In My Memory Locked

by Jim Nelson

  “The Old Internet is unchanging, just as you say,” she continued. “But it’s a goldmine of history. My job on Alcatraz was to study the structure of the Old Internet and how it transformed over the years. It’s fascinating. It grew like a multicellular organism. As the world began to depend on it daily, it sprouted more shoots and roots into our lives. Forty years of the world’s collective memory is stored on the island. And a great deal of effort was made over those forty years to store the previous hundred years on the Internet too. Newspapers digitized all their archives. Hollywood digitized all their films going back to the turn of the century. Every song recorded from 1899 to 2027 was stored on the Old Internet.” She nodded eastward with the reverence of locating Mecca. “And today it’s all accessible with a single thought.”

  “It’s not memories stored out there,” I said. “It’s something else.”

  “It’s as close as what they had back then to memories. Nowadays—” She motioned toward my memex again, but with some disgust. “Now we store actual neural memories in public data stores. Sensations and emotions, all available to the world. Every instant opinion, no matter how screwed-up, people just send it out to the world and it’s recorded forever, no matter how hurtful or ugly it may be.” She made it all sound so dirty. She added, “That’s why I make none of my thoughts public. I’ve been very careful how I use the Nexternet.”

  I reminded myself that I had to bait her. “Sometimes I wish we could wipe away some of the data stored on the Old Internet,” I said. “There are some memories on the island no one should ever have to live through again.”

  “Absolutely not,” she said, aghast at the idea. “We have to preserve everything for future generations.”

  Future generations—I reserve a fair amount of skepticism for that term. Future generations is often used in the same kind of contexts as national security and for the good of the children. They’re loaded phrases intended to grant their speaker a blank check.

  She said, “I know I sound hypocritical. I’m careful how I use the Nexternet, but I truly believe we must record all of public human activity for posterity.”

  I couldn’t stand it any longer. “We used to have a notion of public and private. A long time ago, at least. By the time the Internet was abandoned, we’d abandoned that notion too. We’d become a nation of posturing and outrage. Digging up people’s secrets is fair game. Differences of opinions are firing offenses. And we came to applaud public shamings. We deploy shame like cruise missiles, without a second thought.”

  A tangled memory of Detachment began to form in my mind, a blue dream building itself up brick by brick. The shame of being in front of the camera was trivial compared to the shame on the streets and buses when Detachment was an Internet sensation. People saw my face and began laughing in a quarter of a second. Hungrily I reached for the fluted glass before me.

  “I know you lived in that time and you know the Old Internet better than me, but I disagree.”

  She spoke the way college students do, that hollow formality that sounds erudite. It wasn’t adorable, but with her warmth and eagerness, I wasn’t put off by it.

  “Studying the Old Internet is like studying mythology,” she said. “The stories are strange and bizarre, but the reward is reading between the lines. The history of the Internet is like a massive psychology experiment recorded permanently. So many Rorschach blots, so many responses and counter-responses. With the Old Internet, you can turn back the clock and see day-by-day people’s responses to the 9/11 attacks. Those twenty terrorists set off a chain reaction—”

  “Nineteen terrorists,” I said. “It was nineteen men who took control of those planes.”

  “I think it was twenty,” she said.

  “I’m pretty sure.” An autonomic reaction had me reaching for my memex on those bone china dish. “Well, let’s look it up—”

  Her gentle hand touched the back of mine before it reached the dish. “Let’s not.”

  The positive energy I’d harvested from Leigh was the product of an old man warming in the bask of a beautiful young woman. Her touch was biochemical. Her heat shook the calcified crumbles of developing arthritis off my old bones and made me feel young again. She wore a scent, a musk, that gripped my spine and left a lump in the back of my throat. My memex had reported her to be a 9.19 on the Téron -Merrick Attractiveness Scale. I didn't need a goddamn algorithm to tell me she was beautiful. A hundred million years of evolutionary biology had grabbed me by the lapels and was shaking me and telling me repeatedly the same thing.

