* * * *
"What about my prison sentence?” he asked, when Marla came back into the room. He had finished with the picture frame, handed it back to her. She collapsed it to something the size of a matchstick and put it into her dogcase.
"It's somewhere in those wafers I gave you. That memory doesn't usually resurface for a while and you don't have much to remember. After the trauma care you were suicidal and drugged most of the time. We put you in a psych hospital."
"Where?"
"Dorothea Dix in Raleigh, near your parents."
"That's when you decided about my memory—"
"Your parents suggested it. They said they thought if we took away the memory of the bad time you would heal. So we all went to court."
He swallowed, fingers loosely laced together in his lap. He felt bleak and drained. In a few more minutes the memories would start to fade; recalls worked best when kept short and cathartic, according to Laslow and the other gurus of memory science.
He asked, pretending to be calm, “When did you divorce me?"
She had sat back in his comfortable desk chair, hair a mess, eyes swollen. “Christ. I don't know if I can keep doing this every year, Morgie. It makes it even worse that you forget so completely every time."
"This is what we do to our patients every day without blinking."
"I know.” She shook her head. “It's a bloody business, all right, making people remember what they couldn't live with in the first place. I wish I had a cigarette.” She had claimed the habit as her own as soon as cigarettes were made cancer-safe, before the civil wars. Reclining in a Jacuzzi in frozen Minnesota with a scotch in one hand and a cigarette in the other. Standing in the cold outside her sorority, smoking because her roommate was a priss about the smell. He shook his head, focused on the woman in the chair. “You asked me for a divorce,” she said. “Just before you drove off in the car. I had no idea the boys were with you. You were so drunk."
"Why didn't you know where the boys were?"
"We didn't know. Either of us. They'd crawled into the back seat of the car to get away from the sound of our fight. We were fighting."
"Wait a minute. Wait a minute. I still don't remember any of this."
"You were almost killed in that car, too, Morgie. It's a trauma memory. There's usually a gap."
The nimbus around her was coming to a peak, not even noon yet, and he loved her as much as he ever had. But if it was part of the memory it would fade, too, and within a few more minutes he would think of her in the old way, as his distant associate, not really very relevant to his life. The same line of her neck in that same soft light made him want to touch the skin there, one fingertip along the tiny creases.
She looked him in the eye and knew what he was feeling; that much was plain from her own posture, somehow defeated and dissolving. She loved him, too, and he felt it across the room, without a sound, as she watched. There was a crack in the world and it ran through them, it had taken their children. But that had nothing to do with the fact that he pulsed with feeling for her still, even now, seeing her aged and different.
"I don't know why I wanted to divorce you but it had to have been a mistake,” he said. “I love you so much."
Her face creased in the center as a face will do when it wants to clench a painful emotion, contain it, refuse to let it display. She broke in half visibly but rigidly, refusing to move. “Don't say it,” she shook her head. “You won't remember the rest. You won't remember why you wanted a divorce.” She wiped her eyes on her hands, like a girl, sitting with her feet splayed inward, toes of her shoes touching. “That's part of the gap. I always have to tell you."
"What?"
"You wanted a divorce because I was cheating on you. I was having an affair.” For a moment she was clearly studying him, assessing him for body signs, looking over his monitors, glancing at the cameras for a moment as if to remind herself of the filming, of the silent witnesses. How many times had this staff or another filmed this scene or one like it? Did Marla keep the digitals in one of her frames?
What she'd told him refused to register.
"Did you hear me?” she asked.
"Yes."
She spread her fingers over the arms of the chair. Her nails were still glimmering. Confession had stilled her and she was beginning to show signs of calm.
His fingers and toes were tingling and his mouth felt dry. “It's starting to wear off,” he said.
"Your toes?” she asked, handing him water.
"And fingers."
She nodded.
"Things could be different,” he said, heart thudding. “I still love you. Do I usually say that?"
She shook her head.
"We could see each other now. In our new lives. I know they can't put the memories back in but people learn to live with that anyway."
She looked at him, softening as he watched. Had they not been in the eye of several cameras, he might have touched her. But his thirst was strong again and she poured him more water and something about the taste of the water blurred her, made him less certain of what he saw.
"I don't care what you did,” he said, mopping his forehead with a tissue. “I mean it."
"You're sweating,” she said, arranging her own hair. “It won't be long now."
"Tell me you'll try,” he said. “Tell me we can try again."
"I'll try. Sure.” But she was motionless, watching him. “You really are an optimist. Who knew?"
A last image of Brock, dissolving into the dark. An image of Joshua, face crushed between the back and front seats of a car. Deep inside him came a moment of tearing so awful, so thorough, he would never cross to the other side of it.
"I don't care what you did or who he was,” he said, and she looked at him a last time just as he was closing his eyes. “We could be happy."
