The Memory Agent

by Matthew B. J. Delaney

  “Does it work?”

  “From what you’ve seen,” Valenstein said, “the world in the Panopticon can be as violent and hopeless as the world outside. Even in that virtual world, the rich still have everything, while the poor struggle just to get by. Does it work? I don’t know how to answer that. Inside, you’re still in a cage, same as in prison, it’s just a much bigger one.”

  “So why didn’t they just build a paradise? If the whole point of this is to rehabilitate?”

  “They tried that at first,” Valenstein said, “and they found the human brain couldn’t accept it. We’re not made for everyone to be equal. Our happiness is all relative. We look at our neighbors and want more than what they have. The mind rejected the paradise where everyone had every desire fulfilled. The prisoners always sought conflict.

  “And politically, society wants prisoners rehabilitated, but victims’ families want them punished. Try being a politician and telling a husband that the guy who raped and murdered his wife is doing time in a paradise and see if he votes for you in the next election.”

  “So why are you showing me all this? What does this have to do with me?”

  “Because you worked very closely with this system. You understand the system perhaps better than anyone.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You lead a very specific type of crew that specialized in prison breaks of the mind. You see, no matter how much this virtual world looks like the real thing, it is still a prison. And prisoners serve years in here. And each prisoner has a family on the outside who misses them. Who wants them back. When that happens, people hire you. You enter the system. Find the prisoner. Break them out.”

  “How?”

  Valenstein nodded toward the dusty glass of the saloon. “Look out there. Tell me what you see.”

  Through the window, I could see across a rutted cobblestone street leading to a row of tenements, directly across. The buildings were crowded together in a long strip, which extended along the entire block. Gas lanterns stood in the street with hitching posts on the corners. A wooden slat sidewalk traversed the front of the buildings. The scene looked like a film set.

  “I can tell you about how the prison breaks work, but there is a memory here, saved for you, that you can experience. You can feel how the breaks work,” Valenstein said. “If you want to experience one, go through the door.”

  Next to the window was a batwing style saloon door, which opened out to the street.

  “What happens when I go out there?”

  “You will enter a memory of the past. You will experience the memory again as you experienced it the first time. This is necessary for you to know what happens next.”

  The world had tilted on its axis, and everything I had accepted as truth, I could see now was only variations of the real. A hundred different impressions of reality and of memory were each as open to interpretation as an ink blot. Perhaps there were answers out there that would make sense. I just needed to take the first step.

  “Just go through that door?”

  Valenstein nodded. “That is the door of memory. And through it you can again experience your past.”

  I had a moment of doubt. The flame of my commitment flickered for an instant. But then it burned bright again.

  I went to the front of the saloon, pushed open the doors, and stepped through.

  2

  Roger Parker entered with the barest flicker of air. He blinked once in his new body, stretched and flexed muscles as he gathered his bearings. He was seated in a small living room, crowded with people. A half-dozen chairs formed a semicircle around a dead infant in a crib. The chairs were occupied by a rough group that looked on the downswing in life. Cracked plaster was marked by soot from two kerosene lanterns that hung from the wall, along with a map of Manhattan and a black and white photograph of a couple from the old country. Candles, half-melted, were lined around the crib. Street noise filtered in through the open window; the clatter of horse hooves on cobblestone, screams of children, the bark of a salesman, the faraway clack of an elevated train.

  A closed wooden door was opposite the window. That was where Parker needed to be. Through that door and out to the street below. He didn’t belong here, and they would know it. Parker studied the door a moment too long. He felt the press of a hand against his arm. He turned to look into the faded eyes of an elderly woman seated next to him.

  Her hand circled Parker’s wrist, her bony fingers surprisingly strong, like the claw of an old crow. Her eyes were narrow, suspicious. “Can you tell me the time?”

