Amnesia Moon

by Jonathan Lethem

  “So you don’t ever land?”

  Vance shook his head. “Not here. We have to fly to other zones for that. Here we live in the air. You’ll gel used to it. Man adapts.”

  “Don’t be patronizing,” said Cale. “Everett is Mr. Adaptation.”

  “I bet,” sniggered Vance. “Where you come from, Moon?”

  “Hatfork, Wyoming. But California, before that.”

  Vance jutted his chin at Cale. “You knew these people before the break?”

  “We grew up together,” interjected Cale before Everett could answer.

  “So Ilford wants Everett here to be his boy,” said Vance. He leaned back against a bulkhead, crossing his arms. “For the big expansion.”

  Cale nodded.

  Vance turned to Everett. “Listen carefully. If Ilford rolls down here, or out to some other place where the hives are in charge, he’s going to have a lot to answer for. The fragmentation is all that’s keeping them from running the whole show.”

  “Maybe another reality would predominate,” said Everett. “Maybe you’d win, that way.”

  “The hives are from somewhere else, my friend. They’re not competing on the same level. We had a few dreamers around here, in the air, I mean. Not too useful, kept screwing up operations, until we got them isolated. But a human dreamer, down there—just another slave ape.”

  “Then why would you want me?”

  “We’re working with you people now, carefully. Not here, in Mexico. We’ve got a few ideas.”

  “Vance and I don’t necessarily agree on this,” said Cale.

  Vance waved his hand impatiently. “Listen: why do you think the world got broken up? Because the aliens landed. It was a defensive response, an evolutionary step. Reality shattered to isolate the hives.”

  “I don’t understand how the dreams come into it,” said Everett.

  “The hives are responsible for that—they induce the dreaming. The more the world coheres, the more they can grab. It’s a countermove. You dreamers are dupes, Moon.”

  Asking him to believe in an alien invasion was asking a lot, maybe too much. But Everett could concur with dupe.

  “Listen, Moon. I’ll keep it simple.” Vance waved at Cale, at the ship. “Just because Wonderboy here created this thriving simulation doesn’t mean things haven’t changed in L.A. I might be dead by now, the real me, that is. They could’ve knocked us out of the air by now. If so, then the breakup is all that’s keeping you and a lot of other people from getting to know the hive situation intimately.”

  They broke through a bank of low clouds, and the city tilted back into view. Everett realized what was wrong with the scene. L.A. was built for cars, and without them it was bereft, a body drained of blood.

  Or a hive itself, only emptied. A husk.

  “How much of that is true?” asked Everett. They were back in Cale’s null space.

  Cale spread his hands. “You just heard all I know.” He seemed sunken in depression.

  Everett could feel the dose wearing off.

  “The vehicle we were in,” he said. “I saw one in the desert. They marked my car.”

  “They get around. But they could just be dreaming. You haven’t ever seen a hive, have you?”

  “No.”

  “Well, neither have I. In his version of L.A. you never touch down. You just go around blowing things up from a distance.”

  Everett suddenly wondered: What if he could do what Cale hoped? If he dreamed Cale’s test tube world into reality, and Vance was actually dead, would that bring the dead man back to life?

  Was that what he was supposed to do for Gwen?

  “Of course I remember Vance,” said Dawn Crash. “He’s an arrogant, macho fool.”

  “So he’s real,” said Everett. “Not something Cale cooked up.” It had occurred to him that the L.A. scenario might all be a rhetorical fiction, a tool of persuasion in Cale’s quiet struggle with Ilford.

  “He’s real, all right. And he made a real scene up here, until Ilford had him chased away.” She smirked. “Actually, I slept with him, if you want to know the truth.”

  “So the aliens . . .”

  “Vance being real doesn’t mean the aliens are,” said Fault. “It’s just another dream, Everett. What better way to keep people under your thumb? Make up some big enemy, justify everything as part of the war effort.”

  Dawn and Fault had shown up in Dawn’s car, just after the sun went down, and invited him out for a drink. Everett was sitting at Fault’s place at the basement window and watching the glow fade through the fog, in the aftermath of his visit with Cale. Fault raised his eyebrows at the sight of the pried-off refrigerator lock but said nothing.

  They’d taken him down the hill to a bar in the Submission, a place called Void’s which served brackish beer in big, greasy pitchers. Everett felt that he’d been there before, but the elusiveness of the feeling, and then the irrelevance of it in the face of all he couldn’t reconstruct, depressed him. The bar was crowded, the booths and tables filled with teenage Mexican boys with wispy beards and aging prostitutes scouting drinks. At the pool table a scowling black man studied his shot. The bartender fed coins continuously into the jukebox, as though he didn’t want to have to overhear any conversations. Everett, Dawn, and Fault sat in a dark booth against the back wall.

  Everett felt the pulse of the music and the chill of the alcohol move through him, and it seemed to him that he was nothing more than the sum of those effects.

  “Do you remember my parents?” he asked Fault.

  “I never met them,” said Fault carefully. He seemed to sense Everett’s darkness.

  “Did I ever talk about them?”

  “Not that I recall.” Fault raised his beer glass and hid behind it.

