by Blake Crouch
Those are dead memories now.
Instead, as the shooter walked up the steps of the school, an AR-15 slung over his shoulder and carrying a black duffel bag loaded with homemade bombs, handguns, and fifty high-capacity magazines, a 7.62 NATO round fired from an M40 rifle at a distance of approximately 300 yards entered the back of his head and exited through his left sinus cavity.
More than twenty-four hours later, the identity of the would-be school shooter’s killer remains unknown, but the anonymous vigilante who snuffed him out is being heralded across the world as a hero.
Shaw looks at Helena. “Your chair saved nineteen lives.”
She’s speechless.
He says, “Look, I know there’s an argument to be made that the chair should be eradicated from the face of the Earth. That it’s an affront to the natural order of things. But it just saved nineteen kids and erased the unfathomable pain of their families.”
“That’s…”
“Playing God?”
“Yeah.”
“But isn’t it also playing God not to intervene when you have that power?”
“We shouldn’t have that power.”
“But we do. Because of something you created.”
She’s reeling.
“It’s like you only see the harm your chair might do,” Shaw says. “When you were first starting out with your research, way back when you were experimenting on mice, what was your guiding purpose?”
“I’d always been interested in memory. When my mom got Alzheimer’s, I wanted to build something that could save core memories.”
“You’ve gone way beyond that,” Timoney says. “You didn’t just save memories. You saved lives.”
“You asked me why I wanted the chair,” Shaw says. “I hope today has given you a window into who I am, what I’m about. Go home, enjoy this moment. Those kids are alive because of you.”
* * *
Back at the apartment, she sits in bed all afternoon, watching breaking news coverage of the school shooting that “unhappened.” Students who were murdered stand in front of cameras, recounting false memories of being gunned down. A weeping father speaks of going to the morgue to identify his dead son, a broken mother tells of being in the midst of planning her daughter’s funeral only to shift into a moment of driving her to school instead.
Helena wonders if she’s the only one who sees the slight unhinging behind the eyes of one of the previously murdered students.
As she witnesses the world attempting to come to terms with the impossible, she wonders what the masses make of it.
Religious scholars speak of ancient times, when miracles happened with great frequency. They speculate that we have returned to such an era, that this could be a precursor to the Second Coming.
While people flock to churches in droves, the best scientists can come up with is that the world experienced another “mass memory incident.” And though they talk of alternate realities and the fragmenting of space-time, they look more baffled and rattled than the men of God.
She keeps coming back to something Shaw said to her in the lab. It’s like you only see the harm your chair might do. It’s true. All she’s ever considered is the potential damage, and that fear has informed the trajectory of her life since her time on Slade’s oil rig.
As night falls on Manhattan, she stands by the floor-to-ceiling window, looking out at the Fifty-Ninth Street Bridge, its trusses illuminated and spectacularly reflected in a swirl of shimmering color on the surface of the East River.
Tasting what it feels like to change the world.
Day 11
The next morning, she’s delivered to the DARPA building in Queens, where Shaw is waiting for her again outside security.
As they head back toward the lab, he asks, “Did you watch the news last night?”
“A bit of it.”
“Felt pretty good, didn’t it?”
In the lab, Timoney, Raj, and two men Helena has never seen before are seated at the conference table. Shaw introduces her to the newcomers—a young Navy SEAL named Steve, whom he describes as Timoney’s counterpart, and an impeccably groomed man in a bespoke black suit named Albert Kinney.
“Albert’s defected here from RAND,” Shaw says.
“You designed the chair?” Albert asks, shaking her hand.
“Unfortunately,” Helena says.
“It’s astonishing.”
She takes one of the last unoccupied seats as Shaw moves to the head of the table, where he stands, surveying the group.
“Welcome,” he says. “I’ve spoken to each of you individually over the last week about the memory chair my team recovered. Yesterday afternoon, we successfully used the chair to revise the outcome of the school shooting in Maryland. Now, there is a philosophy, which I respect, that says we can’t trust ourselves with something of such raw power. I don’t mean to speak for you, Dr. Smith, but even you, the chair’s creator, hold that opinion.”
“That’s right.”
“I have a different perspective, emboldened by what we achieved yesterday. I believe that, as technology arises in the world, we’re entrusted to find its best use for the continuation and betterment of our species. I believe the chair contains an awesome potential to bring good into the world.
“In addition to Dr. Smith, we have at this table Timoney Rodriguez and Steve Crowder, two of the bravest, most capable soldiers ever produced by the US military. Raj Anand, the man responsible for finding the chair. Albert Kinney, a RAND systems theorist with a mind like a diamond. And me. As deputy director for DARPA, I have the resources to create, under the veil of absolute secrecy, a new program, which we’re starting today.”
“You intend to keep using the chair?” Helena asks.
“Indeed.”
