The Cabinet

by Un-su Kim

  “What about my work?”

  “You’re joking right? Didn’t you just say that you were bored because you didn’t have any work to do downstairs? And everyone knows that people who work at this research institute have nothing to do. I bet you think you can sweet-talk your way out of this. You’re saying to yourself, ‘This old fool won’t really send me to jail.’ Maybe you’re right. But since I don’t like you, I could easily tell the director about all of this. If I do that, you’ll be kicked out of here, at the very least. I may not look it, but I’m pretty influential. And if you get fired from here, you’ll have to start looking for work again. That’ll be a shame. Jobs like this are hard to find. You know, ones that are secure, well-paid, and relaxed because you don’t have any work.”

  “What in the world do you want from me?”

  “You blockhead, haven’t you been listening? All I want you to do is to come up here every morning and empty my trash bin, mop the floor, and dust the room. At least until you’ve had enough time to think about what you’ve done. Besides, from what I hear, you don’t have anything better to do downstairs.”

  He wasn’t wrong. I really didn’t have anything better to do downstairs. If I was stubborn and tried to refuse him, I might get kicked out of the research institute. Even though I doubted he would go through with it, I couldn’t be sure. After all, this was the guy who bashed in that Department Head Kim’s head and didn’t even pay a penny toward his hospital bills. I thought for a while about all the ways I could lie my way out of this, but eventually, without any other way out, I said, “Ok, deal.”

  And that’s how I came to work with Professor Kwon under the condition that I would go up to his office and clean every morning. Slowly the work I had to do increased. At first he said that all I needed to do was clean and watch the office. So, I cleaned and watched the office. But soon he got annoyed with me and asked why I didn’t answer the phone when someone called. So, I started answering the phone too and had ridiculous conversations with even more ridiculous people. And with time, I even began recording phone calls, scheduling appointments, organizing files, typing up conversations, and following Professor Kwon on his way to meet potential symptomers. And just like that, one year turned to another, and before I knew it seven years had passed. I had spent seven years with Professor Kwon. And yet I still had nothing to do at my job downstairs.

  But there was one question to which I could never find the answer. Why was it that Professor Kwon needed an assistant like me? For the last forty years he had never taken on a single assistant or pupil. Nor had he formed a research team. He’d always been alone. So why me? Why take me as an assistant when I had absolutely no background in science? This was a mystery I could not solve, not matter how hard I tried.

  Attached to the inside of Cabinet 13’s door was this note:

  Strong as an elephant that can obliterate an entire tree,

  Tenacious as a hyena that can drop a rhino, Patient as a crocodile that can fast for six months in a swamp,

  Vigorous as a fur seal with a thousand mates Together with your passion for shedding light on the world’s darkness.

  – Professor Kwon

  I see this note every time I open the cabinet. Each time I read it, my chest lurches and I mutter to myself, “Darkness of the world, my ass! What does he know about darkness?”

  MEMORY MOSAICERS

  In the beginning, it was just a few misspelled words in an old diary which needed editing – at least, that was what Susan Bring, who would later become a voodoo witch and the queen of all memory mosaicers, thought. Susan had no particular goal in mind. She was simply embarrassed by her past as it was recorded and thought it would be awful if someone were to read the diary after her death. She started with editing a few misspelled words in her diary. But, while she was at it, she would also erase entire embarrassing sentences about things she didn’t want to remember. And in their place, she would write new sentences, new memories. And as time passed, she would forget that she had ever edited her diary. And because she often read old diary entries while making new diary entries, this process would repeat itself, again and again. Read, edit, forget; read, edit, forget – until the past itself was edited.

  Such primitive forms of memory manipulation obviously have their limitations. They lack the ability to do anything about traumatic memories or influence the realm of the unconscious. But even memory manipulation of this level has the potential to change one’s present life in dramatic fashion.

  Susan Bring is the prototypical memory mosaicer. People who remember Susan when she was young would never have imagined she would live such a glamorous and peculiar life: graduating from Berkeley Law and becoming a successful lawyer; becoming a famously witty columnist for the New York Times; suddenly leaving behind her life in Manhattan one day, when she was on top of the world, to live in Tibet for five years; and coming back from Tibet to become, of all things, a voodoo witch. They couldn’t have imagined this because the young Susan Bring was an ungifted child, unable to even do the simplest arithmetic; who, until she was twelve, couldn’t read what was in her textbooks or write what was on the chalkboard; an introverted Black girl with B.O. who was picked on by the other students.

  It was Father Bryan who changed Susan’s life. Objectively speaking, what Father Bryan did for her was nothing special. He merely taught the alphabet to a girl who at the time couldn’t read or write, and preached to her about the importance of keeping a daily journal.

  “There are two types of lives people can live,” he said. “The kind of life in which one writes in a diary every day, and the kind of life in which one doesn’t. They’re as different as a country with a history and one without. So, Susan, what life will you choose?”