  Parker paused, considered the question. He looked around the room. Tried to place the when. The grip on his wrist tightened and he felt the gnaw of panic in his gut. More faces turned toward him. Each of the half-dozen chairs was occupied by a person in an antique outfit. Only the clothes weren’t antique. They were all new. Bought recently, from real stores, stores that hadn’t existed in a hundred years. There were men in bowler hats. Women in shawls. A young girl with a bow in her hair and patent leather shoes. The fashion looked late 1800s, but he couldn’t be sure of the exact year.

  What if he had overshot?

  “The time?” Parker repeated the question. “You want to know the time?”

  The old crone nodded. One of the men stood, took off his bowler hat, and cracked his knuckles. He had a thick handlebar mustache and eyes swollen half-shut with scar tissue, someone’s idea of a saloon bare-knuckle boxer brought to life.

  A sound buzzed in Parker’s ear. A faint electric whir, then a voice whispered, “Navigator Operator Charlotte coming online now.”

  The grip on Parker’s wrist had the strength of a vise, almost unbearable in its ferocity.

  “The time?” Parker repeated. He had to get an answer or this would be a short trip to the past that would end painfully.

  “Give me one second,” Charlotte’s voice sounded in his ear. Fingers tapped quickly on a distant keyboard. He heard a slight beep from the synchrony. “The time. The time. I’ve got you located. You’re at 89 Orchard Street, New York City. It is currently 0830 hours, September 12, 1880.”

  The man with the bowler hat fitted a pair of brass knuckles over his massive fist. The little girl in the patent leather shoes had moved toward the doorway. She turned the door’s bolt, locking Parker inside, and turned to stare at him with the disturbed smile of the criminally insane.

  “It’s eight thirty, September 12, 1880,” Parker repeated aloud. The man with the brass knuckles relaxed, the tendons on his wrist smoothed away. Parker tried to smile, then noticed the grip on his wrist hadn’t released.

  “Why are we here?” the old woman asked.

  Another voice in Parker’s ear as the researcher came online. “Archive Operator Selberg online. What’d I miss?”

  “Why are we here?” Parker repeated.

  “Why are we here, why are we here,” Selberg said. “An existential question. Let me see, running 89 Orchard through the historical record. Major events. September 10, 1880, New York Times shows a kitchen fire on the first floor. September 9, 1880, census reports show an infant death from influenza. September 7, a garment workers’ strike.”

  “A baby died,” Parker said to the woman.

  “Dead baby, dead baby,” Selberg murmured in Parker’s ear. Fingers clicked keys. “Connor Gavin, died, age seven months.”

  “Little baby Connor,” Parker said aloud. “Only seven months. Terrible.”

  The woman’s grip relaxed on his wrist and she turned to stare blankly at the crib. The girl in the patent shoes and the bow in her hair unlocked the door, then returned to her seat.

  She looked at Parker. Then with the stillness of a corpse, she said, “We would have killed you.”

  The crowd sat for ten more minutes, then slowly the mourners broke apart from the cradle and the dead infant. Everyone rose and mumbled thank-yous and apologies to one another. The mother, a thin wisp of a woman in a black dress, sat crying in the corner. Her husband stared
stoically out the window.

  Parker stood and left quietly. The door led out into the dark hallway of a tenement building. Rough wooden stairs rose unsteadily to the floor above, the walls blackened by years of soot. Behind closed doors he heard the symphony of tenement living: arguing voices, a baby crying, the clatter of pots.

  The little girl followed behind as he made his way down the hall.

  “I’ve got a follower,” Parker whispered. “I need to change.”

  “Guard or drone?” Charlotte asked.

  He remembered the strange giggle, the unhinged smile of the little girl. “Prisoner I think. Psych services maybe.”

  “Does she suspect?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Parker headed down the rickety stairs, moving to the right to make way for an enormous woman in a soiled dress carrying a dead goose across her shoulder. He reached the bottom floor, then out the back door into a small, stone courtyard area. Limp laundry was strung overhead, dripping brackish water. Several women took turns at a cast iron pump, filling tubs with water and vigorously scrubbing clothes. A row of outhouses lined the back wall. One of the outhouse doors flung open and a rake-thin man stepped out, still pulling up his pants. A few of the women laughed and exchanged dirty jokes.

