Kalan had used a Happenings Memo to copy one of his memories for me.
5
O sweet and bitter in a breath,
What whispers from thy lying lip?
—Alfred, Lord Tennyson, In Memoriam III
I thought of all the ways I could destroy the Memo. Throw it over the edge of the cliff. Stomp on it. Hurl it against the rock wall.
Instead, I hid it at the bottom of my bag like that would make it go away. Because I was stupid like that.
For a while, I threw pebbles into the pond. Big pebbles, little pebbles, it didn’t matter. They all made ripples. I could watch the Memo: big pebble. Or I could delve into my own memory to see what was there and what wasn’t: little pebble. Ripples in my life either way.
I brushed dirt from my hands. Heavy with dread, I tapped into my memory of leaving the Low-G with Cora. I nearly choked on my desperate desire to find it whole. Each second from the past rolled through my mind, replaying how we hurried home across the dim garden. My feet brushed across grass, and Cora and I walked a few inches closer together than we normally would have.
And with barely a blip, I was huddled under my blanket in bed. With no memory of how I got there.
That wasn’t right. I should have had the boringness of a tram ride to skim over. Something I did every day, something I could skip in the recall, but it had to be there to explain how I got from point A to point B. The empty moments yawned at me like a gaping mouth. Somehow these dull moments were just gone. Like a lost puzzle piece. A tiny, insignificant part of the picture gone, just a few leaves missing from the foliage in the corner.
This wasn’t possible. I’d just gone through the memory too fast, that was all, I’d skipped past those moments on the tram because that’s what I always did. I forced myself through the memory again, took each step until I stumbled. Because there was a stumbling point, a jump from the streets to my bedroom.
A gap. Minutes I had lived that were now nothing but a hole.
I wanted to scream. I hadn’t lost those moments, I hadn’t forgotten.
My pulse jump-started the sudden onslaught of panic triggering a convulsion in every muscle. Someone had touched my Links. Or my neck or head, where nerve connections were strong enough to suck out—siphon—my memory.
Fingers on my skin, in my mind. Someone feasting on my stolen moments. They were tiny moments, ones that shouldn’t matter, but they were mine. And now they weren’t, now someone else had them, had bits of me that I no longer had. Pressure built in my chest, forcing my heart into my throat. I gasped for air. Jitters crawled up my legs, my arms, my back, my face. Like ants swarming inside my skin. I scrambled to my feet.
I needed movement, meds, something. Cora’s voice whispered in my head. Not a big deal, remember?
My mantra. She’d come up with it.
Not a big deal. Yes it was. Not a big deal. I breathed deep, matching the words to my inhales and exhales. Matching the inhales and exhales to my footfalls. Not-a. Big-deal. I slammed out the drum solo from my favorite song, my thighs and hands stinging. Not a. Rat-a-tat-tat. Big deal. Rat-a-tat-tat.
Screw that. This was a very big deal.
Face, tingling. I slapped it. The blur in my vision sharpened. Air. Breathe. Okay. New mantra.
This is a big deal. I can handle it. Big deal, I can handle it. I slapped my thighs, finding a rhythm. Big. Deal. I-can handle-it.
Minutes ticked by until the tingle of ant feet slowed and the panic attack faded. Soon only a flutter in my chest and a mass of frustration remained. Betrayed by my own emotions again. Exhausted, I sank to the ground and lay back. I breathed so deep, I thought I might inhale the sky. That was a nice image. I pulled the sky inside me, open and free.
Slowed by exhaustion, I traipsed down the canyon and rode the tram home. My bag nudged my hip as I left the tram station, the corner of the Memo box poking me through the thin fabric of the purse. A reminder. I couldn’t run from this.
* * *
By the time I got home, I was desperate to just watch the Memo and get it over with. I plodded toward the house, trailing my fingers along our white picket fence.
A flash of movement through the trees stopped me. Someone stood on my doorstep.
It was him, it had to be him. Kalan. He’d followed me. He’d found out where I lived, he was waiting for me, he was . . .
It wasn’t him.
