The Amnesia Experiment: A Young Adult Dystopian Novel

by Caroline Wei

  There was a tremulous knock on the door, the knock of a mouse. “Your Majesty?”

  “I will be out in a moment,” she said, her voice barely controlled, like that of a water balloon about to burst. I stood there, in my black dress, feeling like a neglected doll, waiting to be hit and thrown across the room by its owner.

  The knock came again. “Your Majesty? King Khari is asking after you. All the—”

  “I said I will be out in a moment!” Mother picked up a high heel from the ground and threw it, hard, at the door. The attendant’s voice was silenced.

  Mother’s anxious pacing led her to her nightstand, where the picture of an olive-toned man stood. She stared at it for a moment before turning it facedown, breathing heavily.

  All the esteemed members of the other nine countries were invited to the Recordati in Niveus, although technically this was called the Recordati II. The original Recordati, the universal Recordati, marked the commemoration of the end of World War III. That was a grand holiday for everyone, regardless of social class.

  “Don’t just stand there, Alle, get ready,” Mother spat, her hand still clenched around the photo, knuckles like snow.

  I bent down to tie my laceless shoes.

  Some holiday this was for Niveus.

  Another knock sounded, and I took a moment to admire the bravery of the attendant.

  “Your Majesty, please? Could you at least tell me what to say to your guests?”

  “Tell them if you don’t stop talking, I will personally find the longest, thickest rope in the country, make a noose out of it, and tie it like a bow around your neck, then drag you into the ballroom and make you swing from the chandelier.” Mother’s heels clicked aggressively on the ground as she made her way to the door, opening it violently to meet a moon-faced man in a pale blue tuxedo, a silver name tag pinned to his chest. He opened his mouth, then closed it, then opened it again.

  I felt sorry for him.

  “Well? Don’t stand there like a fool. I come and go as I please,” Mother said, every word oozing venom. “Lead the way. Come along, Alle.”

  I hurried after her, my frilly dress swishing around my calves. The grand ballroom was where the Recordati was held annually, with long banquet-style tables laden with delicacies from around the world. There were cherry-filled vareniki from Thalassius, chocotorta from Viridis, dimsum from Rubrum, and honeyed koeksisters from Flavus, among others. The decorations were all black, or varying shades of it, at least, unlike the original Recordati, with occasional symbols of Niveus.

  Because Mother was never in a good mood at our version of the holiday, I, as a result, was never in a good mood.

  We entered the ballroom, Mother first, in her sweeping ebony gown and white sash, and then me, looking as dinky as a sad toy. Next to Mother, I was never quite intimidating, majestic, or commanding enough.

  The monarchs in the room didn’t bother to curtsy or bow, though some did dip their heads in respect. They were equals to Mother, after all, and could act accordingly, and I thought that was part of the reason Mother hated today so much.

  Oliver was in the room, next to his parents, garbed in charcoal. His hair was messy, uncombed, but he beamed at me.

  Alright, maybe I wasn’t always in a bad mood at these Recordatis.

  Mother smiled brightly at everyone, false as dentures. “I am so glad and deeply honored that all of my guests have chosen to grace Niveus today. Please, enjoy yourselves as we remember together what happened so many years ago.” Or, really, she could have said, “Don’t talk to me, don’t look at me, don’t walk near me, and no, I will not be answering any questions.”

  King Khari, ruler of Flavus, came over immediately to violate those unspoken words, talking urgently to Mother underneath his breath. I heard condolences and beautiful and diplomacy.

  Oliver made his way over to me as I stood by my lonesome, eyeing the cardamom salted caramel pears glistening innocently on the banquet table.

  “This is pretty cool,” he said slyly, his smile flirtatious. He leaned with one elbow on the table, his hair flopping into his eyes.

  “Yes, very cool.”

  “You look real pretty.”

  My heart fluttered. “So do you—ah, handsome, I mean.”

  “What are the chances of us sneaking off like we did last time? When no one’s looking?” he eased closer to me. “I have a mind to take a look at the music room again. There’s a piece in there by Beethoven that I haven’t played yet, since it’s not available in Caesitas. Oh, and there’s also a girl that I haven’t quite won yet, who is also not available in Caesitas.”

