by J. P. Smythe
I tell him that I remember being a child. He nods as if that’s progress and he asks me to tell him more. But all I know is that I was. I was myself but smaller, and I was cared for.
I absolutely remember that I was cared for.
I remember that I perhaps used to sleep badly. It’s less a specific memory of why, but of what used to wake me up (or maybe of whatever it was that used to keep me from sleeping)—but I did have trouble sleeping at one time. That’s over now. This—waking up when I do, when I want to, feeling fine, sleeping safely—is the only truth worth considering. Now when I sleep, I don’t wake up until it’s morning, until that alarm rings out—when I hear the sound of birds and insects and then Gaia’s voice. I pass the day and then it’s evening again, the same as the night before. I put my head down, I shut my eyes, and I go to sleep. They tell us to go over what we’ve done that day, to think about what’s happened and who we are. I do this, and it never takes long before I’m asleep.
And then I am awake again.
Every morning the room is exactly the same as it was the morning before. I think of it as being home, my home. This place is all that I have.
I dream, but when I wake up I can’t remember what exactly it was that I dreamed—just the feeling that I’ve been somewhere else, that I was somewhere else, doing something that wasn’t this. That I was a different person.
At breakfast, I’m with three people I’ve sat with before. We all say hello and we introduce ourselves because we’re bad with names. There are so many people to meet and so much to remember. And memories seem slippery, like they’re hard to cling onto. You have to really try. You have to say names under your breath, until they properly take hold.
“I’m Cassie,” one girl says. She’s younger than me by a few years—pretty, but with a look of permanent confusion on her face. Almost everything she says is like a question, lifting up at the end of sentences. “You’re Chan?” I nod. “I remember you,” she says, “from before. You’re new here, right?”
“I don’t know how long you have to be here before you’re not new anymore,” one of the other diners says. His name is Tom, and he’s enormous, aggressive, bearded (and it’s scraggly even though they cut our hair for us—it grows quickly on him, I think). “I’m still new to some people and I’ve been here for months now. Longer.” He scratches at his face through the hair while he thinks. “I don’t remember.” We are told to not worry about things that we don’t remember; that they don’t matter, not in the grand scheme of things. That’s Doctor Gibson’s philosophy. We’re here now.
I think: But where were we before?
“Anyway. New details this week. That’s good. That’s what I’ve been thinking about. Where I’d like to be working. I’d like to get something inside. I’ve been learning programming, which is good. That’s a job I would like when I’m out of here.” Tom scratches as if he’s got lice. He needs to have his beard shaved, but they only do that every few days. Hair itches when it’s growing back in, I know. I don’t know why I know that. “Gibson says we should have a job that is practical, you know, because we can get a placement if we have a skill.”
“That’s what we should focus on?” Cassie asks, or says. One or the other. She doesn’t let anybody take the reins afterward. “Because I’ve been thinking about art, you know? That might be something that I could do?”
“That’s hard,” Tom says. “It’s not practical. To paint, you know. Do you have a viewpoint? Do you have something to say?”
“I think I do?”
I push my food around in its bowl: cereal, brightly colored and so sweet it hurts my teeth. They cleaned my teeth a few weeks ago—sat me in a chair, sedated, and blasted away the dirt on my teeth with this precision laser held in the shaking hand of a dentist who didn’t seem entirely sure about his job, like he was too young or too old or just not trained enough. My gums still hurt. Cold food, warm food, sweet food: It seems as if everything makes my mouth ache.
“You’ve got to be sure. It’s hard. That’s what Doctor Gibson says.”
“I should get a proper job when I leave here?”
“Yeah, for certain. Something serious.”
Every conversation here is the same, I think. They sound the same. They start the same, end the same, drift off with no sense that anything’s finished. Everything is in progress.
The other boy at the table doesn’t say anything or even look at the rest of us. He has stubble on his head and the red fuzz of it on his face—a beard, or the beginnings of one. It’s nothing like Tom’s though, which is patchy. This one is even. He stares down at his bowl just as I do—lifting the spoon, letting the milk run off it onto the grains. Circles of pink and green swim in the white. I catch him staring at me, trying not to let me see. But he looks and then he looks away. We both let Tom and Cassie talk, and they go on and on until the bell rings, and then we walk to our classes.
My stomach rumbles because I didn’t eat.
I ask Gibson what I should do for a job.
“You think about that?”
I tell him that everybody else does.
“You don’t strike me as somebody who cares what others think,” he says. “Do you have any desire about what you want to do?” I don’t say anything. That’s the easiest way to get the conversation moving if you want it to, if you want to know what Gibson’s angling toward when he asks you a question that he doesn’t really expect you to have an answer for. “So there’s working with your hands or your head. Either of those seem like something you’d enjoy doing?”
Head, I tell him.
“I don’t know. You’re pretty athletic,” he replies, “maybe that’s in your favor. Strong as well.” I don’t ask him how he knows that because I don’t care. “You’ll work it out. We’ll work it out together. You believe that, don’t you?”
