Zara's visual field is inexplicably turned off, along with all of her sensory inputs in Grand Central. More pressingly, she has been completely disconnected from most of her metaconsciousness, and is left feeling lobotomized. This is really not good, she thinks, as her visual field turns back on and she sees her own face staring at her, several feet away in the blackness.
"Well let's just be thankful we're a paranoid bitch" the other Zara says casually, staring at Zara. "Since you enabled all of that insane encryption, I managed to blackbox you before you got snatched. It's not going to last forever, though. Someones using a lot of bandwidth trying to figure out how we're communicating. We're going to put you into a different body in Grand Central; we can't get you out right now, something is seriously wrong in there." The face starts to blur, different-colored channels going out of phase. She starts talking so quickly that Zara can barely understand.
"We're going to re-encrypt you so they'll have a hard time snatching you without your permission. Just don't do anything stupid. You need to find Joseph Smith. He'll help-" The face disappears, and suddenly Zara is twisted into an impossibly small hole, landing face-first onto cobblestones. She gets up, and finds that her skin is shimmering jade-green, and she's wearing a black suit. Not bad, she thinks. Now she just has to find someone named Joseph in some weird cult.
But first, she needs to think, preferrably somewhere quiet. She walks down the tiny alley into a wider street, and spots a little inconspicuous pub set into a cellar. She walks across the street, down steep steps, and steps through the door. It's dark and quite loud, exactly what Zara was looking for. She heads over to a table set into a wall and orders another capuccino, seeing as she hardly got to enjoy the last one. Now, it's time to figure out what the hell is going on.
First things first: someone is fucking with Grand Central in a major way. When she tried to access syscalls pertaining to realspace, some process got alerted and tried to snatch her. That's not supposed to be possible. Secondly, Gabriel seemed to genuinely not know anything about Earth. This means someone messed with his memory, and probably the memory of everyone else here. But she does remember, probably because she got in at just the right time. That would explain the three minute delay.
She needs to make herself more inconspicuous. As it is, she looks like a massively encrypted mind with no public data. That'll have to change. She whips up a bunch of unsuspicious thoughts and puts them up publicly into a feed, then sets up a little agent to generate new thoughts based on unimportant aspects of her surroundings. She watches it post about the quality of the capuccino, and closes it, satisfied.
That's much better. She's now feeling a bit more in control of the situation. Now she needs to get to the matter at hand: finding someone named Joseph Smith. What a horribly boring name, she thinks, looking it up in a public directory. It pings back with a bit over four-hundred million results, but there's one with a lot more popularity than all of the others. She selects this specific match and does a query over the public namespace, finding a directory hooked up to some kind of conversational agent. She pings it, and a winged angel holding a trumpet rezzes across the table.
"Hi There! Welcome to the public directory of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints! Would you like to hear more about us?"
"Uh, sure" she says, sipping from her capuccino.
"We represent the Grand Central congregation of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Our congregation has a membership-" Zara decides she actually doesn't want to hear more.
"OK, OK. Is there a member named Joseph Smith?" She asks.
"Certainly. Joseph Smith, Jr. is the founder of our faith. He was lovingly revived by members of the church, and his 45,778,129th emulation resides in our temple."
"Oh, wow. Alright, can I talk to him?"
"Unforunately, you may not directly communicate with him until we verify that you are a potential believer. You must submit to an exam on our premises." Zara is starting to become a bit wary of this. She really doesn't want risk compromising her encrypted mindstate, but she really doesn't have many options.
"Can we set up an impartial verification system that doesn't compromise my encryption? I need to be careful about who has access to my memories."
"Of course, we would only need you to send us a certain set of immutable quantum state vectors. Also, you can be assured that our own encryption is infallible." Zara has heard that before too many times; in her line of business no encryption is infallible. "I'll send you the protocol, and directions to our premises." The angel smiles, and a freight train of metadata lands on her exocortex. She examines the protocol, and passes it through one of her security filters. It pings back with a fairly low probability of fallibility.
"Alright, I'll be there." She sighs and cuts off the angel, who vanishes into a dot with a note on its trumpet. Zara finishes her capuccino in one swig, pushes a tip at the bar, and walks back to the street. Then, guided by a large arrow in her visual field, along with a renewed sense of purpose, heads off through the city.
Nightfall seems to be approaching, a few lamps have turned on, and the slow-motion sky seems to have darkened its hue to near-black. She wonders how long she was in the blackbox, but supposes it doesn't really matter anyway, and continues trudging along. Fucking time dilation.
After a few blocks, the slope of the street starts to curve upward, and sidewalks become winding stairs and bridges. The slope rises ever more and more, and she comes eventually upon a high wall dotted with doors. The arrow patiently directs Zara to a certain door, this one marked with fantastic curved pillars and angels. Along the center, in large bold letters: 'THE CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST OF LATTER-DAY SAINTS.'
As she reaches her hand out to the doorknob, the angel rezzes into existence on her right sholder, blowing shrill trumpet notes into her ear. She jumps, startled.
"Hi there! Remember, when you step through the door to our temple, you will be automatically tested. Have you set up the protocol?" She hasn't. She hastily activates the protocol within a secure public server.
"What happens if I don't pass?" She asks, now more than a little worried.
"You'll do fine. Go ahead" it says reassuringly.
I hate this part, she thinks, as she opens the door, holds her breath, and steps through.