‘Jun, you’re getting over-excited-’ he said and pulled the Interface away.
‘I should think I am!’ she shouted; her eyes bulged. ‘A woman died, and I might have prevented it…’ She began to hyperventilate.
Fan motioned her to stop and put a hand over her lips. ‘Show me,’ he mouthed.
They walked down the steps into the below-level basement garage. With the only natural sunlight filtered through glass-style grates above, it was like stepping into a catacomb. At least there were no speakers so they could talk freely.
Jun and Fan lingered by the Intuimoto trunk door till Jun finally summoned up the courage to open it. It released, and there was Delun, lying there like a toy corpse. Earlier, Jun had switched his power onto standby to conserve his energy. She would, at some point, need to get a charge-dock for him. That would mean another journey to the lab.
‘Tā māde niǎo!’ Fan shook his head in disbelief at what was in front of him.
Jun hadn’t heard him speak their native tongue in so long. He must have been shocked.
‘Are you crazy? You’re going to get into some serious shit behaving like this.’
‘A woman’s died. I think the shit is already serious.’
Their eyes stuck on Delun, as if expecting him to animate at any moment.
‘What are you going to do with it?’ Fan asked. ‘If you’re going to take on the UA, I hope you at least have a plan.’
‘I was hoping to go to one of the Ghettoes. Contact the anti-PSA group, but…’ Why had she insisted on looking at the health chips? Why had she brought Delun back here? Fan was right, it was as good as suicide. If she could un-know what happened with Dr Wei, Markov and Odgerel, she would. ‘That’s not possible right now,’ she said and thudded the trunk door shut. Her heart thudded with it.
Fan wrapped his arms around her and held her tightly, rocking her back and forth. ‘We can’t go the Ghetto,’ he said. ‘What would we do?’
She rested her chin on his shoulder and saw her reflection in the Intuimoto’s windows. There was a way to un-know. She could wipe her memory with a RetrigramAm; it would be like she’d never known.
Fan smoothed down her hair, he was still rocking her from side to side, like soothing a child, but thoughts of the RetrigramAm crawled around her consciousness like ants over honey. Could she? It was extreme, too extreme. It would change everything. It would erase a history.
‘Jun, I love you,’ Fan said, his chin resting on her head, the warmth of his breath slipped between her hair. ‘But you know what the UA can do. You know what going against them means.’
She didn’t need to answer him, they both knew what it meant.
He peeled himself away from her. ‘Your lab has a RetrigramAm, right?’
They had both come to the same conclusion, their analytical minds eager to solve the problem. But could she do it to Odgerel and herself?
‘I understand, the guilt would be too much for you,’ Fan said, answering a question she hadn’t asked. ‘Sometimes the spectator sees more of the game than the player.’
What game had they all played? What had been her role? Odgerel had known. She’d asked, ‘Are you ready to know what makes you special?’ It had unnerved and fascinated in equal measures. She hadn’t deserved those words, nor the trust and conviction. Odgerel said it with the best of intentions, but she had been wrong.
Jun looked at her reflection in the Intuimoto again. She wasn’t special at all.
* * *
It was the size of a fingernail, or thereabouts, yet had the power to wipe away Dr Wei, Markov and the UA’s violations out of Jun’s mind forever.
The RetrigramAm Sonicode lay in front of her, like fingers tapping, waiting to be attached to her neuronal chip. She had used it a few times with subjects. It had been a simple enough process, easily managed. Now at the prospect of putting it on herself, she kept running through the procedure, her mind tried to catch her out.
Jun had, for the second time that day, returned to the lab, with Fan in tow. But this time, she didn’t go through the secret passage as she had with Pav. It would have been easier, more efficient, but her instinct told her to go through security. Her awkward walk there, the fear they would ask her to ‘step this way’ or that Dr Wei had revoked her access, followed her like a shadow.
