by Andy Ritchie
2. The Gub itself has to be relatively small because the orifice into which the other Harkenbach insert it is also small. If the Gub is too large because the Harkenbach who produced it had too many memories, then those memories will never be revisited because no Harkenbach will be able to fit the Gub into its orifice (ooh, Matron!). Apparently, the problem of over-sized Gubs is a relatively recent phenomenon, caused primarily by the fact that Harkenbach are living so much longer and experiencing so much more than their ancestors. For early Harkenbach, living long enough to produce a Gub was something of an achievement, and living long enough to accumulate so many memories as to produce an over-sized Gub was nothing short of a miracle. Now, however, with life expectancies being five or six times what they were, there is a need for a Harkenbach, when it senses the soft approach of Death, to spend several weeks in isolation, sifting through all the memories it has gathered and, in essence, deciding which ones it wants to keep and which ones it would rather not...and, of the memories it decides to keep, which particular aspects of each memory should be retained; the whole thing (sights, sounds, smells, feelings, etc) or just an element (a beautiful melody or the image of a stunning sunset). Everything else gets discarded. This process is called the Quool’halar and I guess it’s like one of us sorting through a lifetime of junk in our attic before we die, rather than letting our relatives do it once we’ve gone.
3. As a result of almost every Harkenbach being able to produce a hugely detailed and factually accurate summation of their lives, the Harkenbach civilisation has been able to grow and mature without the need for any written historical records. Instead, there are literally millions of Gubs stored in huge libraries, each one telling not only the individual story of the Harkenbach who produced it, but also, as a collective, the story of the physical, social, cultural and spiritual development of the Harkenbach race. Unfortunately, the onset of Quool’halar and the practice of ‘editing’ the memories which are eventually immortalised in a Gub has resulted in recent Harkenbach history becoming awash with an impossible number of virtuous individuals who, it seems, have lived lives so remarkably free of sin as to be almost saintly. This phenomenon, which Tukaal described quite scathingly (and somewhat pompously, I thought) as ‘a progressive and cumulative misrepresentation of the historical reality of an entire species’, is caused by successive generations using the Quool’halar as an opportunity to...how shall I phrase it...emphasise the more laudable events in their lives, whilst at the same time playing down or ignoring altogether the more unsavoury ones. After all, what self-respecting Harkenbach, when it is preparing its own autobiography, is going to leave in details of all the nasty, reprehensible things they have done, such as breaking Grandma’s favourite vase when they were seven and then blaming it on their baby sister, poisoning the neighbour’s pet cat because it kept shitting in their garden, or sleeping with their best friend’s sister after a night spent drinking too much red wind when the wife was away visiting her mother in Yorkshire. Oh no, the reality is that the over-riding social and cultural expectations regarding the exemplary behaviour of the individual, coupled with the knowledge that your Gub will almost certainly be viewed by your children and every generation thereafter, has resulted in all that sort of stuff being (and continuing to be) edited out of the final cut. As a result, the upper echelons of the Harkenbach Primacy are now beginning to question their long-held belief that the millions upon millions of Gubs collected over countless generations provides a complete, transparent and, most importantly, accurate reflection of the great cultural history of the Harkenbach. Indeed, that concern is now such that those undertaking the Quool’halar are actively encouraged ‘to be honest with themselves and leave behind a truthful, balanced legacy in which they have embraced both the positives and the negatives of their lives, not only celebrating their greatest achievements, but also reflecting on their greatest regrets.’ It is not yet clear whether the Harkenbach are responding to this encouragement.
I have to admit that when Tukaal told me of the recent trend amongst the Harkenbach to present oneself to future generations in the most positive light possible, I did understand and, to a degree, empathise with those who gave in to the temptation.
Do we not all, I asked him, deep down inside of us, want to be remembered as caring, decent and compassionate?
I know I probably do.
And if that means conveniently overlooking some of the less...commendable events of our life, then I suspect, for most of us at least, that would be a ‘misrepresentation of the historical reality’ we would be able to live with.
I, for one, have a whole host of memories I would prefer to have die with me rather than be placed on display for all eternity.
*
There is one other, rather disturbing piece of Harkenbach trivia which Tukaal took particular delight in sharing with me:
The tentacle containing the needle which the Researcher used to inject the memory oil into my neck is, in fact, the Harkenbach equivalent of a penis!
As if being injected with some alien ‘memory oil’ isn’t bad enough, to subsequently find out that it was done using something which the alien uses for sex makes me feel somehow...violated.
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Diary Entry 22
[Collator’s Note: Whilst the first entry for this day was, I believe, written by JP not long after he awoke, this entry was probably written much later in the day.]
It’s a sad indictment of anyone’s day when they can look back and say that eating a greasy sausage and egg roll with ketchup and drinking a watery cup of rather tasteless tea was just about the best thing that happened.
