by Pintip Dunn
“You were lucky.” My mother strides to the counter and snaps up the cake stand. “Next time might not work out so well.”
She plunks the stand on the eating table and lifts the dome. The chocolate cake is higher on one side than the other, the frosting glopped on and messy. Each mark of the handmade-ness reproaches me. See how hard your mother worked? This is how you repay her?
“There’s not going to be a next time,” I say. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize to me. Think how you would feel if you never saw your sister again.”
The chocolate cake swims before my eyes. This is so unfair. I would never let them take Jessa away from us. My mother knows this. I just wanted to see the sun. The world is not over.
“That’s not going to happen,” I say.
“You don’t know that.”
“I will! You’ll see. I’ll get my memory tomorrow, and in it we’ll be happy and safe and together forever. Then you won’t be able to yell at me anymore!” I leap to my feet, and my arm knocks the stand. It tips onto the floor, breaking the cake into a hundred different pieces.
Jessa cries out and runs from the room. I’d forgotten she was still here.
My mom sighs and moves around the table to put her hand on my shoulder. The tension melts away, leaving behind our shared guilt for arguing in front of Jessa.
“Which do you want? Clean up this mess, or talk to your sister?”
“I’ll talk to Jessa.” I usually leave the hard stuff to Mom, but I can’t bear to sift through the chocolate cake, hunting for the few parts I can salvage.
Mom squeezes my shoulder. “Okay.”
I turn to leave and see the eating table with its empty plates and balled-up napkins, crumbs layering the floor like an overturned flowerbox. “I’m sorry about the cake, Mom.”
“I love you, dear heart,” my mother says, which isn’t a reply but answers everything that matters.
Jessa is curled on the bed, her purple stuffed dog, Princess, tucked under her chin. Her walls have been dimmed, so the only illumination comes from the moonlight slithering through the blinds.
“Knock, knock,” I say at the door.
She mumbles something, and I walk into the room. Sitting on the bed, I rub her back between the shoulder blades. Where do I start? Mom’s so much better at this than me, but since she took an extra shift at work, I’ve had to pinch hit for her more and more.
I used to worry I wouldn’t say the right thing. When I told Mom, she blew the bangs off her forehead. “You think I know what I’m doing? I make it up as I go along.”
So I gave my sister a bowl of ice cream when Alice Bitterman told her they were no longer friends. And when Jessa said she was afraid of the monsters under her bed? I gave her a toy Taser and told her to shoot them.
Maybe it’s not the best parenting in the world, but I’m not a parent.
Jessa turns her head, and in the glow of the walls, I see tears in her eyes. My heart twists. I would give up every bite of my dinner to take the sadness away. But it’s too late. The food lodges in my stomach, heavy and dense.
“I don’t want to leave,” she says. “I want to stay here, with you and Mom.”
I gather her in my arms. Her knees poke into my ribs, and her head doesn’t quite fit under my chin. Princess tumbles to the floor. “You’re not going anywhere. I promise.”
“But Mom said—”
“She’s scared. People say all kinds of things when they’re scared.”
She sticks a knuckle into her mouth and gnaws. We weaned her from the thumb-sucking years ago, but old habits die hard. “You don’t get scared.”
If she only knew. I’m scared of everything. Heights. Small, enclosed places. I’m scared no one will ever love me the way my father loved my mother. I’m scared tomorrow won’t give me the answers I’ve been waiting for.
“That’s not true,” I say out loud. “I’m scared of one thing.”
“What?”
“The tickle monster!” I attack. She shrieks and squirms away, her head flinging out. I wince as her face almost smacks the metal headboard. But this is what I want. A laugh that jerks her entire body. Screams that come from the pit of her belly.
After a full twenty seconds, I stop. Jessa flops across her pillow, her arms dangling over the edge. If only I could wipe out the topic so easily.
“What do they want me for?” she says, when her breathing slows. “I’m only six.”
