2013: The Aftermath
Page 11
“You had me erase your memory for a reason.”
“How much do you want?” I ask, my hands tightening into fists. Every day, it seems like Dr. Ren and I go through the same conversation—me pleading and he refusing.
“I will not accept a bribe,” Dr. Ren says, crossing his arms. “I’m sorry, Ian. You hired me to get rid of something horrible in your past, and I did my job. Whatever happened lies behind you now, and trust me, you will destroy your present and your future if you don’t leave the past alone.”
“I cannot live like this, in ignorance!” I exclaim, jumping out of my chair, shaking. The chest pains return again, the burning, aching. “Please tell me. Please, just give me the memory video.”
A bitter sigh travels out of Dr. Ren’s lips, making my stomach twist. “It hasn’t even been a full two weeks, and you’re already back, pleading for answers.”
“Please,” I say, fully aware of how pathetic I must seem. “I must have made a mistake. I want my life back, or at least… answers.”
“Not until you subconsciously let go of what happened, until you are able to live with who you really are.”
I scoff, look away from Dr. Ren’s persistent face, his analytical eyes. “How can I let go of something that I don’t even know exists?”
“You’ll find a way,” Dr. Ren says, giving me a smile. “And you’ll find me when the time is right.”
***
The fusion of heat and light from the artificial sun glares down at my back as I stumble through the streets. This oxygen mask that I am required to wear has its benefits, I have to admit. When I step outside, into the cold cradle of strangers in the world, no one recognizes me as someone they used to know. No one will find out what happened to Ian Michaels. Behind this white veil, I am just another one of them, another masked face in the sea of people.
Nevertheless, Dr. Ren’s words still echo through my mind.
The ringing in my head returns, its resonance knifing through my heart in scathing torrents, over and over until I can no longer stand it.
I squint through the blanket of pollution, thick like fog, and catch sight of the flashing pink and blue letters of the convenient store sign.
“I need a shot of Headache Serum,” I say when I step into the store, taking the oxygen mask off my face.
The shopkeeper, about my age, forty to forty-five, does nothing but scoff at me and return to his reading.
“Hey,” I persist, feeling a twinge of irritation in my chest. “Did you hear me? I need a shot of Headache Serum.”
“Oh, that’s not all you need, bud,” the shopkeeper says without even glancing up at me. He eases off his stool and turns to the back counter, fills a syringe with a murky blue serum.
He then takes my arm and plunges the needle into it, funneling the serum into my veins.
After thirty seconds, the throbbing begins to retreat from my head, as the clarity returns to me.
“Thank you,” I say, and scan my wrist under the glowing red light emitting from the counter.
My Com-chip identification number pops up on the shopkeeper’s screen. The purchase is a success.
I let out a deep sigh of contentment as the loose remainders of pain escape from my body, leaving nothing but tranquility, a scar of a smile cut into my bones.
I am about to leave the store when my eyes sweep over the serum cabinet, still open. Jars of all sizes, filled with different-colored liquids, line the back wall of the serum cupboards.
But the only jar my eyes gravitate to is the one containing a deep purple solution. The white label reads: Backbone Serum.
“Hey,” I say, pointing to the jar. “Backbone Serum. What does that cure?”
The shopkeeper mumbles, without glancing up, “Cowards.”
“So…if I bought a shot of that, it would…make me more courageous?”
“Yeah, exactly.” This time the man lifts his head, his hazel eyes piercing into mine, questioning, challenging. “Why? You need a dose?”
I pause, my gaze still trained on the purple serum, with little white bubbles dancing at the surface, like little hands beckoning me forward.
Slowly, my lips part, and words form on them. “Yes,” I say. “I’d like to purchase a shot.”
As the shopkeeper turns around to fill the syringe, I take the liberty of looking around at the different serum jars. I have never seen so many before, all grouped together, all these different varieties.
And then my eyes settle upon the handgun at the end of the cabinet’s last row.
***
The protests of Dr. Ren’s assistants all merge into a chaotic blur as I storm down the hall, heading for his office.
The gun hidden in my side feels cold against my skin.
I scan my wrist on the security pad, and the door slides open. Dr. Ren sits at his desk, looking over papers, his spectacles hung low on the bridge of his nose.
“Ian,” he says when he looks up at me. He waves his assistants away.
The door closes.
“Well, this is an unexpected surprise,” Dr. Ren says. “Did you forget something?” He smiles, sending a wave of wrinkles rippling through his cheeks.
But the smile quickly fades when I pull out the handgun, point it at his face.
For a few moments, neither of us speaks.
The gun grows heavy in my hand, which, I notice, is trembling.
My voice shakes too, as I say, “Now, Doctor, are you going to tell me who I am?” Dr. Ren looks from the barrel of the gun, to me, then back to the gun. “Ian… please,” he says, getting out of his chair.
“Sit the fuck down!” I order, rage beginning to crawl out from under my skin. Dr. Ren does as I tell him.
