The cube was clear green grass, the smoke inside moving slowly. Now here was here, he was didn’t want to open it, but Mint was waiting by the door, huddled in her thick coat, and he could sense her impatience. He had come here after all, against her better judgement.
‘That’s why we put memories in boxes, Tor. So we can leave them behind.’ She had stroked his arms softly as she spoke, gentle movements that calmed him, but it wasn’t enough.
They had said the procedure was one hundred percent successful. In most cases. But in some, like him, the procedure left a sort of psychic residue. The online forums called it the Aftertaste and that was exactly what it was like, the unpleasant taste of something repeating on you. He couldn’t remember the memory itself – that part at least had worked – but there was a constant sense of disquiet, that he couldn’t shake off. His mind kept trying to work out why he felt it, and, like a newly removed tooth, he couldn’t help probing the missing hole.
‘We’ve got each other now,’ Mint had said, ‘Our new life. Whatever that memory was, you wanted rid of it, so why invite it back?’ She was probably right. But still.
He had paid good money to get the memory removed, presumably unable to move on with life without the procedure, the usual therapies or drugs not sufficient. So, he had tried to ignore the nagging feeling of loss, at least for a while; but the needling doubts kept at him, day and night, until he was ragged with lack of sleep. He researched reasons for memory removal, trying to second guess why he might have wanted to get rid of it in the first place and got a grisly list of all humanity’s worst failings: betrayals, bitter arguments, feuds, manslaughter, and murders. He lost weight and started to look haggard.
Still, he carried on, fighting against the need to know. Mint was the best thing that had ever happened to him, and they had built a good life together. He was selfish to want to change that; there were horror stories aplenty online. People that discovered they had killed their partner; or were sex offenders, or other nightmares. And once they did remember, they changed. If the shame didn’t destroy them, the knowledge that they were they type of person that could do something like that, after years of living as an innocent, often sent them mad.
And yet.
He couldn’t let it go. Day and night, whatever else he was doing, the missing memory was dull heartbeat underlying everything. It never stopped. It was only when Mint had found him huddled and crying with the need to know that she reluctantly agreed.
Now they were here, at Mnemosyne Ltd., across several acres, which was staggering enough, until one realised that, like an iceberg, most of the building was below ground. Secure vaults holding millions of delicate glass cubes, stacked and labelled.
His memory cube was three levels below ground, and like the other vaults, the air here was a stable 16C, 45% relative humidity, designed to preserve the glass and its precious contents for as long as the owner lived.
‘Does sir wish to proceed?’ Tor jumped and looked at the attendant who had spoken. His nametag, pinned to a crips white coat, said Suh.
‘Sorry, I was lost in thought for a minute there.’ Suh inclined his head, in acknowledgement, but didn’t speak.
‘Why glass?’ Tor asked, aware that he was deliberately prolonging things.
Suh gave a smile of understanding and said, ‘Research showed that only natural materials were capable of holding memories. Mnemosyne tried many plastic vessels, but the memories always deteriorated, the chemicals seemed to leach in and interact, so eventually, glass was chosen.’ He seemed to feel Tor was uncomfortable with such a fragile material, so continued, ‘But its strengthened glass, sir, so there is no chance of breakage.’ He said, his voice pitched to be calming.
Tor looked at him again, ‘And… how sure are you that this,’ he pointed the green cube, ‘is mine and not someone else’s?’ Suh gave a short laugh, as if at a poor joke, then pointed to the code etched into the glass. ‘You see this square? It contains encrypted code, only readable by you, Tor. May I call you Tor?’ Tor nodded his agreement. ‘Oh yes, DNA?’ Tor said, remembering something from the marketing materials he had read.
‘Well not precisely. When you had this procedure, certain of your life-neurons were tagged, linking this box to you. The chance of anyone else being able to access it is calculated at several trillion to one.’ He smiled and Tor smiled back. ‘Great, that’s just great.’ He was worried about the tagging – had he known that?
There was a pause whilst he stood watching his memory moving in the box. He tried to discern some hint of what it contained from watching it. Was it moving in a sinister way? Did it look evil? Or just faint mist like every other box here?
Finally, he looked at Suh and nodded. ‘I’m ready.’ He heard quick movement behind him as Mint suddenly threw her arms around him, saying, ‘It’s not too late. We can leave. We can go now. Please.’ She was crying. Gently he pulled her arms from around him. ‘I have to,’ he whispered. ‘I can’t live not knowing.’
She looked at him, her gaze hardening. ‘This will destroy us.’ She said, her tone matter of fact. She turned away. ‘Please wait for me,’ Tor said, but she gave no sign of hearing him.
