Page 76 of Atlas of Unknowable Things
“Bugbear, you have to give up the delusion. These people, this place, it isn’t what you think. We’re not doing good things here.”
“We’re advancing science.”
“Look, it happens over and over, right?” He adjusted his cap. “Mankind thinks we are smarter than everything around us. We develop a computer program thinking it will help us, and it doesn’t; it just destroys our jobs. We develop a medicine to combat bacteria, but it outsmarts us and evolves to become indestructible. That’s what we’ve been doing here. We thought we were containing these things, using them, but weweren’t. We were strengthening them. All along we were strengthening them. They’re going to destroy us. It’s only a matter of time. If we try to leave, they will stop us. I needed something to bargain with.”
“So you’re bargaining with Uta Symon? Letting him, what, sell our research?”
He looked at me blankly. “Not our research—the harvest.”
And I knew. I saw it all. The notes I’d found had been about quantum cryptography, which had nothing to do with memory, but I saw now that it had everything to do with the substance we extracted, the substance that comes from them.
I awoke with a start, trapped somewhere between my current self and Isabelle, haunted by what I’d just seen. It was almost startlingly basic. The alloy was powerful enough to exponentially scale up the capacity of quantum computers, rendering encryption technology useless. It would mean the end of data safety as we knew it. Of course someone would pay a high price for that—an almost unimaginable sum.
At the same time, I knew somewhere deep down that something wasn’t right. Charles was a good man. If he was even considering selling the alloy, then something much darker was going on. And if I was honest with myself, therewassomething else, wasn’t there? Something I feared even more than I could articulate. Something I was still blocking out. There was something inside me—that creeping guilt that enfolded me in the middle of the night—and it felt like it was waiting just around the corner. It was the barrier I couldn’t get past. But the question arose: Could I truly not get past it, or was it that I didn’t want to? Because I felt certain that waiting just on the other side was something so horrific that once I discovered it, I didn’t know if I’d be able to survive it.
4.5THE DOCTRINE OF SIGNATURES
All herbs, flowers, trees, and other things which proceed out of the Earth, are books, and magick signs, communicated to us, by the immense mercy of God, which signs our medicine.
—OSWALDCROLL,TREATISE OFSIGNATURES,1609
Leaning back in my chair, I pinched the bridge of my nose to try to ease the tension that had been slowly building. Ostensibly I had everything I needed to get me where I needed to be, and yet I was stuck. I tried to think back through everything I had at my fingertips—all the clues, all the information that seemed to, more often than not, lead me somewhat closer to where I needed to be, but never quite close enough.
I decided I needed a change of scene, so after locking up the cabinet, I started back toward campus, my mind spinning. As I reviewed the clues that had led me to where I was now, I could feel the answer finally within my grasp. The light in the woods had led me to the grave, which gave me the peacock key, which led me to the secret room, which led me to the desk clue, which led me to the photos andThe Book of Widows.The entry in the book had led me to the cabinet key, which led me to Project Bluebird.
It all seemed so clear and easy, and yet I kept snagging onThe Book of Widowsand the divination tools. There was more tothese items. I knew there had to be. On the way to my cabana, I knocked on Aspen’s door. When she didn’t answer, I decided to go and see if she might still be up and working in the apothecary garden. It couldn’t hurt to show her everything. She was the person I trusted most at Hildegard, and although our fields didn’t overlap, she seemed to know the most about the occult. She might have insight I lacked.
I darted into my cabana, and after slipping the relic in my coat pocket, I grabbed a tote from the closet and shoved everything else inside. Then I headed down to the apothecary garden. The garden itself was silent and still, but I saw that a light burned in the window of the garden house.
I made my way back, and when I knocked, Aspen greeted me.
“The gang’s all here,” she said with a smile, and behind her I could make out the others gathered around. Dorian stood over by the bookshelves, Lexi was stretched out on the couch, and Finn sat in a chair, a look of fierce concentration on his brow.
“What are you all doing?”
“Emergency meeting,” said Aspen, ushering me inside. “Finn has informed us all that you know that you are Isabelle.” She gave me a quick wink, and I realized that whatever suspicion she’d held of the others persisted.
“Welcome back,” said Dorian with a smile. “Took you long enough.”
Ignoring him, I pulledThe Book of Widowsout of the tote and held it up. “What the hell is this thing?”
Aspen took it from me and started leafing through it. “I’ve never seen it before. Finn, what is this?”
“No idea. It was with her things. We found it on her desklike it was one of the last things she consulted before she left, so I tried to use it to jog her memory.”
“Did it?” Aspen asked, looking up at me.
“If it did, would I be here asking you what it is?”
“What else is in the bag?” asked Lexi.
I dumped everything out onto the coffee table. “Do any of you know what any of this stuff is?”
“I told you,” said Dorian, “the cards are local folk superstition. The rest of it we have no idea. It was with the book.”
Aspen picked up one of the widows’ keys. “So you draw these and then consult this to get a reading? It’s a divinatory text?”
“Has to be,” I said. “But why would I be using divination in the middle of a complete catastrophe? It doesn’t make any sense.”
