The Amnesia Experiment: A Young Adult Dystopian Novel

by Caroline Wei

  The even rarer memories were of my father. He looked so solemn, every bit a commanding, stern king. But really, he was a softie. He stole cookies and he broke glass goblets, he tested Mother’s patience and made her smile. All of my memories of him were of love. It glowed from my every remembrance of his presence.

  That was part of the crying in my sleep. Not so much the stress and the sorrow the Trials had brought me, though that certainly was related.

  It was so much lost love, from a life before.

  41

  Oliver

  All of the world was united against Niveus to end the Experiment now. I had made sure of it. War was brewing, and though I didn’t like war, I hated the Experiment even more.

  Adella Hernandez phoned me continuously, no doubt scared as a plucked chicken. I had heard Carlen was going to get her any time now, and it seemed like she was trying to prove herself.

  “Your Majesty, you must understand, testing the princess through the Experiment is in our Constitution,” she said.

  “Yeah, through an amendment your queen made,” I said, no longer bothering with titles and empty politeness. “You cannot simply stand there and expect me not to fight.”

  Later, I just didn’t pick up the phone.

  My advisors were going crazy. Father was never as reckless as me, but then again, Father had never been in love with a girl who was stuck in a prison that threatened her life at all times. Not to mention, Alle’s obvious feelings that had developed for Malchin made me crazy uncomfortable. I had never truly liked Malchin, but now those feelings bordered on hatred. A guilty part of me liked the fact that Trial Five was a gigantic wall between them.

  That Thursday, I watched the broadcasts with Yale again. The wall had been up for forever, and all that was on Alle’s face was pain, 24/7. The camera pivoted to Malchin’s side of the wall occasionally (and unexcitingly) but mostly the focus stayed on Alle. The Experiment was about her, after all.

  But she had changed.

  I had changed.

  And I was afraid of what would happen because of that.

  42

  Malchin

  I toyed with my signature for a really long time, banging it against the ground, trying to talk into it, trying to disassemble it. Nothing gave.

  Eventually, though, I figured it out when I placed the megaphone against the wall, pressing the button that would usually allow my voice to be amplified. It wasn’t a megaphone, though, as I’d forgotten. It just looked like one, and once I pressed the button, a fat circle, the size of a person’s face, got sucked out of the wall. The perfect circle of metal lay gleaming on the ground while Adisa and Maria gaped, the children between them.

  “Alle?” I called through the hole.

  43

  Alle

  I heard Malchin’s voice, and at first, I thought it was a memory. I was having them every day, constantly, but it was still like missing gigantic parts of a puzzle. I didn’t have all the pieces.

  There was a hole in the wall, and Malchin’s face was in it. Relief flooded through me, and I squeezed my face in as far as it would go, cold metal pressing against skin.

  “Malchin—”

  He leaned forward and kissed me without warning. His lips were soft, welcome, and my legs turned to jelly underneath me. I gasped, but his lips came again, and this time I kissed him back, with every particle of love I had inside me. And there were a lot of particles.

  We were both breathing heavily by the time we separated.

  “That was the first time I made out with someone while stuck in a wall,” Malchin commented, grinning. Tears rushed into my eyes, and I laughed.

  “I love you,” I said.

  His eyes fell, and he bit his lip. His glorious, beautiful lip. “Don’t say that.”

  “But I do,” I said, desperate. Say it back, say it back, beloved, say it back.

  “You don’t remember everything.” Was he blushing? “I can’t take advantage—I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have kissed you.”

  “I wanted to kiss you,” I said fervently. “You’re not taking advantage of anything.”

  He stayed silent, then ducked out of view. I stepped back, and before long, five more round circles had appeared until there was a proper doorway. Maria, Adisa, Oliver, and the young girl ran over to our side, running to embrace Victoria and me. Adisa sent death stares in Clarice’s direction every few seconds or so, anger burning off of him in waves. I just tried not to think about Clarice, but it was hard to stay furious at her when she sat on the ground, tucked into herself, not saying anything. And I couldn’t help but remember the Clarice who had helped me in the old Cube, the one who stood by my side.

