The Memory Agent

by Matthew B. J. Delaney

  “What about guards?”

  “Guards are different,” Selberg said. “They know the truth.”

  Clayton frowned. “So why don’t you just find a guard, pay him off, and have him break out the mark? Seems a lot easier than going in ourselves.”

  “Because of the silver bullet,” Selberg said. Clayton stared blankly at Selberg, then Selberg turned toward Parker. “Jesus Christ, didn’t you tell him anything?”

  “We didn’t get to that yet,” Parker said.

  “You’ve got a guy going in with you and he doesn’t even know what the silver bullet is?”

  “Yeah, I get it,” Clayton said, indicating himself with both thumbs. “This guy doesn’t know anything. But can we just skip the part where you make fun of what an idiot I am and actually get to something constructive?”

  “I just figured he would have told you,” Selberg said. “Since it’s kind of like one of the most important things that we do. But, yeah sure, I’ll tell you. You know how you kill a werewolf, right?”

  “Shoot it with a silver bullet,” Clayton replied.

  “Exactly. You can only kill a werewolf with a silver bullet. Same as in the system. You can only break someone out of the system with a silver. Well, not really a silver bullet actually, but it’s a uniquely designed bullet that separates the consciousness of the target from the Sleep machine. It’s the only thing that allows them to wake up.”

  “But wait,” Clayton said. “I’m confused. I thought if you got killed in the system, you automatically woke up.”

  “No. That would be a terrible prison,” Selberg replied. “Would never work. This is a real-life world we’re talking about. A world populated by thousands and thousands of people, all living their lives. Even on a good day, someone is going to kill someone else. Murder is a fact of life. So every time there’s a murder, you can’t have prisoners waking up into the real world. That’s not secure.”

  “So what happens?”

  “Someone gets killed in the system by anything other than a silver, they just get recycled. Their memory gets wiped and they get put back into the system as someone else. Meaning, you’re a boot maker one day, you get shot, stabbed, whatever . . . the next day you wake up and you’re a bricklayer. Still in the same system. Your consciousness never separates itself from the machine. You never really wake up,” Selberg said. “In order to truly awaken, you have to be killed with a specially coded bullet, what we call a silver.”

  “I don’t understand,” Clayton said.

  “Everything in there is a computer system. It’s not real. It’s all coded by someone. Billions and billions of lines of code. When you die, the program tells the system to retain your consciousness and just regenerate it into someone else. The silver bullets are actually little computer viruses. They break up the coding. So in the system, when you shoot someone with a silver bullet, you’re actually introducing a computer virus into their system. This virus disrupts the attachment of consciousness with the machine. Forcing someone to wake up in the real world. That’s what makes prison breaks possible.”

  Selberg was right, Parker thought, the silvers were what made the breaks possible. If you got killed any other way, the guards were alerted, and your target just regenerated somewhere back in the system.

  Selberg continued pacing back and forth. Just outside, the horn of a passing tugboat bellowed deeply in the night. “Now that we’ve got remedial prison break out of the way, let’s move on. The problem with the new system is the memory erase.”

  “What do you mean?” Parker asked.

  “The old systems, we could insert you inside with your memory. The new system, we can’t do that.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning if you remember who you are, if you know that you’re actually going into a prison, the system will be alerted and won’t grant you access.”

  “So how do we get in?” Charlotte asked.

  “That’s the thing. The only way in is if you don’t know you’re going into a prison. If you think what you’re experiencing is actually real.”

  Parker rubbed his chin. This was what he had always been afraid of. What every person in his position feared the most. Of losing track of what was real. In his world, memory was never taken for granted. Memory was as malleable as clay. Always changing. Never constant. Part of Parker’s job was letting his memory be erased. And like an old VHS tape recorded over and over again on the same ribbon, he sometimes felt his memory getting weaker. But to not know what was real. That would make him no different from a prisoner.

  “So what are you saying we should do?” Parker asked.

