Claire leads me to the deck cabin by her usual mannerisms — consisting of feather light touches on the inside of my palm and arm — knowing exactly how to do this for some reason currently out of grasp. The deck cabin bolsters a pendulum sort of door, swinging back and forth with the lightest of breezes. Claire pushes the door aside like a harmless fly floating in the air as I miss her contact briefly, moving through the filter screen of a doorway. The door swings through on its pendulum arc.
In that instant, Claire seemingly disappears from view into the body of the ship. I push through the door expecting the truth of Claire behind, yet she is not to be seen by mine eyes in this darkened chamber. I walk through this room looking for the visual to match my thoughts only to be disappointed. Claire is nowhere below or above decks. I sense a looming dread. The rhythmic slamming of the door culminates with a loud bang. I look back to see nothing but an empty wall in place of shut door.
I look and search for anything signaling an escape route from this dark and desolate chamber entombed within ship. The transom windows are barely inches beyond my outstretched fingers. The blackness is temporarily held at bay by the late evening light. Chalk markings of an indecipherable and crude tongue relating something or other graffiti the walls. Paper filling every possible inch of available floor makes an audible impact of crumpling and crunching with each step. I sink to the ground in a state befitting my current position.
Wetness encroaches my battlements from every front. A deep red sludge, a curse upon my head adding to my already sad state. With each passing breath and moment my heart and mind fill with revulsion. The impending creep of the fluid into my flesh sends me up and away. The red concoction comes continually higher, soaking into more of the papery under footing, and turning it all into a blood red mush. I end up tasting the fluid to verify my suspicion that this is in fact blood from some massive creature.
The transoms let in something else, filling my prison just a bit more efficiently. The new golden amber liquid comes in by waterfall, sized and shaped in that way. The intense smell of strong alcohol resides within this liquid all twisted to the insane goal of drowning me as sewer rat. The onslaught continues with no sign of mitigation, intent on my destruction. There must be a method escaping my thoughts that can rid me of this impending doom.
The transom is my salvation from this situation. I get myself soaked through and through grasping desperately at the window that continues to evade my attempts. The wandering from light to light finds me a step where there is none. A way out has revealed itself to me as nothing but apparent. I clamber upon the submerged pedestal high enough to reach the hand of my salvation. I pull myself up with as much strength as my frame can manage, up to the deck. Halfway up, a tug on my leg slides me back. The next so forceful, my head reels up into glass transom. This, my end.
(—)
I wake up to a dark room. The pink light from the window illuminates everything. The late hour along with the special sky makes it a weird time to be up. I go to the window. The pink sky, the product of water droplets in the air bouncing rays of moonlight, brought to bear lighting up the clouds. The strange set of conditions all meet for this sight. I reluctantly get back to sleep.
Creation Story
Fri 1/26/18 8:04 a.m.
Sarah and I are off to another memory session, just any day among the 50 or so at the Memory Center. The daily convo starts with how my dreams are. Then, how the therapy is working. My jogging progress.
Sarah presses a few of her pockets and holds one. “I have some good news for you. It’s about the sim equipment you wanted.”
“Yes.”
Sarah retrieves a folded up map from her pocket with a marked room and gives it to me. “You can use a sim here at the center. The bad news is you have to change rooms.”
I unfurl the map, refold, and stow away. “No prob.”
“It used to be the old staff room. It is now like any other room except the sim. You should be able to move sometime today.” She smiles weakly with a slight deepening of her hair.
“It has been a long time coming. There is something that has been bugging me. Do I talk during the memory session? It’s just that recently you stopped asking question about what I remember.”
She answers without a second thought. “Not that much. Let me ask you something. Do you think it is possible for you to consciously talk and then completely forget you said anything?”
“Not possible.”
“There’s your answer. What you think is possible becomes the truth in the memory recovery state. You don’t make any sense in the rare occasions you make sounds.”
I've heard that before somewhere. “Okay.”
We stop outside the therapy room. “Before we go in, do you have any more questions?”
“How did you get into memory guiding or whatever you do now?”
“That's a good story. Let’s sit down and talk about it.”
“Okay.” We sit down in her office for the story. Me on the couch and Sarah on the chair.
“Do you want anything to drink?” Sarah gestures to the nourisher besides the desk.
“No, I’m fine.”
Sarah curls her toes around the rug at her feet. “I wanted to be in the Security Division. That turned into this memory guiding.”
“That’s a big change.”
Sarah itches under her knee, and her hair blanches white. “It all started with my friend David. An accident, you could call it, happened. The go-seat he was using just stopped on the spot, some momentary and intentional disconnect of his tech. This would have been fine, except for the fact he was going at high speed to cover up a delay. The safety devices covered him in a protective bubble before he landed. The stop propelled him over 35 meters. Security tried to id the person behind it. They found someone. That was all they could do.”
“You wanted something more than that but why memories?”
“Well, Security can just give closure in most cases. Sometimes they can’t even do that. That is it. Any emotional, psychological, or physical damage is out of their purview. This damage can take years, if ever, to get repaired. I just wanted the ability to do more for the people I’m serving. With this, it is always possible to provide a complete recovery. I also have the ability to follow each person all the way through the Process. That is what drew me to this.”
