“Yeah. Like a blank slate. What would you want to write if you could start all over again? What would you write if what you wrote in the past didn’t matter?” she asks.
“Like Tabula Rasa,” he whispers.
She nods.
Benja sighs. “You know how much work I’ve put into it? The idea of starting over makes me want to die.”
“Maybe a good night’s sleep will help.”
“Maybe,” he says. His voice trails off.
Aris takes a gulp of wine. A question eats at her.
“So, do you still dream of him?” she asks.
“Who?”
“The man in the white hat?”
He gives her a puzzled look. “No. I don’t have dreams.”
Aris lies with Benja’s head on her lap. She pulls the sheet up to cover her bosom. She does not know why she took him back to her apartment or why she suggested sex. She just wanted to make him feel better. Or maybe it was so she could feel better.
“Sorry,” he whispers.
“Don’t worry. It happens.”
“Does it? It never has to me,” he says. He buries his face in her lap.
“I don’t know what’s wrong. I just haven’t been feeling like myself lately. I still find you as sexy as a fox,” he says with a forced laugh.
She picks at a curl on his forehead. “Don’t worry.”
“I can’t help but feel like a failure,” he says.
“Over this?”
“This. My writing. Everything.”
“Don’t be so hard on yourself. If it doesn’t come out easily, just don’t do it. For now,” she says.
He snickers.
“That’s what Charles Bukowski thought of writing. ‘Unless it comes out of your soul like a rocket, unless being still would drive you to madness or suicide or murder, don’t do it. Unless the sun inside you is burning your gut, don’t do it.’”
“You are too hard on yourself,” she says.
He looks at the ceiling. “We were taught that life is filled with possibilities. That Tabula Rasa allows us to live every four years as if they were our last. We’re reminded of this gift of limited time every single waking moment. We’re told to make each cycle matter. And when we’re faced with it, the terror of that, it’s so overwhelming.”
She laces her hand in his. A feeling of remorse overcomes her. Benja will never know something precious was taken from him.
“Close your eyes,” she says.
He does.
She sings the only song that comes to mind, one about bluebirds and a rainbow. She wonders whether Benja remembers the blue cranes and the Dreamers.
“That’s beautiful,” he says. “How do you know this song?”
“I don’t know. It’s always been inside me,” she says.
From a memory or a dream.
“You’re so good to me,” Benja says, “I only wish . . .” His voice trails off. He is asleep.
His face in slumber does not have the same hopefulness it once did. It is a mask. Empty. Aris feels a drop of liquid on her chest. A tear.
She looks at her hands. These are what twisted the knife. She feels like Brutus. A single piece of information shared can do so much damage. She failed to save his dreams. Worse, she opened the door to let in the monster that stole them.
Et tu, Aris?
Another tear falls. She looks at Benja’s empty face and feels in her heart that she has committed a sin.
She gets up and walks out to the living room. She can no longer look at Benja. The light turns on. Her eyes catch sight of the copper helmet on the table. She walks to it and runs her finger over the smooth metal. It looks identical to the helmet the Interpreter Center used on Benja. She now knows its purpose.
If only she can get it to work. At the Interpreter Center, the images of Benja’s dreams were projected onto the metal cloud-shaped machine. She needs a screen. But the only thing she knows of that projects images is the reach system, and that is attached to the main system. It cannot know about her experiment.
She gently picks up the helmet and puts it on. Can she see her own dreams? she wonders. She would have to record it somehow. How much memory space would she need to record a dream?
She scoffs. How ironic is her reality? In her world, computers and AIs retain memories, while humans do not. Her race has given up the right to their past because they cannot trust themselves to not destroy each other.
A thought comes to her. Could one of the computers in the Tomb be used?
They have screens.
Hope rises. If Benja can wear it while asleep, perhaps she can see the visions of his dreams. Maybe she can study them and figure out a way to preserve them. Can she give Benja back his dreams?
When Metis dreads sleep, he comes to this spot on the pathway. Started as a penance, it has become a habit. But he has no control over it. He has a favorite bench under a maple tree. Its branches are now naked. From here, he looks up at Aris’s darkened window and dreams of a life with her.
Sleep begs. He lies down on the bench. The cold bites at his extremities, and he turns up the heat in his jacket. He searches for Vega in the sky, but the city lights mask it. Being in the dark and cold reminds him of the countless times he would lie on a bench in his favorite section of the park, where there is a large circle of black and white mosaic tiles with the word Imagine in its center.
He finds it interesting how one simple word can stir up endless strings of ideas and visions. For him it conjures up images of Aris. Both from the past and the present.
He cannot remember her old name. Nor his. Had he not met Aris this cycle, she would have remained simply “her.” A face without a name.
Everyone gets a new name in each cycle. How many has he had? If he were to live ninety years, he would have had nineteen names. Maybe his subconscious has learned to not be attached to them.
