Chapter 6 of 6·6 min read·The morning after Oren reviews the recording
What She Could Say
I waited until Morrow Cup was open before I went back. The flash drive was in my inside pocket, wrapped in a folded receipt so it wouldn't scrape against my keys. I had checked it twice that morning without plugging it in. The file was still there. That was all I could confirm without turning the computer back on.
Della was stacking clean cups behind the counter. When she saw me, she set down the one in her hand.
“Did you find out what happened that night?” she asked.
“I found something else.” I touched the pocket holding the drive. “I need you to watch it.”
She looked at my face for a moment, then glanced toward the front windows. A pair of customers had just come in. “Give me a few minutes.”
I waited at the end of the counter. I could have chosen someone more qualified. A technician, a doctor, a police officer. Each option came with its own problem: they might take the drive, copy it, dismiss me, or decide that I was the person in the video and therefore responsible for whatever it showed. Della had no special expertise. She had seen the other recording, and she had treated me as a person asking a reasonable question.
When the customers left, she led me through the staff door into the small office beside the kitchen. She left the door open and put her phone face down on the desk.
“What am I looking at?” she asked.
“A recording from my room. A camera that wasn't connected to the internet.” I took out the drive but kept it in my hand. “I want you to watch it before I tell you what I think it means.”
Della pulled a laptop from a shelf. It looked old enough to have survived several spills. She started it and switched off its Wi-Fi. I checked the network icon, then stopped myself from checking it again. The laptop had no reason to connect to anything. A video file could not execute itself merely because it was opened. That distinction was technically sound and emotionally useless.
“Do you have another copy?” she asked.
“The camera card is at home.”
“And this one?”
“Same footage.”
She nodded. “All right.”
I plugged in the drive. The file name was a timestamp. I had considered renaming it, then decided the original name was one less thing I could be accused of changing. Della leaned toward the screen as I opened it.
The footage began with my bed, the door, and the desk. I stood behind her, close enough to see the fine lines in the screen. Close enough to reach for the mouse if I wanted to stop it.
Next
Della can testify that she watched the file, but Oren still has no way to learn what the beta copied or whether the figure at Morrow Cup was acting through the same access.
At three, the computer screen lit. The figure in it moved. Then it came out.
Della's hand tightened around the edge of the desk. She did not speak. The figure lowered itself to the floor, crossed to the kitchen, and poured a glass of water. It drank. Then it came back and stood beside my bed.
I had seen that part enough times to know the sequence. Knowing it did not make me ready for the figure's face. It was my face, slack with sleep in the bed and clear-eyed beside it. It watched me for hours. The camera kept recording. The room stayed ordinary around us: the blanket folded over one foot, the unopened mail on the desk, the charging cable on the floor.
When the figure crawled back into the computer, Della reached for the space bar and stopped the video.
For a few seconds neither of us moved. The laptop fan ran. Somewhere beyond the open door, a milk jug clattered against a counter.
“That's you,” she said.
“I was in the bed.”
She turned from the screen. “Are you sure this is the original file?”
“I copied it from the camera card. I haven't edited it. I calculated a checksum after the copy.” I heard myself speeding up and made myself pause. “That only tells me the files match. It doesn't prove the recording is genuine.”
“You could have made a video.”
“Yes.”
The answer seemed to surprise her. It surprised me too, though it shouldn't have. I had wanted the footage to force a conclusion. It couldn't even establish what kind of machine had made it.
Della looked back at the frame. “The camera was in the room the whole time?”
“Yes.”
“And you were asleep?”
“As far as I know. I took a sleeping pill. I set the camera up before that.”
She studied the frozen image of my sleeping face. “You told me you hadn't been at the café.”
“I hadn't been there while I was awake.”
“Could you have gone in your sleep?”
“I don't know.” My mouth had gone dry. “The video doesn't explain the café. It makes the explanation harder for me to accept.”
She sat back. The caution in her face was still there, but it had changed shape. “I remember the customer on our recording. He looked like you. He looked at the camera and smiled. This one has your face too.”
That was not the answer I had hoped for. It was more useful.
“I need you to tell someone you saw this,” I said. “If I show it to anyone else, I need a person who can say it was on the drive before they saw it.”
“What if they ask me what it proves?”
“It proves you watched a video.”
She glanced at me. I had been trying to make the statement sound smaller, more defensible. It came out as a request for less than I wanted.
Della closed the video player. “I can tell them what I saw. I can say you brought me a file, and I watched it here. I can't tell them what made it.”
“I understand.”
“Do you?” She didn't soften the question. “Because if you want me to say the thing came out of your computer, I can't. I watched pixels on a laptop. I don't know where they came from.”
I looked at the drive between us. The evidence was real in the narrowest sense: a file, a sequence of images, a checksum, a person who had watched them. Every step beyond that was mine to defend.
“I want you to say exactly that,” I said. “Nothing more.”
Della opened a desk drawer and took out a small paper envelope. “Can I keep a copy?”
I had expected the question, and still felt my fingers close around the drive. If she held a copy, it could leave the office without me. Someone else could see it. It could be lost, deleted, or used to tell a story about me that I couldn't control.
The camera card was still at home. The thought offered no real comfort. I had no guarantee that the original would survive another night, or that I would be able to make anyone believe it later.
“Yes,” I said. “Keep this one.”
I copied the file onto the laptop's drive and watched the progress bar reach the end. I checked the two checksums. They matched. Della wrote the date and the time on the envelope, then added: Oren brought video; I watched it. She slid the USB drive inside and closed the flap.
“You want me to sign it?”
“If you don't mind.”
She signed her name. Her handwriting was cramped and practical. Nothing about it looked like a promise to believe me. That made it easier to accept.
“I'll put this in the office safe,” she said. “I can't promise nobody with a key could get it.”
“I don't need a promise you can't keep.”
She lifted the envelope. “I still have to work. And if you come back here, I need you to tell me whether you're asking for the footage or for help.”
“I'll try to be clear.”
She put the envelope in the safe beneath the till. I watched her turn the key and put it back on its hook. The copy was out of my hands. The original card was at home. Two places, two chances for the recording to persist. It was a small gain measured against the size of the problem, but it was a gain I could name.
At the door, Della called after me. “Oren.”
I turned.
“If somebody asks, I'll say you showed me a recording. I'll say what was in it. I won't say I know what happened.”
“That's what I need.”
She nodded once and went back to the cups. I stepped outside with the original camera card still at home and the drive no longer in my pocket. For the first time since watching the footage, another person knew what I had seen. She could confirm that the file existed. She could confirm the face.
She could not tell me what the beta had taken while it was watching.