The Memory Wall

by Lev AC Rosen

  “Right,” the producer says. “So Berlin is Wellhall, and then the other cities, since they’re also divided, sort of, they’re other cities. Like, Ariav is like Rome.”

  “We blended a lot,” the writer says. “But Berlin was definitely our main inspiration. Right around and after the fall of the Berlin Wall. All that tension, all that spying. We wanted this game to feel more like a spy thriller in many ways, with betrayals and double agents and all that.”

  “Visually,” the female producer says, “we went to Berlin, too.”

  “Yes,” the art director says, as if surprised to be onstage. “We have some pictures, actually…if this works….Can you dim the lights?” The lights on the audience dim slightly, and the wall behind the game designers lights up with a black-and-white photo. It shows crowds of young people marching through a street. “I was really inspired by the images of the Berlin Wall falling, and also by the graffiti on the wall itself.” He flips through more photos, some showing graffiti, some showing people waiting in line. “I like their eyes,” he says. “The way they’re both defiant and nervous, looking around like they’re going to be shot at any moment.” He flips to another photo. This one shows a bunch of people waiting in front of a gate. A young woman stares directly at the camera. Nick feels his body suck in air and hold it. The woman is his mother. “This is the night the wall fell. People lined up to leave, but then they came back. They just wanted to see what was on the other side. That’s how we thought of the stairs, too—almost touristy.” The photo changes. It’s a poorly lit street. “And the shadows. Oh, we loved the shadows. We have this one guy who just did shadows in the undercity. He’s amazing. That’s why the shadows down there feel so alive.”

  There’s more applause, but Nick is wondering if his body will exhale in the next few seconds, because he thinks he might be drowning in the recycled air of the auditorium. Nat looks at him and squeezes his knee. He exhales.

  “That was my mom,” he whispers. The blogger asks about dwarves, and some of the audience boo.

  “Are you sure?” Nat asks.

  Nick nods. “She was in line to leave,” he says. And remembering what his father said about what his grandfather had done that night, he doesn’t blame her.

  “You okay?” Nat asks.

  Nick nods and blinks away the wetness in his eyes. “Just shocked,” he says.

  He wonders if she left for good that night. He wonders if he can ask her. It wouldn’t be so hard to just run away. Never go back to a father who couldn’t remember you. Maybe that’s what she’s doing now—running away so Nick doesn’t have to.

  That’s why Dad didn’t know what happened to Grandpa, why Mom wouldn’t talk about it. And now she’s put herself away not because she’s afraid for herself, but because she’s afraid that one day Nick might do what she did and walk away, and then he’d have to live with the guilt she has now. Maybe. He isn’t sure. Maybe he could ask her.

  He turns his focus back to the stage, where the director is talking about the new technology they used, a program design they called Omni, where every aspect of the same story was changed by simple decisions.

  “Like the main quest,” he says, leaning into his mike. “That thing can go literally thirty-two different ways depending on where you come into it, what NPCs you meet. And it all has to do with decisions you make before it even starts, like your race, and where you get the quest. A lot of people end up adventuring with Siffon, but some people have to do the maze quest with Rel, and some people have to fight Helena with Reunne.”

  “Spoilers!” the blogger says, and everyone laughs.

  “Yeah, yeah,” the director says. “The point is, there’s, like, infinite replay. Almost all the quests will be totally different the next time around if you make different choices.”

  “Just like real life,” the writer says, and the audience applauds loudly.

  • • •

  The panel goes on for about two hours, total. They talk about storylines, forthcoming DLC, and advantages of playing as a dwarf, and they show off concept art and design models. It’s amazing. For Nick, the shock of seeing his mother fades for the rest of the presentation. Instead, he absorbs the room, the people onstage who created this world and the people in the audience who live in it. People like him.

  Afterward, the blogger tells everyone to get in line and come up onstage to get autographs and shake hands with the designers and stuff, and Nick and Nat get in line.

  “That was awesome,” Nat says.

  Nick nods.

  “It’s like meeting God,” she says.

  Nick doesn’t answer.

  “I think I want to design games,” Nat says. “You think I’d be good at it?”

  “I think you’d be great at it.” Nick nods. “Elkana is like a story herself.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I want to see that photo again,” Nick says. “Think they’ll show it to me, if I tell them it’s my mom?”

  Nat shrugs. “You can ask,” she says, her voice rising in a slow question.

  When they get up onstage, Nick asks them all to sign his game case, and they do, but when he gets to the art director, Nick asks where he got the photo.

  “Which one?” the art director asks.

  “It was a young woman, standing in line the night the wall fell,” Nick says.

  “Ah,” he says, pulling out a tablet and flipping through pictures. “History buff?”

  Nick shakes his head. “I think the woman is my mom.”

  The art director looks up at him, his expression unbelieving.

  “She was there,” Nick says. “When the wall fell.”

  The art director smirks, looks around like he’s being punked.

  “My dad is black,” Nick says. “My mom is white. German. East German.”

  The man looks back at Nick and nods, slowly, starting to believe.

  “Is this the photo?” he asks, holding it up.

  Nick looks at it. His mother, not much older than him, stares back. The lines around her face are gone, her hair is longer, but it’s obviously her. Nick nods.

  The art director looks at the photo and then back at Nick. “Yeah, actually, I can see it. That’s so wild. Is she here?”

  “No,” Nick says. “She’s…” He takes a breath. “She’s sick. I actually thought that…” He stops himself. This guy doesn’t need to know what he thought about Reunne, doesn’t need to know his story. “She’s sick,” he says.

  “I’m sorry, man,” the art director says. “I hope she gets better.”

  “Thanks,” Nick says. “Any chance I could have a copy of that photo?”

  “Sure,” the man says. “Give me your email and I’ll have someone send it off to you. And, hey, here.” He reaches behind him into a big cardboard box. “Have a T-shirt.”

  “Wow, thanks,” Nick says, taking the shirt. It’s black and has both the hawk and snake symbols from Wellhall on it.

  “I hope your mom gets better.”

  • • •

  Nick holds his T-shirt up for Nat as he walks down the stage stairs after everyone has signed his game case.

  “Cool!” she says.

  “It’s a pity present,” Nick says softly. “I told him my mom was sick.” He giggles. “He told me he hopes she gets better.” He laughs aloud now, but Nat looks concerned, so he makes himself stop. They walk toward the exit. “I think you should have it,” he says.

  “That’s okay,” Nat says.

  “No, I want you to have it as a thank-you,” Nick says. “For taking me.”

  “Are you sure?” Nat asks.

  “Absolutely,” Nick says, and hands her the balled-up cotton. He smiles to himself and tries not to laugh again.

  There’s not much else to do, but they look around at the other booths and take photos with people in costumes until Jenny says it’s time to go. They take the subway and the train back to Two Rivers, looking at photos from the event, replaying it, reciting all the small details so th
ey don’t forget them. Nick hugs Nat and Jenny and thanks them again.

  “It was a really great day,” he says, and he means it. “I’ll see you on the game in a few hours.”

  At home, before he tells Dad about the day, he goes upstairs to his computer. The wallpaper is still the checklist. He stares at the little boxes and the ironed-out words describing symptoms he’s never really understood. Then he goes to his email and downloads the photos from the day that Nat sent him, and the one the art director sent him, of Mom. He makes the photo of him and Nat in the cow hat and the guy who looked like Rorth his new desktop. Then he prints out the photo of Mom and goes downstairs to show Dad.

  SEVERKIN PULLS the gate open quietly and stands in the courtyard, listening to the water splashing like a hundred whispers in the dark.

  “Come on,” he says to Elkana. He kneels down to pick the lock—in six seconds, a tie for his personal best—then quietly pushes the door open. They creep into the house, but it’s silent. Severkin doesn’t need to search. He knows instinctively where Reunne is.

  They walk downstairs and approach the memory wall. Elkana reaches up and starts tugging at the incense burners, but nothing happens. She shrugs at Severkin. Severkin examines the wall, traces the lines of history with his eyes, looks up to the name Grayfather at the top and at Reunne’s name at the bottom, linked by name after name after name, like a long chain.

  Then, with all his might, he kicks the wall. It shakes under his foot, and gravel and sand spill down it in a momentary waterfall. He can taste the stale dirt as it enters the air.

  “Now she knows we’re here,” Elkana says, drawing her spear.

  “I don’t care,” Severkin says, and kicks the wall again. A crack splinters up and down it from where his foot has struck. Small pieces crumble off the surface of the wall, leaving triangles of clean stone behind. Severkin kicks again and again. The crack grows, fires out across the whole wall, a spiderweb, a nebula. He kicks again, and a small hole appears, right over a name he never bothered to learn. Some ancestor of Reunne’s, erased from memory. He kicks again, and more names and pieces fall, more holes form, and then he kicks again and again until the wall crumbles down to nothingness with the shudder of a dying beast. The other walls tremble. They walk into the chamber beyond, where Reunne is standing.

  “I take it you’re angry,” she says.

  “You lied,” Severkin says. “You pretended to be something you weren’t.”

  “Don’t we all?” Reunne says, tilting her head. “That’s no reason to destroy a family relic.”

  “Ye seem ta have gotten yer hands on some others,” Elkana says, nodding at the Spear, the Staff, and the Hammer, which are on a low stone table behind Reunne.

  “That’s true,” Reunne says with a smile. “And I like these better.”

  “Why be so nice to me?” Severkin asks. “Why make me feel like we were family?”

  “So you wouldn’t notice when I slipped the Staff out of your bag and replaced it with the copy I’d made from my ancestor’s notes,” Reunne says with a shrug. “You lonely orphans from faraway places are all the same. You come here, a place you finally fit into, where you aren’t looked down on, and you’re just filled with love and a need to connect. I gave that to you.”

  “Even though no one ever gave it to you,” Severkin says.

  Reunne narrows her eyes. She takes her spear off her back and points it at them. “If you plan to give my relics back to your precious overcity elves so they can have the glory I should have, you’re going to have to kill me.”

  “I know,” Severkin says, drawing his swords. “I’ve been looking forward to it.”

  Reunne leaps, and Severkin spins out of the way, avoiding her downward thrust. Elkana shoots an arc of lightning at her, and Reunne turns on her, spear outstretched like a whip. She nicks Elkana, but Elkana leaps back. With Reunne’s back to him, Severkin charges forward with his blades. She turns just as he is about to strike, the point of her spear coming around toward him like a comet. Severkin kneels into a slide, cresting under the spear and slicing at Reunne’s torso. She staggers back with a grunt, and Severkin’s swords are edged with red.

  Elkana, seeing Reunne stagger, gestures toward her, and suddenly a wall of flame erupts between them, setting Reunne alight. Reunne lets out a shriek like a cornered wolf and leaps into the air, away from both of them, the fire on her armor extinguishing from the force of her jump. She spins on them, waiting for them to come to her, but Severkin doesn’t give her what she wants, and instead, in one fluid motion, drops his blades and takes an arrow from his quiver. He lets them fly one after another at Reunne while Elkana pelts her with fire and lightning. Reunne dodges and deflects with her spear but quickly realizes she’s put herself at a disadvantage and charges Severkin. Severkin ducks, grabbing his swords, and leaps over her as she’s about to batter into him, spear first. He lands back to back with her and can feel her swinging her spear around, so he somersaults forward, out of the way, then spins to face her. Her face is covered with blood and her wrinkles are pulled back into a snarl. Severkin smiles. Elkana throws fire again, forcing Reunne to leap forward. Severkin runs at her, his blade extended above his head. He feels the weight as Reunne is split on his blade, the pull of her skin like a strong wind on a ship’s sail. When she falls to the ground, a deep wound runs from just below her neck to her navel. Her breathing is wet and thick. She manages to roll over and look up at Severkin. Her teeth are bloodied and look like meat. Severkin kneels beside her.