Metis begins to hum the song that inspired his existence. The next cycle he will continue this dance, spiraling down the rabbit hole into oblivion. It is an endless circle of suffering.
Is Benja still suffering?
He wonders how he’s doing since the Interpreter Center erased his dreams. Is he back to his old self but with no past to haunt him? Metis has not seen him. Benja does not leave his apartment often anymore.
The entrance of Aris’s building opens, surprising Metis. He did not expect anyone to come out at this late hour. He springs up and squints at the door.
The familiar figure of Benja emerges. Metis feels betrayal squeezing his stomach.
What was he doing at her place in the middle of the night?
Benja looks as if he is sleepwalking. Metis decides to get up from his bench and follow him. The tall man walks with no pattern or purpose through the deserted streets. Metis’s jealousy turns to concern. They wander block after block until Metis sees the park and realizes that Benja is heading back to his apartment building.
They reach it and Benja goes inside. Metis debates whether he should follow. He needs to know what Benja did with the Absinthe he gave him.
But the Interpreter Center could be following Benja.
Metis looks around. Dawn is approaching in a few hours. There are no souls out in the streets but him.
He decides to follow. He gets into an elevator and pushes the button for Benja’s floor. Minutes later he finds himself staring unblinkingly at the door to Benja’s apartment.
It’s a simple red door. Wide with a clean, basic design and very unlike the ornate one on his Victorian house.
He hesitates. There could be bad consequences from this. He wonders if he should walk away, but his feet are rooted in place. His desire to know overtakes everything. He knocks. The door opens.
In close range, the state of Benja’s appearance takes Metis by surprise. There is only a trace of the man Metis f
irst met a few months ago. His handsome face is concave and unshaven. The purple bruises under his eyes make him look as if he had been on the losing side of a fight.
The most remarkable change is the fire inside Benja. It’s gone. Obliterated. But instead of peace, he looks as if he’s found nothing at all. Metis feels dread sinking into his stomach.
“I know you, don’t I?” Benja says, “Come in.”
Metis turns to walk away.
“Please,” says Benja.
His tone makes Metis turn back. The look in his eyes is that of desperation. It is this that pushes Metis forward across the threshold.
As soon as Metis enters the apartment, the color blue assaults his vision. Dyed pieces of paper are on every flat surface. They hang or lay on tables, walls, and floor, leaving only a small path to navigate through. Benja’s apartment looks like Metis’ living room on the days he makes the cranes.
“What are you making?” Metis asks.
“Gifts for a friend.”
Benja clears paper off two chairs. He points to one. “Please sit.”
Metis does. Benja takes a spot across from him and leans forward.
“I know you,” Benja says. “But my memory is so hazy. Can you tell me how we know each other?”
How much has the Dreamcatcher taken from you?
Metis thought it only took dreams. But how would a machine know which are dreams and which are memories when both intertwine?
“You came to me looking for answers,” says Metis.
“Did I find them?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t feel enlightened,” Benja says.
“Some knowledge brings only pain.”
“I don’t feel pain either. Just lost.”
Metis is sad for him. “I’m sorry.”
“The thing is, I don’t know why or what I’ve lost,” Benja says. “I sound insane, don’t I?”
Metis feels his anger rising. What the Interpreter Center did was wrong—stealing dreams and leaving only questions. It is cruel.
“You’re not insane.”
“I wish I could be happy,” says Benja.
“Me too.”
“You’re not happy? What have you lost?”
“Someone I love. My heart,” Metis says.
An expression crosses Benja’s face. Is it wistfulness? It passes, leaving the owner looking even more desperate.
“How did you lose the person?” Benja asks.
“Time took her.”
“Doesn’t it always?”
“Sooner or later,” Metis says. “Someone very wise told me where the past and the present converge, there’s pain. I suppose it hurts because the soul cannot exist in both planes.”
“And when it doesn’t exist in either place, you feel nothing,” Benja says.
Metis looks at the man in front of him and realizes that feeling nothing is worse than feeling pain. He cannot bear witness to it.
“I should go,” he says.
“Stay awhile. It’ll be nice to talk to someone. To have some human contact.”
“Don’t you have friends?”
“I can’t see her. Not anymore,” Benja says.
“Why not?”
“Seeing me this way only hurts her.”
“She must love you.”
Benja nods. “She doesn’t want to, and she shouldn’t. I’m not good for her. But she can’t help herself.”
Metis leans back, settling into his chair. “Why would you say that?”
“She doesn’t want to be attached to people. She wants to transcend that basic human desire. But it’s only because she feels too much. She doesn’t want to see that it’s in her nature to care. She’s afraid.”
“What is she afraid of?” whispers Metis.
“Pain.”
Tabula Rasa had left the fear of attachment in place of his wife’s memories.
A question comes to him. “Did you ever give your friend a vial of green liquid?”
“I’m sorry, but I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Did you give it to the Interpreter Center?”
Benja looks confused. “What’s that?”