In the sleep that followed he was certain he would wake and find her with him. The boys would be outside playing in the yard. There would be food to eat and no argument and Marla would not have that guilty, sneaky look she'd had for so long. The earth in Kansas and Iowa and Missouri would knit itself back together and there would be one country instead of three. The Horton family would be whole and Morgan would get his exams done and Marla would not need to talk about that doctor she was training with or mope around the house neglecting Morgan in favor of daydreaming. In the sleep that followed, he was certain everything would be all right again, his life would knit itself back into a whole, and his brain would take the shape it used to have before the memories leaked out of it onto those communion wafers.
But after a while there was no name for that woman he was thinking of and there was no time to which he wanted to return. What was left were scraps of memory that lingered and pulsed forward, shifting into one another, too abrupt to be hallucinogenic, more like a movie stuttering before it stops.
Morgan Durban Alexei Horton came to himself on the patient's chair of his office and looked out the window, where clouds had gathered. He felt shaken and drained and, as he did every year, he wondered what it was he had remembered in the recall. The echoes of the feelings remained. Soon even his memory that this procedure had happened would fade; and he would live another year blissfully unaware that he had ever been part of any other life than this. But Marla Sinjnovc—why was he thinking about her? Why was he afraid she was sad?
Tang, the bodyguard from this morning, came to the office door as he was stirring from the chair. She gave him the sort of once-over one gives to an invalid or a person who has just lost a close relative. “Do you need anything, Dr. Horton?"
"Dr. Sinjnovc. Did she leave?"
"Yes, sir. Right after the procedure."
"Did she seem upset?"
Tang hesitated, her chin dimpling slightly. “More so than usual, yes, sir. I think it's appropriate that I say that much."
"Do you know what memory she shows me?"
"No, sir. Are you remembering something from the session, sir, are you having a residua
l, because I could call—"
He shook his head. “No, nothing wrong. The recording of this session. Does she take it with her?"
"Yes. Every year I've been here.” Tang was getting uncomfortable so he nodded and turned to let her know that she could go. Remembering this morning, he attempted no undue familiarity. He shuffled the frames and packets on his desk.
The thought made him feel warm, that Marla was watching the tape, was watching him remember and forget. Why did it please him? What was Marla to him, after all? But still, maybe if she were to call him, or maybe if he were to call her....
He gave the empty memory box to his assistant, telling her to double-wipe the code to make sure his information was erased. The rest of the day he spent on his orchid garden. By evening he had only a hazy inkling that the procedure had happened. That night he spoke to an associate on the hard-line and actually said, in all seriousness, “I don't even think we knew about the Great Collapse where I grew up. I hardly remember a thing."
In bed in the wee hours he dreamed a sandy-haired boy was leading him to the top of a slight rise, the path folded over with leaves and branches, the crest of the hill all awash with glow under the green canopy. The boy leading Morgan was eager but careful and kept looking back at Morgan with complete, utter tenderness. “Come on,” said the boy, “when we get to the top of the hill you'll see. Brock's there."
But he never came to the top of the hill in the dream, he kept walking as his feet got heavier and the ground slipped back and the sandy-haired boy whose name Morgan could not remember appeared more and more frightened. His hand slipped away and Morgan stepped off the path into the tangled trees and was lost and could not breathe and woke up, looking at the flat, square windows of his bedroom.
The next morning on his turn through the park, Morgan remembered to bring gloves. The sky was lightening and clear birdcalls rose over Meteor Park.
Tang had come with him again, chin tucked in, studying the dry grass, her manner reserved and distant, showing no hint of yesterday.
"This morning's client should be interesting,” he said.
"Who is it?"
"A pervert. A sexual offender of the child molesting type. They get violent when they realize who they used to be.” Morgan smiled, though he was not even looking in Tang's direction. “Maybe it's a sign things are getting better. We're back to the ordinary run of human filth and vice. Not so many war criminals any more."
Tang looked very reserved for a moment, then stared at the ground and something changed in her manner. “Do you remember what you asked me yesterday?"
"No. Not really. By tonight I won't remember yesterday at all, I'll go back to my base memory completely."
"You wanted to know whether Dr. Sinjnovc seemed upset."
"I remember now, yes."
"She said something when she left. She said you didn't follow the script this year, not at the end. I'm not even sure she was really talking to me."
"I didn't follow the script?” A happy feeling flooded him, suddenly. Why? He could hardly bear Marla Sinjnovc's company even for a morning, she was vapid. So why this feeling, that he was pleased at having surprised her?
For a moment he could almost see her younger, standing somewhere in the ice and snow, like something from a fairy tale, smoke or mist drifting around her head.
"I don't know why they make me go through a recall anyway,” he said after a while, his heartbeat settling, his breathing relaxed. “I'm fine. What could there be for me to remember?"
Tang turned away, neither embarrassed nor comfortable, simply herself.
"A little hope,” she said, in that placid way of hers, and he found himself wondering, then and after, what she had meant.
Copyright (c) 2007 Jim Grimsley
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THEY ARRIVED by Mark Rich
They arrived the way we do
on the commuter rail:
suited strangers on their way to work
with finny fingers and blue complexions
as if the poisons drifting through Boston Bay
forced them finally up for air
and for jobs on land.
"What do you do, buddy?” I asked one.
