Part
three
Read ‘Part one’ and ‘Part two’ first.
She sat down in her front room, amongst her lovingly selected soft furnishings, and beside the roaring fire that her dad, Colm, had started for her. All around her, like friends she hadn't seen for years, were the tattered notebooks containing her mother's research. Page after page of semi-legible scribbles about the body, death, brain stems and the use of artificial intelligence in genetics and dna. There was a diary with appointments meticulously recorded, her mother had been deeply connected within the scientific community, alternative healers and paranormal philosophers.
Alis turned her mother’s pages as if they were gold leafed and kept underneath a glass casement, until she came to the final record: a lunchtime meeting with M.M. Mkintyre at their office in the centre of a town, a couple of hours away from home.
The notes were cryptic, Alis’s mum had used an untidy cursive hand with an old fountain pen that she was forever having to flush. Alis could only make out around half of the words: MMM, xylem, phloem, ai research. These were surrounded by codes, equations and diagrams that may as well been ancient Egyptian.
Alis logged in to her work HR portal and requested a day’s leave for the following week, then booked a return train to Leicester.