Detective Jackson leaned on the doorframe, his back to me. Out of uniform, but still broad-shouldered in a black mock turtleneck. A brief moment of relief died under the screeching wheels of a sudden thought.
Today someone had touched my skin. Jackson had seen the very memory that was fractured.
Ridiculous. I’d only allowed him to watch the memory, not take it. He was my father’s best friend. He’d coached my Little League team and tickled my chubby knees all the way back in my incoherent toddler memories. And he was a cop. A good guy, the one trying to catch the Link thief.
“What?” His voice rang across the yard.
I jumped. He raised a hand to the Sidewinder wrapped around his ear. Just talking on the phone.
“I’m not in a good location to talk.” He snapped a stick from a tree, his back to me.
My skin prickled.
Jackson moved suddenly, prowling around the side of the house with tight, swift steps. I sneaked up the front walk. Our house was round, meaning no corners to hide behind, but I edged along the curved wall until I could see him. His powerful shoulders clenched, pulling his shirt tight across his back. Like a panther ready to pounce.
I ducked back out of sight. I’d never been afraid of Jackson before. But the whole “someone you don’t want to meet in a dark alley” idea got a lot more visual.
“Not much.” His voice floated around the bend. “Nothing I got today helped explain last night’s fiasco. But we don’t have to worry about witnesses, the memory was clean.”
I willed my pounding heart to slow down so I could hear clearly. He was talking about me. My memory. I sneaked closer again. His hand came into view, still clenching a stick.
“Of course I’m turning it in to the station, I have to.” He threw the stick across the yard. “They won’t get much from it anyway, the memory was distorted. She was drunk.”
I pressed close to the house. He’d stored my memory in the SLS. He shouldn’t remember it at all. I stepped forward and squinted as more of his frame came into view. A thin, metallic string glinted in the sun. It led from his pocket to the Link bud in the opposite ear from his Sidewinder.
Link buds weren’t just wireless earphones. The quartz crystals and micro-filament cord were giving Jackson hands-free access to my memory stored on the SLS in his pocket.
And whoever he was telling about it was not a cop.
“No. She’s not a risk.” Jackson whirled around. “We can discuss . . .”
Jackson and I stared at each other.
Do not freak out.
He’d said a risk, not at risk.
Do not freak out.
“I’ll call you back.” He clicked off his Sidewinder and fumbled to unplug his Link buds. “Gena.”
If I bolted, he might reconsider me being a risk. Lie. I was good at lying; all Mementi were.
“I thought I heard somebody.” I forced a smile. “What are you doing here?”
Within seconds, he’d crossed the yard. I spooked away from the house. Panther, indeed. I’d hardly noticed him moving, he was just . . . there. Close enough to steal a memory.
He smiled. “Your dad invited me for dinner tonight. I just had to wrap a few things up for another case first.” He sighed and looked around the yard. “We’ve had some good times here. Remember when Ren wanted to rent a pet for her birthday party, and that Doberman dug up all your mom’s Mexican petunias?”
“Oh.” I forced a laugh that came out as more of a squeak. I wouldn’t have pegged him as the reminiscent type. “Yeah. That was awesome.”
Jackson stepped forward. I backed awa
y. I couldn’t let him close enough to touch me, to yank off my scarf and suck away a memory.
Who had been on the phone, and what was I a risk to?
“I’m sorry about earlier, Gen.” He wiped sweat from his forehead, his posture the relaxed pose I was used to. Only now I knew what lurked beneath that skin. “That was really selfless of you, sharing your memory to help your friend.”
My voice stuck in my throat. I nodded.
“Mind if we get inside?” he asked. “I’m roasting.”
I tried to keep my pace steady as I headed back to the porch. I pressed my finger to the DNA lock, then stepped back and gestured into the house. You first, Mr. Panther. Jackson breezed inside. I followed, highly conscious of Kalan’s Memo nestled in my bag.
It wasn’t the only new memory in the area. No one else was home, but my ultra-sensitive Mementi brain picked up an extra electrostatic feedback in the room—Link buzz. Mom had stashed new memories somewhere. Temporary ones to comfort me, probably.
