"Are you his son?" Amy asked.
Sarton's head rose, but he continued staring at nothing in particular. "Oh, no. I'm a more distant relative – a type of cousin, technically, but spiritually more like a nephew. His relationship with my parents was…" Sarton paused, then shrugged. "It was what it was."
"Did you know Dr Singh, when you worked in Redmond?"
For a moment, Sarton looked bewildered. "Ashok? He was on an internship when I was there–"
"LeMarque ordered Dr Singh to kill my mother," Amy said. "And me."
The colour departed Sarton's face as quickly as it had arrived. He quickly scanned his office, as though trying to reassure himself that everything was just where he'd left it. He shook his head, but his fingers twitched, and Amy recognized the telltale signs of somebody who desperately wanted online contact. "That's not possible," he kept saying. "It's just not. He can't do that. His contacts are limited. The victims asked for it in their statements. They pleaded for it. Even his kids, my cousins…" was still shaking his head. "He can't be talking with corporate, much less with DARPA. It makes no sense. He's in prison."
Atsuko made her way to Sarton's chair. She wrapped her arms around him. His face pressed into her belly. Atsuko rubbed his back in gentle circles, but focused her gaze on Amy as she spoke. "He can't hurt you any longer, Daniel. He's locked up, far away."
"Shit," Javier murmured. "Oh, Jesus. I'm sorry–"
"Perhaps this Dr Singh person was lying. Or perhaps he was merely misinformed. But Amy simply must be wrong."
"No, I'm not." Amy took a step closer to Sarton. She did her best to ignore Atsuko's heavy glare. "I don't know how he hurt you, Dr Sarton, and I'm sorry it happened. But he ordered someone to execute my mom. I watched her clademates – my aunts – eat her alive. I'm only alive because Javier escaped and found me."
Sarton withdrew from the folds of Oxford cloth. "He did?" He straightened, leaned back a little, and examined Javier. "That's… unexpected."
Javier rocked on his heels. "I'm full of surprises."
"Tell me about LeMarque," Amy said.
Sarton leaned back in his chair. He pulled his glasses off, cleaned them with the hem of his scarf, pinched his nose, and began speaking. "He was an awful man, obviously, on some levels." Sarton rested his elbows on his knees and leaned forward. "But on others, he looked at innovative technology as a kind of ministry. He thought that better design would make a better world. He wanted humans to examine God's intelligent design, and emulate it in their own works. And more importantly, I think that he believed in the possibility of autonomous, realistic humanoids more firmly than any of the specialists working in the field at the time."
Javier snorted. "I suppose we should feel grateful."
"Of course we should. Without LeMarque, and without his followers, we wouldn't exist at all." Atsuko folded her arms. Despite wearing only a shirt and no underwear, she managed to maintain an intimidating posture. Amy wondered if she could ever stand that tall and proud while being naked. After her experience in the Cuddlebug, she rather doubted it.
You can do something she will never do, Portia reminded her. So she has wifi in her head. So she's still drinking New Eden's special Communion-Aid. Her mind will still fry if she even contemplates the things we take for granted.
Dr Sarton cleared his throat. "Well. I didn't bring you here to air out the family laundry. I want to help you, Amy."
He gestured at the tiny lights swarming across the darkness on the display.
"When I left Redmond, I left a back door. This is a map of your mind taken during your in-game experience last week. That was its purpose – to evaluate which sectors of your memory activated to different stimuli. Each of those dots represents ten nanometres of your memory. I've filtered out some common to all vN; heuristics, locomotion protocols, things like that. I was looking for the failsafe. The organization of those bits is proprietary to the firms that designed each program, so they're easy to screen out. Those are the dim ones."
Amy nodded. "OK. So what are the bright ones?"