Reclaimed

by Madeleine Roux

  The elevator cars bled together into one pulsing light. “What do you mean?”

  “I just sent Beverly all the information,” he said. She could hear the smile in his voice. “There’s a satellite office on the station, but the real magic is happening on Ganymede. We’re looking for people like you, Zurri, people with memories they want gone, traumas they need erased.”

  “Traumas!” she scoffed. “That’s giving Tony a little too much credit.”

  “Oh,” Paxton murmured. He was quiet for a beat. “I see. My mistake, then.”

  “Yeah, your mistake.”

  She heard him shuffling something on his desk, not papers but a keyboard maybe. Why was she still listening to him? Whatever he had to say wasn’t relevant, obviously, but for some reason she just stayed on the line. Part of her worried what would happen when his voice was gone. She would be alone again with her thoughts, with the vast, dark city in space glowing all around her, hundreds of thousands of souls all suspended there among the stars with her. Even knowing Bev was there, and the paparazzi below, the whole station felt suddenly empty, and the loneliness in the darkness grew eyes, hundreds of thousands of lights all turned toward her, watching. Waiting . . .

  Tony wasn’t a trauma. Tony was . . . Zurri swallowed hard. Tony was a cold sweat that never quite left. He was the vague shape that startled her awake every night, a prowling shadow in the corner of her eye, a threat that abated sometimes but never truly left. He was an almost friend turned almost killer.

  “What is this?” she heard herself ask. “Like, therapy?”

  The shuffling stopped. She could feel, even though he was on a moon far, far away, his attention snap back to her full force. “It’s not therapy, no. It’s technology. We can zap a scar or a tattoo off your skin, right? And now I can zap a scar off your mind, too. Your worst day, not just forgotten but gone.”

  Zurri tried to imagine it: Tony’s face lingering over her bed just gone. The smell of his burning flesh just gone.

  “Sounds too good to be true,” she said, rubbing her eye with the heel of her hand. She could already tell the comedown from this dose of Rapture would be brutal. A dance with oblivion never ended quietly.

  “Well, it was,” Paxton Dunn said simply. “But not anymore. Stop by the office on the station sometime, I think what you see there will really change your mind. I have a feeling I’ll be seeing you on Ganymede soon, Zurri. We’ll be in touch.”

  The call dropped. Zurri jerked her wrist up, staring at nothing. He had hung up on her. He had hung up on her. Smirking, she decided to let Bev keep her job for one more day, then she zigzagged to the window and tapped her knuckle on it. Bev needed to get her an appointment at this office of Dunn’s, and she needed to do it right then, wake up whatever receptionist she had to, pull whatever string was required.

  They would accommodate her, they had to. After all, she was Zurri.

  3

  Han couldn’t wait to lose his memories.

  Not all of them, of course, just one in particular. Or rather, one part of one. It was complicated. Because it was complicated, Han was beginning to worry Paxton Dunn wouldn’t be able to do it.

  People got rid of all sorts of things—moles, stained teeth, crooked noses, acne. That was modern life. If you didn’t like something about yourself, then you found a way to remove it; why did a memory have to be any different than a wart? The difference was just opinion, he decided. Stubborn people being stubborn, a preciousness about the mind. Blah, blah, blah, holy or sacred or whatever. Boring. Small-minded. Eight hundred years ago having a wart in the wrong place made you a witch, and then anyone zealous enough could light you on fire. If the meaning of a wart could change, then the meaning of a memory could, too.

  Everyone kept telling him he lived in the future, so it might as well feel like he was, too.

  He kicked his legs back and forth under the chair while he waited. Frowning, Han reminded himself that Paxton Dunn could do almost anything. He had been Han’s hero for years, his inspirational quotes and speeches the glowing background on each of his devices. Dunn’s work and famously enigmatic personality won him the feature story on the VIT mag TechPulse three times, and each time they had to just use a silhouette of a man for the image. Nobody knew what he looked like, just that he was this era’s promised one, filling the void other disappointing tech giants had left behind, stepping into impossibly huge shoes and tap-dancing away with everyone’s imagination.

