In Schiller's office at New Arkham Asylum, Schiller took a bottle of sherry and two glasses from the liquor cabinet. He set a glass in front of Victor and poured as he asked, "Nora has recovered? How is she doing?"
"Didn't you already... Oh, that wasn't you yesterday, was it? Your other personality?" Victor picked up his glass and blinked. Then he said, "No wonder. Back at the Gotham University lab, you were already calling my wife 'Nora,' but yesterday your first instinct was to call her 'Mrs. Fries.'"
"Sorry. The other me isn't very familiar with you all. He may have forgotten that Nora doesn't like being called Mrs. Fries."
Victor smiled and shook his head. "It's fine. It's only because Nora hates being seen as someone else's attachment. She isn't merely Mrs. Fries. She's an equally outstanding cryogenics scientist and a good teacher."
"Actually, I visited a friend yesterday." Schiller raised his glass and leaned against one armrest of the sofa. "You know, through the dream world."
"The other me got hold of a valuable experimental sample. My friend has been researching it intensively and has obtained some results. Would you like to see them?"
With that, Schiller got up, walked to his desk, took out a sheet of paper, and handed it to Victor. Victor accepted it, glanced at it, and frowned.
There was no complicated data on the paper. Eighty percent of it was blank, with only a few lines written in the center. There were no numbers, not even any symbols—only a cluster of strange referents and annotations.
"Is this a code?" Victor stared at the lines. "Can they be deciphered into something else? No, that can't be right. If your friend gave it to you, there'd be no need to encrypt it."
"But judging