The Forgetting Curve (Memento Nora)

by Angie Smibert

  I’m usually a caffeine and sugar guy. School always had Müesli for breakfast, but there was a bakery nearby that made amazing fried apple-bread things and coffee. It was worth being late for class.

  “Cook can prepare something else, if you wish.”

  “No, this is okay.” I could run to Starbucks later. No need to get off on the wrong foot with the old man.

  I broke off a piece of fish with my chopsticks and shoveled it in my mouth with some rice. The salty mouthful of goodness surprised me. It was like coming home—to a home I’d forgotten about. I still intended to get a latte later, though.

  Dad smiled as I polished off the salmon. And the rice. He waited until I sipped the miso to say something.

  “You’ll be working in the testing lab this summer with Roger Nyugen.” He allowed Cook to clear away his plates. “He’s a good kid. You two have a lot in common.”

  I raised one of my eyebrows, and Dad let out a small chuckle.

  “Yes, he’s been in trouble, but he’s turned himself around. For his family.” Dad explained that Roger was supporting his younger brother while his parents were in Saigon on business. The company, meaning Dad, was going to give Roger a scholarship for school this fall. “It’s a surprise, so don’t mention it.”

  I sipped my tea. I saw where this was going. Roger was supposed to be the good example for me to follow, my mentor on the road to the straight and narrow.

  “Don’t worry, there will be plenty of interesting doors for you to crack open.” Dad must’ve sensed I wasn’t buying the kid-from-the-streets sob story angle. “We have a new version of the Chipster set to ship in a few weeks. They were supposed to release this fall, but our client wants to release its new Chipster app early. We haven’t even finished testing everything.”

  Product testing was usually done months ahead of release, and Dad is a notorious control freak. No wonder he let me come home. Free labor.

  “Do they want it in time for SecureCon?” That was a big industry conference traditionally held over Fourth of July weekend.

  Dad nodded. “The new TFC app is due out July first, and they’ve invested a lot in our partnership.”

  “TFC?” I asked, recalling the ad I’d seen on the plane. It’ll be like having a TFC right in your pocket. “Really?”

  Dad had always said that TFC was unethical and manipulative, and that he’d never do business with them.

  “Sometimes you have to protect your interests,” he said quietly.

  And your interests are money. Not ethics. Not family. Money.

  Dad rose. “I have a meeting.” On his way out the door, he added quietly, “I missed you.”

  I think he actually meant it.

  16.0

  EATING THE DOG FOOD

  AIDEN

  Aunt Spring met me in the lobby of Nomura’s Research and Development Division. Sans Winter.

  “She’s not quite ready to work yet, Aiden,” Spring said. “She needs to settle in.”

  She handed me my ID badge, which she explained was mostly for visual reassurance. Translation: the other employees would know I belonged there. All secure transactions—that is, getting into the building and most areas inside—were handled by biometric scans. She led me to the Product Testing Department but stopped with a hand on the door.

  “When Winter is ready to come in—even before—would you mind keeping an eye on her?”

  “Of course not.” That’s why I came home.

  Aunt Spring turned me over to one of the product testing geeks, Roger Nguyen—my supposed mentor. He was maybe eighteen, if that, with fidgety, scarred hands and intense eyes. He struck me as the male version of Winter, minus the artistic genius. Roger handed me a testing protocol to read and disappeared into his cubicle.

  My eyes glazed over as soon as I hit the second paragraph. The protocol was forty pages long.

  Roger came back twenty minutes later with two cups of coffee and a handful of sugar packets. I was reading the product reports I’d downloaded to my mobile.

  “Look, I know you’re the Big Kahuna’s son, but you gotta follow the protocols.” He slid a Nomura mug toward me.

  His own well-worn cup had a faded penguin in a tuxedo on the side. The bird was the symbol of a company that promoted open source code. Once upon a time, programmers thought you should be able to share code, collaborate, and build new and wonderful things together. For free. The cup was ancient—if it was real. Roger was using it to establish his geek street cred.

  I could play that game. “Dude, I’ve been eating the dog food since I was weaned.” I slapped my Nomura Chipster pre-beta on the desk.

  Roger almost did a spit-take with his coffee. In the software-hardware world, dog food equaled product, whatever product the company made. There was an old saying: it’s good to eat your own dog food. That is, you consume (read: test) what you make. Dad always had me testing shit.

  Roger flipped over my phone to read the Kanji on the back. “You have the beta of the model that’s being released soon.” He slapped another mobile on the table. “Want the beta of version 2.0? It was supposed to roll out this fall, but now we’ve got to release it this summer.”

  “Sure.” I snatched the mobile off the table.

  “We also have betas and prerelease candidates of the Soma and a few other models to test, but their chipset is based on the Chipster’s. The priority, though, is the Chipster.” Roger shook his head. “Such a kludge.”

  “Bring ’em on,” I said.

  And he did with a big fat grin on his face.

  He left me in my own cubicle with a pile of mobiles and a bigger pile of paperwork. Not literally paper, of course. He set up the terminal so I could fill out electronic forms as I tested.

  Forms. My summer was going from geek to bleak. Still, I eyed the terminal and mobiles.