  Especially Han’s.

  Han paved the pathways of his life with Dunn’s words and creed. When Han’s family members tried to entice him out of the condo more, to experience life rather than an isolated, virtual simulacra of one via his console, Han would reference Paxton Dunn’s July 2267 interview, in which he said, “Life in outer space has forced us to embrace the collective and to forget the individual. Only through isolation and self-reflection can we learn to dream again, to listen to our own inner voice that longs for pure creation. The will of the masses is regurgitation, the will of the individual’s soul is innovation.”

  Dunn lived in extreme solitude, chosen exile, or so went the prevailing story. He made it his business to remain an enigma, building a simplified mythology of one man up against the universe’s mysteries. His legacy was hard to argue with—the Dunn family’s Merchantia Solutions Corporation led the way in exploration, spacecraft refinement and deep space travel innovations.

  Han would tell his family he needed the time alone in his room to think, to dream, because as Dunn said, “The better we know the mind, the better we can use to it to know the universe.”

  Mostly, this won him a lot of blank stares and rolled eyes, but ultimately more time alone on his computer.

  When he found out about the LENG program, he initially thought he was in trouble. He hated appointments—dentist, doctor, therapist, psychologist—they were all either painful, stupid, a waste of time or all three. His legs stilled under the chair when a door to his right opened and closed. This office was like nothing he had seen before. It was how he had pictured VR parlors looking when he first got to go, but they were mostly dark and dirty, and smelled like stale, flavored popcorn and fog machine chemicals. The young man who stepped through the door matched the office—dressed in a crisp white jumpsuit, with a clear vinyl overlay that skimmed the jumpsuit fabric and crinkled quietly when he walked. His blunt bowl cut was dyed the same color blue as the pale LED lights recessed in the ceiling. The whole place glowed and pulsed like the inside of Han’s refrigerated drawer.

  Relief. He was glad it was a real-life person and not an AI Servitor; he always felt uneasy around new automated voices. It was impossible to guess what voice profile they would use, if it would be that one.

  Han stared at the man. A name tag reading Kris was affixed over his heart. He sat down behind the shiny white desk positioned between the door to the rest of the office and the other door, which led out into the first lobby. Han’s Servitor nanny was out there somewhere; not even the AI was allowed back into this special area.

  The white desk was shaped like a slice of melon.

  “Can I get you anything?” Kris asked, not looking up from his holo-display. The Merchantia Solutions logo had been embossed on the wall behind him.

  “How much longer?” Han felt itchy all over. Ready. Impatient. “Is Mr. Dunn here?”

  “Mr. Dunn does not leave the facility on Ganymede,” Kris told him mildly. “But if everything goes smoothly today, then you’ll get to meet him soon.”

  “Really?”

  Kris smirked. “Really.” The door to the first lobby chimed softly. A water feature running the length of the wall behind Han and the bank of waiting chairs kept out the noise from the rest of the station. The tech sector level on Tokyo Bliss Station was relatively quiet, but not even the roar of the lunchtime rush could be heard in the office, just the soothing trickle of constantly running water.r />
  A woman with hair as blunt as Kris’s but longer and blond came in, carefully, peering around as if she didn’t belong. But Kris stood, smiled and gestured for her to join Han in the waiting area.

  “Ms. Slate?” Kris’s smile didn’t make his eyes crinkle. Han knew from his therapist that only genuine smiles did that.

  “I’m early,” she said with a shivery shrug. “Sorry.”

  “That’s just fine. Have a seat.”

  “I didn’t think anyone else would be here,” she said, glancing at Han with her huge brown eyes.

  “I’m sorry about that, we’re just a little behind schedule,” Kris sighed. “Are you comfortable waiting here?”

  “Sure,” she murmured. “Yeah, I’m sure it’s fine.”

  She was wearing tans and mauves, a shapeless, boxy linen shirt and loose trousers that almost looked like pajamas. None of her clothes seemed to fit right; even her shoes looked big. She reminded him of one of his au pairs, Molly, the one who had lasted the longest. After Molly quit, his older brother gave up and hired the AI Servitor to watch him instead.