  Selberg shook his head. “From what I’ve heard of this system, it’s good, man, like real good. I’m probably one of the best hackers in the world, but this is too much for me. We need someone else.”

  “Who?” Parker asked.

  Selberg went silent, kicking at the dust-covered floor with the toe of his shoe. Charlotte looked at him sharply. “Nooo . . . you don’t mean—”

  “He’s the only one good enough.”

  “Is he even still alive?”

  “Yes. He’s alive.”

  Parker waved his hand to get their attention. “What are we talking about?”

  Charlotte turned toward Parker. “He’s talking about Bobby Chan.”

  Parker drew a blank. The world of prison hackers was a small one, populated by anxious conspiracy theorists like Selberg. Parker had always been on the operational side, reliant on the hackers to get him into the system, but never knowing much about their world. But he knew enough to know that the good ones were like celebrities in their own little spheres of influence. “Who is Bobby Chan?”

  Selberg clapped his hands. He had everyone’s attention. “Bobby Black Hat Chan. The best prison hacker I’ve ever seen. He cut through any system like a knife through butter. He’s the only guy that stands a chance to get in.”

  “But what’s the point? Nobody has heard from him in years,” Charlotte said.

  Selberg held up a finger. “Ah. Exactly. And do you know why nobody has heard from him? Because three years ago he went to prison. Where he continues to be.”

  “What prison system?” Parker asked.

  “System 1972.”

  Parker shook his head. “That’s impossible. They shut that system down. Moved all the prisoners out.”

  “Yes and no,” Selberg said. “The system was shut down for instability issues. But not all the prisoners were moved out. A core group of prisoners was left behind in 1972. The real troublemakers. They just locked the doors on the system and walked away. But Chan is still inside. No guards. Should be easy to get him out.”

  Parker had never heard of a system being abandoned with prisoners still inside. The guards preserved a sense of law and order. Without that, he wasn’t sure what such a world would look like. But he could very easily imagine the chaos of a system filled with only the worst prisoners and no rules.

  “Whoa, wait,” Parker said. “You’re telling me this guy has been in an unstable system for three years?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Even if we find him and break him out,” Parker said, “we don’t know where his physical body is. We have no idea where he would wake up.”

  Selberg smiled, bent down, and picked up one of the lanterns. “Yes, we do. Why do you think we’re meeting here?”

  Selberg led the way through a set of rusted double doors and down a dark corridor lined with open doorways. Parker spotted old examination rooms and laboratories, many littered with leaves and animal droppings.

  “After this place was abandoned, they used it as a holding center for the bulk of the prisoners,” Selberg said. “And when they shut the system down, they just left the prisoners here.”

  “How do you know this?” Charlotte asked.

  “I tapped into the old prisoner records,” Selberg said. “Found out where they were keeping him.”

  The hallway opened into a large open space. In a
nother time, this had been the facility dining hall. Through an open serving window, the shadowy bulk of industrial-sized kitchen equipment was visible. A yellowed menu of items was posted on the wall behind glass. The rest of the room was open space, the floor lined with what looked like hundreds of coffin-sized boxes. A series of lights from a generator blinked red and green in the far corner of the room.

  “My God, man,” Clayton said, approaching one of the human-sized boxes. “What is this place?”

  Parker knew exactly what this place was. Although he had never been to one before. His job had always been to go into the system. To find the subjects, and wake them into the real world. He never knew what happened to them afterward. “These are Sleep cells.”

  Each cell was made up of a black matte metal, like giant display cases, with a viewing pane on the top portion. Through the glass of the viewing pane, Parker could see a male face. The man’s eyes were closed, the rest of his face covered by a ventilation mask. He was vacuum sealed inside a clear plastic bag, reminding Parker of freeze-dried meat.

  “Who is this guy?” Clayton asked.

  Selberg joined them. He inspected the face of the Sleep cell. “Don’t know. These Sleep cells always have identifiers on them so you know the prisoner name and number. Someone removed these though.”