  Malchin stepped through last, smiling faintly at me, and then showed us rose-colored pills the size of a grain of rice. I swallowed one, and immediately, substance and warmth filled my belly, leaving me content. Apparently, the little girl, Ria, had a signature that produced a never-ending supply of water.

  Victoria was overjoyed and started preparing a little feast for us, cooing at Ria and ruffling Oliver’s messy hair. She took charge instantaneously, and I crawled over to sit next to Malchin.

  “I need to tell you,” I started, but then stopped. I wanted to tell Malchin how much I had come to realize what he meant to me, but clearly he felt guilty. He wasn’t ready for this.

  The ground shivered beneath us, and I tensed. Malchin put out a hand instinctively to steady me, then drew back. The snow whispered against each other, the wind anxious, blowing a little quicker.

  Another quake.

  “Malch,” Ria cheeped.

  “Hush, little one,” Malchin said kindly. “It’s going—”

  A violent crack threw us all off balance, and I realized the ground was tilted sideways.

  “Is this Trial Six?” Adisa shouted.

  There was no time to answer him. The soil trembled, rattled, moving faster and faster until it was like riding a spinning top. Oliver fell over and hit his head, hard, on a rock.

  Victoria grabbed my arm, her eyes flashing like steel. There was a diamond in her hand, beautiful, no bigger than a pinky nail.

  “Alle, do you trust me?” she shouted over the groaning of the earth.

  “What?” I asked, eyes wide.

  “Eat this!” she said, shoving the diamond in my face. It caught the sunlight, sparkling, blinding me. The ground shook, and I crashed into Victoria. She was growing frantic. “EAT IT!”

  “Wh—” The moment my mouth opened, Victoria stuffed the diamond between my lips. It was cold on my tongue, hard as marble. Victoria clamped one hand over my mouth and used her available fingers to push at a spot on my throat, making me swallow. The diamond cut a path to my stomach, freezing my intestines along the way.

  “Why did you do that?” I asked.

  Her expression was a storm, a hurricane, a cyclone, eating the Kraken. “Because it’s about to end,” she whispered.

  Chills pricked up on my skin.

  “Congratulations,” a monotone voice announced. “You have finished the Amnesia Experiment.”

  I turned around and saw Oliver, the little boy, lying in a pool of his own blood, as the ground stilled. His face was snow, his limbs like that of a doll’s. Unexplainable anger welled up in my chest. He had been so close.

  There was the sound of something shattering, and then the invisible walls of the Cube fell down, curtains being drawn back, splintering the permafrost landscape, revealing a blue sky and grassy hills, warmth shining from a small sun. I thought I saw a tiny town in the distance, smoke rising into the horizon.

  From all directions, people rushed at us. Large, bulky men and women, dressed in blinding white uniforms with snowflakes on their chests, holding rifles, tasers swinging from their silver belts. One woman grabbed me by the arm while another chained my wrists together with handcuffs.

  “Just a precaution, Your Highness,” she told me, looking at me kindly. “It’s temporary.”

  I gaped at her.

&n
bsp; Malchin struggled against his captors but couldn’t fight off three of the men at once. He glowered at them as he got handcuffs, too. All of the white-garbed people stepped over little Oliver like he was nothing, taking Adisa, Maria, and Ria. The only people who didn’t get manacles were Victoria and Clarice.

  Victoria and Clarice.

  Two of the people went down on one knee before Victoria, saluting her. “Your Majesty,” they said. And then to Clarice, who was still pale and had dark crescents under her eyes. “Dr. Ironstrike.”

  I kicked at the woman holding me captive. “What is this? Victoria, what is this?” But the truth was becoming all too clear. Victoria had lied.