“Tell me who I am, what I am,” I say, stepping forward until the end of my gun hits his forehead. “Tell me, or I swear, I will blow your brains out the back of your head.”
“You’re not acting normal,” Dr. Ren says. “Calm down. We can talk about this.”
“I’m sick of this bullshit!” I say. “I don’t care if you tell me that I haven’t possessed a memory in only two weeks.” My voice cracks, and the tears that I have been holding in all this time, finally spill down my face. “I feel like I’ve been living in a repeating hell for a lifetime.”
First Dr. Ren doesn’t say anything. He simply sits in his chair with his arms folded, watching my eyes, surveying me with a look of pity in his eyes.
And then he says, “Lower the gun.”
I lower it.
“Sit down.”
I ease myself into the chair across, though my fingers still stay tightly wrapped around the handle of the gun.
“Your name is not Ian Michaels,” Dr. Ren begins. “You are Dr. Logan Scott, a lead scientist at UNESCO. You were in charge of a project that, if executed correctly, could have restored all of Earth’s natural resources in the latter half of 2012. But things went awry and…”
Dr. Ren sighs and gestures out the floor-to-ceiling window of his office, at the satellite sun, the blackened clouds, the smoke monsters that now ruled the skies. “You, Logan, are responsible for the current condition of our planet.”
I let out a shaky breath, my heart racing, attempting to outrun the enclosing feeling of fear.
The gun slips from my sweaty hands, clattering over the marble floor until it lies still, silent.
“You mean…” I test out a laugh, but even that tastes bitter in my mouth. “I destroyed Earth?”
“You came to me in the spring of 2013, as soon as you depleted all but ten percent of earth’s first-tier soil, and the news of your failure was broadcast across the world,” Dr. Ren continues. “You asked me to erase your memory, erase it as many times as you ask me to.”
I shake my head, back and forth, back and forth.
The Backbone Serum is wearing off.
“Impossible,” I say, my voice barely elevated above a whisper. “How many times have I had my memory erased then?”
“Twelve times.”
“Usually, it takes anywhere from three months to a year for you to figure out who you really are,” Dr. Ren explains. “Either you find a picture of yourself on the Internet somewhere, or someone recognizes you in a store or something. But this time…” He chuckles, but the sound feels foreign to me, sends a legion of shivers down my back.
I don’t say anything in response, and we lapse into silence.
For a few moments, my eyes stay glued to the Heavens, watching the beams of the metallic satellite shine down onto the city of Chicago. But I know that, after tearing through the fortress of pollution, the light that bathes the people walking the Earth won’t even be the same color.
Tears start stinging my eyes again.
I am responsible for destroying the sun. I am responsible for damning all these people to living this way. Hiding their beautiful smiles behind oxygen masks.
“Logan?” Dr. Ren’s voice pulls me back to the present.
I look away from the window and turn to him. “Erase my memory,” I say. “Erase it again.”
About the author:
Shelly is 17 years old and an active member of SFWA. Her stories have appeared multiple times in Nature, Cosmos, The Dragon and the Stars, and more. Additionally, her first novel of YA Fantasy, THE ROYAL HUNTER, is forthcoming from Penguin Books in Fall 2011.
The Warren
by Anne Waldron Neumann
The sleeping mob stirs and ripples. Bodies shift on dry sand at the back of the young boys’ cave. The air changes subtly, and one sleeper wakens to familiar darkness and stink: piss, oily hair, the bitter warm breath of meat eaters. A picture comes into his mind. Water. Go to the water trickle before all his cohort wakes.
He unbraids arms and legs from the limbs of sleepers on either side and, half standing, half crouching, uses hands and feet to climb blindly over the rock ledge leading to the main tunnel. Once there, he stretches, scratches, and sets off in a shambling trot down the familiar slope to the right.
A big she passes him in the tunnel. Her monthly smell is on her. His cohort is almost old enough for thump-thump. His thumper lifts in anticipation.
Now tunnels open on either hand from the main tunnel: colder air, different echoes. Three fingers on the left hand, two fingers on the right.
He follows his fourth left finger and is soon worming his way through the mob at the water trickle. He makes a picture come into his mind: himself at the water trickle Before Sleep instead of After Sleep. The mob is smaller; in his picture, he drinks his fill standing, head tilted back until water fills his mouth and runs down his cheeks.
Unbidden, his picture changes: himself being pushed aside from the water trickle by one of the bigger hes, come alone Before Sleep the way they do. And yet another picture: himself, waterless, in a daily work gang, unable to dig or carry or scrape for thinking of water. Maybe when he is a big he . . . .
Almost at the trickle. He can already smell water. Sharp, cold, mineral. He crouches. Someone steps on his hand, but he squeezes between knees and shins to where water sheeting down a flat curtain stone gathers into droplets and runs down the hem in a little rill before disappearing back into the rock face. His place. He bends and twists his neck and laps diligently while above him the throng surges to and fro at the larger rivulets.
