Reset

by Sarina Dahlan

  “He was in the middle of making you the origami cranes. Pieces of blue paper were everywhere. It reminded me of my own house when I had to make all those cranes for the Dreamers.”

  “You were the one who folded the cranes for each meeting?”

  “Every single one.”

  “You know the first crane Benja got wasn’t given to him,” she says.

  “Oh?”

  “Someone had left it for me. Except I didn’t know what it meant. Benja did. I didn’t believe that dreams were portals to the past. He did.”

  “It was lucky we met at all,” Metis says.

  “Did you know that Benja wouldn’t see me the last week before he killed himself?” she asks.

  “He didn’t want to hurt you. He thought he wasn’t good for you.”

  Aris feels tears streaming down her face. Too much has happened the past few days, it’s hard to believe the Ceremony of the Dead was just last week. She has not fully healed from her friend’s death.

  She wipes her tears. “Why did he think that?”

  “He knew that, for you, attachment would only bring pain. He said you feel and care too much for your own good,” Metis says.

  Aris feels suffocated. She needs fresh air.

  Metis takes her hand in his. “Like Benja, I don’t think I’m good for you. For that, I’m sorry. It’s my fault we ended up here. You were content in your life, and I dragged you back into the past.”

  “I think your memory fails you. It was I who told you about my dream on the beach. You chose the present.”

  “I chose you. Wherever you decide to be.”

  She looks at him. “Let’s just stay here and wait out Tabula Rasa. There’s food and water. We can learn to forage.”

  “We can’t know what will happen after Tabula Rasa. We could wake up with no memories the day after. We won’t have our AI to guide us this time.” he says.

  Aris revisits the thought she had while swimming in the pool at the Hotel of the Desert.

  “We have the helmet,” she says, “I still have the vial of Absinthe Benja gave me. Maybe you can figure out how to distill more if we can find hypnos. We can write instructions for when we wake up next cycle. A whole map for our future selves to follow. We have almost a month to figure it all out.”

  The more she talks, the more she feels excited about the possibilities of preserving their memories of each other. From a look, she knows Metis feels the same. She scans around for her backpack, the one with the helmet and the computer. She realizes she left it at the front of the cave.

  “I’ll be right back,” she says and walks off.

  She squeezes through the passageway, away from the brightly lit room and toward the darkness of the cave entrance. The rough wall scratches her elbows, but she does not mind. For the first time, she feels like she has a semblance of ownership over her memory.

  Each day inside the cave moves slowly, like dripping liquid amber. The only way Aris tracks the movement of time is through the waxing of the moon. It’s nearly full. When they first arrived, the moon was but a sliver. It must be March, though she is not certain of the exact date. The Crone was right—time isn’t the most relevant aspect of their existence. Being in the moment is.

  Aris and Metis spend their hours making love, talking, and reading. The Crone’s journals paint for them a life in the early days of the Four Cities. They learn of the struggles between the Resistance and the system—one side refusing to subject themselves to memory wipe, the other dedicated to preserving peace through Tabula Rasa.

  They discover that the Crone rarely ventured outside the cave. The majority of her time was spent making and testing batch after batch of the memory potion. Her journals were filled with chemical and mathematical formulas. Results were written with meticulousness and insight. Each failure propelled her to work harder and longer. Aris wishes she could have experienced the Crone and the Planner together. She imagines it a magnificent partnership. After all, they had created the Four Cities.

  One day, after a short walk below the cave, Aris and Metis decide they are ready to test the helmet.

  “When I wore it while awake, it only showed what I was seeing,” Aris says as she fits the helmet on Metis’s head.

  The image on the computer is of herself staring back. She smiles.

  “Okay, now close your eyes,” she says.

  Metis does. The image turns black. Then globs of lights and shadows float around the screen.

  “Nothing,” she says.

  “Well, I’m not really dreaming.” He opens his eyes.

  “You want to try?”

  “Let’s go to the bed.”

  Aris narrows her eyes. As much as she loves Metis, her body needs rest.

  Metis chuckles. “I’ll be good. Promise.”

  “Should we use Absinthe?” she asks.

  “No, let’s stick to the plan.”

  They had agreed that Metis would be the one to take the vial of Absinthe after Tabula Rasa if they wake up with no memories. His mind contains more images of their past together. They think the fortress inside his brain may be stronger because of music.

  Aris places the helmet on Metis’s head. It is a little more difficult with him lying down.

  “Are you comfortable?” she asks.

  “Umm-hmm. I’d be more so if you were lying next to me,” he says.

  “But no one would be looking at the computer.”

  “Maybe we can do it another time,” he says.

  “No, no, no. That’s what you said yesterday. You can’t slither out of this again. Just close your eyes and try to think calm thoughts.”

  “Not sure if I can at the moment.” He grabs her hand and brings it toward his leg.

  She takes her hand back. “Well, you’re just going to have to try harder. You promised.”

  “All right, all right.”

  After a long while, Metis’s breathing becomes slower and steadier. His chest rises and falls to the rhythm of his breath. He is slowly sinking into the arms of sleep.

