The Power of Forgetting

by A M Russell

  ‘Jared?’

  ‘Here.’

  ‘You can start the transport now. Ease it forward by about fifty feet. There’s a short dip to the left. Then it goes up a long gradient. There’s sky!’

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘We’re looking out at the vegetation! You’ll see it in a few minutes. Oliver is coming back to make sure there no problem. But it seems wide and clear.’

  I started her up just as Joe came through form the back.

  ‘Are we moving off now?’ he asked me lightly.

  ‘Yes. We’re heading for the surface. About five minutes away.’

  ‘Alright. Good.’ He seemed hesitant about something.

  ‘What is it?’ I asked him as we reached the short turn.

  ‘I want to ask you something. But I think it might not go down too well.’

  ‘Just talk Joe.’

  ‘I want to say it to you while you are unable to jump down my throat.’

  ‘Yeah; sure.’ I start us trundling up the steady ramp like incline. There’s daylight! I’m so glad to see what looks like a small patch of blue sky.

  We emerged an area tight with vegetation. They looked like subtropical plants. The sea! I can hear the sea. It was the sound carrying far down. That and the moving air.

  The others are beckoning me to turn to the left again into a dry little space surrounded by some sort of date palms. I slow down and ease it into the space neatly. Parking nice and tidy. The rest of them are stood between the trees looking out at something I cannot see from this angle.

  ‘Tell me?’ I said to Joe.

  ‘I’m going to apologise in advance for this; because if this isn’t true, you’re clear that I’m not judging this at all.’

  I stop the engine, ‘What?’ I look him now, as I turn in the seat. We’re alone in the main cab, ‘What’s up Doc?’ I grin at him then.

  ‘Oh boy! I’m really in a quandary now.’ Joe seems terribly serious, ‘do you want me to ask you a question that you may not be able to answer?’

  ‘That depends on the question…. Come on Joe! Since when have you been holding out on me?’

  ‘Since an hour ago.’ He looks worried. It is certainly spoiling the first glimpse of this new world.

  ‘Look,’ I said calmly, ‘If it makes you feel any better. I already know this has something to do with Janey. So just get it over with.... whatever mad accusation, or crazy thing she has been saying. Then we can all get on with enjoying the lovely evening.’

  ‘Okay….’ Joe takes a breath, ‘she said you forced yourself on her.’

  I think I breathed in once and held it for a few seconds. I certainly put my forearms on the wheel and leaned forward until my head was resting on my hands. I know I didn’t speak. I breathed out, wondering what would happen if she came through right now and said this to me directly. Joe was perhaps thinking the same thing.

  ‘She’ll be kept away from you.’ He said, ‘I really have to find out why she’s making something like that up.’

  I turn to him. I’m still clutching the steering wheel. Waiting for a verdict. I’m going to be punished whatever the conclusion. I love my sister. She’s hurting me. I don’t want her to do this. There’s nothing I can do to stop it. I have to work out why….it has to be connected with Sandglass. Everything is connected. For some reason I’m thinking about the accident. I’m still there…. driving down that road looking for a way out. In my dim recollection I am alone. And then I go over the bridge, walls on both sides…. Then I see…. I see something that makes me swerve. Then I’m in the forest. Trees crammed up against the windshield. I was clutching the steering wheel in shock. But I’m alive. What did I see? It’s blank. It’s been removed. Edited out…. I was leaving the house; after the party. The sound is turned off. I don’t hear anything: just my own heartbeat. “Janey…. I don’t want you to come with me….” she’s angry. She’s so angry. “Why are you being so difficult?!” The last word is a snarl of contempt. I can’t block it out….it is like she hates me. Does she? I’m alone if she hates me. It’s all I have…. being alone.

  Wait though. I saw her: the girl in the long shirt. She spins round. She spins so beautifully. I go forward. She looks up at me. She stepped out of her shoes. She’s dancing lightly on her tip toes. There is music. I want to stay. Want to dance with her. I see her face; not just a distant shape. Now in that vision; I hold out my hand; the girl in the skirt takes it; and we dance. She moves so perfectly against me. Balance; poise; beautiful strong legs, and laughing eyes. Her hair is pinned up in tumbling curls and silky shimmers of golden toffee colours. The undertone of chocolate excites my interest. She’s beautiful and tall. She is a few inches shorter than me. I want to kiss her…. I want her. She is like the sudden sunshine on an otherwise cloudy day. I cannot leave now. She is the answer; I find myself forgetting that sorrow. I remember staying. I remember the laughing girl. She is Eve…. My Eve. Why is Janey so cruel? She doesn’t mean it…. I don’t believe she means to be.

  I’m still sat in the front of the transport.

  ‘Jared?’ says Marcia, ‘Are you alright?’

  I turn to her voice. Joe has gone. Marcia slides across, next to me. When I don’t respond, she just waits. I look at the scene. The light has changed. Somewhere to my right; the dome has been constructed.

  ‘Jared…. come on. We need you. Will you help me with the kitchen?’

  I just nod. She slides out of the left side. I get out, and follow Marcia to where the boxes for the kitchen area are stacked. I carry them two at a time, putting them where Marcia wants them to go. We set up the rest of the camp. Janey is nowhere in sight. A little while later Joe and Marcia are sat together talking in whispers. Unfortunately, I can hear what they are saying. I’m sat in a camping chair outside near a palm. James comes and hands me a coffee without a word. I sup it slowly. I hear their conversation just inside the entrance. I don’t care what happens now. I haven’t said a word since Joe told me what Janey said about me. I was so depressed I couldn’t even think what to say, let alone say it. Somewhere in my mind there was this awful fear that something of this was somehow true. My mind was being taken apart piece by piece. I couldn’t take the suspense. I got up suddenly.

  ‘What do you want to do?’ I said to Joe and Marcia, ‘You want to tell me I did something dreadful even though I can’t remember it?’

  They both looked at me in a stunned kind of way.

  ‘There was never any kind of suggestion of you being guilty of anything.’ Joe said evenly.

  ‘Well what the hell….’ I looked away, trying to get the focus back; ‘I want to know what you believe?’

  Marcia stood up; ‘Come on. Come with me. Please.’

  I hesitated; then complied. She walked through the trees. I followed her.

  There in the light of the sunset, I saw the rolling breakers of the shore. Just a little way down between tussocks of spiky grass was a little trail that led to the beach. A warm wind blew in my face. I felt my spirits lift then. Marcia was walking down there already, stepping lightly towards the shore. I followed her.

  We stood on the deserted beach, at the end of the world in a parallel place that could be so far from anything either of us had ever known that it defied imagining.

  ‘Tell me the truth.’ said Marcia, as she stared out at the waves.

  ‘All I remember is Janey kissing me; at the caves. I don’t remember anything else…. I am trying to…’ I can taste salt.

  ‘Do you want to remember?’ she asked me then.

  ‘Yes.’ I face her, ‘Yes. Always. Because I am lost without it. Even if it’s horrible. Even if…. even if,’ I swallow; there is a dry constricting feeling growing in my throat, ‘I had done such a thing…and then was unable to remember; I’d want to be made to know. I want the whole truth. Everything.’

  ‘The whole truth?’ Marcia sounds strange, ‘It’s overrated, ‘you need to believe in things before they resolve into a picture that makes sense. I can rememb
er a lot of facts…. all that information. But it doesn’t make sense without a context to fit it in to. Don’t you see?’

  ‘You are so fine…. dear Eve. If I am not…. then what do you want from me?’

  ‘Oh!’ Marcia comes close and looks up at me, ‘I want what I always wanted….to make everything alright. I want to help people. I want to help certain people I care about especially. And you…most of all.’

  ‘you want to save me.’

  ‘I sense that is another of Hanson’s little musings.’ She sounds amused then.

  ‘He was the one who accused me first!’

  ‘I have been wondering,’ she says in a matter of fact way, ‘why you did hit him?’

  ‘I was more concerned with who froze everything up. Time kind of stopped for a bit then…’

  ‘You see. We do agree. A little of each of us; and we have a fuller picture.’

  ‘I hit him because what he said…. was…. true.’ I couldn’t say anything else if I tried to. I slowly slid into a kneeling position on the sand. This place is like that end place. Yet it is so warm; so in the world. Come on dear girl execute me now.

  ‘I talked to Joe.’ She began; here it comes….’Think we found out what happened. I think we found the spike. And I think that the spike has drugged you.’

  ‘What?!’ I turn, and Marcia is beside me.

  ‘Yes,’ she continued, ‘Joe and I had thoughts about this in the past. But Janey has been used to get certain advantages in the situation. She was the only one who could get close to you. She had been the only one they could legitimately use. She’s really not herself. There is something that is medically wrong. Things don’t match. I can tell you now. But we weren’t sure until yesterday. Davey was the first to really voice his concerns…. But now she is here there is nothing we can do.’

  ‘You mean you knew?’

  ‘No one hundred per cent. But we were getting closer to something like the truth. She really hasn’t been herself. I mean really not herself.’

  ‘Oh my God! Oh no! Janey…. where is she?’ I feel suddenly really sick, and crouched over, ‘they have put their Copy into our group?’

  ‘Yes. I believe so.’

  ‘And she told us. Don’t you see? They are just laughing at us.’

  ‘We don’t know what kind it is.’ Marcia is trying to be clear, ‘all the data that we have pieced together would indicate that “copies” have distinct characteristics. They can be sharing consciousness, or not sharing it. The original can be aware of the other or not. Other things too…. They can only operate within the boundaries of that person’s psyche. In other words: if something appears, it could only do so if at some point the real person felt that, or desired it…. Tell me what you know about that.’

  ‘What I know.’ I said dully, ‘I could take you on a journey through mine and Janey’s relationship and tell you things that seemed wrong but weren’t. Others that appeared right, but couldn’t ever be. And still other times when we were so opposite; that you would not think we had anything to do with each other…. She is the most frustrating person to be around…. I never did know what was going to happen next.’ I glanced at her. I saw she was working all the known facts faster and faster. Everything was there. Everything was being examined; for patterns, connections, links and shades of subtle meaning. I am humiliated and embarrassed. Of course I wanted her! Janey was everything to me before I met Marcia. She was my indecent obsession. You may find it hard to understand. But in the same way I longed for her company, at the same time I was always trying to escape her. And now I had been neatly captured and pinned down for all to mock. Hanson would have been proud of the level of control she had gained and held. Now, only Marcia stood between Me and total depravity.

  She was saying something but I hadn’t been listening, ‘What?’

  ‘You were seduced by someone who looked like Janey, but wasn’t her.’

  ‘It was a small piece of her mind in there!’

  ‘Yes; but it wasn’t her…. We believe we know when she was switched. And I think she did it willingly thinking she could overcome the conditioning and take control of both herself and the copy.’

  ‘You mean…her consciousness shifts around?’

  ‘Yes. But the physical swap had to happen at some point.’

  ‘The mountain?’

  ‘Possibly.’

  ‘She said she slipped the cuffs.’

  ‘She didn’t. We know that.’

  ‘Alexander let her go.’

  ‘Our Janey…. She went to find Aiden then didn’t she?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What was there?’

  ‘Information.’

  ‘She had to be the real Janey.’ said Marcia, ‘the copy would not survive the boundary edge.’

  ‘But there were times that she could have gone to find something; and just been swapped round then.’

  ‘Who did we bring home?’ Marcia asked.

  ‘Real.’

  ‘Boundary end?’

  ‘Real.’

  ‘Davey’s expedition.’

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘Setting out from Base, when she wore the red snow suit.’ said Marcia.

  ‘I’m guessing it had to be the copy.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘I think she must have been…’

  ‘This is too embarrassing for you.’

  ‘Yes…. No. we need to get to facts. I accept the fact that she has a double. That means our Janey is somewhere out here. She must be either pretending to be compliant; or she’s being kept prisoner; or perhaps she was threatened in some way.’

  ‘There is another alternative.’ Marcia had her serious face on again. ‘She did it willingly; perhaps naively thinking she could change things from within Nimbus on her own.’

  ‘Hanson said she was one of the subjects.’ I said miserably. Ironically I was beginning to feel a little better.

  ‘Yes. You told me.’

  ‘Oh…. did I?’

  ‘Yes.’ Marcia tries to touch me, I shrink away.

  ‘Please, not now…. I can’t.’

  ‘That’s okay.’

  ‘Drugged? You said I had been drugged.’

  ‘Yes. It erases what happened. Just as good as a gallon of booze. You literally don’t remember a thing. I don’t think Janey… our Janey would do such a thing. We need to be sure though. We need to find out whose motives are affected.’

  ‘She knew what she was doing at least some of the time,’ I said, ‘She is strong, and must have been trying to get information out of me. There is the reason I’ve felt so rubbish.’

  ‘Yes. It’s not related to tequila.’

  ‘I really could do with some of that right now.’

  ‘Me too.’ Marcia is still looking at me.

  ‘So how do we proceed?’

  ‘Well….’ Marcia was about to pick her words carefully, ‘if we are right. And by “We”; I mean Joe, Oliver and Myself; then the best thing to do is nothing. We make sure you are not left alone with her; and for now carry on.’

  ‘But what about the box thing?’

  ‘What box thing?’

  ‘That keeps the copy alive.’

  ‘It doesn’t keep it alive. It’s actually self-sustaining. I believe that this is further along than they hoped to get. And it has to do with something that Janey herself generates. It is something to do with her personally.’

  ‘Like an electrical field?’

  ‘Yes. A factor of biology…. Something that you may be able to tell us…’

  ‘Oh!’ suddenly I knew. Suddenly I knew why they wanted me. And perhaps Janey. This was what we had been warned about; in quite a different situation. Our family had secrets that we would never tell. We could not do so without betraying so many…. surely they couldn’t make her do that?!

  This experiment required subjects. The test subject must be compliant. We must have volunteered. We must have said we would do this without any record being kept of us having agreed
to it. And what about the other people of my alternate reality last autumn? I wanted to know what had happened there, a long time before Sandglass. There was a gap of a few months. Or was it? It was August the first; then September the…. twenty-sixth. I would have to check.

  There it is. My puzzle. It like the locked room with the body in it. How was it accomplished? I had just found out I could live without floating off into space; even though I had nothing to lock me into the time line. I was not tempted to use my skills on that front. It really was too dangerous. So what then? It was about copies of what? Someone’s life. Another chance to really muck it up again this time. The man with the remote was picking his adventure. Trying to select his “Reality Show”. Money? Could it really be that simple? Develop something; make sure it’s safe, by trying it on a load of unsuspecting scientists and other assorted riff raff. Us lot.

  ‘Jared!’ she speaks as I stand up quickly.

  ‘I have to stop this! Right now!’ but my knees feel weak. I slide back down into a sitting position in the soft sand.

  ‘Don’t be silly. This is no time for your type of being impetuous. There is more at stake than your bruised ego. We are in real danger. We know that this whole thinking could be an elaborate trick. But then again it could be there just to prove a point.’

  ‘What point is that?’ I asked her.

  ‘That it can be done; that you can literally fool someone who has an intimate knowledge of that person. But there are some things you can’t fake.’

  ‘So there is a way to be certain?’

  ‘Apart from finding where they have hidden the transmitter. Yes, I believe so.’

  ‘Hanson said it was worn under the clothes. He showed me his.’

  ‘Hanson’s a liar.’

  ‘With truth serum?’

  ‘Then he was lied to, presumably. He is just repeating his “truth”.’

  ‘Hanson’s in real trouble isn’t he?’