The things you grow up with, thought Maria, become your definition of normal.

Her mother and Uncle Johann had been inseparable. When he fell into one of his episodes, or reacted too intensely to the wrongness of others, or just needed to be lured out of his head into the world of other human beings, she hurried to his side. Maria’s father tolerated it. It was her responsibility, after all, and he was a stoic believer in duty and responsibility.

To Uncle Johann, Maria’s mother was a buffer from the outside world, a translator of human oddities and irrationalities, and, finally, a brilliant engineer who helped him realize his impossible ideas. That she may have sacrificed something to achieve these things was not really on his mind, nor, at the time, Maria’s.

This sibling symbiosis only tightened when Maria’s father died, felled by a genetic disorder. The trigger was a high fever; his temperature spiked, and his heart, which had beat with invincible vigor through basic training and deployment and baseball and yard work, simply stopped. After the funeral, her mother gradually withdrew. While she didn’t neglect Maria or Noelle, she spent more time with Uncle Johann, and less time with their handful of family friends.

To Maria, even this had been normal, in a way. Perhaps she had Noelle to thank for that. When their father died, it had been Noelle who explained the exact sequence of events to the doctor, saving their mother the anguish. And when their mother vanished, it had been Noelle who had worked and saved and cut corners and pulled in every favor she could to make a semblance of normalcy possible for her younger sister.

All evening, Maria had been trying to hold together her composure at the loss of yet another family member. But as the program launched, she felt a sickening sense that maybe this last push would be what broke her down. Because -- because --

A black window popped up in the middle of the screen, and lines of text appeared, one by one.

Connecting to predictive server…

Updating knowledge base…

Loading textures…

Because on top of everything else, this program was an undeniable proof that nothing had ever really been normal.

The thing appeared on screen. Maria clenched her eyes shut and balled her fists. It was a crude, halting simulacrum of her mother’s face, the same one Uncle Johann had flaunted to her earlier. A stupid, smiling impostor.

“Hey, Johann,” it said, the pause between the words just a little too long. “Are you okay?” The pitch held low and monotonous on the ‘are you o-’, only to leap up on the ‘-kay?’, turning the query into a bizarre singsong: Da-da-da-DAH?

A prompt appeared.

“Any ideas?” asked Agent Singh.

Maria could type something. No, she had to type something. She’d come so far in arguing her innocence to Agent Singh; she wasn’t going to let a glorified chatbot with her mother’s face stop her from finding the truth.

She tried:

> Hello, Alice.

“Have you remembered to get your medications refilled? You can’t keep forgetting,” said the thing.

> I have. Do you mind if I ask you a few questions?

“Do you mind if I answer your questions with questions?” asked the thing. That stung; while the first few lines could have been said by an ordinary digital assistant, this was something her mother would have said.

But now it was time to grit her teeth and interrogate.

Narration unlocked by strand VV: The mice

If her Uncle had really modeled this program on her mother, maybe he had fed it information about their work.

> What are we doing with the lab mice?

The image on the screen replied. "What do you think we're doing? Let's not get into this again! We need to make sure it's safe for lab mice before we can even dream of sending a person. I don't care if you want to. We need to make sure It's safe."

The program seemed to respond to the phrase 'lab mice,' by a kind of association, without really answering Maria's question. It could take a formulaic phrase ('What are we doing?') and turn out a context-free, formulaic answer that was convincing on a surface level ('What do you think we're doing?') Sometimes, it repeated itself, vainly reiterating old arguments like a ghost pacing down a decrepit hallway for the ten-thousandth night in a row.

Narration unlocked by strand VV: The Red Queen's Race

'Sending.' Sending where? Maria hurriedly typed out her next question:

> Does this have to do with the Red Queen?

"Don't get me started on the Red Queen! Ha, ha!"

God, that laugh was eerie.

"Not the Queen of Hearts from Alice in Wonderland. The Red Queen is the chess queen from Through the Looking Glass. Everyone confuses them! The Queen of Hearts is angry beyond any sane bound of anger. The Red Queen is logical beyond any sane bound of logic."

Well, that certainly explained her mother and Uncle Johann's obsession. They could probably relate.

When Maria was five, her father made a necklace for her mother: a red chess queen on a thin chain. Major Park never shared the Palmstroem siblings' obsession with Carroll. But he wanted to understand it; he saw the Tenniel drawings on her walls, the figurines, and the framed quotes. These outlandish figures were important to her in some deep, totemic way.

> Tell me more about the Red Queen.

"Do you remember the Red Queen's Race?"

> It was in Through the Looking Glass. It was also an Asimov story you read to me.

"I read it to you?"

Hastily, Maria corrected herself.

> I mean, you read it to our daughter.

"I remember the Red Queen's Race," said the computer, just barely seeming to follow the conversation.

Here, Agent Singh cut in, eying Maria with concern. "Why are you pretending to be your Uncle? Why not speak to her as yourself?"

"It was made for him," replied Maria, her voice dark. "If I don't play along, it'll just get confused."

"If you say so."

> Tell me more about the Red Queen's Race.

"In the Red Queen's Race, it takes all the running you can do to stay in one place. Asimov wrote a story about it. But Asimov's story is really just an application of the Novikov Consistency Principle."

Narration unlocked by strand VV: The Last Few Days

Unsure how to deal with this, Maria tried a change of subject.

> What have you done in the last few days?

"Worked on the belt, mostly," said the image of Alice. "And the mouse-sized prototypes. The beacon's operational, as far as I can tell. But we won't know until we can test it."

Interactive Segment:

In the comments thread, post your questions for the AI based on Alice Palmstroem Park. Try to determine information that will help Maria's investigation and uncover the secrets of the Saturn Technologies labs.

Since the interrogation has stalled, the plot will advance from the point the interrogation reached on October 3rd, 2020. However, you may still use the thread to ask questions and continue the questioning, as it may help later on. Rather than rely on questions asked here, the next segment will use speculation that readers made earlier to continue the story.

Spoiler warning: If you haven't yet made a guess as to what Uncle Johann was working on, now would be a good time. Many of you saw this part coming.

Narration Unlocked by strand VV, SmolShrimpa, and Zenopath:

The AI's talk of "beacons" and "sending" crystallized a nascent suspicion in Maria's mind. Even if the only concrete evidence she had was that mouse...

"I've got an idea of what my uncle was working on," said Maria, shutting the program down with an almost vindictive click of her mouse. "But you're not going to believe it."

"I can believe a lot... with sufficent evidence," replied Agent Singh.

Maria took a deep breath, and said, with as much confidence as she could muster, "A time machine!"

She waited.

"Sure," said Agent Singh, with neither sarcasm nor enthusiasm. "A time machine. And...?"

"What do you mean, 'and?' It's a time machine! The mouse traveled in time!"

"I agree that's a possibility. I saw the video, too. But what I'm asking is: how does that shed any light on your uncle's murder? You're not accusing the mouse."

Maria's heart sank. "You already knew about the time machine, didn't you?"

"I suspected," replied Agent Singh, as she jotted down another note. "I still only suspect; the word of that program wouldn't hold water in court. But even assuming such a device exists... it represents only two things to me.

First, if real, it is a grave threat to humanity.

And second, it is a motive for your Uncle's murder... for which you're still the lead suspect."