The Seven-Sided Die

The assassin's amnesia

Posted Friday January 16, 2009 at 09:42 AM

Doctor Checkmate wrote a sort of review of Frozen Alive (aka Der Fall X701) and mused about the plot element that has the scientist wake up from stasis only to discover that he's suspected of murder. He mentioned frozen colonists as a plot element that might give more wiggle room for weakening the "but I was frozen during the crime!" alibi. I wrote the following as a comment there, but it became elaborate enough that it's worth posting here.

I immediately thought of the colonist idea too since I have Blue Planet right at eye level on the shelf here. You could get around the alibi by adding in mistaken identity. The "colonist" angle isn't really necessary for that, but it does imply that communication between origin and destination is tenuous and that presents many opportunities for fudged, missing, or swapped documents.

For Blue Planet, my thought expanded out to this: A corporate assassin is given extensive, expensive bio-sculpts and a new identity, then shipped as a popsicle through the wormhole with the expectation of picking up her full instructions once she's on Poseidon. She arrives and, lo, happens to be among that unlucky 5% (or whatever it is) that experience partial amnesia. She doesn't know who she is or why there are guns pointed at her, only that she has a mission brief to pick up planet-side.

As a further twist, it's not that the identity swap failed, but her new identity isn't what it was supposed to be, and that other person is a wanted criminal. Did her employer set her up? Was there a mistake made by the bribed emigration clerk? Is someone hijacking the assassin for their own use? Did a double agent intercept the ID swap? Does the assassin get her memory back? If she does, are they her memories? Can she get away and pick up her instructions? Can she trust her mission brief?

Comments (1)

drcheckmate

Friday January 16, 2009 at 03:30 PM

My work here is done :)

drcheckmate’s last blog post: I’m an agent of chaos