Author: Elena Tosato

My visor kept flagging gaps: from timestamp T+19:43:12 onward, my sensors had gone dark. The system had filled the void using Steve and Ian’s data, which were both intact. Yes, sir. The implant reconstructed my memories from backups, but my sensors stopped recording after we crossed Hill 37-b11. So they used Steve and Ian’s data.

According to these cross-referenced memories, I killed Wayne. Meaning this is what you can see: Wayne walking away, an altercation, a high-energy discharge, and me heading back, alone. Yes, sir. The maximum-likelihood hypothesis. Two independent sources converging. However, sir. We all passed through the same contaminated environment. Hill 37-b11 may have introduced spurious correlations, and we have no way to correct the data for unknown environmental biases. No, sir. I’m not saying I remember it. I’m saying the data converges, and the data was written into my memories. Yes, sir, I understand. “Killing Wayne” is a well-formed sentence in natural language. But past that hill, well-formed sentences don’t guarantee referents. Yes, sir, I’m a linguist. For the mission, that’s correct. No, sir, no contact. Excuse me? No, as far as I know there was no friction between me and my companions, with Ian and Steve. We weren’t friends, but no one up there can afford to have friends. Wayne was a hard man. He was the same way with everyone. But I always considered his conduct appropriate, sir. It was. None of us ever filed a code violation against Wayne.

So there’s the question of motive, sir. The reconstructed memories suggested growing tension between me and Wayne. But that’s not sufficient evidence under any interpretive framework. I would propose the presence of an external synchronization agent. I’ll explain: my alleged words were nearly identical to those attributed to Steve in a different sequence. Sir, the data suggests that Ian’s and Steve’s sensor synchronization signatures align too cleanly after the hill.

No, sir. I’m not saying someone else did it. My memories, sir. It’s not me, it’s my memories. The system minimizes error by assigning the action to me, because that’s how it reduces the divergence between Steve and Ian. I could posit an unobserved event that accounts for the discrepancies without attributing fault to any human agent. If the resulting error is smaller, then I… No, sir. I’m not saying the system created the event. Words don’t create reality, sir.

Very well — let’s say I killed Wayne. Sir, the problem is that the sentence assumes “I,” “killed,” and “Wayne” maintain stable identities across the hill. Which is an unproven assumption. You see, sir, if Wayne’s memories were also reconstructed, you would most likely end up with a version in which he doesn’t die, or dies differently. The killing would become a family of narratives, pairwise compatible but not all consistent at once. Or Wayne isn’t dead. If Wayne still exists, he isn’t in a space our models can describe. No, sir, those were only conjectures. No, sir. I have no next of kin to notify.