  At first he hated it, but he adapted quickly; unlike the au pairs, the Servitor could be hacked and made to do whatever he wanted.

  “Hi,” the woman greeted him, staring at his feet while she huddled down into a chair across from him.

  “Hey.”

  He wasn’t allowed to use his VIT to access the network while he was inside the office. Security measures. It all felt top secret, and that made Han’s leg start to bounce again. Top secret meant Dunn might really be able to take his bad memories away.

  Without a game on his VIT to hold his attention, Han observed the woman across from him instead. Her face, like a word on the tip of his tongue, was maddeningly familiar but just out of reach. Where had he seen her before? Her haircut was unusual, way out of style, and she didn’t wear much makeup. Also unfashionable. He only knew that because his favorite station pop groups spread wet silver glitter across their eyes and drew tiny hearts and stars on their cheeks like freckles.

  She must have noticed him staring, and pulled her feet up onto the chair, trying to make herself as small as possible. Her wide brown eyes flicked up toward him, and that was when it hit him.

  His stomach twisted. An ugly urge to lunge for her rose in him like the need to vomit. Glaring, he whispered, “You’re the cult lady.”

  She winced and shook her head, hiding behind her blond curtain of hair. “I . . . I don’t . . .”

  “No, you are!” He shook his head and pointed, frantically, as if she might try to get up and run away. It was definitely her. What were the odds? Could it be a coincidence? “It’s not fair. You shouldn’t be here . . .”

  Kris popped up out of his chair like he had been ejected. “Han? They’re ready for you.”

  “Oh my God,” he heard the woman groan, covering her face with both hands.

  “Right now,” Kris said to him behind a tight, fake smile. Han began to shake, but Kris carefully took him by the arm and began to lead him away. “As you can imagine, we’re screening quite a few candidates. Your time slots were not scheduled to overlap . . .”

  He could hear the note of frustration in Kris’s voice, and the muttered curse that came after, out of place, like a splash of blood on the walls of that pristine lobby.

  “Yeah,” Han muttered, to both the woman and Kris. “I’ll bet.”

  For a while he couldn’t escape this woman’s face on the news vids. He turned away every time it happened, every time she appeared, because hers wasn’t a face anyone should care about.

  “So sad, so sad,” his AI Servitor nanny had clucked once, the news rolling by while Han pretended to do his Spanish homework. “It breaks your heart.”

  “You don’t have a heart,” Han had reminded the nanny AI. And sometimes I’m not sure I can feel mine anymore, either.

  The Servitor’s smooth, pale dome of a head had turned slightly toward him. “Even I can recognize human tragedy.”

  Hearing it say that had been particularly enraging. The next day, he dialed back the Servitor’s emotional parameters, unwilling to be shamed by a stupid robot.

  He walked by the woman from the news vids, the face of the Incident, and she was still trying to disappear behind her knees. When he was at the door with Kris, he heard the cult lady heave a sigh of relief.

  He wouldn’t be shamed by that, either. He didn’t get a sigh of relief, he only got angrier.

  “If Mr. Dunn isn’t here, then what are we doing?” Han asked, impatient. He didn’t bother asking why that woman was there in the lobby, he could already guess. The corridor was quiet, dark, the walls thrumming softly with energy as if hidden engines waited behind them. “I already filled out your survey online. It took forever.”

  “We’re only taking the perfect candidates to Ganymede,” Kris told him, walking ahead. He had a stiff gait, like someone who had worked out a lot. Han’s brother walked like that the mornings after he went to play squash. “The selection process takes time, Han. But this is the last step. You’re almost there.”

  “If I get picked,” Han muttered.

  Kris raised his left wrist, a holo-display rising from the VIT monitor there. A bright blue interface appeared with what looked like a dossier, including a 3D image of Han’s face, rotating.

  “You have a unique case,” Kris said. “It’s just the sort of thing Mr. Dunn is interested in. He really wants to test the capabilities of this technology before going public with it.”

  “Are you saying I’m getting in?”