Fan waited in the car as he had done last night. As she collected the RetrigramAm, she wondered how she would be able to return it to the lab after they had wiped their memories. And Delun, they hadn’t even talked about how they would manage Delun. She tucked a tech Ai-ssistants charge-dock under her armpit. Perhaps Pav could take him to the Ghetto, Delun would be safe there. They would need to do that before they RetrigramAmmed. There was so much to think about. She hated rushing – things inevitably slipped through the net, considerations not properly thought through and managed. At least Markov and Dr Wei hadn’t reappeared, that was one thing in her favour.
As they journeyed back past other cars, with passengers enjoying a mid-afternoon ride, Jun felt the urge to discuss the practicalities. Talking through the details helped suspend her disbelief and gave the illusion of everything being under control.
‘I think it might be best if we RetrigramAm you first. I can run an automatic program for me,’ she said.
Fan’s face became uptight. ‘I’m not going to delete my memory.’ He put a hand up before she tried to protest. ‘One of us needs to know the context. To move forward, someone needs to know the past, so we don’t trip up.’
Jun didn’t like the sound of it. She understood his logic, but it came with risks, and Fan was anti-risk. The thought of burdening him further when she couldn’t face it, took her guilt to another level. She was overdosing on the stuff.
Fan pressed on. ‘I assume you don’t want to go back to the lab, right? Even if you delete this memory?’
She shook her head. Even wiping away the memory couldn’t change that. It would be too much of an insult to Odgerel, to work side by side with them.
‘Someone will need to be able to negotiate with the UA to release you from your contract. Given the circumstances, I’m sure they would understand a leave of absence…’
The open road pulled them along, maintaining momentum as the words between them stilted. Jun tried to think about it logically, but her guilt kept gnawing, cutting her to the quick. ‘Fan I can’t let you live with-’
‘I can.’ He shrugged his shoulders and without hesitation said, ‘It’s not personal to me – it doesn’t affect me the same as you. You’re my priority, Jun.’ He said and brought his hand to her face. ‘I want to protect you, what we have. Let me.’
She didn’t know if that was a statement or a question. Could she let him do it? This dwarfed his marriage proposal. Even the prospect of kids. It felt a different kind of… commitment wasn’t the right word.
‘There are others who know, that I know. What if they try and talk to me about it, like Pav or Dr Wei-?’
‘I doubt if Pav’ll get assigned to work back at the lab and Dr Wei? You think he’ll want to chew the fat over this mess? You bet he won’t. Besides, you don’t have to set foot in the lab again.’
The files! The copy she’d made and hidden in Delphine’s locker. That was one loose end she couldn’t tie up. It might come back to haunt her, but she wanted a record to exist somewhere of what Wei and Markov had done. If Delphine abided by the note, she wouldn’t mention it. Only Jun could unlock her datacarry, and if she didn’t go back to the lab, after time, it would probably disappear in the natural ebb and flow of things. Maybe then, it wouldn’t matter. The world would be a different place, and she would be a different woman.
‘Let me take the weight off your shoulders. And without the stress of work, we can start a family, if you like…’ he said. His words swirled like smoke.
‘Yes,’ she said and wondered if everyone discussed having children like that.
They had both journeyed back with the doctor versions of themselves, forensically plann
ing. The clinical formality of it was as reassuring as it was dissociating. Fan would take Delun to Pav’s and ask him, with his GPS-less Intuimoto, to take Delun to the Ghetto. Jun felt another tug of guilt. Pav had risked enough already. He had come to her with the hope of virtuosity and justice, and here she was, Fan as her conduit, shamefully returning to sender. Likewise, the RetrigrdamAm. Fan would give it to Delphine, another conduit, to take back to the lab.
Jun had put her arms around Fan, a child holding on to its comforter; unsure if she could let him do this, weighed down by the gravitas of the decision. As his arms had wrapped around her, for the first time since he had woken her to say that Odgerel had died, she felt a moment of relief.
‘It’s ready,’ Jun said and spun the RetrigramAm around to Fan.
A feeling rose from the pit of her stomach, like she was homesick, but for a home she’d never known.
Fan put a hand on her arm and squeezed reassuringly. She received it like a cat curling into his lap, but his weak smile betrayed he was just as nervous as she was.
Jun had located the memory encoding coordinates from her neural chip and had transferred them to the RetrigramAm. It would transmit the request to decode her memory via the Sonicode. They would attach it to her chip and collect the memory. The waves were too dense to transmit remotely.
