He found the record by accident, which was the only way records worth finding were found.
The data terminal on Floor Two had been left in an unlocked state by a researcher who had been called away to another floor and had assessed — incorrectly — that the subjects' access to the terminal would be limited by their technical knowledge.
Ren's technical knowledge was not limited.
He had eleven minutes before the researcher returned, based on the time such interruptions typically took. He spent thirty seconds orienting to the file structure, which was organized along lines he recognized from the data architecture of the public-access terminals on Floor Four. He identified the subject registry. He opened it.
The registry contained five cohorts. The first cohort was the oldest entry — twenty-two years ago, eight subjects. The entry for each subject had a status field. All eight entries had the same status code: Decommissioned. Beside each code was a date, and the dates were all within a fourteen-month window. The procedures involved were listed under a classification heading he did not have clearance to fully access, but the categories he could see were sufficient.
The second cohort: eleven subjects, seventeen years ago. Three statuses read Field Deployment (Active). Eight read Decommissioned. The deployment dates for the three were seven years ago, which meant they had been deployed and were either still active or their entries hadn't been updated. He noted the subject numbers of the three. He noted the dates.
The third cohort: nine subjects, twelve years ago. One Field Deployment (Active). Five Decommissioned. Three statuses read Decommissioned (Procedure Failure), which was a different classification that did not require accessing restricted categories to understand.
The fourth cohort: what he was part of. Eleven subjects currently active, no statuses assigned yet. His entry was last. The notes column contained data he almost looked at and then didn't, because he had eight minutes remaining and he needed to think about what to do with eight minutes rather than what the notes said.
He closed the terminal to its prior state. He sat on the procedure table and looked at the equipment and did the arithmetic.
Forty-one subjects across five cohorts, including the current one. Fourteen field deployments across cohorts two and three. Twenty-seven decommissions of various types. The current cohort at eleven subjects, statuses unassigned, presumably to be assigned as the program concluded.
He sat with this for the remaining seven minutes, which was enough time to run the calculation forward and arrive at what Preet had arrived at, and then to run it further, past what Preet had likely modeled.
The researcher returned at the seven-minute mark. He was slightly flustered, professionally controlled. He sat at the terminal and began the coherence analysis without checking whether anything had been accessed. Ren sat on the table and offered his left arm for the induction port and looked at the wall.
"We'll start with the baseline read," the researcher said.
"Yes," Ren said.
The coherence analysis ran for forty minutes. Ren sat still throughout it and thought about the numbers. Not about the people inside the numbers — that was an operation he had no reliable framework for. About the numbers themselves. The ratios. The pattern across five cohorts.
The pattern was clear. The program produced a narrow funnel. The funnel was designed to — or at least functionally did — narrow to one. The one was not a certainty in previous cohorts. In the current cohort, the distribution of viable scores made it close to certain.
He was the one.
What happened to the one was not in the accessible data. The three field deployments from cohorts two and three were the only precedent, and seven years of active status was a data point with no follow-up he could access.
He thought about what Solin had said in the east corridor: the oversight model doesn't apply the same way.
He thought about what Preet had said at dinner: you are the benchmark.
He thought about Tessaly sitting three chairs away in the common room every evening, reading about coastlines. About Fen and Rael and the stability that made the researchers uneasy. About Orra not crying since he was twelve and whether that was management or completion.
He thought about the phrase Decommissioned (Procedure Failure) and what it had in common with the other decommission codes.
"You can go," the researcher said. "We'll have results by tomorrow morning."
Ren got up. He walked back to Floor Four. He went to dinner. He ate precisely what was in front of him. He looked at nothing in particular.
That night, after lights-out, he lay in his room and ran the calculation for the first time in a specific direction: not what will happen to me, but what am I willing to do about it.
He ran it for a long time. The ceiling was dark. The ventilation ran its cycle, slightly irregular, the new sensor making a sound below audible threshold. Somewhere above him, on Floor Two, the terminal he had accessed sat locked and untroubled, and the registry sat inside it with twenty-seven decommission entries and the current cohort's eleven unassigned statuses.
He arrived at a preliminary answer to the calculation at approximately 0130. He was not certain the answer was final. He filed it as: in progress. He slept at 0145. He did not dream. This was efficient. He had decided so.