  The image on the computer changes. At first it looks hazy, as if she is gazing through thick fog. Then she sees green. The color separates into different shades, slowly revealing an image of leaves on a tree. A leaf falls and lands on a path. A park. She sees a hand. The long fingers of Metis. The hand is holding another. Aris sees a glimpse of silver. A ring. She raises her left hand and sees that it matches the one on the screen.

  The image changes. She sees herself in a garden through a window. It is the garden in the back of Metis’s Victorian house. Has he always been there? She thought the Dwelling Council assigns housing randomly. Maybe that is not the case for some. It would be a difficult task to move a grand piano from one place to another every cycle.

  The image on the computer increases in luminosity until the only thing Aris sees is bright white. Then slowly it takes shape. A room with white walls. White bedding. She sees her own sleeping face, her long hair spraying on a pillow. She is Metis watching herself sleep. They are at the beach cottage. The image from Metis’s perspective is clearer than hers. She looks over at him. She feels like the creator of the universe, watching everything across different times through different eyes.

  The helmet works.

  It is their salvation—a way for them to get back their memories so they can spend the next cycle living without pain.

  She hears a sound. A low hum. A buzzing in the air.

  What is it?

  She has heard this sound before. Dread clutches at her stomach.

  Drones!

  She shakes Metis. He opens his eyes and confusion crosses his face. He sees her and springs up. His face is drained of blood.

  Aris pulls the helmet from his head and grabs the computer. She stuffs them into her backpack and shoves the bag under the bed.

  �
�Look for an exit!” Metis yells.

  They feel along the walls for anything resembling a door. Aris pushes at spots she thinks may reveal a secret door. Nothing.

  Then Aris hears bodies forcing themselves through the passageway. The suffocating feeling returns. A man in a brown fedora appears. Then another. And another. And . . .

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Aris opens her eyes. The light is bright and piercing. She blinks to adjust, and the room slowly reveals itself. The whiteness is blinding. The walls and floor glow as if lit from within. Flowing through her is a calmness that feels eerily foreign, as if she does not have a worry in the world. There is no fear in her, and that makes her wonder if she should be afraid. Could she be dead?

  But if she is dead, why is there a feeling of tightness on her arms? She looks down and expects to see two strong hands on them. Instead, there are silver bracelets around the smallest part of her thin wrists. She saw one like this on Benja the morning she picked him up from the police station. She wonders why they are on her, but beyond that, she does not care.

  “Hello?” she says. Her voice is lost in her parched throat.

  She tries to pull up her arms, more out of curiosity than anything. They are immovable. The bracelets anchor her to the chair she is sitting on. They are not uncomfortable, so she focuses her attention instead on moving her legs. They, too, are rooted in place. She is trapped in the chair. But she is in no hurry, she tells herself. She will sit here awhile.

  The door opens. Officer Scylla enters.

  “Hello, Aris. It’s nice to see you again.”

  “Where are the rest of you?” Words fall out of her brain like a river without a dam to filter and block its flow. You’re being quite rude, Aris, she thinks.

  He smiles.

  She wonders if the many Officer Scyllas were from a dream. Maybe they were a figment of her imagination. Maybe this moment is a dream.

  “Are you real?” she asks.

  “Yes, I am. My brothers are back at their police stations.”

  “Brothers?”

  “Well, that’s what we call each other. But to be scientifically accurate, we’re clones.”

  Her mind shrugs it off. There is a constant throb in the back of her head. The pain increases when she thinks. She hears a buzzing in the lights above and cranes her neck to look up.

  “Where am I?” she asks, squinting at the lights.

  “The Interpreter Center.”

  Her neck begins to hurt. She looks back down. Officer Scylla. He is blurry. She blinks a few times. She knows the reason she is here, but why is he here?

  “Why are you here?” she asks.

  “I’m here, Aris, because you’re a suspect in a crime. I have a few questions for you.”

  “Crime?”

  “Don’t you remember what happened at Bodie’s house in Elara?”

  Is suicide considered a crime? They didn’t hurt anyone but themselves.

  “I do,” she says.

  “Can you please tell me why you were there?”

  I don’t want to.

  “Metis and I went to help Bodie get his dreams back.” She looks around. “Where’s Metis?”

  “Don’t worry about him for now. Let’s go back to the reason you were at Bodie’s house.”

  “I have a Dreamcatcher. Well, not really. I only have the helmet. It projects dreams into images. It doesn’t erase anything. Bodie had his dreams erased here, did you know that?”

  “Yes, I do. He came here for a treatment.”

  She laughs. Her laugh sounds dry in her ears. She is thirsty.

  “Oh no, you’re wrong. He didn’t want it. Neither did Benja. They steal dreams here.”

  “They do?”

  “Benja killed himself because of it,” she whispers. “Now he’s with the blue birds of happiness.”

  He leans forward. “One thing at a time okay? Let’s get back to Bodie’s house.”

  “Sure. It’s a nice house. The walls are happy.”

  “I mean, can you tell me what happened there?”