‘Once you’ve removed these memories, what’s to say you won’t be suspicious again?’ Fan said, inspecting the RetrigramAm which was shaped like a briefcase, it even included a carry handle to complete the resemblance. It lay flat on the kitchen counter, except for the popped-up Interface.
‘Good observation. I’ll include a program to encode and re-encode the memory about the suicide. I’ll layer it with a false memory about it not being anyone at the lab, or UA’s, fault. I’ll need to reprogram my conversation with the Police.’ She tapped on the Interface next to him.
Jun’s digits kept working. ‘I’ve made a false memory for today, as well, so I don’t remember what happened with Delun, or what Pav told me he saw. I’ve kept some of the memory of me speaking to him, as our chips and the UA will have clocked it,’ she said. ‘It’s only subtly encoded because we’re still experiencing today. I’m programming that after speaking with the Police I slept a lot, I had a shower, we agreed I wouldn’t go back to the lab … and that you proposed to me,’ she said and stopped her typing momentarily, lifting her head, facing the change of winds. ‘And I said yes. I’ll only have a partial recall of it, so you’ll need to keep reinforcing that memory…’
‘You don’t want me to propose properly?’ Fan said.
‘I do, I do.’ Jun carried on typing. ‘But doing it this way will help with the new narrative for me.’
The sun began to set, and an amber-sepia glow came through the blinds making a stockade on the wall. This was it. There was nothing left to do, but do it.
She looked to Fan, and their eyes found each other in silent consensus.
He broke it first. ‘When we’ve done, you won’t remember why you’re sitting there and what’s happened?’
‘No. Nothing. When we’ve used it at the lab before, we usually tell the person they felt ill. You’ll need to let me sleep and when I wake up just repeat the narrative I’ve told you. I might seem a bit disorientated, but that’s okay. Just let me go back to sleep.’
He nodded. ‘What if you don’t believe it, or I don’t know… you resist?’
‘All you need to do is hold me and tell me this is for the best. I’ll believe you. I’ve integrated the memory with a sub-feeling that it’s for the best.’
They stood there, with so much and so little between them. Jun wanted to cry out. What if it wasn’t the right thing to do? It didn’t feel like it was.
Fan pulled out one of the stools and patted for her to sit down. ‘Jun, this is for the best.’
She nodded. Would anything be the same again?
‘All you need to do is press that,’ she said and pointed to the grey button on the machine. She swallowed thickly, the doubts and regrets catching in her throat.
Jun sat down, but her hands twitched with the adrenaline. She needed to distract them, distract herself, so jammed them in her pocket. Her fingers found something. She pulled them out and with it came the red endless knot bracelet that Odgerel had given her. She had put it in her pocket yesterday and worn the same clothes again today. It had only been yesterday. Odgerel! She had let her down so terribly. Was it a bad omen finding the bracelet now, just when she wanted to forget?
Fan picked up the Sonicode and moved it closer to Jun’s forehead till it connected with her chip, magnetising itself against her head.
Jun played with the thread of the bracelet between her fingers, looping it around each one, enjoying the tension against her skin. It helped to distract her mind.
‘Are you ready?’ Fan said solemnly, his finger hovered over the Interface.
Jun pulled on the thread. She wasn’t ready but nodded anyway. There was no going back now. She pulled the thread tighter, so tight it felt like it would slice open her skin, closed her eyes, and prayed to Confucius to forgive her. We shall purify self and pray.
Fan’s finger depressed the button, and Jun’s eyelids inched open a quarter way, revealing the piano-key-coloured sclera of her eyes. They flickered for a moment and slipped to close, slowly, like paint dripping down a wall before they flipped open instantly. Her pupils dilated and spread themselves wider and wider.
Jun’s head pulsated, and she felt a spasm of pain behind her eye socket, an ocular nerve. Her fingers throbbed and she was confused. She needed water.
‘Jun, are you okay?’
Why was Fan staring at her like that?
‘Do you remember what happened?’
What did happen? Why was she sitting on a stool with him looking at her like that?
‘Wow,’ Fan said, and smiled like he was seeing her for the first time.
Her finger throbbed.
‘You’re okay Jun, follow me. It’s time to lie down, you’ve had a long day.’
Her forefinger. It hurt.
‘This way, Jun.’
That was okay, she felt a funny kind of relief from it.
‘Do you remember what happened today?’
But why did it have a red thread around it?
CHAPTER 15
7th May 2062
Silence pervaded the room like a dust cloud after an explosion.
It had been a few minutes since Fan had finished telling the story of what happened. No one had uttered a word. In Jun and Fan’s living room, the world had stopped turning.
Since Fan had spoken, both messenger and deuteragonist, he’d shifted his weight from one foot to the other, dancing to a song no one else heard. His eyes moved between Jun and Kau.
Kau brooded next to him, lost in thought. His hand hovered above his eyes, shielding them from a stray beam of sun; maybe from Jun as well, who was in his sightline.
Jun cradled her head in her hands, protecting herself from the looks of disgust from her family and Solo. She couldn’t bear their eyes on her. Her skull was dead-weight heavy, and her skin slick to the palms of her hands.
Solo had backed away from the others. An apex at the front of the room, she’d curled into herself tighter than a conch shell, till eventually something shattered, and she launched herself towards Jun. ‘You,’ she said, her finger pointing at Jun, ‘knew what happened, and did nothing?’ Her finger buckled.
Jun raised her head from her hands. No words would come.
‘You’re as responsible as they are, you sons-of-bitches, covering it up, letting them get away with it.’ Solo’s words sprayed like bullets.
‘I’m sorry,’ Jun said, barely louder than a whisper. ‘There’s nothing I can say or do-’
‘I know this is a shock-’ said Fan, stepping in between Solo and Jun.
‘A shock!’
‘I know it doesn’t make it easier, but she wasn’t murdered,’ Fan said.
Jun winced a
t the mention of murder.
Solo sprang forwards, her arms speared out to Fan’s neck and her hands pincered around his throat. He couldn’t react quickly enough, and Solo’s fingers had already begun to dig into his windpipe. He stumbled backwards, gasping for breath.
Solo’s face knotted with rage, her eyes burned with intent, till something suddenly seemed to shatter. Kau went to pull Solo away, but she had already released Fan. Her hands trembled. She slowly brought them to her mouth, shocked perhaps at what they were capable of.
Fan capsized onto the sofa, almost on Jun before she jumped up out the way. His arms and legs flailed like an overturned beetle.
Jun fell to the floor beside him on her knees, her hands stroked his face as he grappled to catch his breath. Each intake sounded like air being dragged through a wind tunnel. Pink lines branded his throat where Solo’s fingers had been.
Solo threw off Kau’s grip. ‘I’ll swap one murdered parent for another,’ she said between her teeth, smearing her hands across her face and nose, which had begun to stream. In one seamless motion, from nowhere her legs gave way and Solo fell to the ground. On hitting the floor, she released deep, guttural sobs.
Jun tentatively put her hand on Solo’s shoulder, as the sensation of it might scold her.
‘Don’t you dare touch me!’ Solo said, tears dripping from her lips, and pushed Jun’s hand off so violently, they both keeled over with the force of it, and lay curled and contorted on the floor like shrapnel.
‘I’m sorry,’ Jun said quietly. ‘I… I’m so thoroughly ashamed… and sorry-’
‘Spare me,’ Solo spat and pulled herself up. She looked at Jun like she’d splintered her into tiny pieces.
‘What can I do?’ Jun said faintly, trying to read Solo’s response. ‘I’ll do whatever-’
‘You don’t get it, do you?’ Solo said, exasperated. ‘There’s nothing you can do. These years you’ve had with your son, seen him grow up, you’ve denied me of that.’ She grabbed the Pix of Kau’s graduation from the wall and threw it on the floor. It cracked, fracturing the screen through his face. ‘I’ll never know my mother, and I’ve spent my whole life blaming and hating myself,’ she said and covered her face with her hands. ‘I don’t know who I am if I don’t hate myself.’
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