Asimov's SF, July 2011
Page 4
* * * *
Yes, he remembered it perfectly well. King Kong, the omelet, the couple at the next table, the breasts of the green-haired girl: he remembered it all. Same with Day 38, 37, 36, 35, 34. All the movies, all the books, all the games, even many of the individual swims and beers, though, naturally enough, memory had elided these to some extent. Same with 33, 32, 31. He remembered them well. In fact he remembered these days rather better than he'd normally have expected to remember days from a vacation three years previously. His awareness of the steadily increasing likelihood that he would not remember them had lent a frisson, a vividness, that had actually made them more memorable than they otherwise would have been.
* * * *
June 8th. Day 30: Woke up about 5.30. This feels weird. Kind of exciting, but weird. There's a 87.3% chance that I won't remember anything about today at all. If that's turned out to be the case, hi my future self. You were alive now, I promise you. Even if you don't remember it. If you want to know what it feels like to be me right now, remember a time when you were excited about something but a bit scared, and in the meantime it was really boring. Like that time Uncle Gary took you caving, and there was that long boring drive to get there.
Anyway, I couldn't get back to sleep again so I got up and went for a swim. In the sea this time. I thought it would be good on the beach when no one much was there yet. It was, too, and I had a good appetite for breakfast, which was . . .
* * * *
It seemed that in anticipation of not being remembered, his past self had begun to detach itself from the person it would become, addressing him in the second person, reassuring him, offering him tips as to how to reconstruct a moment in the event that he'd forgotten it without trace. But in fact he had not forgotten it. On that particular Day 30 (and it wouldn't necessarily be the same this time, when he reached Day 30 again) he had turned out to be one of the 12.7% who remembered the day in its entirety. In fact he remembered it very well.
* * * *
June 9th. Day 29: Now this is very weird. There's a 98.5 percent chance I won't remember today at all. And I know for certain, I know absolutely for certain, that even if I do remember today, or part of it, I won't remember tomorrow. So from tomorrow on, I can get up to what I like, my future self, and you won't know it. I could get away with all kinds of things in a place like this, as long as I didn't write it down in this diary. And, you never know, I might not feel like it, not after today. Ha ha. Only kidding.
No seriously, dear future self, I'm only kidding. The whole point of this diary is so you know what really happened. Not much point in it unless I write everything down, is there? That's why I wrote down about that porn movie I watched back on day 39 (and not just because there was a 99.1% chance that you'd remember it anyway, ha ha!!). If you remembered a thing and could see I hadn't written it down, you'd wonder, wouldn't you, what else I'd done that you didn't remember? And that would worry you wouldn't it?
(Weird. I was going to say it would certainly worry me!)
What did I do today? I lay in bed until 9 watching TV and playing screen games. I got up and went for a pool swim before breakfast. Then I had croissants and coffee and headed off down to town to get myself a new pair of swimming shorts, for no reason except something to do (seeing as the shorts can't come with me to Lutania.). I had another coffee in town and sat outside the café watching people go by: pretty girls on vacation, and not so pretty ones, migrant workers cleaning the streets and collecting the garbage. At one point a fire engine went by. They're yellow here, for some reason, not red. Then I walked to that cliff-top place to get some lunch, and then back to the hotel to watch a movie.
The movie was called War Hero. If you've forgotten it, which you probably have, don't worry, you've not missed much. And then . . .
* * * *
Stephen read and re-read Day 29's entry over and over. He could remember the beginning of that day, lying in bed watching TV. He remembered the croissants too, and the swimming shorts (they were green) and coffee in town, and an achingly pretty girl who walked by in a white bikini top and tiny shorts. But that was it. The yellow fire engine, the cliff-top lunch, the movie War Hero—he couldn't remember them at all.
And, worse than that, he couldn't remember the frame of mind in which he wrote the entry. Why this coquettish teasing of his future self, offering reassurance but undermining it, acknowledging his fears yet deliberately provoking them? It seemed that the less this past self of his expected to be remembered, the less it cared about the person it would become.
And that was Day 29. Even when he was writing that diary entry, he knew there was a small outside chance that he'd remember doing so. When it came to Day 28 that chance would have gone.
Yes, and there was something else he remembered about Day 29. He remembered that when he was getting out of the pool to go for breakfast, he'd thought about the next day, Day 28, the day when forgetting was a certainty, and he'd felt a strange, dark thrill. And he remembered—he was pretty sure he remembered—that he had spoken out loud to that darkness.
“No, not yet,” he'd said to it, as if to a demanding child.
* * * *
June 10th. Day 28: Oblivion time. No one can see me, not even you, my future self. You'll remember yourself before this time, and yourself after it, but not this. So who am I, eh? Who the crap am I?