  Feeling feeble, I peered at the portrait over the bar. Alice lay spread out across a giant mushroom like Manet’s Olympia. Animated in slow motion, I discovered her winking luridly at me. I hated myself. I’d devolved into Humbert Humbert.

  I’d never heard a young person express so much interest in a piece of technology I’d worked on decades earlier. Today, it’s all Nexternet this, Nexternet that. The Internet was written word and two-dimensional video. The Nexternet is immersion and feelings and experiences and sensations. Leigh was bored by the current hot trend. She was excited by a dead technology, a buggy and crude version 1.0. She was excited about something I understood fully. Nothing today made a damn bit of sense to me, no matter what I told Whitcomb standing over Aggaroy’s body. I understood the Old Internet better than I understood people. No one really understands other people.

  “What other kinds of stories can you piece together?” I had to remain focused. I was there for a job. “What were you working on out on the island?”

  “Well, it’s going to sound silly,” she said with another disarming smile, one I’d not seen on her before. She was a deck of cards, each card a different expression. “I was studying a film made in the early 2010s. It’s called Detachment.”

  Ghostly bluish memories sparkled around me like blowing dust off an old book’s cover. Cline Mayall propositioning me at the bar, the audition for the film, casting on the couch, climbing into bed with my shirt off and a half-naked model—it all came roaring back.

  “From the look on your face, I guess you’ve heard of it,” she said. “The film was very popular in its time. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised you’d know it.”

  Carefully, I assembled my words. “Why did you choose to study that?”

  “Pop culture,” she said. “You can learn a lot about Depression-era America by reading the first Superman.”

  I’d heard that my first day on the island. Must be one of those aphorisms they say a lot to each other. All organizations have them.

  “Films like Detachment were simply impossible to produce and publicize before the Internet,” she said. “Independent filmmakers had few outlets in America for their work. Before the Internet, a film with Detachment’s subject matter could only have been shown at underground movie theaters, or stag parties and grindhouses—” A look of concern washed over her. “Are you okay?”

  She caught me staring at her arm. She recoiled.

  “Lemme see that,” I said.

  She retracted. She turned away from me, away from her drink.

  I did something I should not have done. I would not do this in any other circumstance. Hell, on any other day, I wouldn’t bother striking up a conversation with a pretty young woman in a blue lounge. Any other day, I’m the guy in the porkpie hat sipping his Pharjé in the corner and enjoying his blue-out, silent and alone.

  I leaned across the empty seat between us. I pulled up the loose sleeve of her summer dress. I was careful not to touch her skin, only the sleeve.

  Three royal-blue blots made a moon-shaped crescent across the upper part of her arm, each the size of a thick fingerprint. Without looking, I knew a royal-blue thumbprint was shining on the other side of her arm. The bruise looked as painful as a pop in the mouth.

  “Did he do this to you?” I asked.

  “How do you know—”

  “Because this is what men do,” I said. “Who is he?”

  She tugged down the sleeve. He
r eyes gave me an empty, challenging glare.

  “He’s my boyfriend,” she said. “He loves me. You need to understand that.”

  “That’s not love.”

  She swirled the thin blue syrup in the bottom of her fluted glass. "I must admit," she said, "I find myself thinking of someone else now." She smiled a full, warm smile at me. "It's funny to discover there may be someone else, and he's right under my nose."

  It made me warm and funny inside to hear it. She faced me with a concerned expression. She reached her fingers toward my chin.

  “What happened to your face?” she asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “You weren’t born this way, were you?”

  I nearly told her—I wanted to tell her—but I shook my head and retracted.

  She put a hand over her upper arm to cover the bruise. “Then you can understand how I feel.”

  “I know what men are capable of doing to women,” I said.

  “And I know the violence men are capable of doing to themselves.” She held her fingers close to my face again. “You did this to yourself, didn’t you?”

  “Let’s drink,” I said.

  "Let's drink," she said in response.

  “I’m sick of remembering,” I told her.