Suh turned to his hand screen tapping and moving his fingers rapidly, then, to Tor he said, ‘Please place your eye up to the code,’ Tor did so, and felt a prickling sensation on his eye, and heard a soft clunk as the box was released, into the claws of a waiting bot.
‘Now we will go to the Instatement Room,’ Suh said, as they both followed the small bot. Tor hoped it wouldn’t drop the box. ‘How long will it take? I mean, I was told only an hour, but you know…I’ve read the recovery can be different for everyone?’ he asked.
Suh nodded, ‘The actual Instatement of memory is relatively quick, but you are correct. The recovery depends mostly on the content of the memory.’
‘Can you give me a clue?’ Tor laughed, trying to making it a joke, but he was serious. He wanted to know, to prepare somehow.
Suh smiled, but looked around and said in a low voice, ‘I can’t tell you anything like that, but…the very worst ones tend to be on level 9,’ he pointed to the ground, ‘waaaay down there.’ Tor nodded. It didn’t mean anything, but he felt a bit of relief. Maybe he wasn’t a murdering, psychotic madman then.
The room was white and clinical, almost identical to the room for the original procedure, but that had had an optimistic feel with images of smiling couple and families, playing on sunny beaches, all carefree, no worries.
This room was devoid of any images at all. He supposed they didn’t want to show miserably depressed people struggling with the weight of their newly acquired memories. He swallowed, his mouth dry and his heart seemed loud. Maybe he should just go, forget it.
‘Make yourself comfortable, Tor,’ a female attendant: Anwen, came towards him with her wide smile and bright eyes, and he stumbled back into the reclining chair, sitting with a thump. Too late now. He lay back and they wheeled equipment toward him, wiring him up, sticking things into and onto him. He felt a tightening at his feet, wrists and head, ‘Hey! What’s going on?’ He was strapped down, with his head between clamps which were being tightened as he protested.
‘Relaaaaax, Tor,’ Suh said, ‘Remember this was in the Instatement waiver you signed. Every patient must be restrained for Instatement, just until the memory is installed and settled.’ His tone was soothing, and Tor remembered reading something about ‘being held securely for the procedure, for his and others safety.’ Somehow those words hadn’t conjured the reality of being unable to move. He could see the green box from the corner of his eye, a pop of colour in the white, as it was placed into one of the instruments to his side.
‘We’re administering the sedative now, Tor, so you will start to feel more relaxed. Remember this is not a general anaesthetic, so you will be aware, but relaxed.’ His voice was getting slower and softer, and Tor relaxed against the long chair. It would be alright, after all it was his memory. He would just have to deal with whatever it was, with counselling or something… he was becoming sleepy… he tried to stay awake, to feel the moment the memory came back…
—
‘The spine is ruined,’ the voice said, ‘he’s useless. Next.’
Blind as a grub, he was lifted into the air and swung back and forth – he heard men saying ‘a-one, a- two’- and he was flung up, and up, before landing, on a heap of soft and hard parts: other bodies. Pain burst into song as his head hit other hard bones and his back twisted painfully, corkscrewing. He groaned, and tried to move, but before he could, something landed with a heavy thud on top of him and he collapsed back into the heap. He groped ahead, his hand questing and gripped an arm, then a leg in front of him and pulled and scrabbled away from the landing zone of bodies. He was going by feel, the world was dark; maybe it was dark – actual night- and hope flickered, but he felt his eyes with his fingers and winced as he felt the scarring and the pain of burns. He continued forward, pulling against anything to drag himself, coughing with the effort, his throat claggy with smoky fumes. His eyes were watering, but he thought there was some lightening of the darkness. He could hear the men behind him, ‘A-one, A-two,’ and the grunt of release and he imagined the body flying up briefly weightless before falling to the mound of bodies. He crawled on, fiercely gripping whatever his hands met, trying not to think about the human features his fingers recognised as they brushed across the noses, eyes, and hair. Other people. Cold and clammy. Some misshapen, by what, he didn’t know. He realised he was thirsty, his throat a sandpaper tube, rasping with each breath. He kept moving, inch by inch. He couldn’t feel his feet, but no time to think of that now. Just get away from that nightmare behind him.
