Free Control (Shift) by Kim Curran Page A

proving pretty popular. Especially with the female voters. Personally, I thought he was a bit of a git.
    And yet I still remembered the old guy so clearly. He’d not been so popular. His grey hair and sullen smile didn’t play well with the voters. It didn’t play with anyone at ARES either. He’s been the one who’d put the agency on lockdown: introducing all the security; bringing the NSOs in; insisting on complete containment. He was paranoid about everything.
    Someone had Shifted and the world had changed: all these new events rippling out from that one moment. Only I had no idea who or why.
    I had to concentrate to hold onto the previous reality, which was the very thing I was trained not to do. Fighting against the current of a new version of the present could lead to a reality attack. And that could be bad news. I’d interviewed a Shifter, a kid who was only about eight, who suffered so badly from a reality attack after a Shift that he’d been locked up in a mental home. I worried that that’s where I’d end up one day too.
    I didn’t know why I had this weird ability to remember alternatives for longer and stronger than anyone else. Most people just held onto glimpses, echoes, that they quickly dismissed. With me, the old reality didn’t fade that easily. Sometimes, it was like waking up and not being sure if what you’d dreamt was real. It could take me days to sort through versions, finding places for all my memories. While for everyone else it just happened instinctively. A touch ofdéjà vu, maybe. A shiver down the spine as if someone had walked over your grave. And that was it. They just accepted the new reality as quickly as the old one collapsed. But not me. I had a serious problem with letting go. I’d never told anyone this, even Aubrey, but I felt this weird sort of responsibility, as if someone had to hold on to the old realities. If only just to understand why they’d come about.
    I could feel the two versions of “now” fighting for place in my head. I wanted to hold on to both of them. The problem was, when a reality is shared by lots of people, it’s so much easier to accept. The personal stuff, things that just happened to me or people I cared about, that I could hold on to for as long as I wanted. Much longer than I wanted in a lot of cases. But when it was something big, something public, when there were so many people observing the event, so many ropes pinning it in place, it became irresistible. And there wasn’t anything much more public than a Prime Minister.
    The Prime Minister stopped laughing and stretched out his hand to shake mine. I started to panic. If I shook his hand, it would make him real and harder to remember what had happened. I had to leave myself a message. Something that would put a pin in the old reality so I could work out if this new one was the better. I could hardly write myself a note. I looked at the guards in their black suits and wondered how they would react if I suddenly reached inside my jacket.
    His hand was uncomfortably close now. I bit down on my lip. Hard. And tasted the coppery tang of blood. When my lip throbbed later it would remind me. I told myself over and over. Blood equals Shift. Blood equals wrong.
    I reached out and shook the Prime Minister’s hand. He had a firm shake and surprisingly cold hands. As his fingers closed over mine I suddenly couldn’t remember why I was feeling so unsettled. He oozed natural charisma and it was clear why he’d won the election so easily. No, I was worrying for nothing. Not that I could even remember what there had been to worry about.
    “Good to meet you…?” Miller said.
    “Scott, Scott Tyler,” I said.
    “And you are?” he said, letting go of my hand and turning to Aubrey.
    “Aubrey Jones.”
    “Wonderful. And hello you, little scamp,” he said, ruffling Jake’s hair. He half turned to Sir Richard and didn’t bother to lower his voice. “I’ll have to get a picture with this one later.