  We didn’t clink glasses or toast our acquaintance. We just drank. She tipped back her fluted glass. I yanked my flute up with a bit more force and shook it to urge the drink out, like coaxing the first of the ketchup from the bottle. The viscous liquid slid toward my lips with the enervation of a snail. Manufacturers electrostatically coat the inside of these fluted glasses for this reason, and yet the Pharjé still doesn’t drain fast enough.

  The blue syrup was sickly-sweet with a salty spearmint aftertaste. It numbed the lips and tongue. From her wrenched mouth, I knew she needed a chaser. She’d only finished half of her drink. I ordered an ice water for the lady and a second ginger ale for myself. She sipped the cold water glaring straight ahead, as though she’d just swallowed a bitter medicine and I was the parent who’d forced her to take it. The purpling bruise peeked out from under her sleeve.

  Sixty seconds later, it didn’t matter what I’d said to her or what I’d seen. The Pharjé took effect with a peculiar urgency. The lounge hummed neon-blue. My skin shimmered with electricity. The bluish cream of ocean waves crashed down upon my head. They flung their foam left and right. Each advance of the waves washed up against more of the lounge. The tide carried us away from our petty little lives in San Francisco. Blueness smashed against us and down the rabbit hole we flew.

  13.

  A sudden intake of cold air filled my lungs and I came to all at once. Emerging from a blue-out is like waking up with a start. My brain began remembering again, like a vapor-locked engine finally taking gasoline into its dry manifold.

  Above me, a clear indigo sky was spread wide. The stars were missing. As I took deep breaths and gathered my wits lying on my back, a burst of pale blue light filled the sky. It revealed the reason the stars were missing. For a split moment, the light revealed the sky was covered with churning gray clouds. Blackness returned and the distinct aroma of fresh ozone tinged my nostrils. I made out the sound of waves crashing nearby. A rip of thunder rumbled.

  Just as I shifted my leg to attempt to stand, another burst of pale blue light filled the sky. It startled me this time and I jumped up to a sitting position. I was under a tree near the edge of a cliff. I sat in the dirt with gravel biting into the palms of my hands. The sensation of charged ions climbed like roaches over the surface of my skin. The hair on my arms stood on end.

  There’s no hangover with a blue-out, no headache or queasiness, not even the dehydration one usually suffers from overdrinking. I’d been through many blue-outs in my life. I had a routine. First I checked myself for injuries. One common scare story about Blue Pharjé are people who injure themselves and “forget” to call for help. It’s pure bunk. A blue-out doesn’t make you stupid or drunk. If anything, Blue Pharjé heightens your awareness and makes the immediacy of your surroundings even more immediate. The problem with Pharjé is hurting yourself in a mild way while under the influence, telling yourself you’ll take care of it later, then returning to the real world and forgetting you injured yourself.

  I touched my face. My right cheekbone ached. The skin around it was hot and tender. This was not self-inflicted. You’re not often attacked when you work in the field of computer security, but I’d lived a lifetime in bars. I knew what a clenched fist to the face felt like. Even without a mirror, I sensed a black eye ripening. My eye socket felt icy hot in the cold night air.

  I climbed to my feet and continued to check myself. My appetite suggested I’d not eaten since the Lake Street cafe. I found another ache in my left side centered in my rib cage. Someone had laid one into me from the side and then slugged me in the face. Maybe it was vice-versa, who knew. My abdomen muscles clenched tight when I touched them. My ribs shuddered with each step I took.

  My spinal socket was empty. I wondered if I’d left my memex at the blue lounge. It looked to be early morning hours. If the lounge had closed, I wouldn’t be able to retrieve my memex until it opened the next day.

  Another flash of pale blue light illuminated the visible world for a split second. Moments later, thunder ripped across the dark heavens. That split second of light informed me of my location.

  I stood alone on top of a cliff. The Pacific Ocean lapped at the rocks sixty feet below. The ripe smell of ozone was strong, the distinct odor of burnt air. This was Lands End, the westernmost point in San Francisco. The Golden Gate Bridge stood a mile or so behind me, although I could not see it from my vantage point.

