Gui watched her as she closed her eyes, fell quiet, mumbled to herself, before opening her eyes to start on another sheet of printed material. Then he became conscious of someone else giving him a dark look.
‘They say you get old fast if you forget to smile.’
Radzi’s expression did not change. ‘Where are you exactly? Off-screen, I mean.’
‘Too far away for you to guess.’ Changing the subject, Gui commented, ‘So you’re the computer whiz, and she’s Memory Girl. We should’ve recruited you. I’d always tried to tell the rest that there were more untapped talents.’
‘Wouldn’t have joined anyway, not with you. Even from another corner of the globe, your face still screams money.’
‘And here I thought I was the one who didn’t trust you.’ The mischievous look slipped back into his face. ‘Why does she do that – the mumbling?’
‘You don’t know about eidetic memory, do you?’ Radzi smirked. ‘Her photographic memory registers raw material, just like the way raw information is absorbed into any normal person’s sensory memory, except that hers last several seconds longer. And in those seconds, in order to commit the impression fully, she’s got to reconstruct the images in her mind. The mumbling helps with audio recall, and processing the raw stuff comes later.’
‘Naturally. Long-term memory is aided by repetition.’
Annoyed that Gui caught on so quickly, Rad added, ‘Even with repetition, her memory has to be exceptionally fine-tuned to recall information word for word. Which she has, obviously, hands down.’
‘Tell me again why you need her to memorise all of that.’
‘Because, when we want to analyse the data, it’s perfect to have someone who knows every little detail in order to make the slightest connections. And if new information is received, there’s no point to it unless we know all the old information to make the links. Only then can we understand a situation.’
‘Ah.’ For a moment, Gui seemed uneasy, but a second later, that look was gone. ‘How long does she usually take?’
‘For every twenty-five pages with a rough average of 32 lines, it takes her an hour. She could do it much faster, but she prefers to rest in between, just to clear her mind before entering new material, so that the accuracy of recall will be over 99%.’
At this, Nikki spoke up. ‘But with the both of you talking about me in third person, it’ll only be 95%.’
Radzi turned around, smiling slightly, and explained to no one in particular. ‘Though, of course, even among the best, the memory is only a part of the human mind, constantly subject to variables such as adrenalin, distraction, or tiredness.’
Strangely, Gui looked as though he was trying not to puke. ‘No news about them, I’m afraid,’ he said directly to her.
She didn’t reply. There was still a lot of anger towards him, simply because he had contact to the outside world and he had people hunting down her mother and sister, whilst they were holed up in this stupid metal box. But no news was good news, and she couldn’t fault Gui.
‘Here.’ She thrust the papers to Radzi and looked cuttingly at him.
There was a plan to work at.
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