“To what end?”
“The mission statement for our group is something we’ll craft together.”
Albert asks, “So you’re thinking of us as a kind of brain trust?”
“Precisely. And the parameters of use are also something we’ll decide on together.”
Helena pushes her chair back and rises. “I won’t be a part of this.”
Shaw looks up at her from the head of the table, his jaw tensing.
“This group needs your voice. Your skepticism.”
“It’s not skepticism. Yes, we saved lives yesterday, but in doing so, we created false memories and confusion in the minds of millions of people. Every time you use the chair, you’ll be changing the way human beings process reality. We have no idea what those long-term effects might be.”
“Let me ask you something,” Shaw says. “Do you think any decent person is sad right now that nineteen students weren’t, in fact, murdered? We aren’t talking about swapping out good memories for bad or randomly altering reality. We’re here for one purpose—the undoing of human misery.”
Helena leans forward. “This is no different from how Marcus Slade was using the chair. He wanted to change how we experienced reality, but on a practical level, he was letting people go back and fix their lives, which was good for some people, and catastrophic for others.”
Albert says, “Helena raises a legitimate concern. There’s already quite a bit of literature out there on the effects of FMS on the brain, issues of excess memory storage, and false memories in people with mental disorders. I’d recommend we have a team research every serious paper that’s been published on the subject, so we can stay informed moving forward. In theory, if we limit the age of the memories we send our agents back to, we’ll limit the cognitive dissonance between the real and false timelines.”
“In theory?” Helena asks. “Shouldn’t you move forward on better information than the theoretical if you’re talking about changing the nature of reality?”
; “Albert, are you proposing we take travel into the distant past off the table?” Shaw asks. “Because I have a list here”—he touches a black leather notebook—“of atrocities and disasters from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. I’m just spitballing, but what if we found a ninety-five-year-old with sniper training in their past. A sharp mind. Clear recollection. Helena, what’s the earliest age you’d feel comfortable sending someone back into a memory?”
“I can’t believe we’re even discussing this.”
“We’re just talking here. There are no bad ideas at this table.”
“The female brain is fully mature at twenty-one,” she says. “The male brain, a few years later. Sixteen could probably handle it, but we’d need testing to be sure. There’s a potential that if we sent someone back into their memories at too young an age, their cognitive functioning would simply collapse. An adult consciousness being shoved into an underdeveloped brain could be disastrous.”
“Are you suggesting what I think you are, John?” Albert asks. “That we send agents forty, fifty, sixty years back to assassinate dictators before they go on to murder millions?”
“Or to stop a killing that’s the catalyst for an epic tragedy—for instance, when Gavrilo Princip, a Bosnian Serb, murdered Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914, and in so doing, tipped over the first domino in a chain that would ultimately trigger the First World War. I’m simply raising the possibility for discussion. We are sitting in a room with a machine of incredible power.”
A sobering silence falls on the group.
Helena sits back down. Her heart is racing, her mouth gone dry.
She says, “The only reason I’m still at this table is because someone needs to be a voice of reason.”
“I couldn’t agree more,” Shaw says.
“It’s one thing to change the events of the last few days. Don’t get me wrong, that’s still dangerous and you should never do it again. It’s another entirely to save the lives of millions half a century ago. For the sake of argument, what if we figured out some way to stop World War Two from happening? What if, because of our actions, thirty million people lived who would’ve otherwise died? Maybe you think that sounds amazing. Look closer. How do you begin to calculate the good and the evil potential of those who died? Who’s to say that the actions of a monster like Hitler or Stalin or Pol Pot didn’t prevent the rise of a much greater monster? At the very least, an alteration on this scale would certainly change our present beyond comprehension. It would undo the marriages and births of millions of people. Without Hitler, an entire generation of immigrants would never have come to the US. Or, simpler still, if your great-grandmother’s high school sweetheart doesn’t die in the war, she marries him instead of your great-grandfather. Your grandparents are never born, your parents are never born, and—fucking obviously—neither are you.” She looks across the table at Albert. “You’re a systems theorist? Is there any modeling you can conceive of that would even begin to extrapolate the changes to the population of the planet at this level of magnitude?”
“Yes, I could develop some models, but to your point, tracking cause and effect with such an immense dataset is virtually impossible. I agree with you that we’re flying dangerously close to the law of unintended consequences. Here’s a thought experiment off the top of my head.
“If England didn’t go to war with Germany because of something we did, then Alan Turing, the father of the computer and artificial intelligence, wouldn’t have been pushed to break Germany’s ciphering technology. Now, maybe he still would’ve gone on to lay a foundation for the modern, microchip-driven world we live in. Then again, maybe not. Or to a lesser degree. And how many lives have been saved based on all this technology that protects us? More than the lives lost in the Second World War? The ‘what-ifs’ snowball out into infinity.”