Unfortunately, for me, that seems to be the case.
My vague recollection of there being one of those small mobile greasy-spooners in a lay-by somewhere near the turn-off to the Derwent Valley had turned out to be correct. Fortunately, the rather incongruously named Ladybower Café was open in spite of the relatively early hour, no doubt hoping to catch the passing trade of lorry drivers and business travellers commuting between Manchester and Sheffield.
I stayed in the car whilst Tukaal went to order. He was looking forward to the prospect of ordering food and drink from a roadside vendor in much the same way as the rest of us would look forward to ordering a latte in a café just off the Champs-Élyssés in Paris.
When he returned, beaming like a small child who had just completed his first bike-ride without stabilisers, he spent the four or five minutes it took us to drive back to Bell Hagg explaining to me how he had ordered the food and drink and then paid for it, as if it was something which I had never done and should therefore be of tremendous interest.
I did not do anything to pop his balloon of enthusiasm, primarily because I didn’t really have the energy to do so and also because I got the distinct feeling that Tukaal was trying especially hard to be positive and upbeat, which was something that made me even more suspicious about what he was going to have to do in order to get the Researcher out of my head.
When we arrived back at Bell Hagg and hid the car once more in what is best described as a rough clearing just off the A57 (the barrier of which I had to open and close to gain access), we both set about consuming our breakfast with gusto.
Tukaal appeared to have bought something that resembled a full English breakfast on a bread roll. From what I could see, it had at least two sausages, two rashers of bacon, a couple of fried eggs and lashings of ketchup. He seemed to enjoy it immensely. He wasn’t however, quite so complimentary about the tea. He too thought it lacked flavour.
When we had finished eating, I got out of the car to stretch my sore, aching body. The rain of the previous night and early morning had finally abated, but above us the sky remained dull and overcast. A gusting wind made the surrounding trees sway gently and the gentle rustle of their leaves was on stark contrast to the roar of passing cars on the road which lay just out of sight. In classic-British style, I commented on the change in the weather.
‘Looks like
the rain has passed. I haven’t seen the forecast for the last couple of days so I’m not sure whether that’s it for a while, or whether this is just a lull and we’re in for some more later in the week.’
It was waffling bullshit borne out of nervousness.
Tukaal didn’t reply.
That made me even more nervous.
‘So, what happens now? Do you hypnotise me, put me in a trance, what?’
Tukaal shook his head slowly.
I didn’t like the way he shook his head slowly. It was ominous.
‘The Researcher’s memory oil will almost certainly be everywhere throughout your body by now, and I have a feeling that all those memories will be mashed up and swirling around in your blood stream and your organs. We don’t know how much memory oil, and therefore how many memories, the Researcher injected into you. We don’t understand exactly how the memories are interfacing with your body and, because of that, we have no way of knowing whether the memories will surface randomly, or in some sort of order. We don’t even really know whether your conscious mind will be able to access them directly at all, or whether you will only be able to get to them once they have surfaced in your subconscious mind, for example while you sleep.’
‘So what you are saying is that whatever we do next is a long-shot.’
Tukaal nodded, his features surprisingly sombre.
‘I need you to start at the end, Jeth. I need you to start at the moment you get hit by the bus...’
‘But I don’t like...’ I started to protest.
Tukaal held up his hand and I lapsed into silence.
‘I need you to try.’
So I did.
*
For over an hour, I was not me.
I was the Researcher.
I remembered only what he had done, saw only what he had seen, heard only what he had heard.
Felt only what he had felt.
It was the most unpleasant experience I have had in my entire life, and that includes that bastard Mendelssohn trying to rip my balls off with that glove-thing of his.
It was like losing control of yourself, handing over everything you are to someone else...
It’s so difficult to describe, to express how isolated and cut-off from your own reality the act of remembering someone else’s memories can make you feel...because that is the weirdest fucking thing about it, not just the fact that I was remembering what it was the Researcher had experienced, but the fact that, at the same time, I was conscious of my own feelings as I did so...it’s almost like living two simultaneous lives.
Perhaps that was what Tukaal was trying to prepare me for. Perhaps he had realised that I had naïvely got it into my head that I could somehow be...insulated from the experience of fishing for the Researcher’s memories, that I could remain detached, perhaps even oblivious, as if I could sleep through a nightmare and wake up the following morning with no recollection of it at all.
That was not the case.
That was so not the case.
Apparently, it was after about ten minutes that I vomited the first time. After about an hour, I had puked up so many times that I had nothing left to bring up and all I could do was wretch.
Tukaal wasn’t sure why my body should react in that way. Perhaps, he suggested, it was some physiological reflex to the interaction with the memory oil. Perhaps it was like sea-sickness, brought on by the disorientation caused by accessing the memories. Perhaps it was the beginning of my body’s outright rejection of the memory oil, a kind of anaphylactic shock
But he didn’t really know...
