"I think I've exhausted all the resources of self-discovery available to me," she told the Pierrot when he came to collect his tip. "And I've still got half the morning left to kill."
He glanced at her powder-blue facepaint and smiled politely.
"It's selective black."
"Huh?" Elin turned away from the lake, found that an agtech carrying a long-handled net had come up behind her.
"The algae-it absorbs light into the infrared. Makes the lake a great thermal sink." The woman dipped her net into the water, seined up a netful of dark-green scum, and dumped it into a nearby trough. Water drained away through the porous bottom.
"Oh." There were a few patches of weeds on the island, where drifting soil had settled. "It's funny. I never used to be very touristy. More the contemplative type, sort of homebodyish. Now I've got to be doing something, you know?"