  Susan Bring chose the former. But, unlike others, she also chose to edit her diary from time to time. Having been shown the magic of letters, she read furiously at the library, as though she were trying to make up for all the lost time as an illiterate. And as a result, she learned about herself and about the language of others. And the more secrets she uncovered from reading, the more she felt embarrassed about her past and how ignorant she had been. That embarrassment overshadowed her current life. She wanted to live boldly. She realized that a person’s existence was defined by their past. So she changed her past. And it was effective. With each embarrassing memory she erased, her personality became more confident, more outgoing, more daring. Slowly, she began tampering more and more with her memories. Propelled by the will to forget and the natural human tendency for forgetfulness, Susan’s edited diary little by little came to define what she remembered.

  Through much trial and error, and with the help of chemistry and modern medicine, and by appropriating mystical secrets from Tibet and various secret drugs used in voodoo, Susan Bring created the very first prototype for a memory mosaicer.

  For the next twenty to thirty years after Susan Bring, the techniques of memory mosaicers developed rapidly. The techniques used by second-generation memory mosaicers were varied and complex, but with that variety and complexity came danger. Modern mosaicers are not satisfied with just forgetting or modifying one or two small memories like their predecessors were. They treat memories like files on a computer, deleting, embellishing, modifying, and syncing them. Obviously, this is a dangerous game. And that’s because for memory modification to be possible in such a short amount of time, a person has to attempt terribly risky procedures and experiments. Invasive surgery, taking chemicals, using the mystical arts – they’ve tried it all.

  The drugs that mosaicers use when they delete or modify memories have not been explored scientifically and it is hard to know what side effects they might have. They started with drugs like LSD and cocaine, then moved on to making cocktails from drugs like those used to treat neurological disorders and depression (such as Janax, Penzolfen, and Syndrofoam), heart disease, and even colds. They also attempt recklessly risky experiments without any scientific evidence or reasoning. Some experimen
ted with acupuncture to shut off parts of the mind, and others experimented with applying ultrasonic and electromagnetic waves to specific parts of the brain. Needless to say, all of their ridiculous experiments failed and many of the test subjects either died from brain hemorrhages or became paralyzed.

  There’s no way to confirm the effects of these secret techniques, which spread by word of mouth between mosaicers – and even if one could prove their efficacy, the question of whether they are safe would still remain. The only way to know is to try it for oneself. Even self-hypnosis, which is generally believed to be the safest of memory moasicer methods, lacks expert approval.

  Because of all this, there have been many unfortunate incidents involving second-generation memory mosaicers. One Chilean immigrant, who was trying to rid herself of the memory of her abusive and alcoholic father, killed herself by punching a hole in her head with a mixer blade when she could no longer handle the migraines. A woman on the east coast of the United States, who wanted to erase the memory of being bullied as a child, caused a great tragedy when she pointed her machine gun at a nearby elementary school.

  And in spite of all this, mosaicers say:

  “Living with bad memories is far more fatal, far more dangerous than any potential side effect. And that’s because living with bad memories is hell on earth.”

  Mosaicers manipulate the past and fool themselves. They erase specific memories and rehash the remaining ones. They manufacture the present with new memories, and with that present they reimagine their future. But mosaicers aren’t escapists. On the contrary, they are conquerors. Much like how people use plastic surgery to erase their insecurities, mosaicers are merely modifying the memories that debilitate their reality. Some people might question whether what they are doing is any different from publishing textbooks with revised and distorted histories. And they might have a point. But mosaicers don’t have the luxury to think about the ruin their own fabricated memories, which have nothing to do with the rest of the world, will bring to them.

  Benefiting from the advanced research in neurology, the discovery of drugs that regulate hormones and the brain’s emotional response centers, and the rapid development of the computer industry, third-generation memory mosaicers have evolved into safer creatures than their forebears. And this is the result of the relatively successful integration of brain nerve stimulation with computer programs, the increased effectiveness of chemotherapy, and the widespread realization that you can’t solve everything at once by taking dangerous or destructive measures. Yet in spite of all this progress, there still remains one problem: addiction.

  Memory mosaicers who succeed in obtaining happy memories become addicted to the act of fabricating those happy memories. This happens because their manifest present and future always seem unhappy in comparison to their glorified past. Whereas their past might be filled with glory and praise, their present and future are filled with uncertainty and fear. Simply put, they become unsatisfied with their present. And their future always seems downhill in comparison to the past. But because they are unable to do anything about their future or present, they throw their undetermined future to the wayside and turn to editing the past. They completely lose themselves in the past. And little by little, all for the sake of editing more of their past, they began to use again more destructive methods of memory manipulation – methods their predecessors had once used.

  Quite a few memory mosaicers are known to live in South Korea. But no one knows the exact number. What is clear, however, is that the number of them who are experimenting with dangerous and reckless methods is continuing to grow.

  Within the drawers of Cabinet 13, there are eight files of different memory mosaicers. All of those individuals are members of the Red Rose – a local group created for people suffering from the side effects of memory modifications that went wrong. Among its members is a pianist who accidentally erased all her memories relating to the piano, an automobile mechanic who thinks he’s married to his ex-girlfriend from ten years ago, and the miserable priest who ruined his memory so badly that he can’t even differentiate between his own memories and countless confessions he’s heard over the years.