  I shouldn’t.

  “Seraphina and Bodie’s wedding.”

  “How do you know them?”

  “Metis knew them. Seraphina was so pretty. I didn’t like her. Not at first.”

  “Why not?”

  “I thought she and Metis were lovers. But she only loved Bodie.”

  “Did you know that Seraphina worked for the Center of Disease Control?” he asks.

  “Did she?”

  Aris begins to lose interest in her conversation with Officer Scylla. He asks too many questions, and none of them pertain to her. And it bothers her, though only in passing, that she told him things she didn’t want to. A spot on the wall attracts her attention. It’s a tiny black spot that vibrates. She stares at it, trying to figure out what it is.

  “Her job was to synthesize plants for medicine,” Officer Scylla says.

  “Well, that makes sense.”

  “Aris, who made the poison?”

  “You just told me.”

  “Did I?”

  “Yes, silly. You forgot already? Seraphina.”

  “So, she killed all those people?”

  “No. Well, yes. But not really.” The black spot on the wall moves. Aris squints, trying to focus. Her vision seems foggier than usual.

  “You’re not making any sense,” Officer Scylla says.

  “I think that’s a fly,” says Aris of the thing on the wall.

  “What?”

  She tries to pull up her arm to point at it, but they are stuck. She had forgotten about the bracelets.

  “Officer Scylla, I have to say, this is the most useless conversation I’ve ever had,” she says. She is not angry but merely expressing her opinion.

  “I’m sorry about that. I assure you, the feeling is not mutual. Can we get back to Seraphina?”

  “If you want. I didn’t know her very well. We only met there the one time.”

  “Did Seraphina kill the people?”

  “She only made the poison. But she didn’t kill them.”

  “Then who did?”

  “They did. They all wanted to die.”

  “They all killed themselves?”

  Aris nods.

  “But why?” he asks, his voice perplexed.

  The affable policeman’s face goes through multiple emotions. Confusion. Grief. Sadness. Despair. Seeing it makes Aris feel as if she is watching blue sky being swallowed by storm clouds. For a moment she wants to give him a hug. But she cannot. She is stuck here in this chair.

  “Because they didn’t want to be without the ones they loved,” she says. “Now can you please tell me where Metis is?”

  Metis stares at the shiny copper contraption above him. It is the size of the entire ceiling. No matter where he looks, he cannot escape it.

  He thinks of Benja. Toward the end of his life, his sunken eyes had no trace of hope in them. A man without his dreams.

  What will a dreamless life be like for him? A life with no memories of Aris or of their past together. He focuses his mind on the spot on her palm, the one he used to lie awake at night remembering. It’s etched in his brain like music. What if they take away his memory of music with it?

  An existence without Aris or music. He wonders how he will end it. Benja used poison and went in peace. Quick and painless. At least he hopes it was.

  He and Aris were within grasp of a way out of Tabula Rasa—a way to remember each other in the next cycle. Now that hope is gone. Without his dreams, there would be no point to the helmet. All the Absinthe in the world would be useless to him.

  On one wall is a large window that reflects the room back to him. He cannot see beyond it, but he knows the Interpreter is there.

  Where’s Aris?


  He begged the Interpreter to not erase her dreams. He told her Aris is just the woman he loves. Not a Dreamer. Not a threat to the Four Cities. Apollina did not care. So he did the only thing he could. He bargained.

  Shame slithers over his skin like a snake. He is disgusted with himself, ashamed of his weakness. But he did not have a choice. He never did. He loves Aris too much. He once told her he would trade everyone’s lives to keep her from harm. And he has. He has sacrificed everything.

  Attachment . . .

  Thane enters the dilapidated cottage with trepidation. The only lights are the threads of the sun’s rays shooting through the random holes in the roof. He walks slowly, hoping not to fall through the decaying floor.

  Metis gave up the source of the drug—the reason for its reappearance every cycle. He did it so Aris could keep her dreams.

  He loves her.

  This is the weakness Tabula Rasa was created to erase. Thane asks himself if he would have sacrificed the peace of the Four Cities for Aris. It is a big price for one person. He knows his answer.

  He reaches the back of the small house. He sees the rickety ladder. He yanks at it, testing its strength. It remains intact. He climbs.

  At the top he finds the saddest-looking library he has ever seen. The shelves lean like drunks. A crust of dirt and dust covers everything. He fears breathing mold spores into his lungs.

  He brings one arm up and covers his mouth with the fabric of his jacket. He looks around at the disgraceful state of the books. They are so ancient the titles on the spines have faded. The smell of mildew permeates everything. How is he going to find Love in the Time of Cholera in these shambles?

  Why that book? he wonders. He read it a long time ago but found it pointless. What is the purpose of being in love with someone who does not return affection? It is a waste of a life.

  He pulls out a book. No. Another. No. Discarded books slowly rise next to him like a tower.

  Thane goes through the entire bookcase. He moves on to the next and the next until piles of books stack like high-rises on a city block. He wipes his dust-painted hands on his pants.

  Metis lied. There is no book.