  Looking westward, I waited for the next flash of pale blue lightning. When it came, it illuminated a herd of cyclones skating across the surface of the still Pacific. They stirred the water like a kitchen mixer churning gray cake batter. Not the slightest wind struck my face. The tide sent waves against the rocks in sporadic bursts like an angry drunk slapping at a jukebox that just ate his dollar. Lands End was a glorious display when I was young. College students would build bonfires on the beach and drink beer and carouse. Today, it’s an electromagnetic desolated mess.

  Lightning interplayed overhead. The clouds delivered a bolt from one to another the way children play Hot Potato. After passing the bolt around, a cloud would shake the bolt loose and deliver it to the water below. The lightning shimmered a white-blue column before disappearing. A ripping thunder followed. Once the rumbling settled, the absolute silence of Lands End returned.

  There’s a reason the autotrolleys halt thirty blocks from the ocean. Passenger cars may travel a few blocks further, but at their own peril. Years ago, the city erected barricades at 40th Avenue, absolutely prohibiting motorized vehicles from advancing further. Any electronic device was subject to the forces at play along the coastline. Even being out there with my pocket tablet was chancing it. For all I knew, my tablet was now a dead sheet of silicon and tempered glass fried inside-out due to the electromagnetic nightmare called Lands End. The only electronics that survive out there are fleshy nonconductive devices like memexes. Even then, there’s no Nexternet connectivity at Lands End or beyond. The satellites and repeater towers cannot penetrate the electromagnetic storm. Lands End is a dead-spot to the world.

  Leigh Blessing was nowhere to be seen. I could come up with no reason why I would travel out to Lands End. I rarely went out there. There was no reason to, other than to watch Mother Nature with rabies. The beachside businesses had folded long ago. No one lived within a mile of the place, save for a handful of squatters and daredevils who’d sworn off all modern conveniences. No electricity, no wireless, no Nexternet—a modern Walden, and city blocks after city blocks of abandoned tract homes empty and for the taking.

  Most people emerge from a blue-out with a profound sense of calm. After ten or so years of abusing the stuff, that calm had been replaced by red dreams. After spending hours on the seafloor of my mind, my
sudden rise to the surface was like a deep-sea diver suffering the bends.

  The red dream was the sound of laughter. The red dream was the face of a man and woman, both laughing at me. They did not attempt to hide or stifle their laughter. They laughed proudly and with a great deal of delight. He had said something wicked to her about my waistline and my doughy face. She was entertained, and she laughed along with him. This memory is the red dream. I could feel the red of shame in my face. My back hunched over, the red weight of humility weighed me down.

  It was the fifth of June, 2008, a dead red dream from thirty years later revived like Lazarus. I corrected two software bugs that morning. I ate a dim sum lunch, alone, at a tea house across the street from the office. The water cooler broke down in the morning, the water seeping across the break room floor like blood from a wound. I drank lukewarm water from the tap the rest of the day. The laughing man and the woman worked in the office with me. I worked for the company some eight months by that point.

  I mistakenly imagined I’d earned some respect in that office. On June 5th, 2008, my delusion was corrected. Their laughter grabbed me by my T-shirt like countless hands. The man had made no attempt to mask his comment from my ears. With a clear transmitting voice, he’d told the woman that the company would need to buy me a forklift to sit on, as my girth was bound to break the office chair I worked from. He also compared my face to a dog’s face. It was a Thursday. It was a red Thursday.

  *

  At some point in my blue-out, I’d turned off my pocket tablet. Most likely, I recognized the danger of walking out to Lands End and turned it off in the hope of saving its electronics from damage. When I reached 40th Avenue, I powered it on. It booted right up. I also discovered my memex in a bottom corner of my jacket pocket, shriveled like a dead bug. I cleaned off the lint and reinserted it. At 33rd Avenue, Nexternet connectivity returned.