Mom had a weird attachment to every single object she’d ever owned. She stored memories she connected to those objects in them, so the whole family could observe them. She added to them when she had something in particular to say to one of us, but didn’t know how to say it. It still gave me a why-the-devil kind of bewilderment. She couldn’t remember those moments unless she touched that object again.
At least Jackson gave me an excuse to avoid Mom’s preferred method of comfort.
He settled himself into a chair in the living room. “How’s Cora?”
“Oh. You know.” I backed toward the kitchen. “Not great.”
“She’ll be okay,” he said. “The hospital keeps a close eye on all the victims. She’ll be admitted if she loses control.”
“Loses control?” I blinked. “Control of what?”
A tiny muscle in his cheek twitched, almost a wince. “Just . . . well, if she can’t handle the residual emotion. The other victims have had some, uh, issues. I guess our Links don’t actually store emotional memory. They just change how we connect the memory and emotion. It’s hard to cope when you have no memories to tell you what your emotions are for.”
“They’re not going insane, like some of the first generation?”
He hesitated.
Not good.
“They’re having trouble adjusting,” he said.
A.k.a. they were going insane. The first gens were a whole bouquet of crazy, thanks to the Memor-X screw-up. Some were fine. Others became borderline schizophrenic. Developed multiple personalities. Were committed for violent acts. Killed themselves.
This was not what I bargained for at all with this conversation.
“Cora—”
“She’ll be okay.” Jackson held his hands up, as if warding off my worry. “She lost very little compared to the others, so she may not notice the emotions. And there are medications, and therapy.”
Cora was a highly emotional human being. Even two years’ worth of her explosive ups and downs would be a lot to handle. She didn’t need meds, she needed her memories.
“Um, I . . .” I swallowed. “I’m sorry, can I have a minute?”
“Sure. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—”
I slammed my bedroom door, cutting him off. Rude, but I didn’t care. Jackson, the one supposed to hunt the enemy, was the enemy. Was he even trying to find Cora’s Link? Did he care if she ended up mentally ill?
I collapsed on the floor, leaning my forehead on the glass of my snake tank. Hades slept, his yellow and white body coiled under his hollow log. He was oddly calming, especially all curled up and still. When Mom and Dad told me I could get a small pet for my sixteenth birthday, I don’t think an albino corn snake made the initial list. I’m not going to lie, that was half the reason I wanted him. Plus he was just cool.
I stood and emptied my bag onto my bed. Kalan’s Memo clunked on top of my lip gloss and water bottle. His name and number were scrawled on the box. Frustration welled up. I needed to see this memory, especially knowing that Cora was primed to go loony if she didn’t get her Link back. But Jackson wasn’t the only one who’d be after me if he saw the Memo.
It wouldn’t matter if the Dalai Lama gave me a memory of how to achieve world peace, my parents would freak if they knew I had Happenings tech in my room. Liza Woods, CEO, tried to sell the Populace the kind of memories we’d paid for with years of heartache. It made people downright hostile.
She’d sidled in like some kind of parasite after Ascalon’s SLS tech had proved the power of Mementi memories. Determined to use us for profit. Not a good way to make friends, especially with a town already profiting from our own company. Ascalon had been around since near the beginning of the Mementi, it was created for us. To make our Links, to research ways we could grow, to protect us from threats we might not even know about. We didn’t need Happenings.
A sound brought my head up: the chime that announced someone had come through the front door.
“Jackson?” It was my sister’s voice. “Hey. Didn’t expect you here.”
“Good to see you, Ren. I like the hair.”
I burst from my room. Ren stood in the granite-tiled entryway, arms folded.
“You cut your hair,” I said stupidly. It was short, just-brushing-her-ears short. A thick streak in front was dyed deep purple, almost blending into the black of the rest of her hair. It sort of sharpened her Asian features.
I’d told her I wanted to dye streaks into my hair. Why did she have to go and do it first?
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
Ren had moved out last year and promptly done everything she could to violate our parents’ strict sense of propriety. She lived on the Populace side of town. She’d dyed her hair purple.
