Remember (38 page)

“I think that’s everything.”

“Conor, it was fun.” She’s ready to leave. An idea comes to her as she reaches the doorway. She turns around and comes to hug me. Where did this come from? I let her do it. She whispers something in my ear.

“Just a little longer, now.”

Claire leaves like every other week. A hint of her smell lingers, what you smell by laying in a grassy field. I just need to sit down. What happened in the last minute? I start seeing flashes of black and white. I feel unsteady and dizzy. Bracing myself on the table helps. The flashes get more intense and faster. I know if anything happens a switch on the table can bring help. A white and black fuzzy image covers my entire field of view. It resolves into a text doc, the logs of some Agent 7429. That is somehow familiar. Another doc flashes in. Over the next short span hundreds flood in. I can see again. The info is gone. A small black dot tracks with my sight. I reach for where it appears to be and the info comes back. I know to look at the first one, a convo between this Agent and someone else, probably Report about a target, me.

Wed 8/23/17 11:02 p.m.

A:

Ready to start briefing?

R:

Yes.

A:

We met in person for an unscheduled briefing. Is this required?

R:

Yes. The briefings have to continue on schedule. Is there anything to report from the intervening time?

A:

A source within the head office of the Stephens Institute has confirmed that an Agent within the Institute has been promoted to director.

R:

Good. Does this open new possibilities?

A:

Yes. Dr. Stephens has started confiding in this Agent. The Agent has privileged access to Dr. Stephens.

R:

Anything else to report?

A:

No.

R:

End briefing?

A:

Yes.

A:

That interview with Report in person went better than expected. She asked questions that required narrative answers. I answered something inclusive of what actually happened. The suit malfunctioned because the user gave bad commands. I got through to Conor from the outside, referred to as external suit controls. Now if she demanded one word answers of yes and no, the odds are a coin toss, 50-50. When one of us lies, including Conor, the signs amount to one of a few such as a twitch of pupil constriction, a 0.1 degree change in palm skin temp, an uptick in breathing volume, and maybe a millisecond delayed response. Maybe half the Reports out there could sense it. But for her it amounts to good or bad days. I passed that day. Yes or no questions suck.

That's everything for the latest week.

Thurs 1/25/18 10:49 p.m.

T
he boundless ocean stretches ahead. Its jagged, mirror-like surface reflects back on me the pale orange sun. The boat moves at speed through these gently rolling waves sending up a spray of fine mist. On every conceivable surface the salted droplets land, a coating of flaky, crumbly mineral forms. The salt covers my lip with an enhancing taste. My grip on the railing provides a source of security and strength against the cool winds and damp. The sun helps too. Water maids accompany me on this journey, swimming in the wake and ahead of the bow, in the form of dolphins.

I peer to the upper deck, flying high above, well over the worst of the spray and sound. Perched upon this, my constant companion whom I couldn’t do without. She gazes out past the local scenery with the aid of binoculars, to some far off wonder beyond my grasp. From that outlook another horizon is visible just a bit farther than my own. She takes a more pedestrian view by carrying the eagle-eyed tool off to her side. Her other hand forms a shade visor over gleaming eyes. A shift in the oncoming rays turns Claire’s body into a silhouette of a goddess on the harsh radiating light that is our life bringing sun.

She comes down from her heavenly perch, nestled upon the higher deck. The ease and grace with which she moves in nothing less than perfection. Claire is down at this deck to exchange words with me. The sweet sounds of her irresistible intonation wash over me. I hear her words but that is not everything. This exchange has the surprising quality to put me at ease and in a state of supreme contentment.

Claire leads me to the deck cabin by her usual mannerisms — consisting of feather light touches on the inside of my palm and arm — knowing exactly how to do this for some reason currently out of grasp. The deck cabin bolsters a pendulum sort of door, swinging back and forth with the lightest of breezes. Claire pushes the door aside like a harmless fly floating in the air as I miss her contact briefly, moving through the filter screen of a doorway. The door swings through on its pendulum arc.

In that instant, Claire seemingly disappears from view into the body of the ship. I push through the door expecting the truth of Claire behind, yet she is not to be seen by mine eyes in this darkened chamber. I walk through this room looking for the visual to match my thoughts only to be disappointed. Claire is nowhere below or above decks. I sense a looming dread. The rhythmic slamming of the door culminates with a loud bang. I look back to see nothing but an empty wall in place of shut door.

I look and search for anything signaling an escape route from this dark and desolate chamber entombed within ship. The transom windows are barely inches beyond my outstretched fingers. The blackness is temporarily held at bay by the late evening light. Chalk markings of an indecipherable and crude tongue relating something or other graffiti the walls. Paper filling every possible inch of available floor makes an audible impact of crumpling and crunching with each step. I sink to the ground in a state befitting my current position.

Wetness encroaches my battlements from every front. A deep red sludge, a curse upon my head adding to my already sad state. With each passing breath and moment my heart and mind fill with revulsion. The impending creep of the fluid into my flesh sends me up and away. The red concoction comes continually higher, soaking into more of the papery under footing, and turning it all into a blood red mush. I end up tasting the fluid to verify my suspicion that this is in fact blood from some massive creature.