  Kris stopped outside a recessed door. It opened automatically at their approach with a quiet hiss. Then he gestured Han inside with a cool smile. “I’m not saying anything. Step inside.”

  Usually, Han wasn’t any good at following directions. His mother had almost never said a cold word to him, but the few times she had raised her voice were burned deep into his mind. Just thinking about it made his palms clammy.

  “Han, just stop. Just stop!” she had screamed, after he reprogrammed the condo’s internal alarm systems. He had messed up and the clocks were off, making her late for her flight off station. “I don’t care what you think! You are not always the smartest person in the room!”

  But even if her words hurt—stung—he hadn’t really believed her. More often than not, he really was the smartest person in the room. Brushing by Kris and into a claustrophobic white box of an office, Han wondered if that was true currently. Was he smarter than Kris? Probably. But if he went to Ganymede, if he met Paxton Dunn, at last he could understand what it felt like to feel in awe, and small. Just another reason to get there—he wanted this memory gone, but he also wanted more than anything to meet the most brilliant man working in the universe.

  “Is that woman out in the lobby getting picked?” Han asked. Her name escaped him; he had tried hard to forget all the news coverage. One of his many therapists suggested that the trauma had indeed blocked out certain things.

  But not enough.

  “I don’t know,” Kris told him. “And if I did, it wouldn’t be my place to share it with you.”

  “She shouldn’t get picked,” Han muttered, and he saw Kris’s head turn, perhaps in curiosity. “She doesn’t deserve it.”

  “Okay,” Kris said, obviously eager to be moving on. “Just have a seat there.”

  He gestured Han toward the only chair in the room. A panel on the wall to the left was obviously another recessed door, and beside that was a panel, glass. Two-way mirror, Han thought. The chair for him was long and low, like a dentist’s, with a very small rectangular feature sticking out of the headrest, just about where his neck would go. A pair of thick, padded headphones sat on a silver dish next to the table. A now familiar blue glow suffused the room, and relaxing, nondescript music played just above that strange hum that came from the walls.

  H
an forced himself not to hesitate. He was so close to getting chosen . . . couldn’t screw it up now.

  “We’re just going to map this memory,” Kris explained. The holographic display hovering above his VIT vanished, and he waited by the two-way panel. “You can lie down and get comfortable, and put those headphones on. In a moment, you’ll hear instructions. Shouldn’t be anything too tough for a smart kid like you.”

  Han smirked. Smart. Sure. Try genius. He wanted to know more. So much more. What was the little square on the headrest? Some kind of reader, he hypothesized, that would tap into the implant at the base of his neck. That implant allowed him to seamlessly interface with his VIT monitor, and served other purposes on the station, too. Tokyo Bliss Station was considered a crimeless, peaceful utopia by many, but it came with its own set of drawbacks. The system that tracked citizens through their VIT implants was mandatory. Of course crime was low when the station PaxDiv knew your whereabouts, blood pressures and temperature at all times.

  Even while going to the chair, lying down and putting on the headphones, Han’s mind raced. Kris had mentioned mapping. What kind of mapping? Maybe some version of neural imaging that could be used to precisely pinpoint the physical location of the unwanted memory in the brain. This was supposed to be surgical, scalpel-level stuff, not the clumsy obliteration of memory that came from age or disease or substance abuse, but an incision into his very subconscious.

  Han really didn’t think it could be done, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t curious.

  The simple chair and headset didn’t give many clues as to how Dunn was pulling this all off. The key, he knew, had to be in whatever technology was hidden under the chair’s soft, white leather exterior. His fingertips burned, and his ears felt hot. In time, he reminded himself, he could grill Paxton Dunn on how it all worked. First, he had to get to Ganymede, so he played the dutiful patient while on the inside he felt almost enraged with curiosity. Han was only fourteen; thinking of someone like Dunn as competition was ridiculous, maybe, but he couldn’t help seeing it that way. It was like looking into his future. Destiny. He didn’t want to be just like Paxton Dunn, he wanted to be him. One day it would be Han’s face featured on TechPulse.