All I do know is that when I finally gave up, when I had fished in the murky soup of the Researcher’s memories for as long as I could stand, I came round (if that’s the right term) to find myself, my seat, part of the dashboard and even the windscreen covered in the remains of my breakfast and the air in the car thick with the vile stench of puke.
‘Oh, fuck,’ was all I was able to say.
‘How are you feeling, Jeth?’ Tukaal asked, placing a concerned hand upon my shoulder.
‘That is such a stupid, fucking question,’ I replied with the best attempt at a smile that I could muster.
‘When you vomited, I tried to bring you round, but I couldn’t.’
I knew what he was talking about because I could remember hearing his voice saying ‘Jeth, come back, Jeth, something’s wrong...’
In fact, I could remember him saying a lot of things.
But the weird thing was that, from where I was, at that time, nothing seemed to be wrong. From the moment I came to understand the nature of the reality in which I found myself, I always felt that I was, if not always in control, then at least always aware of what was happening around me and to me. I never once felt fearful or threatened and, I know this sounds freaky, but I certainly didn’t realise the impact the experience was having on me physically. I simply don’t remember anything about being sick, though I do remember seeing sickening things...even now, when I think about those images I saw, those events I witnessed, I feel the urge to puke...which is why I think the vomiting was a result of what the memories themselves contained, horrific as they were, and not a result of the process of swimming through the memories.
And swimming was what I was doing, swimming in an ocean full of bubbles...like swimming in lemonade...bubbles everywhere, hundreds of them, thousands of them, some close, most distant, all swirling and eddying around me.
For those first few moments (at least they only felt like moments), the chaos around me seemed to be just that...chaos. There was no order, there was no logic, there was no structure that I could relate to, nothing which gave me a hint of where to start or of what I should do, and I began to fear that this conscious venture into whatever memories the Researcher had managed to pass on to me would prove to be frustratingly fruitless.
But then, very slowly, I began to see patterns in the bubbles...it’s difficult to explain, but it was almost as if some (and I do mean only some) of the bubbles were linked together by an invisible thread, moving in unison...and then I noticed that the bubbles were not the same...some were large, most were small...and not only was the size of them different, but they were of different colours...
That was when I started looking more closely at the bubbles nearest to me...and that was when I began to see not just colours, but actual images within the bubbles...yet there was more to them than that, more to each bubble than just a picture...there were also sounds and smells and sensations pouring out of them...and emotions too...
Then I realised what each of these bubbles represented, that each bubble contained a different memory, a moment of the Researcher’s life, captured in time, waiting to be touched, waiting to be relived.
That was how I found the memory I wanted, the Researcher’s final memory, from studying the bubbles as they swirled close to me...but it’s weird because I didn’t actually see an image of a bus or of dark-suited men in sunglasses or of me crouching over...well...over me...instead, I sensed the Researcher’s fear, and that fear led me to the memory...
I instinctively knew what it was that I had to do in order to experience the memory the bubble contained, that I had to reach out and touch it, not with hands, because in this place I had no hands, but with my mind. I had to consciously choose to go inside the bubble, to immerse myself in whatever lay inside it, just as I had to choose to remove myself, to withdraw from that memory, to move back into the swirling ocean of bubbles.
But moving towards any particular bubble was difficult. It required immense effort and concentration, as if only through the force of my will was I able to close the gap between my conscious self and the bubble I had chosen. And once I had reached it, the effort did not stop there. In order to fully experience the memory, I had to engage each of my senses...eyes to see the images, ears to hear the sounds, nose to smell the aromas and so on...only, more often than not, I was unable to connect them all and I found myself reliving parts of the Researcher’s life with senses
missing...and that was really weird...like watching a film without the sound on...recalling the memory of being in a bakery yet being unable to experience the smell of baking bread...hearing the wind howl around you yet not feel it ruffling your hair...
It took some getting used to.
Often, though, I was able to get ‘fully connected’, able to engage all my senses and, in so doing, draw myself into the memory and draw the memory into me, experience it in totality.
And once I had successfully connected, I found myself able not only to be part of the memory I had chosen, but able also to follow the invisible thread that linked that memory with the ones that preceded it; I was able to trace my way back through time, back though the Researcher’s time, through its final minutes, its final hours...like rewinding a DVD.
And that process of reliving the Researcher’s past would have been just that simple if it wasn’t for those...what can I call them...rogue memories, those random, unconnected recollections that seemed hell-bent on disrupting everything...you see, just as all I had to do was reach out and touch a memory to experience it, so it seemed all a memory had to do was reach out and touch me...and they did, with annoying regularity, as if they themselves possessed a consciousness with a purpose; a purpose which was to make sure that the memory its bubble contained was relived as soon and as fully as possible. They did this by literally barging into me, forcing themselves upon me like an unwelcome and aggressive suitor, demanding to be heard...and seen...and felt.