And she’d taken a job with Happenings.
I hadn’t seen her since Dad nearly had an aneurysm about the job. He’d banned Ren from the house for contributing her Mementi knowledge to the “enemy’s” work. But I’d caught him sneakily sending her texts, like he was half-ashamed he was still worried about her.
“Cora’s theft . . . I saw it on the news.” Ren’s gaze dropped to the floor. “You shouldn’t have gone out last night.”
My nostrils flared.
“Cora didn’t ask to lose two years of her life,” I said. “We shouldn’t be afraid to walk outside.”
“Gena,” Jackson said gently. “I don’t think she was saying Cora deserved it.”
Our security system beeped again as the front door opened. “. . . this new data opens up some more options with the SLS,” Dad said, walking in with Mom.
“Absolutely,” another voice said. To my surprise, a thin man followed my parents into the house—Drake Matthews, head scientist of Ascalon’s memory research. “This is the first time we’ve had a witness to a theft. Well, not a witness, exactly, but someone there just before it happened. The SLS can do all sorts of things with the info in that memory. Cross-checking other memories, maybe even hooking into streetcam footage to find any connections. I wonder how I could do that . . .”
Me. They were talking about me, my memory I’d given to Jackson. It would help the investigation after all. A sickly, panicked kind of hope rose inside me.
“That’s why I invited Gunner tonight,” Dad replied. “He’s the investigative mind, knows what methods—oh, you’re here already.”
Dad and Matthews looked old-fashioned in their respective bowler and fedora hats. Jackson, who chose to trust his hair alone to protect his head, looked oddly uncivilized next to them. The hats didn’t do much to protect their necks, but an accidental brush wasn’t likely there, anyway. And it’s not like the scarves most women wore protected us if someone wanted access to our memories. Really, we were exposed no matter what we wore. I suppressed a shiver and tugged on my own useless scarf. It hadn’t done me any good.
“Gena let me in.” Jackson stood. Every muscle expanded and contracted precisely, even with such a casual movement. Precision. Speed. Power.<
br />
Helpful skills for a cop. And for a criminal.
“Ren,” Mom said. Her mouth pinched, and she glanced at Dad. “I . . . didn’t know you were coming over.”
Dad’s face reddened, and he turned to hang his hat next to the door. Of all the nights for Ren to show up, it had to be when he was forced to be polite.
“I wanted to talk to Gena,” Ren said after a moment.
Mom’s face gentled with an almost-smile. “That’s . . . well, that’s sweet of you.” They eyed each other awkwardly until Mom shifted her attention to me. “You okay, Gen? You get my memories?”
“I’m fine,” I said. “Thanks.”
“Drake,” Dad said, his neutral tone a bit forced, “this is my daughter Genesis, and her sister Serenity.”
Ouch. Ren didn’t react, but the sting of his words pierced me too. For Dad, fear showed up as anger. I wasn’t sure how much of his mad was pure mad, and how much was scared-for-Ren mad.
Matthews nodded hello to me and my sister, taking off his hat. I’d only seen him from a distance at company parties, and he looked old, though he wasn’t much older than my parents. Tiny wrinkles canyoned his thin, frail skin. His hair was a mottled gray-and-black example of a dye job gone bad. It contrasted with the sharp cut of his brown suit coat. A cream turtleneck rose above the suit’s collar.
“Gena’s also the source of our witness memory from last night’s Link theft,” Dad said quietly.
“Oh! Oh dear. Oh my.” His face drooped in exaggerated sadness. It gave him a weird, unbalanced look. His cheekbones were freakishly uneven.
I wanted to squirm under his overly sorrowful gaze. He’d better not get direct access to my memory. Jackson had said only cops would see it. But then, he’d already broken that rule himself.
“So sorry about your friend, dear,” Matthews said. “What a brave, brave girl you are.”
“Thank you, Mr. Matthews.” I gave him a proper deep nod and gritted my teeth behind my smile.
“So polite. You’ve raised a fine pair here, Mr. and Mrs. Lee.” He winked at me.
The Unhappening of Genesis Lee Page 5