  I blushed. “We can’t sneak away.”

  “Why not?”

  “Moth—Her Majesty—will notice. And she’ll punish me afterwards.” A flicker of a maid’s uniform, a flash of freckles, and I knew Yale had entered the room with a troupe of other maids, ready to serve. Mother would double the workload of the maids as my punishment, since I had to serve with them, ever since she found out about Yale’s and my escapades. I didn’t want or need for Yale and the others to work that hard. She was around the same age as me. Still a girl, still growing, still in her childhood. She caught my eye and shot me a grin.

  “C’mon, Al. It’ll be fun. We can slide down the banisters and flip all the paintings upside down and blow in the trumpets. I know you love sliding down banisters.”

  I did. “You and I will both get killed.”

  “It’s not that extreme.” He smiled and slid me a cardamom salted caramel pear. I speared it with a fork and held it to my mouth, savoring its sweetness. He reached out and took my arm, already making for the exit. “Let’s go on an adventure.”

  I tried to resist. “Ollie—”

  “Al…”

  As he pulled gently, I slipped, crashing to my knees, the pear rolling from my hand and making brown, sugary streaks on the perfect, crystal floor. Embarrassment flared in my cheeks, knowing that Mother’s eyes were on me and tomorrow would probably be scrub-the-bathrooms day for the maids.

  “Ollie, look what you did!”

  He got down and tried to wipe up the mess, but it was no use. The caramel was sticky and would need more than napkins to clean effectively.

  Someone bent over me, handing Ollie a damp cloth. “This’ll be better,” a voice said.

  Oliver took the cloth, his eyebrows drawn. “Thanks.”

  The person helped me up, and I curtsied, a little unbalanced. “Prince Malchin.”

  “Princess Alle.” He turned towards Oliver, who was still wiping. “You shouldn’t do that to her, you know.”

  Oliver looked up, annoyed. “What?”

  “Make her do something she didn’t want to do.”

  He flushed. “You know nothing about it!”

  Malchin’s hand came to my elbow, a gesture I wasn’t used to from him. Upon seeing it, Oliver jumped up, his face stormy.

  “What do you think you’re doing?”

  I wanted my head to shrink into my shoulders and into my chest and then to my legs, my feet, my toes.

  “Oliver,” I hissed, feeling Mother’s piercing gaze.

  Malchin lifted his chin, a bit arrogantly, in Ollie’s direction. “Why is it your business?”

  “It’s my business because she’s—” his words cut short at the words he couldn’t say, fuming. “It just is,” he finished.

  “I don’t think that’s valid.”

  My elbow was beginning to burn from his touch.

  “Stop it, you two,” I said, feeling hot. “It was just a little slip.” I cleared my throat. “Thank you for helping me, Malchin.”

  His tanned cheeks deepened with dimples. “I don’t mind. My regrets, for your father, by the way.” His eyes filled with genuine concern. “He was a champion. Brave and true.”

  “Just like you, Alle,” Oliver interrupted hurriedly. “You’re brave and true.”

  I read once that ostriches buried their heads in the sand when they were afraid.

  “Yo
u’re very lovely today, too,” Ollie added. “Just like a princess.”

  “No,” Malchin said, looking at me with something I couldn’t quite decode. “Like a queen.”

  The memory stayed long enough for me to feel my skin simmer. The last thing I saw was Malchin’s chocolate eyes, and then everything disappeared into mist, to be replaced by an older man in a royal military uniform, his hair close cropped, his eyebrows furry.

  “I love you,” he said. Then he smiled, his eyes crinkling.

  I jolted out of the haze, panting. I hadn’t moved from my position from the wall, and I was staring at a confused Clarice and a troubled Victoria.

  “You’ve been in the memories for a full thirty minutes,” Victoria said, rubbing her hands on her pants nervously. She looked up at the unforgiving sky, then back at me, then to the cold, iced-over ground. “Nothing’s happened. Clarice and I are thinking that this is all this trial is. Separation.”

