The data module was more important, but older proprietary format made recovery slow.
The tapes were playable immediately.
Tape one was mostly engineering notes.
Graham’s voice.
Twenty-two years younger.
Alive.
Camille heard the first three words and stood abruptly.
“I need a minute.”
Nobody stopped her.
She walked into the laboratory corridor.
The wall was white.
Completely ordinary.
She pressed both hands against it.
Her father’s voice continued faintly through the closed door.
She had forgotten its exact texture.
Memory had smoothed it.
Made it deeper.
Cleaner.
The real voice contained a slight rasp and the habit of inhaling before technical words.
Camille closed her eyes.
She was eleven again.
Cereal.
Blue tape.
COMET.
She cried silently.
Not the controlled tears she allowed at funerals or investor crises.
Her whole body shook.
A door opened behind.
She wiped her face quickly.
Evan stepped out.
She looked at him.
“I said I need a minute.”
“I know.”
“Then why are you here?”
“Naomi sent me.”
Camille almost laughed.
“She’s afraid I’m going to collapse?”
“She said you’d be mad if she came.”
“That sounds right.”
He held out a bottle of water.
Camille took it.
“Thank you.”
He stayed far enough away that she did not feel watched.
After a while, Camille said:
“I can’t remember the last thing I said to him.”
Evan looked.
“The morning he died.”
“I know we argued.”
“About what?”
“I wanted to go to a school dance Friday.”
“He said maybe.”
“I told him he always said maybe when he meant no.”
Camille stared at the water bottle.
“I slammed the car door.”
“That’s all I remember.”
Evan said quietly:
“That’s normal.”
“What?”
“Last conversations not knowing they’re last.”
She looked at him.
He was thinking of his wife.
Of course.
Camille asked:
“What was yours?”
He hesitated.
Then:
“She told me to buy milk.”
Camille waited.
Evan smiled sadly.
“I said we had milk.”
“She said Noah finished it.”
“I told her he drank too much.”
“She called me eighty years old.”
“That was last normal conversation.”
“What happened?”
“Her breathing got bad at three in morning.”
“Hospital.”
“Never really talked after.”
Camille swallowed.
“Do you wish you said something different?”
“Every day.”
“Does it matter?”
“Less than I thought it would.”
She frowned.