He thought he heard a noise, ‘Here, here lad.’ The whisper was from his right, a hoarse, urgent command and he turned towards it. The smell of rotting meat, that he had until now only been aware of in the background minimised by the adrenalin of escape, now seemed to burst in on his senses and he almost gagged. He was almost glad he couldn’t see, but he could feel the slip of flesh on bones and remembered the old abbatoir outside his childhood town, which could be smelled even as far as their house if the wind was in the wrong direction. Once he and Bill had sneaked in close to dusk, handkerchiefs over their mouths, and heard the heavy buzzing of flies. Behind the huge corrugated barnlike building was a vision of hell, a pit of bloodied bones and skeletons, flesh and skin hanging like rags, eye sockets watching them reproachfully. They had retched and run.
A hand grabbed the scruff of his shirt, and he was dragged forward and up; he was almost faint with fatigue, pain and fear. He was laid onto something that cradled his battered body, lifted, and borne away.
—
A gruff voice: ‘You fool, Pinker. He’s not worth the time. Or the resources.’
An argument, just out of his hearing.
A soft hand on his cheek.
Awareness as he sank in and out of consciousness, as if floating on a rough sea, of time passing.
—
‘I’m going to remove the bandages now. Are you ready?’ Dr Pinker said, his voice carefully neutral. Tor’s mouth was dry: if his eyes hadn’t healed…But he couldn’t think like that. He gripped the bedsheet. ‘Go ahead.’ He tried to sound calm but heard his voice waver.
The bandage was peeled back, fresh air cool on his skin. He heard the plunk of the wastebin lid as the bandage was disposed of and felt the wash of cool water as his eyes were ungummed, then Dr Pinker said,
‘Ok, we’ve kept the lights low in here, so: when you are ready, open them. Slowly.’
Tor ordered his eyelids to open and, heavy as they were, they opened a crack, to blinding light and he shut them immediately, before trying again. And again.
Fuzzy shapes in the room slowly coalesced into people. A man to his right: Dr Pinker, smiling. Tor felt tears start and sniffed to swallow them back. ‘I can see. I can see!’ he shouted and laughed. Dr Pinker whispered something under his breath and smiled at Tor. ‘Its good. Very good.’
—
Liv wheeled him out of the compound, grunting as her combat boots slipped on the gritty ramp, ‘Here we go, your Highness.’ It was a steep incline up to the entrance, a bright light at the end of a long tunnel and hard going with the rickety wheelchair.
Tor laughed, looking up and back at her face, behind him, ‘Come on Liv, put some effort in.’ She cuffed him round the back of the head, and the wheelchair skewed. ‘Ouch’ he complained, rubbing his head, ‘Keep your eyes on the job.’ He knew she liked him really.
‘The only reason I won’t kill you is ‘cos they took so much effort in to saving you. And you’ve got fat on the rations; they always give the invalids too much.’
‘Hey, you can’t…’ his words stalled as they cleared the entrance, into the warmth of a bright day, a deep blue sky.
And two suns.
—
‘Code Red, this is a Code Red.’ Alarms were sounding in the room, splitting his head in two. He felt the straps loosen and the chair whirred quickly into an upright position. Suh was talking on the phone, ‘Yes sir. No, it just came up on screen: A Level 6 Red Warning. I don’t…’
Tor could hear shouting from the other end of the phone, and Suh said, ‘Yes sir, I’ll bring him as soon as he’s recovered.’ Tor vaguely thought they might be talking about him, but he didn’t want to open his eyes, his stomach was doing flip-flops and he felt queasy with motion sickness and the rush of memory.
Suh touched his arm, ‘Tor? Tor? I imagine you are feeling nauseous right now which is an entirely normal reaction. The brain needs time for the new memory to be installed so to speak. Instatement can take time.’ Tor heard him burble on, concentrating on keeping his stomach under control. He risked opening his eyes. Anwen was holding a cup of pink liquid, ‘Here, take a sip of this, it will settle your stomach.’ Tor took a cautious sip of a fruit flavoured drink. It seemed to be staying down, and it did seem to help.
Fragments of the memory were repeating in flashes, loud and clear, but it was all wrong. Nothing in that memory could be real. Two suns. It didn’t make sense.
When he could talk, he said, ‘I think there’s been some mistake. Whatever that was, it wasn’t my memory.’ He started to say more but Suh held up a hand. ‘Uh, Tor. There has been a…message…on your file. There is another level of memory that we need to discuss.’ Suh seemed guarded. ‘We need to take you to another room for a …debrief.’ He smiled. He did that a lot.
Tor wondered if Mint was still waiting. He felt fine, even if the memory, or dream, as he was already thinking of it, was strange.
The door opened and two large men in uniform marched in, faces like granite. Tor looked at Suh, who grimaced apologetically. ‘I am sorry Tor, but you must accompany these men.’
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