Well, at least I can make a fool of myself and know I won't be ashamed about it later. Not as long as I don't write any of it down here, anyway. Ha ha. Only kidding.
One thing's for sure: no point in practicing my Luto now!
Anyway, here's my exciting day. Breakfast. Pool. Chess. TV channel hopping. Solo Agent. Lunch. Town. Beach. Coffee + watched girls. TV. Dinner. 3 beers. Movie: Casino Royale (3rd remake). Solo Agent. Bed.
Yee-ha! Living the dream!
* * * *
There was a kind of surliness creeping in. The tone was of an adolescent asked what he had done at school that day. This became more evident as time went on.
* * * *
June 20th, Day 18: I'm sick of this diary. Why am I doing it? It's for your benefit, not mine. Okay, okay, keep your hair on. You're me, I know, I know. Yawn.
Breakfast. Beach. Bar. Lunch. Movie (too boring to remember its name). Pool. Beer. Dinner. TV. Solo Agent. Chess. TV. Bed. That do?
* * * *
The thing about surly adolescents was that, when pressed to tell, they only told the empty shell. What was inside, what was real to them, they kept back.
Stephen's Day 40 was marked at the Station by a stiff little farewell event. Leader Wilson made a speech. Everyone drank lukewarm Lutanian wine out of plastic cups and tried to think of nice things to say to a member of staff they hadn't liked all that much. His colleagues tried to make polite conversation with him about what he'd be doing next. Helen Fu, who was one of those people who feel the need to keep a group together, hugged Stephen and apologized for nagging and trying to organize him. Stephen stiffly acknowledged that he'd sometimes been unnecessarily abrupt. Then he downed a couple of full cups of wine, called out for everyone's attention, and made a short and excruciatingly awkward speech in which, to everyone's surprise and embarrassment, he apologized for having been such an unpleasant colleague.
“You're very nice people,” he said, “and I'm sorry I've sometimes been unfriendly and too taken up with my work.”
Helen Fu had tears in her eyes. He had redeemed himself at last! But worse than the tears in her eyes were the ones that Stephen noticed in his own.
“I've not made the best of you all, I can see that now. But I'd like you to know that I have appreciated you in my own way, and I'll remember you fondly.”
He'd wasted these three years, he now realized, wasted them on all kinds of levels. And the sad part was that, though he would forget the last part of his time in Lutania, he'd always remember these wasted years and the many opportunities he'd failed to take. The forgetting wouldn't begin, at the very earliest, until tomorrow morn
ing.
When the wine was gone, some of his colleagues suggested they all go over to New Settlement (where many of them lived) to carry on drinking together. But Stephen said he really didn't mean to be unfriendly but he'd rather not.
“This has been very nice,” he said. “But, if it's okay with you, I don't want my last memory of Lutania to be of me throwing up in some bar somewhere.”
He even attempted a joke at his own expense.
“And anyway, you know me and nights out in bars. A man can only change himself so much.”
So the women kissed him and the men shook his hand and wished him luck, and several of them called out jovial warnings to him to walk in a straight line and not wander off into the forest, and then they all climbed into the bus and waved to him until they'd turned the corner. He knew that when they'd settled back in their seats, they'd spend a minute or two telling each other that Stephen had been a funny sort of fellow but he wasn't so bad really, and then they'd forget him, pretty much for good.
He could have made himself part of their lives, but in fact he hadn't, and the moment for that had passed.
* * * *
Bright stars packed the sky above the road as he walked, stumbling a little, through the caramel forest. He didn't see any indigenes, though once, in the distance, he saw a score or more of the vaguely pony-like creatures that the Lutanians called unicorns, emerging one by one from a pond and heading off through the trees in single file, faintly illuminated from below by the dim pink phosphorescence that came up from the moss at dead of night.
About halfway back, he stopped for a dip in another pond not far off the road. The algal-type growth that lined the ponds was also slightly luminous, so that the water glowed a faint soft pink. When he dived down into it he could see the tunnels quite clearly and unmistakably, stretching and branching away in every direction through the roots of the trees.
* * * *
Jennifer and Lucia were sitting over on the bench.
“Hey, Mr. Kohl!” Lucia bellowed. “We didn't think you'd be back till much later.”
“Go and get some beer from the kitchen and come and join us,” hollered his landlady.
They smelled pleasantly of fresh sweat and cheap perfume and cigarette smoke as they moved over to let him squeeze in between them. Their bodies felt friendly and female and warm. Jennifer opened up the flagon of beer he'd brought over from the house and passed it back to him to take the first swig.
“Day 40, eh?” Mrs. Notuna said, prodding him affectionately. “A big night for you, Mr. Kohl.”