  “I thought I was coming back to something, if I came back here. To a self.”

  “When I found you in Vacaville, your name was Chaos. Remember that? Be grateful for what you have.”

  “Who you are isn’t a matter of memories, anyway,” said Dawn. “Especially lately.”

  “What is it, then?” Everett asked with bitter sarcasm. Only after it was out did he realize how badly he wanted an answer.

  “It’s what you do. Your choices.” She sipped her drink. “Who you make yourself into.”

  “So I’m not supposed to care who I was before?”

  Dawn shrugged. “Care if you want. Just don’t make everything depend on it. Because you’ll never be sure.”

  “What about you?” Everett said, suddenly furious at her smugness. “Why is it so easy for you? Do you remember everything before the break? Is your life now consistent with what it was then?”

  “I’m mostly interested in forgetting what I was before,” she said.

  Everett weighed the notion of remembering too much, so much that you wanted to forget. He felt a flare of envy. Though it might not be that different, he supposed, from wanting not to dream. From drinking to blot out Kellogg.

  “Were you married to Harriman, before?” he asked. “You’re married, right?”

  “Our alliance goes a long way back. It’s not what you think, perhaps.”

  “What is he, some kind of dream scientist? What was he before?”

  “His research was along those lines. The break changed it, like it did everything, of course. But I don’t want to talk about Harriman. The subject bores me.”

  Everett slumped deeper in his seat, weary of pressing for answers that didn’t satisfy. His gaze drifted out past the bar, through the front window, a pane cracked and repaired with masking tape and framed by dusty, obsolete logos.

  There was someone he recognized on the street outside. Something, rather: the televangelist. It stood lecturing or reprimanding two small boys, who for a moment reminded Everett of Ray and Dave. But they weren’t, of course. Just two boys. Everett watched as they ripped loose the televangelist’s supply of pamphlets and scattered them on the avenue, then ran. The robot laboriously bent to gather the flutterin
g papers.

  “Weren’t you going to play some pool?” said Dawn unexpectedly to Fault.

  Fault nodded, taking the hint, and slid out of the booth. Everett watched him approach the table, weaving his head nervously as he addressed the players.

  “I want to talk to you about the girl in the dreams,” Dawn said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Gwen, right? You’re in love with her. That’s what you came back for.”

  Everett nodded, too tired and possibly too drunk to argue.

  “Cale wants you to make his world real.”

  He looked away, not wanting to confirm it. He’d seen Dawn’s contempt for Cale at the party.

  “So he and the girl can be alive,” she pressed on. “Don’t lie, Billy told me all about it.”

  He met her eyes again and knew it was as good as nodding.

  She scooted up against him in the booth, until shoulders, hips, and knees were all touching. “Listen,” she said. “I have a better idea.”

  “Better than what?”

  “Make me into Gwen.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Use your power to turn me into the one you want. Then she’ll be alive, and you’ll have her. You can do it, you know. Make me into her, and we’ll get away from here together. We can go to the house you dream about, if you want that.”

  He closed his eyes, then lifted his glass and drained it. He felt her hand on his thigh.

  “That’s somehow disgusting,” he managed to say.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “Do you mind if I ask what’s in it for you?”

  She laughed and gripped his leg. “I could say that’s none of your business, Everett. But I’ll tell you. I would be young again—not that I’m old. But your Gwen is very young, like you. And I want my life to change. And you turn me on. Your power turns me on.”

  He didn’t say anything.

  “She would be real, Everett. I know how much you want that. You wouldn’t have to wonder anymore.”

  “What about Harriman and Ilford? What about their plans?”

  “I’d be happy to see their plans go up in smoke, dear.” With the hand that had been on his knee she reached up and turned his face towards hers.

  “Give me a kiss,” she said.

  He put his mouth on hers and tasted her breath. It was sweet, like apple juice. He’d somehow been expecting something bitter. Ash, or vinegar.

  She turned her body towards his, and they moved together in the booth. Everett felt unstitched. The canned roar of the jukebox, the smell of sweat and stale smoke, the clack of billiard balls, Dawn’s tongue in his mouth and her hand on his leg—all drifted apart like islands, to reveal the sea or fog that lay between.

  He sat up and shook his head. Dawn opened her eyes, smiled petulantly, and drew away.

  “You’re not Gwen yet, you know,” he said, wanting it to be a vicious remark, wanting it to express his entire cosmic bitterness.

  But she was still smiling. “No. Not yet. But I’m not half bad.”

  He pushed out of the booth and made his way to the men’s room, and stood, wobbling in place, at a stall. Fault came in after him, still carrying a pool cue.

  “You all right, Everett?”

  “Let’s get out of here,” said Everett.

  He stood and looked up at the low sky, the vault of fog that pressed down on the black bracket of trees. Dawn had dropped them at the end of Ilford’s driveway, and then her car had slipped invisibly into the night, the sound of the motor trailing away to silence.

  For a moment he regretted letting her go. He could have gotten free of Ilford’s looming house, could have followed Dawn to her bed and asked her questions. Her appeal was tied to what she seemed to know. He hated himself for the need that drew him to her. For his pastlessness.