Shaw says, “Point taken. These are the types of discussions we need to be having.” He looks at Helena. “This is why I want you here. You aren’t going to stop me from using the chair, but maybe you can help us use it wisely.”
Day 17
They spend the first week hammering out ground rules, among them—
The only people allowed to use the chair are trained agents, such as Timoney and Steve.
The chair can never be used to alter events in the personal histories of the team members, or their friends and families.
The chair can never be used to send agents further back than five days into the past.
The chair’s sole use is for the undoing of unthinkable tragedies and disasters, which can be circumvented easily and anonymously by one agent.
All decisions to use the chair will be put to a vote.
Albert has taken to calling their group the Department of Undoing Particularly Awful Shit, and like many names that start as a bad joke without a quick replacement, the name sticks.
Day 25
A week later, Shaw submits the next mission candidate for the group’s consideration, even bringing in a photograph to make his case.
Twenty-four hours ago, in Lander, Wyoming, an eleven-year-old girl was found murdered in her bedroom, with the MO eerily similar to five previous murders that had occurred over an eight-week period in remote towns across the American west.
The perpetrator had broken into the bedroom at some point between eleven p.m. and four a.m. using a glass cutter. He gagged his victim and violated her while her parents slept unknowing in a room across the hall.
“Unlike previous crimes,” Shaw says, “where the victims weren’t found until days or weeks later, this time he left her in her bed, tucked in under the covers for her parents to find her the next morning. Which means we have a definitive window of time for when the murder occurred, and we also know the precise place. There seems to be little question this monster will do this again. I’d like to propose a vote to use the chair, and I vote yes.”
Timoney and Steve are instant yeses.
Albert asks, “How would you propose Steve dispatch the killer?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, there’s a quiet way of doing it, where he intercepts the guy and takes him out into the middle of nowhere and puts him in a hole in the ground where no one will ever find him. And then there’s the noisy way, where the would-be killer is found with his throat slit in the bushes under the very window he was on the verge of climbing through, with the glass cutter and knife still in his possession. With the noisy version, we would be, in effect, announcing the existence of the Department of Undoing Particularly Awful Shit. Maybe we want to make that announcement, maybe we don’t. I’m merely raising the question.”
Helena has been staring at the most disturbing photograph she’s ever seen, and rational thought is disintegrating beneath her. In this moment, all she wants is for the person who did this to suffer.
She says, “My vote is that we take this lab apart and wipe the servers. But if you decide to go through with this—I realize I can’t stop you—then kill this animal and leave him with his incriminating tools under the girl’s window.”
“Why, Helena?” Shaw asks.
“Because if people know that someone, some entity, is behind these reality shifts, then the awareness of your work begins to take on a mythic stature.”
“You mean like Batman?” Albert asks, smirking.
Helena rolls her eyes, says, “If your aim is to repair the evil that men do, maybe it’s in your interest for evil men to fear you. Also, if they find this guy near the scene of the crime, ready to break into a house, authorities will link him to the other murders, and hopefully give closure to the other families.”
Timoney says, “You’re saying we become the bogeyman?”
“If someone chooses not to commit an atrocity because they fear a shadow group with the ability to manipulate memory and time, that’s a mission you’ll ne
ver have to face, and false memories you’ll never have to create. So yes. Become the bogeyman.”
Day 24
Steve finds the child murderer at 1:35 a.m. as he’s beginning to cut a hole in the window of Daisy Robinson’s bedroom. He tapes his mouth and wrists and cuts him slowly ear to ear, watching as he writhes and bleeds out in the dirt beside the house.
Day 31
The following week, they decline to intervene in a train derailment in the Texas hill country that kills nine people and injures many more.
Day 54
When a regional jet crashes in the evergreen forest south of Seattle, they again opt not to use the chair, the group reasoning that, as in the case of the derailment, by the time the cause of the accident is determined, too much time will have passed to send Steve or Timoney back.
Day 58
Day by day, it’s becoming clearer the types of tragedies they are most suited to fix, and if there’s any hesitation, any doubt whatsoever, to Helena’s relief, they err on the side of noninterference.
She continues to be held captive in the apartment building near Sutton Place. Alonzo and Jessica have allowed her to begin taking walks at night. One of them trails a half block behind; the other stays half a block ahead.
It’s the first week of January, and the air whipping between the buildings is a polar blast in her face. But she basks in the faux-freedom of walking in New York at night, imagining she is truly on her own.
She becomes contemplative, thinking of her parents, of Barry. She keeps returning to the last image she holds of him—standing in Slade’s lab just before the lights went down. And then a minute later, the sound of his voice, screaming at her to go.
Tears run cold across her face.
The three most important people in her life are gone, and she will never see them again. The stark loneliness of that knowledge cuts her to the bone.
