The Grade of Memory

I drew lines on the back of the list of the dead. Instead of the notebook Jang Yura hadn't given back, I used an incident intake form I'd gotten from the station office. The paper was thin, and the tip of my pen kept catching on it.

One horizontal line, one vertical line. That gave me four cells.

Jang Yura stood holding the grab handle behind the driver's seat. The fire command vehicle heading for the hospital rocked, and the siren cut in and out in short bursts. O Gyeongtae sat in the rear seat with the bag of filters clutched against his chest. Every so often he coughed.

“You've got time to make a table?” Jang Yura said.

“It isn't a table. It's a classification.”

“Does changing the name make it faster?”

I wrote A above the first cell. Directly witnessed. Jang Yura shoving the maintenance worker out from under the cable. What I had seen with my own eyes did not disappear. Only its meaning could change.

The second cell got B. Official records. Incident reports, station logs, the Argos command queue. Records could be used, but they were not absolute truth.

The third cell got C. Hearsay. Somebody's testimony, rumors I'd heard on the original timeline, information where I only remembered the headline.

The last cell got X. Things that must not be used as grounds for action on the current branch.

I moved the Sector B ventilation explosion into the X cell. The location was wrong. The ignition risk itself remained, but the order that said Sector B had nearly sent people to the wrong place.

Jang Yura took the paper and looked at it.

“Does labeling it make the wrong thing less wrong?”

“No. It changes who I move next.”

“Up until a minute ago you moved people first.”

“And that nearly sent people to the wrong location.”

She didn't hand the paper back. She wasn't looking to argue with me, she was looking at the empty cells. The question of where her own name went was sitting on her face. I didn't speak first. The information she had to ask for and the risk I had to volunteer weren't separated yet.

O Gyeongtae leaned forward.

“A, B, all well and good, but machines don't open because of a grading chart. To get to the hospital you have to pass the big south emergency door.”

“Can you open it?”

“You need two keys. One from the technical office, one from Continuity Headquarters. Both go in, and you have to turn them within 90 seconds for a full release.”

He pulled up a photo on his phone. On an old control panel there were two key sockets of different shapes. One was round, one was a flat square. Below them was a small warning label. Safety lock engages if the time gap between central command and manual command exceeds 90 seconds.

“We failed it once in a drill. One guy turned his side first and then went off for coffee, and the door stayed locked for three hours.”

“Coffee?” Jang Yura asked.

“He called it coffee. I called it running away.”

A short joke passed through. The information stayed. Two keys, 90 seconds, full release. I wrote it in the B cell on my paper. The photo O Gyeongtae had shown me himself was present evidence. Except that I didn't know where the keys were.

Jang Yura said,

“So without the keys we can't get through.”

“Can't do a full release. I can get it to open partway with the latch still biting, but people can get hurt.”

“How many people can pass?”

“Depends on the state of the door. The door tells you the number.”

I wrote that down. The door tells you the number. It sounded like a joke, but it was the rule of this incident. The current state of the equipment came before the dates in my memory.

The vehicle braked hard. The road ahead was blocked. Two white control vehicles sat across the intersection, and police were turning cars back. Over the radio came word that an alarm had gone off at the power conversion station in the direction of Haneul Hospital.

Jang Yura opened the window.

“We have to get the Haneul Hospital oxygen truck through. What's the reason for the block?”

The officer waved a hand without looking our way.

“Central command. Road closure.”

“Time of the order.”

“06:50.”

I lifted my head. 06:50. Right after the Myeongjin Station accident, before the hospital delivery vehicles rerouted. Jang Yura read my face and asked at once,

“Another number that doesn't fit?”

“I need to check.”

We got out of the vehicle. A permission code was displayed on the terminal inside the control vehicle. The officer tried not to show us, but when Jang Yura said the remaining oxygen level he let us confirm a single line. Executing authority: HWC-27-PROXY. No result found in the current personnel roster. Scheduled activation date D-0. Exactly 27 days from now.