When he has drunk his fill, he squirms backward out of the mob and returns to the main tunnel. Sleep. Water. Eat. Back to the right and up the slope again. A hand and two fingers to the right, four fingers to the left, eighth right, go softly not to disturb the glowworms. His practiced eye picks out ten bright patches, one for each finger. He plucks and swallows a worm from each patch. Take glowworms Only From Bright Places. He can have more food at Midday Eat, dried bat meat and algae scraped from the walls of the light chimneys. But each morning, After Sleep, he and his cohort can take two hand-fingers of glowworms.
Sleep. Water. Eat. Work. His mind makes another picture, of work gangs beginning to form and himself, early, choosing freely between them. Choose The Work That Still Needs Choosing. He returns to the main tunnel.
Not bat catching. Plenty in his cohort like that work, like the huge echoing cavern, like the pale light, do not fear the sharp teeth of the sleeping multitudes. When the milk shes are given too many Littles, they take them to the cavern so the bats can drink their blood. Not bat catching. Scraping algae, then, or digging.
Digging. At the divide in the main tunnel where the work gangs form, he hears and smells a group already moving off toward where, he knows, a new midden is being dug.
The group, mostly big shes, is still loose and fluid. Room for more. He joins it, finding other bodies to follow with his hands, and is soon at the end of a long new tunnel, hacking blindly at the floor with a flat stone and turning packed earth and stone into loose rubble. When the new midden is dug, the old midden will be filled in, and the mob will have to learn this new place for piss and kak.
Some of the shes are taking the loose dirt away. They have different pictures of where to take it. One she gives his small pile to the young He just behind him. Several shes drop their rubble at the first wide place in the new tunnel. Another she, he guesses by the fading sound of her shambling, is taking loose dirt all the way to the old midden, ready for filling in. They work without plan, but the new midden swells slowly at the end of its tunnel. The scrapers move steadily forward, and loose dirt moves by fits and starts backward behind them.
Morning passes. At Midday he is standing and scraping. Some of the work gang are already beginning to leave for Midday Eat, but he has uncovered a stone as big as his head in the wall he is working on. Dig Where The Dirt Needs Digging. By scraping on either side of the stone and above and below it, he has loosened the stone, and now he pulls it from the wall like kak from a kak hole.
Wah! A blast of cold air hits his face. He has broken through into a New Place. Dim light. Maybe more glowworms. Maybe more bats.
If only more of the work gang were still here. A picture forms in his mind: everyone pushes forward to taste the new air he has found.
His picture becomes real enough. The workers who have not yet left for Midday Eat crowd around the new hole, and those still in the new tunnel turn back to join the excited press. Many hands reach up to loosen more rubble around the hole where the stone was.
Now the hole is big enough for a small one to wiggle through. He understands from the grunts of the others that he has been chosen, he and the other young he who worked near him all morning. Bent legs and joined hands make a step for him to climb, and soon he is head and shoulders through the hole, feeling for purchase with his hands.
The floor of the New Place is higher than the Old Place. He can feel loose pebbles with his hands, and, finding himself in dim light, his unpracticed eye confirms that the New Place is a large cavern with a fairly level floor. No bats. He slithers the rest of the way and then puts his head back through the hole to show it is safe.
Soon both he and he are standing on the loose ground. He makes a picture in his mind: both he and he are on the other side of the cavern, near but not too near the dim light. He takes a step forward to enact his mind picture. But a draft of air brings a new scent. Oily hair, yes; piss, yes; meat-eater, yes. But darker, rougher, more like the bats and yet not bats. Three, no, four, five shapes are silhouetted against the dim light on the other side of the cavern. Smaller than he is but not much smaller, and five are three more than he and he.
Creatures he has never seen before. Arms and legs thin and bony, like roots. They stand on tiny feet and lean forward resting half their weight on what look like fists. They have prick ears and shaggy fur all over, including, some of them, a sort of frill around their necks like his water stone. Their faces are more pointed than bats, but a snarling noise fills the cavern, and he catches a gleam of the same sharp teet
h.
The five shapes flatten against the light and squirm forward into darkness. They are crawling toward him. Light reflects from narrow slits of eyes, not large round ones. So they must be creatures from Up Out. Where the bats go when even the light chimneys are dark and the mob sleeps. Confused pictures flicker in his mind. Bats, holes, a press of bodies he longs to join. He stands, uncertain. Behind him, loose stones slip, and someone whimpers.
A sudden leap and the leader of the creatures is at his throat, jaws locked on the forearm he has instinctively raised to defend himself. He feels another sharp pain at his ankle. They are eating him. They are going to eat him. He turns heavily against the weight of the creature still hanging from his arm in time to see legs and feet disappearing back through the hole, kicking frantically to dislodge a third creature from an ankle.