  My skin tightened at Clarice’s name, and I threw a hot glare in her direction, trying to maintain a facade. Inside, the pain was stronger than the anger, threatening to break the skin of my fake bravery.

  “We can beat separation, can’t we?” Victoria asked, no doubt trying to distract me.

  “Sure. We’ve faced worse.” I stood up, feeling the bones creaking within me. We’d all gotten so sickeningly thin, gaunt and drained from a lack of nutrients. “They’re not trying to kill us this time. And you know what that tells me?” Memories of my mother and inadequacy and throne rooms pieced together in my mind, like a puzzle.

  “What?” Clarice asked, her voice broken, like felled wood.

  I ignored her, talking to Victoria. “I’m a princess out there,” I stated. It felt a little odd for me to say it, even now. “And they’re trying to test my worth.”

  37

  Carlen

  I tried to get myself alone. It was always the worst when people attempted conversation with me. Useless, empty, dead.

  There was a tiny ding sound in my ear, so quiet it was nearly impossible to hear. A voice buzzed on, sharp and too harsh, too close.

  “Your Majesty?”

  “It’s not working,” I said through my teeth.

  38

  Yale

  Oliver and I had worked out an arrangement where we would video call each other every Thursday evening, which was usually when I had my hours off every week. Mostly, it was us watching the Amnesia Experiment together. Me in the maids’ quarters, in my rickety, rag-a-tag bunk, staring at Amelia’s junky touch screen, and Oliver in his office on his newest-model computer.

  Occasionally, his voice would rattle over the signal, saying things like “No” and “That’s disgusting, what they’re doing to them” and “I hope they find shelter soon.” But the Experiment had lost its glow. International TV wasn’t even really talking about it anymore, and though I still feared for Alle’s safety, she wasn’t doing much but sitting around and talking, never getting too far from the metal wall. For a whole half hour the footage was just Alle’s faraway eyes as she lapsed into her memories, which I wished more than anything I could remember with her. What was she seeing, behind that shroud of distance? What flurried through her dreams?

  I had no doubt in my mind that Dr. Hernandez was about to get executed. She’d failed to meet the queen’s demands of stopping the memories from happening, and failing to meet any of the queen’s demands was a death sentence.

  “How are things in Niveus?” Oliver asked, his voice crackling through the touch screen audio quality.

  “The same,” I replied. “Something out of the ordinary happened yesterday, though. I dusted a vase.”

  He laughed. I so liked his laugh. He needed to do it more.

  “How spectacular. I’m sure you had lots of fun.”

  “Oh, it was too fun for me to control myself. I went crazy, swishing my duster up and down, up and down.”

  Again, his laugh. Then, “Anything about Ichiro, Meiyu, and Malaya?”

  I still wasn’t used to him addressing them without their titles, but I had to remind myself again and again that Oliver was a king. Still, he wasn’t even in his twenties yet.

  “They’ve gotten worse. Dr. Hernandez is telling the public that it’s exertion.”

  “Surely no one believes her.”

  “You’d be surprised,” I said sadly.

  “I visited Rubrum yesterday, just a quick stop. The steward of the throne is a good man. I’m not worried, but all of Rubrum’s citizens are holding rallies. There are boycotts against products shipped from Niveus.”

  Something like satisfaction bloomed in my chest. For once, the queen should have a taste of her own medicine.

  I knew there were certain places in the palace that were bugged, but I didn’t think there were any mics in the vicinity. Still, I whispered when I spoke. “Carlen made a bad move, crossing Rubrum.”

  “Let’s hope it’s her downfall.” Oliver’s voice was as hard as diamond.

  “We’re nearing the end,” I said.

  “Yes, we are.”

  Tears threatened to burn out of my eyes, lava coating my throat, scorching my skin, leaking onto my collarbone. “I really miss her.”

  “Me, too.”

  39

  Malchin

  I did all I could to provide for those on my side of the wall. Adisa, Maria, Oliver, and the toddler. All armlets that hadn’t previously been broken now shattered, including mine. We were all desperate to get away from the cold, the hunger, the thirst. Most other signatures had been lost in the avalanche, except for Adisa’s lie detector, which Alle had uncovered and used to unmask the murderer.