  The group meets once a week on Friday night. I used to participate in the meetings from time to time when I didn’t have any plans. The members of the Red Rose sit in a circle and talk for two hours. Some days they have a lot to say, other days they don’t say anything, and everyone has to sit in awkward silence. But in all honesty, this isn’t unique to the Red Rose. They usually talk about the past they remember, the past they can vaguely recall, and the past that has been modified. They also talk about the fuzzy and dark times that are stuck between one memory and the next. And when the meeting is over, people usually go back to their houses, but sometimes they go to a nearby bar and have a beer. It’s not a particularly enjoyable atmosphere, but neither is it excruciatingly depressing.

  P, the pianist, erased all her memories of the piano. And, because of this, she can no longer play. She forgot what her body remembers. It’s truly very strange. Even when people have amnesia, they don’t tend to forget how to drive a car or swim. So the fact that P, who played the piano since she was three, would one day suddenly lose the ability to play, is quite strange indeed. The way she describes it is that she feels like all of her memories are suspended in midair.

  “None of my memories are connected to each other. There’s a huge, black hole in my head, and all my memories of the piano have been sucked into that hole. The life that I can remember seems so short. It’s probably because everything in my life was connected in some way or another to the piano. The school I attended, the people I met, and all the relationships I made were because of the piano. Aside from my family, I rarely met anyone who wasn’t in some way related to the piano. I studied at a conservatory in the Czech Republic and spent the majority of my life practicing and playing the piano. So now, the majority of my memories are completely empty. A life filled with nothing but the piano… Can you imagine?”

  Thinking that she might regain her memory if she struck a few keys, we once sat her down in front of a piano. But all she did was sit and stare at the piano for an hour, never touching a single key. Finally she turned to us and said, “But I don’t know how to play the piano.”

  Father L can’t differentiate between his own memories and confessions he’s heard. In other words, his memories have become mixed with the memories of all the people who’ve come to him through the years.

  “Confessions are the stories of pained and disgraceful lives. It’s rare for someone to come to me to confess a memory that’s happy and beautiful. Since I’ve lost the ability to discern between my memories and others’ confessions, everything’s gone south. My head’s about to explode with their pained memories. One day it’s the all-too-real memory of a murderer who killed his father, and the next it’s the memory of a prostitute. I even have memories like this one: I’m walking down a dark alleyway one night when three wicked teenage girls appear before me. The girls try to seduce me, saying they’ve always wanted to have sex with a priest. One girl licks my face, and another raises her skirt to reveal her underwear. She asks if I have an erection and begins grabbing at my crotch. I slap one of the girls, but they don’t back off. At that moment, something inside me snaps and I give them what they want. Yes, I have sex with the three girls! O, forgive me Father! And they were minors, too. Did I mention I’m a priest? But I can’t tell whether this is my memory or someone else’s. My head’s a mess and I can’t tell this from that. What if I really did have sex with those girls? How can I be received by our Lord and Savior with such a body?”

  There’s Mr Han, a bachelor and automobile mechanic who thinks he’s married to his ex-girlfriend from ten years ago. Not only does Mr Han think he hasn’t broken up with the woman, he thinks they’ve been happily married for the last ten years.

  “A while back I went to see her. But to my surprise she was living with another man. She even had a kid. Imagine
my shock. Obviously, I told her to come back with me. But she got angry and looked like she had no idea what I was talking about. I’m positive we lived together for ten years in intimacy, but she pretended not to know of any such thing. The traces of her still remain all over my house and body. I can remember every detail of the last ten years. I can tell you what we ate, in what positions we had sex, and even the color of her underwear. We didn’t have kids. She wasn’t able to have them. So we raised a cat instead. It was a Siamese cat name Chestnut, and she loved him so much. I really liked him, too. So I asked her if she remembered the cat we raised together. And she said she was allergic to cat fur.”

  And then there’s Madame Song, the proprietor of a once prosperous brothel in Gangnam who has forgotten everything about the year 1998. As an eventful year, the year 1997 conjures all sorts of memories for Madame Song – the good, the sad, the irritating, the money she lost, as well as the two apartments she bought and the countless bills. But when it comes to 1998, nothing comes to Madame Song’s mind but a single carrot. Stunned by this, we all asked in unison, “A carrot?”

  “Yes.”

  “But why a carrot?”

  “That’s the rub. It’s clear to me that I modified my memory to make 1998 remind me of a carrot, but why I felt the need to do so I cannot remember. I always wonder, ‘Why a carrot?’ I’ve tried everything – cutting carrots, eating carrots, putting carrots on my face – but I can’t remember anything. Why in the world is 1998 a carrot? Why a carrot and not a cucumber or bell pepper or onion? It’s torture not knowing. I don’t even like carrots that much.”

  The members of the Red Rose are tortured by the disappearance of their memories. They want to find their lost memories. But what they’ll find there can never bring them happiness. They erased those memories because they were unhappy ones, because they couldn’t live with those memories anymore. So why do they want to find those painful memories again, those memories they so fervently tried to erase? They want to only because they forgot the reason for their pain. If they did regain their memories, if they did find the origin of the pain they erased, they would probably regret it and try to rid themselves of it again.