I didn't put that code in the A cell. I had seen the screen myself, but I didn't know what it meant. What I had directly witnessed was only the fact that the code wasn't in the current roster. And even that was closer to B, since it was the result of a screen query.

I wrote in the B cell.

HWC-27-PROXY. Not in current personnel roster. Scheduled to activate 27 days from now.

Jang Yura stopped my hand.

“You saw it yourself, so why isn't it A?”

“What I saw was a screen. I don't know who's behind the code. The screen could be wrong.”

“Now you're being careful.”

“Late is better than not at all.”

She didn't accept that answer, but she didn't push further either. Instead she turned to the officer.

“If you can't let the oxygen truck through, the patients in that hospital are in immediate danger. Open a detour at least.”

“I don't have the authority.”

“Then give me the number of someone who does.”

The officer picked up his radio. The way Jang Yura moved people was different from mine. I laid out conditions and tried to give orders. When the person in front of her wouldn't move, she found the next person who could.

O Gyeongtae stepped over beside the control vehicle and looked at the distribution box underneath.

“So this is what feeds the road closure panel. Can't cut it completely, but I could open one lane.”

“Is it all right to do that?” I asked.

“You get the permission. I only said whether it's possible.”

He didn't touch the wiring. That distinction mattered. The rule showed itself before the solution did, and the question of authority was still open. Jang Yura got the hospital and the police command post on the radio at the same time. Her voice dropped lower.

“Haneul Hospital has 36 minutes of emergency oxygen. The authority behind the central command code cannot currently be verified. Requesting on-site approval for a detour.”

It took 20 seconds for an answer to come. In that gap I could hear the hospital alarm through the phone. I wrote 36 minutes on the paper and then circled it. 43 minutes had become 36 minutes. Of course the time was shrinking, but writing an obvious number down by hand produced the next choice.

What came through was not a full opening. One lane detour, oxygen trucks and critical patient transport only. The officer's face was still hard, but he pushed one barricade aside. Jang Yura signaled the oxygen truck driver herself.

“Just follow the vehicle in front. If it stops, I'll get out first.”

The truck moved. We ran along behind it. O Gyeongtae's breathing got ragged, but he didn't let go of the bag of filters.

“Sir, are you all right?”

“You said saying you're all right was banned for patients. I'm not a patient, so I'm all right.”

Jang Yura said immediately,

“More than three coughs and you go to the back.”

“Scary.”

“Yes.”

O Gyeongtae swallowed a laugh. The laugh was short, and his steps kept going.

When we came in under the overpass toward the hospital, the Argos auxiliary terminal put up a white screen. Retrying synchronization. The clock on the roadside display board read 06:58, and my wristwatch read 06:56. The gap between the network and the offline equipment was widening. There was no way yet to confirm whether it had passed 90 seconds.

I drew a new line on the paper. Time gap. Needs confirmation.

Jang Yura looked at the paper and said,

“There's a lot that needs confirmation.”

“Which is why we have to look at it together.”

For the first time she put the notebook back in my hand. Not entirely. Two of her fingers stayed pinched on the edge of the paper.

“We look together. Hide something and I tear it.”

“If you tear it, only my memory is left.”

“Then that's more dangerous.”

I nodded. She was right. Memory was more dangerous when it was alone.

When we reached the outer approach road to Haneul Hospital, the log on the control vehicle terminal updated again. Beside the HWC-27-PROXY code a line had appeared: execution authority verification complete. A code that did not currently exist had approved a current order.

I didn't promote that to A. I wrote it in the B cell in heavy strokes.

Up near the hospital approach the oxygen truck was moving slowly. It took 40 seconds for the truck to get through one lane. The white dust on its hood looked like the particulate from Myeongjin Station. I did not write down that they shared a cause just because they looked alike.

Jang Yura saw that and said,

“You're not writing it?”

“Looking similar isn't even C. I'll leave it as an observation.”

“You've gotten wordy.”

“I'm trying to say fewer wrong things.”