I do, I say. He makes a note of that. I think he’s watching how fast I reply; what my face does when I reply. I don’t know why he would care.
“Tomorrow, I’ve got another test for you. You feel ready for one?”
I do, I say. Of course.
“Good. Because I think we should step things up a little, see some real progress.” He smiles. Smiles make you trust somebody. Smiles are easy to understand.
The test begins the same way the previous one did. A warden leads me to one of the shops in the town. This is where they sell food that comes from the cities. We earn money through working and then we spend it here. Commerce, they say, is a lesson in itself. He stands me outside the shop and he says that I’m to go inside and buy myself something. It doesn’t matter what. I can choose. He gives me a card loaded with money. I ask him how much money.
“Your choice,” he says. “You buy whatever you think you can pay for.” He stands back and folds his arms across his chest and he watches as I walk forward. There’s no direct sunlight in this part of the town because we’re inside what used to be a mall and there’s a roof over us. There’s a huge entrance at one end, and they keep all the doors and windows open at all times. The air outside might be nearly too hot to bear, but they need ventilation—that’s what they say. The ventilation lets the wind from outside in, and it brings sand with it that whips around into shoes and eyes and hair. The shops are different. They’re air-conditioned, cool and welcoming—a respite. It makes you want to open their doors.
“Good morning,” the shopkeeper says. I smile at him. “You have a look around,” he tells me, and he whistles something—a song I’ve heard before, in this shop. “You mind if I put some music on?” He doesn’t wait for me to answer. The sound system in the shop turns up, some old song. I don’t know instruments. Some people here learn them, play them, write songs, play in the band that performs every Sunday evening in front of the center. The song jangles. And your bird can sing, the singer goes. The shopkeeper sings along.
I look at the shelves: pastries, the scent of chocolate wafting from them. I love that smell. It reminds me of something that I don’t rememb
er. In the corner of the room, a whirring fan; a counter for the shopkeeper to stand behind; expensive items on rails and racks: clothes, shoes. More expensive still: technology, tablets and drones. And then, a locked cabinet—a new-model striker, a knife. I recognize it. I feel like I know it.
“Any idea what you’re after?” the shopkeeper asks. I think I recognize him. He’s a warden, I’m sure. Working here on his days off, or maybe the other way around.
I tell him that I’m not sure.
“When you are . . .” he says, and the sentence ends like that—trailing off.
I find a shirt. It reminds me of something from before. Memories like this, they’re like a knot in my gut—I don’t know where they come from or when, but there’s something about them, an echo deep inside me. This one has a hood. I am drawn to these things—something to pull over my head, to cover my eyes. It feels like something I’ve worn before. I look at the rest of the shelves and the memories that feel like they’re trying to surface. Everything here feels like I should remember it.
“That’s nice,” he says. He’s watching me touch the shirt with the hood, watching me take it from the hanger and pull it around me, and discover that it fits me. They said to buy anything.
I tell him that I want this. He smiles.
“You want to wear it now?” he asks.
I do. He reaches over and finds the tag, and he keys the price into his tablet.
“Got a card?” I hand it over, and he scans it. He frowns, scans it again. “There’s not enough funds here,” he says. “I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to keep this.” He reaches over and pulls the hoodie from my back, yanking my arms out. He puts it on the counter. “Maybe don’t try to spend money you don’t have in my shop, okay?”
I apologize. He puts the top on the counter, right in front of me, and he coughs.
“Excuse me,” he says. He coughs harder, and then he covers his mouth, and he walks to the doorway that leads to the back of the shop. He coughs, and I hear him cough louder and louder. He can’t see me. I can’t see him. There’s nobody else in the shop. The hoodie is in front of me—teasing me, taunting me.
I don’t pick it up. I leave the shop. Outside, the guard asks how it went.
I didn’t want anything, I tell him. He nods, tightens his lips, and squints his eyes.
“Let’s go,” he says.
Gibson asks about the shop. He’s interested, desperately interested in everything I have to say. He records the conversation and a small camera drone buzzes around the office, zooming in, noting everything.
“Did you not want to take the clothes?”
I say that I didn’t.
“But they were there. And he wouldn’t have known.” I don’t tell Gibson that he would have known, and that’s just the same. And it’s a test. It’s not a real situation. And beyond that, I wouldn’t take them. They aren’t mine to take. The shopkeeper was nice to me, didn’t do anything to bother me. Why should I hurt him in any way? “Did you change your mind about them?”
I say that they weren’t mine to take. That’s stealing.
He nods. “Excellent work,” he tells me. “From where you were to here. You’re really doing so very well.”
That’s the end of the meeting. He smiles at me to let me know that I’m free to leave. But I sit there for just a little while longer in case I think of something else to say.