I cross my arms, some new gesture I picked up. “Is there any tangible way to see your hard work in the heads of people like me?”
Her hair returns to a passable orange. “We do neural pathway efficiency scans of the memory storage area. With people like you we do a scan before and after. With some people we do them every week.”
“How can a brain scan tell you how much I’m remembering?” Shouldn't I know this?
“The efficiency of the connections tells us how well you remember something. It is a relative value so we compare two different sets of scans. That’s how we measure progress.”
“I’m ready to start.”
“Good.”
I lay down on the usual sofa I’m already sitting on, my arms at my sides. Sarah raises an armrest from somewhere under the cushions. It comes up next to me giving a place to put my arm. I start wondering about something for the first time. How do they make me remember? They aren’t giving me any medication then, how?
“How do you make me remember stuff?”
“We are using your unconscious mind to uncover new memories, mediated by programming through sensory inputs. We use imperceptible stimuli to get the necessary result, in your case the texture of your bed sheets.”
Just changing the bed sheets? “I can’t be that simple.”
“We first figure out what’s going to work with you. We can ask you questions and see where your brain is stimulated. The brain scan gives us enough for a sim of your brain. We question the sim instead of you. We can use the food, lights, even smells or textures like with you."
“If it is imperceptible, how does it do anything?” St
op asking questions and remember.
Sarah spreads her toes across the rug and wriggles them. “Imperceptible refers to the lack of conscious perception. Of the total sensory info gathered by humans, only 30 percent or less is known by the conscious mind. The other 70 percent or so is processed by the unconscious mind. That window allows us to talk directly by the unconscious mind. That’s how it works.”
“What about that long speech before I go into the memory?”
Sara curls her legs up on the seat. “Oh, that's just a triggering mechanism to start looking at what you have remembered. We program that in also, just a few key words, that’s it. The rest is to relax you so you can accept the memory as your own.”
“I’ll have to look into it more.”
“Ready?”
“Yes.”
Sarah is sitting close to me in her chair. She takes my hand in hers. Sarah says in her lullaby voice, “Take deep breaths along with me… one… two… three… four… five… six… seven… eight… nine… and ten. Allow yourself to completely relax. You are in a safe place. Nothing you remember can hurt you. You can remember every detail of your last dream. You can remember what it means to you. You have everything needed to do as I ask. You just have to trust the Process. You have the memory in your grasp. You have to trust the memory. You have to let the memory fill your consciousness. You have every…”
(—)
I go up to meet with Gary. Last week, I convinced him to meet once a day, before that once a week. We mostly talk about his…
The Question of Treatment
Wed 8/30/17 2:35 p.m.
…alcoholism. The meetings fill the standard slot between Gary and each of the various directors, even ones in training. I walk right in after waving to Morgan. Gary gave me almost exclusive access to his apartment, if I’m needed. I start taking off my shoes.
Last night a dream visited me, probably of my own creation.
(—)
A gang of pirates circle on all sides — ensnaring me on the deck edge — poised with all manner of weapons from cutlasses to blunderbusses, rapiers to muzzle-loaders, almost anything scrounged from on-board, including a kitchen knife or two. What right do these scoundrels possess on Her Majesties Ship Du Nord, save death? The guile to even threaten one of the last remaining crew. The trusty sword deployed from scabbard, wielded in my hand tests the veracity of this threat. Found trustworthy, a few backward steps throw me over deck and rail to the dozen flashes of muzzle flare and insistent stares into the deep blue sea.
The coat and pompous dress of the British Navy plunges me into the warm (but still suffocating) depths of these shallow seas. I strip off everything down to skives, while I'm swept away by the currents, away from the ship burgeoning with ordinance and ready to blow. I resurface with a life saving gasp for breath, choking it down, and giving it another, more successful go. Something forces me under, maybe my own action, as right on cue the ship blows into shards, shaking the water, coloring the air, and raining down charred wooden chunks. The surface lures me back for a cheer and a laugh, hanging water from the pocket knife purchased on leave, drips back home.
Swim, swim, and swim as far as my arms will allow. And keep on. Stop not till safe harbor. Such harbor finds me on the back of a pink-fleshed whale, offering up a perch to witness the smoking, adrift wreckage my destruction wrought. Floating refuse and supplies arrive by current, namely citrus and a cargo full of desiccated mint leaves. Easy retrieval of a few oranges adds some refreshment in the hot tropical sun. I open my necklace bound knife, carve a V through the skin, grip the peeled portion between thumb and knife, peel off, and repeat. Separate a segment, ingest, and revel in the slightly waxy capsules containing a sweet, acidic concoction, with eyes closed of course.
They open to something completely different, my lips wrapped around M's, hands holding her shoulders, and her hands snaked under the back of my shirt — reality for a change. Enough. I push her away, and she releases as if it hurts. M tightens her robe, covers her exposed shoulder, and turns to the rain drenched window, gazing at the bare tree straining in the wind. I look through her still wet hair to her neck in the amber light of fire, so much so that the brightness blooms and turns to daylight. M clutches the window frame with white knuckles, mumbling something.