  One of the women stared at Parker as he passed. She was doughy faced with skin pitted from a childhood ailment. Her hair was greasy, her fingernails dark and cracked. At a sign from the little girl, the washerwoman dropped her laundry into the barrel of soapy water and joined the girl to follow him.

  Parker ducked beneath the laundry, opened a door at the far side of the courtyard, and entered the adjoining building. “Do we have any drops nearby? I might need a weapon.”

  “You have a charging drone, third floor of your current location,” Charlotte said.

  Parker took the stairs two at a time, up past garbage-strewn hallways barely lit with flickering gas lamps. He was still acclimating to his new body. The stairs left him winded. If a fight came, he wasn’t sure how the ride would be. He paused on the third floor.

  “I’m here, third floor,” Parker said.

  “Door at the end of the hall,” Charlotte said.

  One floor below, Parker heard the footsteps of the girl and the washerwoman. They suspected him. He wouldn’t have much time before half the guards in the neighborhood were after him.

  Parker pushed open the door at the end of the hall and entered a cramped apartment beyond. A large cast iron stove took up most of the kitchen. Dried herbs hung from the ceiling, with a flat iron set to warm near the stove. The floor was uneven hardwood. Through an open doorway, Parker saw a rope bed with a lumpy mattress, chests and battered suitcases stacked almost to the ceiling.

  In the living room, a frayed carpet covered the floor. In the far corner was a man. He sat completely still in a wooden chair, and in the faded dusky light from the window, Parker could see he wore faded overalls and the leather boots of a worker. His face was flat and wide, pockmarked, with a thick mustache and black hair.

  His eyes were open and glazed over, no life inside the body.

  “Got him,” Parker said.

  “Subject’s name is Robert Brown, laborer,” Selberg said. “He’s a level three drone.”

  “Can we use him?”

  “Of course. I’m accessing him now.”

  Robert Brown’s eyes flickered rapidly. Footsteps sounded in the hall outside the apartment. The woman and the girl had reached his floor. Fear gripped Parker and he scanned the room for anything he could use as a weapon. All he had was his fists—and he clenched them tight. It wasn’t pretty smashing a little girl in the face. That’s probably why they always chose them. That moment of hesitation could make the difference in an escape.

  “Transitioning,” Selberg said. Parker gritted his teeth as his stomach plummeted and his brain went light. His vision went black. In the darkness, he heard a rattle of metal as someone tried the locked door. His senses returned.

  He was alone in the same room, seated in the wooden chair. He rose and looked into the warped mirror that hung from the wall near the window. The flat, rugged face looked back at him. He was inside Robert Brown.

  “We’re good,” Parker said. He moved quickly around the room, testing his new reflexes and balance. Something in his brain wavered and dizziness swamped his body. He held onto the chair for balance. “Whoa . . . feeling a bit wobbly here.”

  “I can see that. We’re only at 80 percent.”

  Parker took a cautious step forward. The room seemed to spin around him. “Can you tighten it up?”

  “I’m trying. Perfect synchronization is tricky. Should have gotten a synchronizer for this job,” Selberg snapped.

  “Ouch,” Charlotte voiced.

  “I’m not paid enough to archive and synchronize,” Selberg said.

  Parker’s grip tightened against the chair as his brain continued to swirl. “I’ve got guards at the door. Just fix it.”

  “Trying to. Hang on.”

  The dizziness increased and a wave of nausea overcame Parker. And then he was locked in. His stomach still felt queasy, but the world stopped turning. He opened his eyes.

  “Good,” he said.

  “Told you. Just be patient.”

  Parker’s previous body lay in a pile on the ground. Seeing him now from the outside, the man had been weak, sickly looking. Maybe one of the garment workers along Orchard. Parker had to hide the body.

  There was a sharp knock on the door to the apartment, then a metal click as someone tried the knob again. Parker’s heart flared with adrenaline. “They’re at the door.”