The Natural History Museum looks bleak and forbidding in the light of the dawn. It is hours before opening and too early for anyone to be there. Even so, the last day of the year means most people will be out celebrating with friends, not going to a museum. Its emptiness amplifies the sounds of Aris’s steps on the granite tile floor.
Benja needs his dreams back. She needs to find a way to fix what she broke. She is here to steal.
It has to work.
She hopes she does not run into Thane. There is no mending that relationship. Trust, once broken, cannot be healed. What would she say to him if she sees him? On those nights she cannot sleep, she thinks of all the horrible words she could fling at him for having written the nasty report on Benja. Because of him, her friend’s dreams were erased.
Benja has not been the same since. He is no longer plagued by the dreams of his old lover, but he is a shell of himself. There is no passion, none of the sparkle that she had loved most about him. He barely talks. And when he does, he sounds utterly devoid of desire. Will Tabula Rasa reset him? Or will he continue to be a fraction of himself cycle after cycle, with no one—not even she—able to remember how wonderfully complex and alive he once was.
It has to work. There’s no other way.
Aris opens the door to the Tomb. The storage room looks like it always has. Shelves of neglected, broken things line it from one side to the other. In one corner lie crates of items too large to fit anywhere else. She feels a tinge of sadness. This is the last time she will be here—at least for this cycle. Who knows where she will be in the next.
Aris walks to the table where computers of various sizes sit. She needs one with enough power and memory to make the machine work. She walks to the computer she wants and turns it on. The screen shows a crisp image of snow-dusted mountains. She picks it up and turns it over. She has worked on its guts and knows it will provide what she thinks she needs.
It has to work.
She stuffs it into her backpack and walks out. The Natural History Museum is still empty except for the things it contains. She is outside in no time without having been seen. She sighs in relief.
As she walks down the stone stairs, sadness clutches her. She pauses and looks back one last time at the place she spent most of this cycle. She will miss this place—the Tomb, the angry bear, even the children whom she taught the horrifying history of how the Four Cities and their lives came to be.
The sun is rising. The orange rays peek through the gaps between the leafless trees, lighting up the stone building, making it appear as if touched by fire.
She turns away. In less than three months she will be wiped of the memories of her friendship with Benja and the betrayal of Thane. Until then, she must do what she can to atone.
Chapter Sixteen
“Lucy, reach Benja,” Aris says.
The last time she saw him in person was before the new year, and now January is two-thirds done. She has not heard from him in a week. She left messages but they were not returned. He must be busy with writing. Still, her news is too good to not share. It may be premature, but she feels if she does not tell someone, she will burst into confetti.
She finally got the copper helmet to speak to the computer. She tested it on herself while awake, but the screen only showed images in front of her, as if her eyes were a video camera. Now she needs Benja. If he can wear it while asleep, perhaps she can see his dreams. She has yet to figure out how to record with the computer. But as soon as she does, she will be able to give him back his dreams.
“Reaching Benja,” Lucy says.
An unfamiliar face pops up in front of her—a woman.<
br />
“Hello. Sorry, I’m trying to reach my friend,” Aris says, confused. “Where is he?”
“You’re Benja’s friend?”
Aris nods.
“You must think this is so odd. A stranger speaking to you like this. I’m Padma, his apartment manager.”
“Hi. I’m Aris.”
An unsettling feeling looms.
“I’m sorry that I have to be the one to tell you this,” Padma says.
“Tell me what?” Her stomach feels as if she is dropping from a great height.
“There really isn’t a good way to say this at all.”
“What are you talking about?
“Benja’s dead.”
“There is a kind of sleep that steals upon us sometimes, which, while it holds the body prisoner, does not free the mind from a sense of things about it, and enable it to ramble at its pleasure.”
The lines are projected on Benja’s apartment wall. The last passage he read while alive. Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens.
Aris steels herself, holding back tears.
“I’m so glad you called,” Padma says. “I really didn’t know who to reach after Benja . . . It’s such a rare and tragic thing. There’s not even a clause in the apartment guidebook to tell me what to do. I just called the hospital and the Dwelling Council. They handled everything.”
“Where did you find him?” Aris asks.
“In his bed. It was his AI who contacted me. Benja had programmed him to do it twelve hours after he went to bed.”
Why didn’t you call me?
“May I please speak with his AI?” Aris asks.
“Sure. His name is Sirus. I’ll give you privacy. If you need me, please don’t hesitate,” Padma says and leaves the room.
Aris walks to the windows. She opens the curtains and sees a sweeping view of the vast sky. Benja’s apartment is on the top floor overlooking Central Park. The sun is beginning to set over the mountain range beyond the thicket of skyscrapers. The yellow rays bounce off the field of solar panels at the end of the city boundary, making them look like a glittering sea of molten gold.
Aris sighs. His beautiful face, his amazing brain, his potential—gone too soon. The worst thing that happened to his life was her. How can she ever forgive herself?
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