  “The thing is,” he says, “if you had just come with us, presented the objects to Rorth, you would have been accepted. It’s not that I don’t feel pity for you—you’re between worlds, hated by everyone. I’ve been there. But when you told me I was family, I believed it. I would have made you my family.”

  Reunne spits at him, blood and phlegm sticking to his face.

  “We’re not family,” she says. And then she dies.

  “I know.”

  “THAT WAS amazing,” Nat says at lunch. “You cut her in two! It was kind of gruesome, but it was really cool, too. Is it bad that I think that? Does it make me a sociopath?” She puts some of her food down on Nick’s tray—a spring roll. Nick picks it up and takes a bite. Nat is wearing the T-shirt he gave her. It’s two sizes too big, but she’s cut the collar off so part of her shoulder is showing—also freckled—and it looks good.

  “Do you want to cut people in two in real life?” Nick asks.

  “Ew, no,” Nat says, scrunching her face up.

  “Then I think we’re fine.”

  “Hey, freak,” comes Charlie’s voice as he approaches their table. Nat rolls her eyes and Nick tries not to laugh but still finds himself smiling. Charlie can’t hurt him now. Charlie trying to hurt him is…funny. “What are you laughing at?” Charlie asks. His friends have swarmed up behind him. “You forget I could kick your ass?”

  “What spell are you thinking of getting next?” Nick asks Nat.

  Charlie slams his palm down on the table so hard that Nick’s tray rattles. “Don’t ignore me, freak,” he says. “Or did your mom forget to teach you manners?”

  Nick turns his eyes on Charlie and thinks about how they were once sort-of-friends. Now all he sees is Charlie’s small eyes and the shadows of people he’s trying to impress looming behind him like a panel of judges. Nick takes a deep breath.

  “You know what, Charlie,” Nick says, the words shooting out before he decides to say them. “My mom is sick. So yeah, she forgets things. And if you want to make fun of me or her for that, then go ahead. All it does is make you look like an asshole. I wouldn’t do that to you—no matter what I knew about you or your family. But, sure, if you want to make fun of me because it makes those idiots behind you laugh and like you, fine. I’m happy to help you with your social life.”

  Nat inhales sharply through her teeth, looking down at the table, but grinning. From behind Charlie comes a pipe of nervous laughter, but that makes Nat start to gigg
le, and suddenly she’s throwing her head back and laughing loudly enough that people are staring. Charlie is red, and Nick knows he’s probably about to get punched, but surprisingly, Charlie just stares at Nat, like he’s waiting for her to stop laughing, but she doesn’t, so instead he just walks away, his shadows following him silently.

  Nat’s laughter dies down. She puts another spring roll down on Nick’s tray, which he eats greedily.

  “Should I ask my mom to start packing me two lunches?” Nat asks.

  “Is that an option?” Nick asks. “Because, yes. Unless she wants to teach my dad to cook.”

  Nat laughs. “She might be willing. She likes you guys.”

  “Hey, Nick!”

  Nick looks up to see Ms. Knight walking toward them, with Jess at her side.

  “Hi,” Nick says, and to Jess, “What are you doing here?”

  “I’m treating her to lunch in our glamorous dining hall,” Ms. Knight says. “Was Charlie bothering you just now?”

  “No.” Nick shakes his head, smiling.

  “Well, I just wanted to say hi,” Jess says. “You going to come visit your mom soon?” she asks quietly.

  “Tonight,” Nick says.

  “I’m off all of today,” Jess says. “But if you come around this weekend, I already asked permission so you can play that game with her. Just call ahead and I’ll reserve time and everything.”

  “Thanks,” Nick said. “That would be great.”

  “C’mon, leave them alone,” Ms. Knight says. “They have to eat so they have energy for my class later.”

  “Okay, see you later, Nick,” Jess says, waving.

  “See you!” Nick says. Jess and Ms. Knight walk away and wave at them as they leave. Nick turns back to Nat, who is grinning lopsidedly at him. “What?” he says.

  “You’re just very popular today,” Nat says. He laughs. “So you’re going to see your mom tonight?”

  He nods.

  “Oh well. I was going to ask if you wanted to come study.”