"He did this to me, that sicko." She trembles, before spinning around and gasping with a hand to her chest. "Fuck, how many times do I have to tell you? Don't do that."
The room darkens to a flickering blood red, in time for M to swipe away tears under her eyes, and look into dwindling fire. I circle ‘round to her back, approach, and message her shoulders. "I need to see what that monster did."
M loses the wrap around tie, I free the hem, ease it off her shoulders, and let it drop without protest from M, expecting her smooth back. The burns assault me eyes, nothing worse than I've seen, but still the ideas that possessed him stun, rape, and murder my faith in humanity, resurfacing feelings of relief brought on by escaping the insanity of human life. The staccato triangular scars carve out the initials GS. What is the cost G? Me.
I spin M around, wrap her in my arms, and just hold her tight, whispering "This isn't over," over and over again. M cries into me, shaking as the sobs rack her body. I hold her at arm’s length, and say, "By blade or barrel, you will have retribution."
I leave M there, naked, tear soaked, weeping, hair wet, moist legs and body in front of the dying fire. I grasp one door handle, lead it over to the other, and pull both closed. I walk at a blurring speed with hands tucked into pockets, scrunching up the bottom of my sport jacket, un-tucked dress shirt, and the stretched open tie flaps and whips in the air. A burst of urgency frees my hands and lights the surroundings as in day. Reaching G's door, I pound it gently (my strength could easily throw the door free of its hinges) still concussing the air with loud bangs.
Inside, G boasts about his exploits, "I marked her as mine in every way possible. All with an enthralled audience." Bang, bang, and bang. G twists and unlatches the door, opening a gap, while remote controlling the vid chat off, over his shoulder.
I slide through the gap, close it behind, and take in the roaring fire, bed-clothed G, sheet strewn bed, along with empty dinner tray. G announces, "Care for a drink?" Without my answer, he helps himself, turning around and offering again. In the intervening time, a metallic nodule forms in my left palm, growing behind my back, and stopping as a huge semi-auto. I draw into hands, pump out all six shots, the first through the heart bisecting the liquor bottle, and the rest through lungs, guts, and lower. A new cartridge materializes in my other hand right upon ejecting the other clip from the spent weapon and once again pumped into the slowly falling G.
The weapons vanish as they appeared, replaced by a dagger in each hand. A quick jump of 2 meters lands me over G's splayed legs with a dagger in each lung. What a waste of good blood. I right myself, review the scene, walk away, hearing rushing footsteps, a weepy scream, and a body falling besides G. I'll be here for you and yours, M.
(—)
At the time, it felt like another dream someone put in my head. After a few hours sleep and waking up, I realized the true meaning was not hurting Gary. The message to myself: Gary needed help before he messed up something important. That would likely have ended up my responsibility. That's at least what I thought. No one except Morgan, Gary, and I even know what his is doing.
Gary tied my hands when it came to treatment. My research tells me, treatment based on percentage of blood alcohol works best. The closest thing I have experience with is heart failure. The worse the diagnostic test results, the more intense the treatment. Gary refused medication to help him get better. He wants to wait for minor alcohol toxicity before intervening. I just monitor his blood toxicity levels and haven’t been able to change his mind. My shoes are on a shelf.
I enter the apartment. Yesterday, he hovered at 12 percent. At anything over 20, he will start becoming unresponsive to most stimuli, a conservative value but still. Ga
ry offered access to the medical data collected by his tech. He is at 13 percent now, and it's 3 in the afternoon.
I look for Gary and find him outside the window to the balcony. The glass door just inside the apartment leads me there. Neighboring windows reveal the array of plants out there. The window at the shorter end of the seat shows his bedroom. It always displays the same thing, his room neater than truth. I step out to join him. He covets a glass in his hand, almost full. The same decanter lounges on the table next to him. I need to somehow convince him to get treatment.
I take a seat on one of three padded stool around a glass topped cantilever table. “How are you feeling, today?”
“Nothing a drink won’t fix.” Gary takes a sip with a spill. "Shit."
“Are you sure you are just fine. I’m concerned about your alcohol level.”
Gary leaves his stool for the table, with drink. “Don’t worry. If alcohol’s my way I go, you can’t change anything about that.”
“You know that isn’t true.”
“I don’t care! Just leave me alone.”
Gary runs up the stool to the tabletop, putting his foot on the rail, like a conquering pirate with a glass instead of flag. Gary just stands there unmoving, as if challenging me to stop him. The intention is clear, the threat of walking off the balcony. I’m not sure what to do. If he wanted to do it, he would have done it alone. I can use that.
“You don’t want to do this. You know I’ll stop you.” I hold onto his foot.
“I want someone to remember me doing this.”
I stand up still holding his foot. “You don’t want to do this.”
I reach up and grab his wrist, instead. He can jump at any minute. I can’t do anything to stop that. I just have to show him, I want him to stay here. With firm, gentle pressure I pull him back. He starts helping me get him down. He didn’t want to do it. I just helped him figure it out.
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