Page 74 of Atlas of Unknowable Things

Intrigued, still unable to believe my eyes, I took another step toward them. Suddenly the creatures all raised their heads as one. Finn startled. Enormous eyes shifted, and they all stared directly at me.

“What’s happening?” I whispered.

These things weren’t as harmless as they appeared. They were extremely dangerous.

“They know you’re here.”

“What do you mean? How do they know I’m here?”

“They recognize you.”

One began struggling, shifting around in its watery prison. Suddenly I remembered the water, how it had felt that day, strange and viscous. Only it wasn’t water. It never had been.

“We extract something from them, don’t we, some kind of substance?”

“You’re remembering now.”

It wasn’t so much a remembering as a deep understanding.

“Is that what we used to alter that device? Is that possible?”

“The harvest gives us many gifts” was all he said.

“What are we extracting?” I spoke with Isabelle’s cold self-assurance. In that moment, I had total confidence that I understood more about this than Finn did. I just didn’t remember. “Is it organic?”

“It’s a kind of ferromagnetic alloy. It has a number of biological and technological uses.”

“Like cobalt?” I asked. “That’s what everyone is after these days, isn’t it? The future of technology is supposed to depend on it.”

I remembered the images of the tech moguls on the website and began connecting the dots. How long had this been going on?

“Similar to cobalt. But not cobalt.”

I shook my head. “What does any of this have to do with alchemy?”

“We told you before. Alchemy is just the forefather of chemistry.”

“Not witchcraft, then?” I asked, thinking back to the strange room I’d found.

He gave me a sly smile. “Witchcraft and science aren’t as far apart as we’d all like to believe. Some say the supernatural is just natural phenomena for which we don’t yet have a scientific explanation.”

“So which is it that you do here?”

“Science,” he said flatly. “Now I want you to look at this.” He pointed to a complex keypad next to one of the control panels. “Does it look familiar?”

“Not in the slightest.” And then it dawned on me. “Wait, is this it? Is this the code I’m supposed to know?”

He nodded. “The entire system has been shut down, and we need the code to gain access. We just need you to remember the code and we can do the rest. We’ll be able to repair the breach remotely from here.”

“If this code is so important, why do only Charles and I know it?”

He closed his eyes momentarily, frustration showing in the lines around his mouth. “Because you changed it. Or Charles changed it. Now only you two know it.”

“How were we able to change the code?”

“Remember when we talked about systems theory? Those rarely used elements of a feedback loop that are important but can become easily neglected?”

A flashback to the conversation, and a sudden understanding of why he’d told me all that. He’d been preparing me for this moment. And I saw.