I sigh. Should’ve tickled her longer. “I’m not sure. The scientists think psychic abilities are the cutting edge of technology. They want to study them so they can learn.”
She sits up and swings her legs over the bed. “Learn what?”
“Learn more, I guess.”
I look at her scrawny legs, the knees scabbed over from falling off her hovercraft. She’s right. This is ridiculous. Jessa’s talent is a parlor trick, nothing more. She can see a couple of minutes into the future, but she’s never been able to tell me anything really important—how I’ll do on a big test, say, or when I’ll get my first kiss.
Jessa’s frown relaxes as she snuggles into her pillow. “Well, tell them, okay? Tell them I don’t know anything, and then they’ll leave us alone.”
“Sure thing, Jessa.”
She closes her eyes, and a few minutes later I hear her slow, even breathing. Standing up, I’m about to slip out when she calls, “Callie?”
I turn around. “Yes?”
“Can you stay with me? Not until I fall asleep. Can you stay with me all night long?”
It’s the eve of my seventeenth birthday. I need to call Marisa, speculate with her one last time what my memory will be—if I’ll see myself as a Manual Chef or have a different profession altogether.
It’s been known to happen. Look at Rita Richards, in the class ahead of me. Never touched a keyboard in her life, but her memory showed her as an accomplished concert pianist. Now, she’s off studying at the conservatory, all expenses paid.
And earlier this year, Tiana Rae showed up to school with bloodshot eyes when her memory revealed a future career as a teacher instead of a professional singer. Still, we all agreed it was better to find out now that it wasn’t meant to be, rather than spend an entire life trying and failing.
Whatever the possibilities, one thing is clear: I need to be in my own bed tonight, alone with my thoughts. But Jessa won’t notice if I leave ten minutes after she falls asleep. And tomorrow, she won’t remember she asked me to stay.
“Okay.” I cross back to her bed.
“Promise me you won’t leave. Promise you’ll stay forever.”
“I promise.” It’s a lie, but a small one, so white it’s practically translucent. I can’t be concerned. This is it. The moment I’ve been waiting for all my life.
Tomorrow, everything changes.
2
Perched on a cliff overlooking a river, the steel and glass building rises out of the forest like a serpent shooting out of the surf, all curved lines and shiny scales.
I swallow hard as I exit the bullet train. The Future Memory Agency. The place where I’ll receive my glimpse of the future. In cities all over North Amerie, there are similar buildings, regional agencies where the area’s inhabitants can go to receive their memory. But since I live in Eden City, the nation’s capitol, this agency is the nicest and biggest.
FuMA doesn’t have the whole building, of course. Down, down in the bowels of the earth, in the basement floors of the structure, the scientists from the Technology Research Agency dissect the brains of their psychic subjects.
My stomach executes a slow back flip, the way it does every time someone even mentions the word “TechRA.” But I’m not going to that part of the building. I’m only here to get my future memory, and the scientists will have no reason to notice me. Or my sister.
At the entrance, I scan the ID embedded in my right wrist. By the end of the afternoon I’ll have a matching chip, containing my future memory, implanted in my left wr
ist. A bot leads me to a conference room, where twenty or so kids talk to each other in small groups.
No Marisa yet. I press my back to the wall and try to look unconcerned.
My best friend and I have the same birthday. It probably has something to do with the fact that when Logan stopped talking to me, I scooted my chair farther and farther away from him, until I was practically sitting in the next student’s lap. Lucky for me, that student was Marisa. Instead of being offended, she cracked a joke about how our teacher had talons for nails, and we’ve been friends ever since.
I pull my long brown braid onto the shoulder of my silver jumpsuit and fiddle with it. A few minutes later, Marisa saunters into the room, a pair of trapezoid spectacles perched on her nose. She doesn’t actually need the spectacles for seeing, of course. Everyone fixes their eyes with lasers, but the latest fashion is to dress like our ancestors before the Technology Boom. So people wear fake plaster casts on their arms and legs and fake hearing aids as if they’re earrings. I even see a guy across the room who has glued tiny metal strips to his teeth.
“October Twenty-eight!” Marisa swoops down on me. Out of all my friends, she’s the only one who calls me by my school name, probably because we have the same one.
A couple of kids stare, and she shoots them each a salute. “So good to see you, October Twenty-eight. And you, too, October Twenty-eight.”
They avert their eyes, as though she’s gotten their names wrong. She hasn’t, of course. On this Memory Day, everybody in the room has the same name.
Marisa turns back to me and weaves her hand through mine. “Are you ready for this?” she asks, serious for once.
“Scared out of my mind,” I admit.
She grips my hand tighter. We both know how important this day is. It’ll determine the track we’ll enter, the careers we’ll have. It will lay out the parameters for the rest of our lives.
“If only we didn’t have our hearts set on artistic fields,” she says lightly. “Too bad we don’t want to go into bot maintenance. Plenty of job openings there.”
I snicker. My best friend yearns to be a live actress, and she’ll probably do it, too. With her big, brown eyes and her deep tawny skin, she commands attention wherever she goes. And she’s got the talent to match her looks. She’s had the lead in our school’s live dramas the last four years and has been known to move the audience to tears with a single line.
“Oh, I can totally see you underneath bots all day,” I say. “Grease on your nose, streaked through your hair. Who knows? You’ll probably start a new trend.”
At that moment, a woman in a FuMA uniform comes in and strides to the podium. Supposedly, all the different agencies have an equal say in ComA, but rumor has it FuMA’s power is growing, as future memory becomes more and more important in our society.
The woman’s hair is bright, artificial silver, cut close to her head. It’s no longer than an inch anywhere. She’s about my mother’s age, but that’s where the resemblance ends. My mother is a bot supervisor, while this woman’s uniform is navy all the way through—navy blouse, navy jacket, navy skirt—the mark of a high-ranking official.
“Take a seat, everyone,” she says. Marisa makes a beeline for the front row, and I trail after her. Once we’re seated, the woman smiles, but her gray eyes remain flat.
“I am Chairwoman Dresden, head of the Future Memory Agency. Let me be the first to congratulate you on your entrance into adulthood. Later this morning your life will change for the better. For the first time, you will have direction and guidance from an indisputable and all-knowing source—the future.”
Scattered applause breaks out across the room. The Chairwoman endures it with a tight smile. The clapping falters and then stops.
“As you know, the very first future memories arrived twenty years ago. They struck the lucky recipients like bolts of lightning—randomly and without warning—painting such a vivid picture of the future, they erased all doubts from the people’s hearts. These select few turned into the most productive members of our society. And it isn’t any wonder. Instead of second-guessing their decisions, they could put their passions and energies into endeavors they knew would succeed.
“Ten years ago, FuMA discovered these memories weren’t arriving in a haphazard manner after all. Every citizen under ComA’s jurisdiction receives a memory from his future self on his seventeenth birthday. We only needed to teach you to open your minds so that you could access those memories, a directive FuMA has met with resounding success.”
Chairwoman Dresden pauses, as if expecting cheers. But the audience is no longer sure what’s acceptable, and she is met with silence. She arches an eyebrow and continues.
“It is our hope this memory will serve as a beacon to you, guiding you through the treacherous waters of life. But do not ignore the dangers.” She looks us each in the eye. I feel the cold metal of the chair through my jumpsuit when her gaze lands on me. “Some of you may take the future as given. You may be tempted to slack off, go wild, even break the law. You may, in essence, think of yourself as invincible. You would be wrong.”
She steps out from behind the podium. Maybe she doesn’t intend the movement to be threatening, but it makes my palms clammy with sweat.