“So tonight's the last night you'll remember?” asked Lucia. “Is that right?”
“Not necessarily,” Jennifer told her knowledgeably, “It could be but it probably won't. He might remember the next ten days. But after that, he'll definitely remember nothing. Imagine that. Nothing at all.”
“Yava save us,” said Lucia, touching her forehead. She had been rolling a cigarette, and now she lit it, the flare of the match illuminating the carved god beside her.
Stephen giggled.
“You Lutanians are funny. You haven't a good word to say about the indigenes and you'd happily shoot the lot of them if you could, but you worship a god who looks just like them.”
“What? Yava? A goblin?” Lucia was not only shocked by the suggestion but genuinely amazed. The thought had never once occurred to her.
“He's got nothing to do with that ugly lot, Mr. Kohl, I can assure you,” said Jennifer firmly. “Our ancestors brought him over with them when they first came here.”
Both she and Lucia were completely unable to see, even slightly, a similarity that was commented on by every Agency worker who arrived in Lutania. But drunk though he was, Stephen knew that it would be tactless to tell them that no god back home had ever looked like Yava, and certainly not the ones that the first colonists had, as a matter of record, brought with them.
People needed their verities to be eternal. This was true, after all, even of the Agency, with its particular idea of rationality, and its particular notion of universal human rights.
“But Yava can see into your head like they can, can't he?” he said. “Isn't that what you believe?”
He passed Jennifer the flagon and she took a long swig. He felt wonderfully comfortable and at ease, with these women on either side of him.
“Goblins can't really see into your head,” Jennifer snorted dismissively, handing the flagon to Lucia.
“Well, all right,” she reluctantly conceded, “they reflect back what's in your head, like a mirror, but they don't understand anything.”
Unusually, this traditional Lutanian view was broadly shared by Agency biologists, who speculated that indigenes’ ability to stir up uncomfortable feelings in the minds of potential predators served the same defensive purpose as smell did for a skunk, or a nasty taste for a toad.
“They might think they understand,” Lucia agreed, “but really they don't at all.”
“Horrid creatures,” sniffed Jennifer. “It's giving them too much credit to say they think at all. They might have hands and stand up on two legs, but they're only animals. I don't care what anyone says.”
Then suddenly she laughed out loud.
“Honestly, Mr. Kohl! You Agency people! Yava like a goblin indeed! No, of course not! He doesn't even come from Lutania. You ought to know that. He comes from the same place as you.”
She lit up a cigarette, drew deeply on it, and exhaled with a contented sigh. Nothing more seemed to need to be said on the subject of Yava and the indigenes, and the three of them sat for a while in comfortable silence.
“What bad thing would you do, Lucia,” Jennifer asked after a time, “if you knew that no one you know could see you, and if you knew you wouldn't remember a thing afterward?”
“It couldn't really happen, though, could it?” said Lucia piously, touching her forehead. “Yava could still see and remember what I did.”
“Yes, all right,” conceded Jennifer, with slight impatience. “But just suppose for a moment he couldn't. After all, Mr. Kohl here doesn't really know about Yava, does he? None of the Agency people do.”
“That's because they've got bone heads,” said Lucia, rapping Stephen on the forehead with her knuckles, and then giving him a little kiss on the cheek to show no hard feelings. “That's why they sit staring at those screens all the time, if you ask me. It's the only way they know how to connect up to anything.”
She took a thoughtful swig of beer, then laughed.
“Okay, I'll tell you, then. There's a good-looking bloke called Paul down at Porto. You know him, Jennifer, that man in the hardware store? If I really believed no one would ever know, not even Yava, and I myself wouldn't remember, perhaps I'd have a fling with him. He's asked me often enough, and why not say yes, if I knew I'd forget it completely afterward so it wouldn't come between me and Luis?”
She considered this.
“Mind you, Paul would have to forget too.”
“You've got a one-track mind, Lucia,” her employer told her.
“Well, you did ask, and I'm not saying I'd really do it, am I? I'm just saying if. Anyway, Mrs. Goody-goody, how about you? What would you do?”
Jennifer puffed on her cigarette.
“All kinds of things you could do, couldn't you?” she said after a while. “You could steal something you really wanted, and then put it somewhere where you'd find it later and think that you'd just been lucky.”
“Boring!” complained Lucia, reaching across to give Jennifer a prod. “Boring, boring! Is that really the worst you can come up with, old lady?”
“The worst I'm telling you,” Jennifer chuckled.
“And anyway,” she said, “maybe you don't really know until you get in that situation. Maybe your heart keeps its secrets even from you, until it's quite sure they'll never be found out.”
She took a few last thoughtful drags on her cigarette, then tossed the butt end onto the ground. