While we wait for this Simon to come up, Miranda plays our host, having just a tad too much of a swing in her step for my taste. Not that I’m complaining, she’s a pretty one all things considered.

“Checking out the goods, huh?” John asks next to me before adding a warning, “Careful though. Some of our guests can get rather...protective of their own, if you get my gist.”
“Cut me some slack, how can you NOT look at that?” I ask while Miranda is in another room.
“I feel you bud, but you’d best keep your hands to yourself. That said, you’re lucky. From what I’ve learned, Miranda’s mellowed down quite a bit since she got married.”
“You mean to tell me she was worse?”
“Way worse. Almost got raped just for walking into the wrong bar. Simon went berserk and just about dismantled the whole place cause of it.”
“...that’s awful. But why didn’t she fight back? She certainly looks like she can hold her own.”
“From what I heard, she wasn’t in much of a condition to fight back then, if you get my drift. Either way, this Simon...he has a dark side to him. And Miranda’s wellbeing is very important to him.”

So look but don’t touch. I can live with that. Besides, it’s just about never a good idea to think with the little friend in the midriff region.

When Miranda returns, she has a knowing smile on her face and I cannot help but wonder if she somehow overheard our conversation. I mean, she’s got those big red fox ears perked upon her head, but does she also have the hearing of a fox? How well do foxes hear anyway? Wait, foxes are related to dogs, so their smell should be...why am I even wondering about any of that?! There’s a case to be solved and this woman’s physiology isn’t going to help me any! ...unless…

“Mrs. Silver…”
“Please, call me Miranda. Mrs. Silver makes me feel old,” Miranda replies with a smile.
“...Miranda, did you, by chance, hear or notice anything peculiar when you entered the scene? A smell or a noise maybe? Something out of the ordinary or unexpected?”

Miranda tilts her head, her ears moving to an almost horizontal position as if to block out unwanted noise. It’s really strange how little she fazes me. I should be freaking out in the face of her very existence and yet I am having a pleasant conversation with her. As if it was the most normal thing in the world. But then again, it is, isn’t it? At least in this world. Why do I even feel estranged about her? It’s not like I have memories of a world where creatures like her do not exist...right?

“Um, you okay there, bud?” John asks, pulling me out of my thoughts.
“Huh? Oh, um...yeah, yeah I’m good. I was just...thinking.”
John shakes his head and shrugs. I can just about hear the words that shrug is saying and it’s a far cry from my actual thoughts. Not like the thought didn’t cross my mind, but in my line of work it’s very important to stay in control of your impulses and keep a level head at all times...lest you end up in a very uncomfortable situation very quickly.

Just then, the door opens and the armored man I had seen in the vision comes in. Only that he isn’t wearing the armor any more, but much more casual clothes...at least I figure what he’d call ‘casual’. They’re almost white and have a plastique shine to them, but bend as if they were made of wool. Another mystery wrapped in a box stored in an enigma has just entered the room and I’m pretty sure that it wasn’t going to be the last time I would run into something alien.

“Ah, you’re here. Gentlemen, this is Simon.”
“Hello John. And…” Simon looks at me expectantly, silently asking me to introduce myself, but I can just shake my head and explain, “Sorry, no can do. Amnesia or something. Just call me ‘detective’.”
Just then, John stifles a laugh or much rather fails to do so and I throw him an annoyed look.
“No, no, hear me out, I figured out the perfect name for you. Until you resolved this whole amnesia thing, I mean.”
“Well, now I’m curious,” I say, not really expecting anything.
“In my past life, there was a really old TV show with a guy who kept coming back to life with different bodies, because they had to exchange actors. Either way, this guy supposedly introduced himself as ‘The doctor’, much like you did just now.”
Something clicks in the back of my mind and a distant memory surfaces. I actually know what he is talking about and I groan, “Please don’t call me ‘Detective Who’, thank you very much,” before even fully realizing what is going on.
John, on the other hand, picks up on it immediately and asks, “...wait, you know the punchline already? Who told you about that show? Or could it be…?”
I blink a few times. I cannot recall hearing or ever watching that show. Yet still, I somehow know about it. About the timelord who travels in a phone booth and keeps complaining that he never comes back a ginger. Does that mean that John and I actually come from the same world?!