Instead of answering she took hold of the bottom of the incident intake form. She didn't pull it out of my hand, she held it with me. The paper went taut between us.

“So where does my death record go?”

I stopped between A and B. Her name had been on the list of the dead I saw with my own eyes on the original timeline. But right now she was alive. As a source, the memory I had witnessed directly was A. As a basis for predicting action, it was X.

“Source A, current execution X.”

“That's hard to follow.”

“It's a memory I witnessed myself. But since you're alive now, I can't use it as grounds for predicting what you'll do.”

Jang Yura sat with that sentence a long time. It wasn't an angry face. It was the face of someone measuring how far it was permitted to go, using her own death as another person's tool.

“Then I'll say what I do.”

“Yes.”

“Once we're inside the hospital I handle patient triage. You separate memory from current numbers.”

“Understood.”

That agreement was small, but it reduced my authority. Reduced authority could slow us down. In exchange, it reduced the chance that one wrong memory would move a person to the wrong place. I wrote that cost down.

O Gyeongtae looked under the road closure panel again and said,

“One more thing on the two keys. Having both keys isn't the end of it. Even if you turn them within 90 seconds, if central time runs too far ahead of the on-site equipment, the safety lock engages. When the clocks are drunk like they are right now, the door doesn't pretend to be nice.”

“You mean if the gap between central and on-site exceeds 90 seconds, it locks.”

“Right. In machine language it's safety, in human language it's being trapped.”

I wrote the 90 second safety lock in the B cell again. Not repeating a rule I'd already written, but separating out the conditions for applying it. Two keys was a question of authority, 90 seconds was a question of time. Get either one wrong and the door doesn't open.

Jang Yura confirmed over the radio that the oxygen truck had gotten through. The person on the other end said the truck had reached the rear door of the emergency wing. But the facilities worker in charge of the connection valve was stuck at the southern control line. Another problem of where a person was.

“Location of the facilities worker,” Jang Yura said.

The answer was slow in coming over the radio. In the meantime I zoomed in on the hospital floor plan. There were two corridors from the rear door of the emergency wing to the oxygen storage room. One was the patient transfer route, one was the waste removal route. In the report on the original timeline, the waste removal route was listed as blocked by flooding. That was a B I hadn't confirmed yet.

“We need to check the waste removal route.”

“Report memory?”

“Yes. It's B. Not yet confirmed.”

“Then let's look at it with our eyes before we send anyone.”

Jang Yura had one of the paramedics turn on a camera. On the screen there was no water on the floor of the waste removal route. Instead two powered beds stood parked in front of the door. They'd been left there while the hospital moved patients. Another result of intervention.

I demoted the flooded waste removal route from B to X. The flooding was wrong, the blockage remained. The remaining condition was usable.

“It isn't flooding. Move the beds and it's passable.”

Jang Yura gave the order at once.

“Release the bed wheel locks and push them against the wall. The oxygen connection team goes through first.”

This time my memory was wrong, but it wasn't completely useless. It made us suspect the blocked corridor first, and the current footage changed the reason. Beside the X cell I wrote remaining condition. Even a wrong memory had parts you could use if you broke it down like a machine.

The control vehicle terminal still hadn't deleted HWC-27-PROXY. The police had put in a request for a re-query up the chain, and no answer came. A permission code that did not exist had opened a small hole in the scene. Nobody could find the person responsible, so everybody was a little late.

I measured that delay. From the re-query request to the detour approval, 2 minutes 18 seconds. It wasn't time that took a life directly, but it was time shaved off the hospital's oxygen timer. This was what numbers were for.

Jang Yura came over beside me and said,

“The owner of that code, is it in your memory?”

“No.”

“If it activates 27 days from now, it could be someone we're going to meet.”

“That's a possibility. I won't write it down as fact.”

“Good. I like that you write down what you don't know as unknown.”

She said she liked it, but her expression didn't soften. The relationship hadn't been repaired. One way of working had provisionally lined up, that was all.

Scheduled activation date, 27 days from today.