“The memory you are about to receive is but a snippet of your future. It cannot tell the entire story. Make no mistake, future memory will not protect you from the laws of physics. It will not give you immunity from the directives of ComA. If you fling yourself off a cliff, you will be hurt. You may still go on to discover scientific breakthroughs, but you might be paralyzed from the waist down. If you break ComA’s laws, you will be imprisoned. You may still become a famous singer, but you will record your music from the comfort of your cell.”
The room stirs, and Marisa and I exchange a glance. It’s not like Chairwoman Dresden has told us anything new. We’ve always known our memories are mere glimpses into our futures, but I’ve never heard it phrased quite so ominously before.
“On the flip side, all of you have doubtless heard gossip about someone who’s managed to change his future. I’ll tell you right now: do not waste your time. The hand of Fate is strong. We all know the parable of the man who traveled back in time to save his wife from drowning. He managed to pull her out of the water. But the next day, she fell down a flight of stairs and died anyway.”
The Chairwoman doesn’t speak for a full minute. And then she smiles. “But let’s not dwell on the negative. Your bright, brilliant futures are upon you. In a few minutes, you will each be led into your rooms. Open your minds like you’ve been taught, and the memory will come to you. Once it does, you will proceed to Operations and have the black chip implanted in your wrist. Please report back to FuMA two days from now. People react differently to their future memories, and we want to make sure everything is progressing…smoothly.”
She turns to leave and then pauses. “Should you be one of the rare individuals who do not receive a memory, please report to the Memory-less Division for further processing. That will be all. Good luck.”
Guards in navy and white uniforms enter the room, and I wipe my palms on my pant legs. There’s no way my memory’s not coming. I can’t even consider the possibility. I’ve been waiting too long for this day. I want this memory. I need it.
I say a quick prayer to the Fates. Please, let me have a wonderful memory. Let today be the first day of the rest of my life—a good life, a happy one.
One of the guards calls my name. Marisa squeezes my hand, and I look one last time into her eyes. Standing up, I follow the guard from the room. He leads me to where my destiny is waiting, where my present and future are about to collide.
3
Who knew Fate lived in a glass box? The floor is made from a dark tile so shiny I can see my reflection, and a thick pane of glass serves as the wall for the front of the room. Thin white sheets hang on the other three walls, someone’s paltry attempt to give the room privacy.
I settle onto the reclinin
g chair. Rows of cylindrical cushions, six inches thick, make up the seat and the back. It is more fashionable than it is comfortable. I slip a metal contraption onto my head. It looks like the protective gear we wear during the Fitness Core, with narrow strips and lots of venting, and it hooks into a machine sitting on the table.
The guard punches a few buttons on the machine. His name tag says “William,” and he looks young, barely older than me. He has the prettiest hair color I’ve ever seen—deep russet-red threaded with bits of gold. I’m tempted to ask which salon he uses, but he snaps on some gloves and slides a small metal chip into the machine.
I take a shaky breath. The computer chip that will record my memory. The one that will later be implanted under my skin.
“Don’t worry,” he says. “It’s painless, I promise.”
I wet my lips. “How did you get this job? Did you see it in your future memory?”
He grins. “Nah. The future me is a child-care parent, with jam in my hair and a whole gaggle of children. But my girlfriend’s memory showed her as the head of FuMA thirty years from now. She’s currently the personal assistant to the Chairwoman, so I guess they thought they’d better be nice to me, in case she decides to marry me.”
He reaches under the table, pulling out a tray of meditation aids. “What do you want? A candle, white noise, aroma oils?”
I look at the candle, half-melted on the tray. How many memories has that dripping wax induced? The thought disturbs me, like I’m sharing something intimate with those faceless people. The green bottle holding the aroma oil makes me think of my pre-Boom ancestors, breathing in the unsanitized air.
“What kind of white noise?” I ask.
“Birds chirping.”
Really? That relaxes people? Too much cheeping makes me want to tase myself. “Maybe I’ll skip them all.”
William frowns. “Are you sure? Most people need something to help them achieve the sufficient state of openness.”
“I aced the Meditation Core. And I’ve been practicing every morning for the last six months.”