"I'm part of an invasion force,” he said;
"we conquer alien civilizations."
I thought it sounded like quite the task
and said so. “Like yours,” he added.
I only nodded
having heard the story.
The way so many others had been before
these folk from the Bay are too smart
and have too many of their own concerns
when six o'clock rolls around—
beer gardens, private dinners,
even catching a couple films—
to be too efficient at what they do
over the long haul.
Still, some have admirable industry
and whole boroughs, I hear, lie conquered.
I wake some mornings expecting to hear
the bugle call to defense
but hear only a few dogs barking,
probably at themselves,
and the rolling of the commuters.
Sometimes a week will roll by
without my catching a glimpse of an invader
mowing a lawn or weighing down a park bench
although somewhere or other I feel sure
the conquest rolls on.
—Mark Rich
Copyright (c) 2007 Mark Rich
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BABEL 3000 by Colin P. Davies
Colin P. Davies has just completed his first novel, a comic fantasy for young adults. Further details about it are available on his website, www.colinpdavies.com. The author's previous story for us, “The Defenders” (October/November 2004), resurfaced in The Year's Best SF #22. More recently, many of his tales have appeared in the online ‘zine, Bewildering Stories. In his newest story for our pages, he takes us far into a future where we can attempt to interpret...
Unbeknownst to Smith, archaic words had become cool.
"Nicola...” he protested. “You're making that word up."
The blonde girl's cheeks flared crimson and she was clearly befuddled. She leaned her bicycle against the crumbling bark of a naked oak tree.
"Honest Guv ... I ain't. I ... I heard it only yesterday. My boyfriend hooked it in London, 1236 AD."
"And it's definitely a must have?” He removed his trilby and glanced about to ensure they were alone here this morning on the banks of the river.
"You'll be cooler than an Argentinian penguin farmer.” She laughed. Her fingers fought with the breeze to keep her shoulder-length hair out of her doll-perfect face.
"I thought Japanese words were current."
"Keep up, Smithy! Fatima used an archaic, totally unknown word on Lunchtime Debate, two days ago. Now everybody wants one."
Smith was reluctant to part with his credit—it was a novel weight on his spreadsheet. But still ... a new old word! Maybe he could use it at Jenny's millennium dinner party tonight.
"I'm telling you, Señor Smithy. No one else has got it yet.” She tugged on her white T-shirt so that he could not miss the word UNIQUE stretched across her chest. “My boyfriend has the best ear, and the best gear, for time-fishing. He's sharp, sly. Bit of a geek."
Smith recalled how his wife, Mary, had loved that word ... geek. He was a geek for collecting hats. He was a geek for choosing to cook. She'd been dead nine years now and he still missed being a geek.
Nicola moved towards him. With her confident hips and assured shoulders, her casual, almost careless style—evidenced by the yellow trousers complete with bicycle clips—Nicola reminded him of Mary. He wondered why he'd not seen it before.
"Okay,” he said. “I'll take it.” The girl had not let him down yet. Every word she'd sold him had been received with admiration and applause, whether literary, educational, technical ... whatever. He'd come to trust her,
and to look forward to their meetings. Indeed, today, after she'd called to make the arrangement, he'd immediately showered and chosen a sharp charcoal suit he had not worn in nine years.
They touched fingertip terminals. The credit transfer was swift and Smith experienced the usual sherbet fizz in his left temple. “Lodged and logged. I feel positively medieval."
"Thanks, Mister."
Mister? Yes ... he was twice her age. “On your way, Lass. And....” He pressed his hat back onto his bald head and turned up his coat collar. “And wrap up warmer."
Smith watched Nicola pedal off on her bicycle while he reflected on the speed of change. He'd only recently adapted to the fashion for Japanese jargon following months of entrepreneurial claptrap. And now this. It seemed the world had grown old while he'd slept.
* * * *
"Jenny.” Smith hugged the tall, elegant lady and kissed her naked earlobe.
"Smithy....” She snaked an arm around his shoulders, reached up and cheekily dislodged his top hat.
"I've got something for everyone to hear,” he said quietly, taking the hat in hand. “At the end of the main course.” He noted that her scarlet, off-the-shoulder, silk gown carried the word erudite in gold and in a variety of sizes and fonts. She could possibly be the most stylish host in Cambridge. She was certainly the most industrious—this was her fourth millennium party and they were only halfway through January.
"Angelina also has a word, Smithy. Can yours wait till after that?” She helped him out of his overcoat.
"Indubitably. No rush.” Fashions changed fast, but not usually during the course of a formal dinner.
However, he soon noted that most guests were attired in red, whilst he had opted for a black kimono. Tomorrow he would re-subscribe to the lifestyle channel.
Later, as he polished off his four-seasons pizza, Smith was disturbed to see the Holy Anderson rise to speak. The sensei's gaze flitted about like a butterfly, alighting on guest after guest, freezing each for a moment's examination. He was canny, this priest. He would first still the conversation and then drop in his word like a fox into a hen house. This time, however, he held back. “I give way to the delectable Angelina,” he said.
Asimov's SF, March 2007 Page 10