The transoms let in something else, filling my prison just a bit more efficiently. The new golden amber liquid comes in by waterfall, sized and shaped in that way. The intense smell of strong alcohol resides within this liquid all twisted to the insane goal of drowning me as sewer rat. The onslaught continues with no sign of mitigation, intent on my destruction. There must be a method escaping my thoughts that can rid me of this impending doom.

The transom is my salvation from this situation. I get myself soaked through and through grasping desperately at the window that continues to evade my attempts. The wandering from light to light finds me a step where there is none. A way out has revealed itself to me as nothing but apparent. I clamber upon the submerged pedestal high enough to reach the hand of my salvation. I pull myself up with as much strength as my frame can manage, up to the deck. Halfway up, a tug on my leg slides me back. The next so forceful, my head reels up into glass transom. This, my end.

(—)

I wake up to a dark room. The pink light from the window illuminates everything. The late hour along with the special sky makes it a weird time to be up. I go to the window. The pink sky, the product of water droplets in the air bouncing rays of moonlight, brought to bear lighting up the clouds. The strange set of conditions all meet for this sight. I reluctantly get back to sleep.

Fri 1/26/18 8:04 a.m.

S
arah and I are off to another memory session, just any day among the 50 or so at the Memory Center. The daily convo starts with how my dreams are. Then, how the therapy is working. My jogging progress.

Sarah presses a few of her pockets and holds one. “I have some good news for you. It’s about the sim equipment you wanted.”

“Yes.”

Sarah retrieves a folded up map from her pocket with a marked room and gives it to me. “You can use a sim here at the center. The bad news is you have to change rooms.”

I unfurl the map, refold, and stow away. “No prob.”

“It used to be the old staff room. It is now like any other room except the sim. You should be able to move sometime today.” She smiles weakly with a slight deepening of her hair.

“It has been a long time coming. There is something that has been bugging me. Do I talk during the memory session? It’s just that recently you stopped asking question about what I remember.”

She answers without a second thought. “Not that much. Let me ask you something. Do you think it is possible for you to consciously talk and then completely forget you said anything?”

“Not possible.”

“There’s your answer. What you think is possible becomes the truth in the memory recovery state. You don’t make any sense in the rare occasions you make sounds.”

I've heard that before somewhere.
“Okay.”

We stop outside the therapy room. “Before we go in, do you have any more questions?”

“How did you get into memory guiding or whatever you do now?”

“That's a good story. Let’s sit down and talk about it.”

“Okay.” We sit down in her office for the story. Me on the couch and Sarah on the chair.

“Do you want anything to drink?” Sarah gestures to the nourisher besides the desk.

“No, I’m fine.”

Sarah curls her toes around the rug at her feet. “I wanted to be in the Security Division. That turned into this memory guiding.”

“That’s a big change.”

Sarah itches under her knee, and her hair blanches white. “It all started with my friend David. An accident, you could call
it, happened. The go-seat he was using just stopped on the spot, some momentary and intentional disconnect of his tech. This would have been fine, except for the fact he was going at high speed to cover up a delay. The safety devices covered him in a protective bubble before he landed. The stop propelled him over 35 meters. Security tried to id the person behind it. They found someone. That was all they could do.”

“You wanted something more than that but why memories?”

“Well, Security can just give closure in most cases. Sometimes they can’t even do that.
That is it.
Any emotional, psychological, or physical damage is out of their purview. This damage can take years, if ever, to get repaired. I just wanted the ability to do more for the people I’m serving. With this, it is
always
possible to provide a complete recovery. I also have the ability to follow each person all the way through the Process. That is what drew me to this.”

I cross my arms, some new gesture I picked up. “Is there any tangible way to see your hard work in the heads of people like me?”

Her hair returns to a passable orange. “We do neural pathway efficiency scans of the memory storage area. With people like you we do a scan before and after. With some people we do them every week.”

“How can a brain scan tell you how much I’m remembering?”
Shouldn't I know this?

“The efficiency of the connections tells us how well you remember something. It is a relative value so we compare two different sets of scans. That’s how we measure progress.”

“I’m ready to start.”

“Good.”

I lay down on the usual sofa I’m already sitting on, my arms at my sides. Sarah raises an armrest from somewhere under the cushions. It comes up next to me giving a place to put my arm. I start wondering about something for the first time. How do they make me remember? They aren’t giving me any medication then, how?

“How do you make me remember stuff?”

“We are using your unconscious mind to uncover new memories, mediated by programming through sensory inputs. We use imperceptible stimuli to get the necessary result, in your case the texture of your bed sheets.”

Just changing the bed sheets?
“I can’t be that simple.”

“We first figure out what’s going to work with you. We can ask you questions and see where your brain is stimulated. The brain scan gives us enough for a sim of your brain. We question the sim instead of you. We can use the food, lights, even smells or textures like with you."

“If it is imperceptible, how does it do anything?”
Stop asking questions and remember.

Sarah spreads her toes across the rug and wriggles them. “Imperceptible refers to the lack of conscious perception. Of the total sensory info gathered by humans, only 30 percent or less is known by the conscious mind. The other 70 percent or so is processed by the unconscious mind. That window allows us to talk directly by the unconscious mind. That’s how it works.”

“What about that long speech before I go into the memory?”