  “That’s the only way out,” Charlotte said. “Better get moving, cowboy.”

  Parker hoisted the body over his shoulder. The man was heavy and limp, but Parker’s new vehicle was strong and able to handle the weight. Parker kicked open the lid to a wooden chest in the corner and dropped the body inside. He folded the legs up, trying not to think of this thing as human. It wasn’t. Not really anyway.

  The rough banging on the door sounded again, then the lock broke up with a crash. Parker dropped the lid on the chest and stood. The child and the washerwoman stormed into the room. The little girl held a pistol.

  “Where is he?” the girl asked.

  “Who?” Parker replied. He felt a wave of relief as his voice worked normally. He hadn’t remembered to test out his new vocal cords.

  “We had an intruder,” the girl said, her voice young, but her bearing completely adult. Parker had no doubt she would shoot him if given cause. The washerwoman vanished into the back bedroom. She overturned the mattress to the ground. “You didn’t see nobody?”

  Parker shook his head.

  “What’s your name?” the girl demanded.

  “Robert Brown,” Parker said.

  “Prisoner?”

  “AI. Drone.”

  The washerwoman returned to the room and shook her head.

  The girl glanced around the room, still not satisfied. “This is your recharging quarters?”

  Parker nodded. The girl moved forward, her eyes flickering to the windows. Parker tensed the muscles of his arms, ready to spring forward if the girl moved toward the chest.

  “Remember, Parker,” Selberg’s voice sounded in his ear. “She isn’t an eight-year-old girl. She’s a violent adult prisoner and would shoot you down in a moment if she had to. So whatever happens, don’t hesitate.”

  Parker said nothing. The girl passed by Parker and began to walk slowly toward the chest. The washerwoman stood near the exit, blocking the open door, her beefy arms folded across her chest. Parker sighed. He hadn’t wanted this to happen. It was supposed to be an easy job. But Charlotte had dropped him into the middle of a funeral. He was bound to be noticed.

  The girl flipped open the heavy lid of the chest. She had a moment to glimpse the crumpled body inside before she swung back toward Parker. Parker’s fist impacted her face and knocked her off her feet. The gun clattered to the flo
or. Parker picked it up and turned as the washerwoman charged at him, a metal pipe in her hand. Parker shot the woman once, the pistol incredibly loud in the small space. The woman twisted and collapsed.

  A sharp pain and intense pressure electrified Parker’s shoulder. The little girl hung on his back, her teeth buried into the meat of his upper arm. Parker screamed and spun, trying to flip her off him. Sharp fingernails dug into his cheek and he felt blood on his face. She bit down into the side of his neck like a crazed vampire. Parker slammed his body against the back wall. There was the hard jolt of impact and the girl’s grip loosened enough for Parker to reach up, grab hold of her hair, and fling her forward to the floor. She hit the ground hard, scrambled to her feet, and charged at him again with a shriek.

  Parker unloaded the pistol into her body. She fell back to the floor, twitched for an instant and then lay still. His surge of adrenaline passed. Parker bent over and vomited in the corner of the room.

  “Rowdy stuff. You all right there?” Selberg asked.

  “Go easy on him, Selberg,” Charlotte’s voice cut in. “He just shot an eight-year-old kid.”

  Selberg scoffed. “More like a forty-year-old rapist.”

  “Well, I guess we’ll never know.”

  Parker wiped the sides of his mouth, then stood. “I’m fine. Just get me where I need to go. Those kills are going to set off alarms.”

  “I see someone doesn’t want to be cheered up,” Selberg said. “Fine.”

  “I’m here,” Charlotte said. “You need to get to 176 Stanton Street. Go out the door before you have company.”

  Parker straightened himself, pocketed the revolver, then walked into the hall. The firearm hung heavily in his pants and he pressed his hand against the weapon to keep it from swinging. Several apartment doors were open, light spilling out into the dark hallway, curious tenants staring at him, drawn out by the gunshots. Parker kept walking, hoping none of the onlookers were guards.