  “So this guy is a prisoner?” Clayton said.

  Selberg nodded, waved his arm to indicate the entire floor filled with thousands of Sleep cells. “Yup. All these people. Everyone in this room. They’re all prisoners. Tried and convicted of crimes and then sentenced. And now they exist together in the same system.”

  “But what are they doing here?” Clayton said. “I mean, this place is abandoned. No security. Anyone can just come by and open up these coffins and wake them up.”

  “You can’t,” Charlotte said. “Nobody can just wake them up like that. The cells monitor brain wave patterns, remaining locked until subjects wake up. The mind is immersed in the reality of the Sleep system so deeply that you can only wake them up from being on the inside. And as long as the person sleeps, their cells can’t be opened. An ingenious security system.”

  Parker surveyed the rows and rows of Sleep cells. “Which one is our guy? Which one is Chan?”

  “Not sure,” Selberg replied. “And since they removed the identifications, we’ll never know. But he’s definitely here. He’s one of the forgotten ones.”

  “These are human beings,” Charlotte said. “How can they just leave them here?”

  “Transfers are expensive,” Selberg said. “It’s not like they have visiting hours. Who’s going to know the difference? Family can’t complain. Most of these guys are hardcore felons. Long sentences. By the time they’re due for release, most of their family will be dead or have forgotten about them. The prisoners will continue to age and eventually die in their sleep.”

  “So what do we do now?” Parker said.

  “If you want to move forward with the job, we need Chan. He’s the only hacker good enough to get into the new system. To get to Chan, we need to break him out.”

  “When?”

  “I was thinking right now,” Selberg said.

  Parker laughed. Even for the easiest jobs, he generally took months to plan. Parker had to study the history of the time period, the people, the fashion, the technology, or he couldn’t function. The success of any breakout was based upon being invisible. You had to be able to move seamlessly through the world. The guards were everywhere, and the more waves you created, the more mistakes you made, the easier it was for them to spot you.

  Selberg read the look on Parker’s face. “It’s not as crazy as it sounds,” Selberg said. “Think about it. The time period of the system is the early 1970s, not that far off from today. And there are no guards. Nobody is going to notice if you come crashing into the system like a meteor. You can use any techs you want and it doesn’t matter. Nobody is looking to keep you out.”

  Parker bit his lip thoughtfully. He hadn’t thought of that. No guards. He had never been in a system like that. That would make his job easier. And they really didn’t have much of a choice. Selberg was conniving and untrustworthy, the proverbial snake in the grass. But he was good at what he did. And Parker could think of no reason for Selberg to lie. If they cut Chan into the deal, Selberg’s share of the profits went down. So if Selberg said they needed Chan, Parker had to trust the advice.

  “How would we get in?” Parker looked around the filthy room. This wasn’t exactly the laboratory environment he would have preferred to work in.

  “The servers for the system are right here,” Selberg said. “The security is totally antiquated. I can easily hack in. Drop your consciousness right into the system. You find Chan. Bring him out. Easy.”

  “Why do I think that is a gross oversimplification of what’s about to happen?” Parker said.

  “I want to go in with you,” Clayton said. “Practice run.”

  Parker turned to Selberg. “Is that a problem?”

  Selberg shook his head. “Not really. I can get you both in.”

  Charlotte coughed slightly. The sort of attention-getting cough that indicated there was an issue. She had her arms folded thoughtfully, her eyes squinted with concern. “I think I should warn you. I don’t know how positive it is there are no guards. I mean, for all intents and purposes, this has been a world abandoned for years now. With no law. We don’t know what we’re going to find. But I think there’s going to be chaos and violence like we can’t even imagine. Imagine Lord of the Flies, but on steroids.”

  Selberg nodded. “That is possible.”

  “More than possible, I think it’s fairly likely,” Charlotte said. “I’m not saying don’t go in. But I am saying, be prepared for the absolute worst.”