  She walked over to me as I struggled, feeling the hot onslaught of tears. But that would not happen. I had cried too much already. She slid one finger underneath my chin, and I could see it now, the familiarity, my first conviction.

  “My dear,” she said, tilting her head. She was all arrogance, all satisfaction. When she looked at me, her eyes were transcendent, filled with a nebula of things I didn’t know.

  She’d had her memories all this time.

  “I was always destined to win.” She smiled, pausing for time to catch up, and then turned, where a white helicopter was coming down from the sky, touching down, the doors sliding open for her. Clarice followed her like a scolded dog.

  Obscenities rose in my throat, ready to come spilling out. But then a wave of dizziness crashed over me, powerful, an ocean’s pull and release. The dizziness turned into pain, and the pain magnified, growing, becoming larger and larger until it was a part of me, taking up my entire being. A tsunami in a cup.

  “Everything will be okay now,” the woman behind me said, like she was trying to comfort me. “When you come to, you’ll remember everything.”

  44

  Oliver

  She fell over limply on the screen of the computer, finally given permission to access her mind.

  I stood up from my chair, my palms pressed flat to the table.

  My heart felt like a bomb.

  45

  Malchin

  Black and white and yellow and speckled, roaring sounds, train lights, blaring, blaring, typhoons and hurricanes and people walking on the streets and cars crashing, again and again that moment replayed BOOM BOOM BOOM all in my head thudding through my blood and oh IT HURT IT HURT IT HURT

  46

  Yale

  I was crying, touch screen in hand, the sheets of my bed drawn up to my mouth, already soaked through. I was crying and I didn’t know how to stop, I was praying oh please, oh please, crying and I didn’t know how to stop—

  47

  Carlen

  After the War, everything in international relations was renamed using Latin. Our countries, our heritage, our government plans. Though not Latin, even the royal family’s last names had been changed to be representative of their nation. The world was revitalized.

  Victoria was exactly the name I needed for the Experiment.

  48

  alle

  I was in the middle of a dark room. There was a spotlight shining on a pedestal with a pair of glasses, pearly frames and wide lenses. I walked over to pick them up, sliding them onto the bridge of my nose.

  I opened my eyes.

  49

  Malchin

  There was a pair of chunky blue sunglasses basking in an unknown light source.

  “Hello?” I called, but there was no answer, not even an echo.

  I took the glasses.

  50

  Alle

  The first thing I saw was a baby, swathed in pink fabric, her cheeks like bread dough and apples, saliva crystallizing on her lips. Then there was a woman with messy blonde hair and blue eyes in a hospital gown, her smile like lightbulbs on her face, and a broad-shouldered man with his hand on her shoulder. When the baby cried out, I was not the baby, I was not the mother and her joy, I was not the father and his pride, I was happiness defined.

  Fireworks made up my being as I hovered over the child, watching her lifting her eyelids slowly, teasing, like a butterfly. Cake and confetti blurred in my vision, and nursery rhymes filled my ears. This girl was going to have an amazing life, the best life the world could offer her. I was sure of it.

  ~.~.~.~.~

  There was a storm outside, one that shook the walls, making the candelabras shiver, the carpets exhale and inhale. A door banged somewhere in the palace, and I was fear, nesting inside a little girl with brown pigtails, a scarlet ribbon clutched in her chubby hands.

  “My King, my Queen!” a man and woman barged into the room, trampling on the velvet rugs, the woman holding a snowy lump in her arms. “Please forgive our intrusion, but there was a baby left outside in this weather. What would you have us do?”

  I bent towards the direction of curiosity as the little girl stood up. Hands wrapped around her middle as she was brought into the lap of the mother.

  “Give her here,” she said, and the child was nestled right next to the girl, her bright red hair contrasting against her white cheeks. An explosion of affection wiped out what was left of the fear.

  “Thank you,” the father said in his rumbly voice. “Mimi, Archibald, thank you. Please, go give yourselves a break, get some hot cocoa. It’s Christmas Eve, after all.”