  Clarice.

  I still couldn’t quite reconcile her with Anna’s brutalized corpse. I was glad Clarice was on Alle’s side, otherwise Adisa would snap.

  The wall towered above us, reaching to a height where it looked like it was touching the clouds. Occasionally I heard snippets of words from the other side, but they were dampened, muffled, like someone was speaking through wool cloth.

  I stood, regarding the signatures we had, lying on the snow. I was glad of our options.

  Maria’s signature was a pack of tiny pink pellets which I had tried to eat. It made one feel full to the stomach, and so far, the feeling hadn’t worn off. Adisa, Oliver, and the toddler, named Ria, were chewing on theirs.

  Oliver, the little boy, had an armlet that produced a pair of silver glasses. When he put them on, his eyes widened.

  “I can see so far,” he said. I smiled and tried to congratulate him as sincerely as I could. Supersight wasn’t going to help us at this point.

  Ria’s signature was a sphere of squishy putty. I wrapped my fist around it and squeezed, and water oozed out of unseen pores. Fresh water, I found out. I passed it around to the others.

  I hoped Alle, Victoria, and Clarice were having the same luck, but then I remembered all of them had used their signatures already. Alle had found hers in the snow, but the slippers weren’t exactly going to be survival tools. Victoria’s was still lost. My stomach tightened as I remembered Clarice’s metallic rope—the one she must have used to tie Alle’s noose.

  My own signature was something that resembled a megaphone, shiny in the sunlight. I still couldn’t figure out what it was for, curiosity chewing at me.

  “Malch, Malch.” Ria tugged at my pant leg, her wide eyes imploring. My heart softened at the sight of her. “Are we going to be okay?”

  I wanted to lie to her. I would lie to any other normal child, any other innocent three-year-old. But Ria was different. She’d seen far more than any other little girl her age had, too soon before her time.

  “I don’t know,” I said, the words heavy with burden.

  40

  Alle

  I cried in my sleep, trying not to let the others hear. In the daytime, I ate, I drank melted snow. I listened to Victoria prattle on. I tried to call up hate for Clarice, intense anger, burning detestation, but it was harder than before. I was losin
g the will to live. It was so tiring. On and on and on. Trial, trial, another trial, oh hey look it’s another trial.

  Eventually Victoria got mad at me.

  “You can’t just sit there complaining,” she said, even though most of the complaining was done in my head. “You’re being useless.”

  Her words would have stung, in a time before.

  Instead, I spent most of my time living in memories. They came like a torrent, one after the other, uncontrollable, and when I woke from them, Victoria would be staring at me like I’d done something wrong. I sensed jealousy. Maybe indignation.

  Often, I thought of Malchin. He came to me, twelve years old, fourteen, once when he was three. Red uniform, raven hair, smiling eyes. And then, a jump in the years, when he was seventeen. His shoulders filled out, his skin turned golden, and his dimples deepened. He liked books. He liked art. He liked crossword puzzles and playing with his little sister, Malaya. He was the heir to the throne and good at it, too. Excellent in diplomacy, in warfare, in government surveillance and strategy. In the older years, he rarely spoke to me and rarely met with me, but when he did, he made my knees a little weak. Even then.

  Oliver was there, too, the whisper of a person I used to know. He was a banterer, clever and whimsical. When he wasn’t glued to his piano, he liked to go outside and play a game that wasn’t so popular anymore, lost to the lore of pre-World War III era.

  “It’s called baseball,” he said, swinging a long, rather bulbous-looking wooden stick behind him.

  His parents, King Wilbur and Queen Kalauni, liked me. I felt their approval like radiating rays from the sun, and it felt good. Different from what I was used to.

  “You’re such a wonderful girl,” Queen Kalauni had said to me once. She was so beautiful, the kind of beautiful that people made statues of, painted, bottled in a jar, preserved in museums. I was wonderful, wonderful, wonderful.

  My mother shifted in and out of remembering, always in some sort of gown, always lethal, always some form of anxious or angry. And Yale, whose laugh was like summer rain. She and I would defy Mother in every way possible, and I took a breathless pleasure in it.