  “Which would be?”

  “Open tribal warfare. I think various groups will have aligned with each other and we’ll be in a constant state of violence with each other. Rape. Murder. Torture.”

  “I thought you couldn’t be murdered in the system?” Clayton said.

  “Oh no,” Charlotte replied. “You can be murdered. You just end up right back in the system. Imagine how horrific that would be. Like living a nightmare you could never escape. The constant reliving of violence over and over again would destroy most people. I think you’re going to a system filled with violent psychopaths with no sense of humanity left.”

  “Or on a more optimistic note, you could find a peaceful commune that values art and literature,” Selberg said. “There’s really no way of knowing.”

  There was no way of knowing until Parker went in. But he tended to believe Charlotte’s point of view. You take a few hundred violent recidivist felons and throw them together on an island with no rules or law long enough . . . eventually things would go bad.

  “Just remember the Boy Scout motto,” Charlotte said. “That’s all I’m warning.”

  Parker crashed into the system. His entire brain shook on the way in. Pain surged through him, deep into his bones as the world spun like a centrifuge. The vibration poured through his body, every cell seeming to resonate with the hum of a tuning fork until his entire being felt on the verge of breaking apart into a billion separate atoms. He screamed in brute pain, but no sound was heard in the darkness that surrounded him. And just before he blacked out and yielded to the nothingness, the pain ended.

  He had arrived.

  He lay flat on his back, his eyes still closed, a rumbling somewhere beneath him. Slowly, carefully, he opened his eyelids, his fists clenched, ready to fight. He appeared to be alone. He was in some kind of small transport vehicle. Above him, a metal roof, windows on all sides. The floor was rubber, with support poles that ran to the ceiling. Parker rolled over on his side and vomited.

  A voice sounded in his ear. “Navigator Operator Charlotte online.”

  “Hi, Charlotte,” Parker barely managed, his stomach slowly finding itself.

  “Archive Operator Selberg online,” another voice soun
ded. “How you doing, buddy?”

  “I feel like a bag of golf balls in a blender.”

  “Sorry about that. The entry system was a little out of date. Bit rougher than I thought.”

  “Where am I?” Parker said. His strength was slowly returning, but he needed another few moments of lying down. The floor beneath him was definitely moving. And that made him worry.

  “I was trying to get you onto one of the buildings on the east side. But looks like I’m showing you . . .” Selberg’s voice trickled off.

  “Showing me where?”

  “He’s on the tram,” Charlotte spoke to Selberg. “That’s why he’s moving. Parker, you ended up on the aerial tramway that connects Roosevelt Island with Fifty-Ninth Street in Manhattan.”

  Parker rolled over onto his stomach, then slowly pushed himself up. Using the pole for support, he pulled himself to a standing position. The inside of the tram car was about twenty feet wide, windows on all sides. He stumbled toward the glass and looked out. He was two hundred feet above Manhattan and moving fast. On one side, the skeletal beams of the Queensborough Bridge. Empty of traffic. The pillars rusted. A half-dozen metal cages hung from the bottom of the bridge, suspended out over the water far below. Inside the cages, Parker could see men. Living men. Some lay huddled, knees pulled up to their chins. Others stood, looking out through the bars, watching as the tram passed by.

  Two hundred feet below, the waters of the East River ran in swirls of current, the waves incredibly dark. Then Parker passed from water to land, the lanes of the FDR visible below him. Wrecks of cars were piled up along the median. The vehicles were empty, stripped to almost nothing. Then the view was gone as the tram swept into a valley of residential apartment towers. Even twenty stories up, a massive tower of glass and steel rose above him, reaching out of his line of vision. The tram passed within two dozen yards of the building, level with the twentieth story, allowing Parker to look in through the windows. He could see the line of apartments, all empty. A fire burned in one unit, flames engulfing the side of the building, sending plumes of smoke into the air. From a smashed window hung a giant banner made from bed sheets.