  Fast forward, then rewind, and time was doing backflips and handstands, stretching on its back, sprinting towards a finish line that kept moving further and further away. I was joy, then I was pain, then I was sorrow and shock and anxiety and loneliness. There was a lot of loneliness.

  Alle, at fourteen years old, was a very uncertain teenager. I was insecurity most of the time, laced into her petticoats, echoing in her steps, bleeding into her letters, and scrawled on her face every time she talked to her mother, who had changed from sweetwater to ice.

  Occasionally the insecurity was cut through with excitement, with happiness, and it was always associated with a boy and a piano, and sometimes a long sleek banister. The redheaded girl was a constant companion, and I felt like a holiday whenever those two broke the rules.

  But loneliness.

  But confusion.

  But closed doors and unanswered questions and a missing father and a childhood that should have been, could have been, would have been.

  Malchin entered like radiance in a void, like a starburst galaxy in the midst of the unknown. He was very handsome, there was that. I was girlish pleasure and curiosity, and then, oftentimes, guilt whenever Oliver was around.

  I was horror. The mother’s youth had morphed from sunflower yellow to glacier white, her eyes turned freezing, and sometimes, in Alle’s dreams, she would hear screaming from the dungeons many levels below her bedroom. She would say hello to a servant and then find them gone the next day. She would constantly fear for Yale’s life, she would beg for mercy from a cold throne, she would be an inch and her mother would be a mile.

  There were forbidden rooms in that palace, walls and floors and doors her eyes were kept from. Her mother’s secrets wreathed the place like decorations that could never be touched.

  Soon after Alle’s seventeenth birthday, the memories stopped, like a breath that was cut short. And then I was nothing at all.

  ~.~.~.~.~

  I woke up in heaven.

  Or, at least, what felt like heaven. The bed underneath me was feather soft, such a contrast to the hard, icy ground I had been sleeping on in the Cube.

  My joints were unoiled door hinges when I sat up. Light spilled out of an open window to my right, lazy yellow curtains throwing refractions across the room. A snow globe sat on a pale birch wardrobe to my left, next to a stack of dusty books and a scarf. Slowly, creakily, I got out of bed, taking note of a messy desk, a jar of broken pencils, and an array of shoes, from gardening boots that looked mostly unused to a pair of worn ballroom slippers. I had just noticed a blinking red camera above me when the door swung open.

  “How are you liking your old room?”

  Victoria—no,
my mother—stood in the entryway, decked out in a long white robe, a crown sitting casually on her braided hair. She smirked as I stared at her, expecting anger, fury, hurt, or betrayal, perhaps.

  I didn’t feel any of those things, though. I was just sad.

  “Hello,” I said softly.

  Mother closed the door behind her and started taking a tour of the bedroom a forgotten princess used to inhabit, sifting through the papers on my desk, running a finger across the curtains.

  “So,” she said, her voice saturated with satisfaction, “you know what it’s like to lose now.”

  “I lost a long time ago, Mother. A thousand times over.”

  She turned around to look at me, her eyes hard. “Oh?”

  “Why did you hate me so much?”

  There was a moment of silence. Then, “Apologize.”

  “I’m sorry.” The words came so naturally and unexpectedly I was surprised. “Wait, I—”

  “Close the window and be useful, Alle, why don’t you.”

  My feet moved, as if pulled by strings, towards the window, where I latched it closed, pulling the curtains shut. Alarm buzzed in my body, so palpable I felt like I was being electrocuted.

  “Very good.” Mother gave a nod, then patted me on the head like a pet. “Everything will go according to plan, my dear, you’ll see.”

  Shivers ran all up and down my arms. “What have you done?”

  “This was always a part of my design. My victory has only begun, princess. Dr. Ironstrike and your own special maids will come to prepare you for this evening’s festivities in just a moment, and that’s where you’ll see the culmination of everything you’ve ever feared.”