I notice that somebody’s watching me while I’m sitting in the library in my downtime, sorting the books people have checked out. I go through them and return them to the shelves where they belong. It’s a job, one that I volunteered for. I like the stories: I glance at the backs, trying to feel if they are something that I will fall into or something that will push me away. And then I file them alphabetically back into the racks. The ones that capture me, I sit and I read the first few pages and I try to imagine where the story is going to go, where it’s going to end up. The best ones take you away from where they begin and then back again. They understand that it’s the journey, not the ending. The end can be the same as the beginning, and that’s okay.
The boy watching is pale, his skin the color of dust. We are not allowed to bring dust here, that’s a rule. Some people clean and they make sure it stays clean. Dust is skin itself—and hair, and tiny parts of us that we abandon. We shed our skin and grow new skin, like snakes (as I have read). I know him. I saw him at breakfast. It’s been two days, and his hair has grown more. Now it’s a thin red sheen, a glow upon his scalp. He comes up to me when I’m reading a book about myths, things that we used to believe on Earth but now we know aren’t real: vampires, werewolves, mermaids. Lies, all of them.
“Chan,” he says.
He knows my name. I tell him I’m surprised.
“I’ve got a memory for names,” he tells me. “My name is Jonah.” He holds out his hand to shake mine; his skin is somehow colder than I thought it would be. It’s nice. Everything here is so hot all the time, and he’s not.
I have a feeling that I’ve known him. Like the items in the shop. There’s something in the past. But as Gibson says, that doesn’t matter. What matters is the truth of being here, of being now.
I tell Jonah that it’s nice to meet him.
At dinner, I see Jonah in the corridor, heading to the same room as I am. Dinner takes place across three large rooms, each with multiple tables set out. Tonight Jonah and I share a room, not a table. He stares at his food, pushes it around the plate. Eats some of it, but not all. He looks over at me but doesn’t stare, just a few glances.
As we’re leaving, he hands me a note. We’re shuffling out the door to get back to whatever activity we’re filling our evenings with, and he slips it into my hand. I don’t read it until I get back to my room.
I feel like I know you, it says. Isn’t that strange?
He comes to the library and he hands over a book. He opens the pages to show me a line from it. We appreciate the words. He sits on the floor opposite where I am, where I’m putting the books back and taking my time with it. I give him some books for him to take away. Ones that I have enjoyed.
I ask him about the note, where he thinks he knows me from.
“I can’t say,” he tells me. It’s not a refusal, just that he doesn’t know. I don’t know either. They tell us when we first get here that it’s to be expected—because we’ve been somewhere before, we all know that. Different places, different lives. They say, You are here because there was something terrible that happened to you, something that is beyond your control, something that’s too bad to think about. Trust us, they say; you don’t want to. Sometimes you’ll wonder what it was that happened to you before, they say, what your life was like. There’ll be a gnawing in your gut and a tugging in your mind that you’re forgetting something that should be remembered. Well, trust us: You should not remember it. The truth that is in front of you is all that matters.
When they first woke me up here, they asked me if I remembered my name. It’s the first thing that they said to me. Do you know who you are? I was in a room with devices that I have never seen since and don’t want to see again. The memory of them—dense black boxes whirring away, something medical and evil about them—makes me feel sick. I told them my name and they were happy with that. They asked me my favorite color. I remembered that. They asked me why I was there, and it was gone. I told them that I didn’t remember, that I couldn’t quite reach the memory. Explain that to us, they asked.
So I said it’s a like a fog, and there in the fog are the things that I’m trying to say to you. They are there somewhere, and I can see them, I can nearly catch them, touch them; but they’re running, and faster than I am. That’s how it feels. I know I was somewhere before this, and I know it was a place other than this. But the details? They’re gone. I can’t remember.
I cried and they comforted me. They told me that it would all get better. This is the worst part, they told me. Before this, things were bad for you. Everything after this will be good. You for
get the bad things. Why would you want to remember them?
I wonder if Jonah is my bad thing that I’ve forgotten.
Or maybe if I am his.
Here is my room. I have a space all my own. There are four walls and a door. The door has a lock that I can control, but so can the people who work here, and that’s important. We’re taught it’s for our safety. We understand that, because those are the rules. One door opens and another one shuts. Not literally, but inside us. We are able to protect ourselves, but sometimes we need someone or something else to protect us.
I have pictures on the walls of what this place was like before. It’s sweltering hot outside, so hot that you can only cope for minutes at a time. Your skin will crackle and pulse, your sweat will pool, your lips will dry out, and you’ll suffer. We’re told a healthy fear of death is something worth having. I’ve been out there—because we’re taught that freedom is allowed and isn’t to be feared. But inside is safe—or safer, certainly. So the room has a device, a small box that maintains the temperature for me. I can change it, but only a little—if I’m too cold or too warm. Depending on the day, I could be both. Sometimes I just can’t seem to settle on one side. I have a few things: a table for my books, a lamp on the wall, and a mirror on one wall that’s dark and hard for me to see myself clearly in. I don’t like to look into it. But it’s mine. And bed sheets which we are encouraged to embroider ourselves: to build up designs, to thread needles through them into patterns, words. Mine has flowers, stars, the faces of a family that I don’t remember, but that I know.