  Be good, Mom’s voice echoed in my head. I knew exactly what she meant. This internship was kind of like giving an alcoholic a summer job tasting wine. I was expected to taste but not swallow. Spit it out and move on to the next vintage.

  I wondered what Velvet was doing this summer.

  Roger’s mobile buzzed in his cubicle.

  He listened a moment and then let out a squirrely little laugh. “Nah, he’s just a rich skid,” he said seriously, and then hung up.

  A skid. A script kiddie. It’s what serious hackers called wannabes who ripped off other people’s code or downloaded off-the-shelf scripts from Russian or Filipino boards to do the heavy lifting. Kids like me.

  17.0

  LATHER. RINSE. REPEAT.

  AIDEN

  For the next few days, I was stuck in a loop of crushing boredom. Face-time breakfast with Dad, who was clearly stressing about this July 1 deadline. Work (in which I behaved). Dinner. Hanging with Winter, who seemed more and more obsessed with her parents not having been in Japan. (I admit this had me worried about her.) Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

  I needed to explore. I needed to pull on a few doors and see what the universe had for me, unearth some hidden world that nobody else knew about. A forgotten steam tunnel. A locked clock tower. An abandoned chalet. A back door to a program. (Even if I was a quote-unquote skid.)

  The Hub in Tamarind Bay had nothing interesting to offer. I’d looked, hoping it was like Disney World, with its underground system for employees to get magically around. Nada.

  “You have one of the new ID chips, right?” Roger asked as he handed me a batch of the newest betas that were slated for fall release.

  “Mine’s about four years old.” I’d gotten an ID chip back when I lived in Tamarind Bay before going away to school. I didn’t need one in Bern.

  “These models only work if you have the nGram, but you can fake it out with this.” Roger handed me a headset. “The ID chip is mounted inside.”

  I looked at him, surprised.

  He shrugged. “I don’t have one, either.”

  “When’s the deadline?” Funny how Dad hadn’t mentioned me getting one.


  “July first,” Roger said. “You’ll be okay. There’s probably some student exemption. I bet you won’t need it at your fancy-schmancy boarding school.” He glanced down at something on his mobile.

  “I got kicked out for hacking the payroll,” I said as he started walking away. “Weak, showy shit really.” I needed to feel him out.

  “You wanted to get caught?” Roger slowed, looking back at me. “And your dad put you here?” Roger seemed amused.

  “I’ve been a good little white hat. So far.” I sighed. “I’ll find something else to challenge myself with.”

  Roger rolled his eyes and then left me alone. He was far more interested in his mobile.

  Not quite the reaction I was going for.

  I was hoping he’d ask “like what?” And then I’d bring up Memento. Somehow.

  Screw him. I’d figure this Memento thing out on my own.

  Problem was, I was stuck. GIGO. Garbage in, garbage out.

  Micah was a wash—at least until he got out of juvie, and even then he might not remember. Should I find Nora? She probably didn’t remember a thing, either.

  Then the universe gave me a big, fat hint.

  The test mobile picked up a crackle and then the sound of a woman’s voice.

  This is the MemeCast. All that you remember may not be the truth.

  18.0

  TIME TO GO OLD SCHOOL

  AIDEN

  The MemeCast lasted only a few minutes. She told the story of an older man who’d once ninjaed (her words) around the city like a superhero, but was now humbled by the horrific memory of something—a mugging—that didn’t really happen to him. My sources say a little chip might have something to do with it, she said. Then she played a song by a local band about spitting it out, whatever “it” was, which she said was inspired by Memento.

  She knew about Memento. (And what the chips were capable of.)

  The ’casts was obviously unauthorized. Somebody knew what they were doing and was “broadcasting” an old-fashioned pirate radio show on the low-power spectrum. That probably meant they varied the length, timing, strength, and location of the ’casts to avoid being found. And since nobody used these frequencies anymore, it would be hard just to stumble across the show—unless it interfered with something. Like a mobile.

  Finding radio signals is pretty old-school stuff. I could drive around with a homemade directional antenna and physically hunt down the transmitter. Back in the day, I could’ve triangulated the signal off of radio towers. But those towers didn’t work anymore. They’d been stripped, scrapped, or had fallen apart. Most people didn’t even remember that radio and TV had once been broadcast over the air from towers like that—for free.

  Only geeks knew that kind of stuff anymore. And only a non-skid, like my Winter, would know how to make something to track the signal.

  It was time to rattle on some doors.

  19.0

  SOMETHING

  WINTER

  Finally. Something to do.

  I had been so bored. I couldn’t call my friends, leave the compound, or see my own grandfather. I couldn’t even go into stupid work. All because Mom (and Dad, but mostly Mom) kept saying I’m still too fragile, that I need time to get my bearings.

  What a load of crap.

  Maybe I should stop asking them about Japan.

  The hummingbirds fluttered.

  Aiden described his so-called “project” and I told him what to bring. “Can I come now?” he asked.

  “You’d better,” I replied.

  While he was here, he introduced me to the MemeCast.

  20.0

  HELLUVA FIRST DATE

  VELVET

  New amendment to the Book of Velvet: when a cute rich guy asks you to hang out, be worried if he shows up with an antenna made out of a potato chip can.