  He turned towards the house and encountered Fault, waiting for him. Suddenly he was filled with loathing. “You’re the universal yes-man, aren’t you?” he said.

  “What?” said Fault, gaping through the darkness.

  “You’ll pimp me to anyone. Ilford, Cale, now Dawn—”

  “That’s a little harsh, Everett.”

  “Everyone wants a little piece of me,” said Everett. “Except for you. For you I’m bait.”

  “There’s a lot you don’t understand,” said Fault.

  “Do you even care which side you’re on?”

  “I’m a survivor,” said Fault indignantly. “Like you, like anybody else. I do what I have to do. You don’t know about my problems, Everett. You don’t know what happened to me.”

  There was silence then, as they stood in the dark on the drive. Everett heard his own breath, felt his own thick pulse swollen with alcohol. Before him glowed the windows of Ilford’s living room, beacons in the fog. The basement apartment was unlit, invisible.

  Finally he said, “You’re right. I don’t know what happened to you.”

  “That’s right.”

  “So tell me. What happened to us in the break? What happened to Cale?”

  “Things could be a lot worse.”

  “Who are you protecting? Ilford? Cale? Or yourself?”

  “I’m not—”

  “Tell me what you know, then.”

  “I can’t.” Fault turned away and walked towards the house.

  Everett stood, infuriated, wanting to go the other way, into the fog and night. Instead he followed, moving into the circle of light that came from the windows. At the entrance to the basement he caught up with Fault again.

  “I want a dose tonight,” he said.

  “Go upstairs and go to sleep. You’re running through my supply.”

  “Give it to me, Billy.”

  “Shut up, don’t talk about it out here—”

  “Downstairs, then.”

  They went into the basement.

  “You were away for so long,” said Gwen.

  “I’ve been busy,” he said. “Things have been complicated.”

  She drew him to her, into her arms where she sat on the sketch of a bed in that empty space. He felt her touch like an echo, a whisper in the language of memory.

  But he was tired of whispers.

  “You have to find a way for us to be together,” she said. “I can’t stay here waiting for you anymore. I can’t stand it.”

  “It’s not that simple,” he said.

  “Cale said there was a way.”

  “Cale thinks there is a way. I don’t know what I think.”

  “He said you could finish what he started,” she said. “When he called me back, when he helped me come back. You could bring me into the world again.”

  Everett flinched. “Maybe. Maybe I could do something like that.”

  “Cale thinks so, Everett.”

  “Does Cale . . .” He stopped. It didn’t matter if Cale came here. The thoughts she voiced were Cale’s. It was better, in fact, to think that Cale came here, came to her in person and spoke. Better than thinking he’d somehow programmed her from afar. If it was that way, he didn’t want to know.

  He pulled away.

  “Is something the matter?” She looked into his eyes.

  “I need to know who I am.”

  “I know who you are.”

  “Tell me.”

  “You’re Everett, in love with Gwen. Everett with Gwen. Just like I’m Gwen with Everett, Gwen for Everett.” She blinked, looked down, then found his eyes again. “Do you love me, Everett?”

  “Yes. But I’m not—”

  “Then I know you.”

  “But you don’t,” he said. “You don’t know me.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He slid away from her on the bed. “Will you let me show you something?”

  She nodded mutely.

  He took her to Hatfork.

  They stood in the parking lot of the Multiplex, the sun beating down on them, the desert air already drying their mouths. The theater’s sign still shouted that Chaos was the only
thing playing. The empty black lot burned them through the soles of their shoes. Squinting, he pulled her by the hand into the shelter of the entrance.

  “Everett,” she started.

  “You have to call me Chaos,” he said. He pulled out his old keys and unlocked the door to the staff entrance, and they stepped into the hall that led to the projection booth.

  “Why should I call you Chaos?” She leaned back against the corridor wall, looking frightened.

  “Because that’s my name here.” He reached out and touched her shoulder, and smiled slightly. “It might even be a name I gave myself. Because I’m part of why it’s like this, here. I helped make this place.”

  “I don’t understand. Places don’t matter anymore. That’s what Cale said. He said he could make any kind of place he wanted. And that you could too, Everett.”

  “This is different from the places Cale makes. I mean, I didn’t make it by myself. I didn’t even like it. But it’s a part of me, it’s the part of me I can remember.”

  He closed the door behind them, sealing them in the gloom. But he knew the way, would know the way forever. Grasping her hand, he led her up the stairs.

  The projection booth was just as he’d left it, just as it always had been, the old machines layered in dust, his stained blankets balled underneath the couch. His cigarettes were where he’d left them, and he realized he hadn’t had a smoke since hitting the road. He thought of that day, his argument with Kellogg out at the reservoir, his flight. He broke the spell of memory, led Gwen to a seat on the couch, and lit candles in the corners of the booth.

  “This is what?” she said. “Where you lived?”

  “For five years.”

  “I thought that was wrong, Everett. Cale told me you thought it was five years, but it wasn’t really.”

  All she knew was what Cale told her. Everett saw that Cale had done his best to prepare her for her time with him, for her chance to be real.

  “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “This is where I’ve been, this is what I remember. It was five years to me.”