“Um...I’m not sure what’s going here, but Miranda said you wanted to ask me about that incident?” Simon suddenly chimes in and the fleeting grasp on my past disappears like the shadows of a dream do when waking up. You still know that something was playing in your head, but you cannot remember it...what was I thinking about just now? I have the feeling that it was important. Curses! Didn’t it have something to do with John? He said something about a punchline...right?

Just then, a powerful blow to my head drags me back into the unwanted reality of not knowing who I am and having to figure out a supposedly impossible murder.
I turn around to Miranda who had delivered the hit and ask, “Hey, what’d you do that for?!”
“Sorry, you looked like you desperately tried to remember something and I heard that light hits to the back of the head can help with that.”
“‘Light hit’?! You almost took my head off my shoulders!” I yell at her, massaging my aching neck, when a startling realization hits me. If that really was a ‘light hit’...then just how strong is she?

John stifles another laugh and then addresses Simon in my stead, “Mr. Silver, we came to verify some details about the body you found earlier and to hear whether you heard anything regarding the identify of the victim.”
“So you want to hear the story again then?” Simon asks and I nod, my neck still hurting. The flashback starts playing and, save for a few details, it’s the same ol’ story Miranda had already told us. Witnesses really are a very unreliable source of evidence. Simon’s flashback starts with him opening the door instead of on the corridor and portrays him as approaching the body instead of Miranda. Which is a rather big discrepancy, actually.
After the flashback ended, I ask, “Hold on, I have a question. Who of you approached the body?”
Like from one mouth both of them answered, “I did, of course. Wait, what do you mean you did?! You were waiting at the door!”
Peculiar...the funny thing is, it doesn’t feel like either of them is lying. But then again, I already know that this body can somehow alter the perception of the people around it. So maybe they both think what they’re saying is true? Grand...there’s nothing worse than a liar who doesn’t even know they are lying for a witness.
While Simon and Miranda are still arguing who approached the body, I interrupt both of them and ask, “Never mind that for now please. Can I ask something else? Did you notice anything out of place? A smell? A detail? Anything at all? I know that there being a body commanded your attention, but in my experience, people perceive all sorts of stuff they forget when under stress.”
“Ah yes, you asked that question earlier, but I never answered, did I?” Miranda asks.
“...now that you mention it, there was a somewhat familiar smell in the air,” Simon says, putting his finger to his chin, trying to place the memory.
“Ah yeah, now that you mention it, there was this terrible stench,” Miranda chimes in.
“A smell? Any idea what it was?”
“Hold on, I’ve almost got it...it’s been a long time ago...from before I got taken to Eden…” Simon says, pacing up and down the room.
“Didn’t it smell a bit like on the Titan? Just...less musky and old?”
“That’s it! It smelled like a spaceship! Jeez, how could I forget!”

“Spaceships have...a smell?” I ask, trying to get over the fact they were talking about spacecraft right now. Just what kind of world did these guys come from? A science-fiction novel?

“Of course. Everything has ‘a smell’. A pine forest smells fundamentally different than a fir forest. A road through the country side smells very different from a town. Every person has their own smell. What makes you think spaceships wouldn’t have a smell?” Miranda explains.
“Still...what the heck does a spaceship even smell like?”
“Well, seeing how spaceships need to be self-contained vessels, the oxygen needs to be recycled. There’s usually not enough room or sunlight to do this organically, so the air naturally has a bit of a ‘musky’ smell to it. Then of course there’s the smell of oil and other lubricants, the constant hum of electricity as it runs through the many circuits which charges the air...feels a bit like the air before a thunderstorm, actually.”
“So, to recapitulate, we’ve got a body in a strange getup and the ‘smell of spaceship’ in the air?” I ask, trying to make sense of the information pouring down on me.
“Yes. Now that I think about it...she looked like she was wearing a uniform of some sort...could she have served on a spaceship before ending up here?” Simon asks.
Of course it’s a rhetoric question, but a sound conclusion nevertheless. So it would seem that we caught a glimpse at the past of the victim. Which is good. The more we know about the victim, the more likely we are to figure out a motive for the murder.