  At least I dressed appropriately: old jeans, combat boots, and a Pax Victoriana tee. I was deliberately trying to look like I didn’t care enough to impress him. Mission accomplished.

  “What’s that?” I poked my finger at the cantenna.

  “We’re going hunting,” Aiden said. “You see, there’s this pirate ’cast—”

  “Yeah, the MemeCast,” I interrupted.

  He seemed a little miffed that I already knew about it, but it didn’t put him off his explanation. Much. He wanted to find the MemeCast because the person behind it seemed to know about the Mementos and Winter.

  Of course, I’d wondered about the ’cast, about Meme Girl and where she got her info, but I was mostly into the music and poetry that followed her rants. I told him that. It’s where I’d heard “Enough” by the Multinationals and “Minor Birds” by Robert Frost. She even played and read some local bands and poets. The conspiracy theory stuff had seemed half-baked. Until now. I rubbed the disc behind my ear.

  Aiden was going on about tracking the signal.

  I had to admit the idea was genius, though I wasn’t going to tell him that. I had a few questions of my own that I wanted to ask. Someone. Anyone.

  “Lead on, Macduff,” I told him.

  He did. We drove around the center of the city a bit, not talking much because he was intent on listening for the signal.

  “We may not pick up anything today. She only ’casts from random locations and intervals—so people won’t find her. Like this,” I said.

  “I’m surprised you listen to the MemeCast,” he said.

  I was really thinking, Me? What about you, Mr. Richie Rich? Instead I went with, “Don’t sound so shocked. Looking good is not my only talent.” I hoped he got sarcasm. Spike didn’t always.

  “You do look good,” he said, but then quickly turned back to his signal. He rolled down the window to scan a bigger area.

  “Uh, you’re going to make people really nervous driving around in a black SUV with a gun-like thing hanging out the window.” We’d already gotten some panicky looks from passersby, most of whom had hustled away quickly.

  He rolled the window back up. “If we could get higher…”

  I pointed to the MLK pedestrian bridge that overlooks downtown and joins it with the West End neighborhood, where I live. “You might treat a girl to coffee on the way.”

  “I’ll even throw in some cake.” Aiden tapped on the privacy screen between us and the driver. We rolled through a drive-thru, and then Aiden told the driver where to go. It took some convincing, but the driver finally let us out at the bridge; he probably parked around the corner to keep an eye on us.

  “You know,” Aiden said as he swept the cantenna over the skyline. “War walking doesn’t have the same romantic appeal as war driving.”

  This must be some usage of the word romantic that I’m not familiar with. But coffee and red velvet cake—Aiden’s idea—and watching the city rush by, wasn’t such a bad thing.

  Aiden put down the cantenna after one last sweep and sat beside me to sip his coffee.

  “How long have you known Winter?” he asked after he inhaled a slice of cake.

  “Since seventh grade. She’d just moved to the neighborhood.” You could see Winter’s grandfather’s house from here. It was the only one with an obstacle course in the back. “She was different. I like different.” We’d bonded over our distaste for physical exertion in gym glass.

  “Winter didn’t exactly fit in at her old school, either.”

  “Did you? Fit in, that is?” I asked.

  “Winter got the brains; I got the charm. And I do get by on my looks.” He smiled cheesily. It wasn’t the multiple kilowatt Prince Charming smile he’d tried on me before. More of a parody of it. That was progress.

  “How’s that working for you?” I sipped my caramel latte.

  “Eh. Not so much lately.” Aiden snorted. He began telling me about this guy at work who seemed to have his number, too. “He thinks I’m some rich kid poser.”

  I didn’t say a thing.

  Aiden shrugged it off, but I could see it was getting under his skin. Not too many people pierced t
hat Prince Charming armor of his.

  A familiar crackle came out of the mobile he had hooked up to the antenna.

  “Was that it?” I asked as Aiden scrambled for his mobile.

  “There’s a signal—actually a couple—but no ’cast.” He scowled at his mobile. “It’s coming from down there.” He pointed toward a football field-sized yard of junk by the railroad tracks.

  We sauntered casually over the pedestrian bridge before his driver noticed and then ran in the direction of the signal.

  I knew where we were going.

  21.0

  THROUGH THE FUSELAGE

  AIDEN

  A freight train clattered by behind us as we stood at the entrance to the scrapyard. A bakery truck was parked down the block, and a rocket fuselage blocked the gate.

  “This is where all the stuff from the science and transportation museums ended up,” Velvet explained. “It’s scrap now.”

  “It’s a solid mass of junk. Rocket parts. Train cars. Old cars. Some sort of telescope thing. A section of a radio tower.” I’d climbed partway up the cyclone fence to see above the rocket. “Winter would love this place.”

  “How do you think I know about it? I’m not Junkyard Girl.” She crawled up the fence and stood on the fuselage. “Do you see a hatch?”

  No. I hadn’t quite pegged what girl Velvet was. Maybe that’s why I liked her.

  “A hatch?” she repeated. Then she stepped around me and opened a door in the rocket body that I hadn’t seen.

  How’d I miss that?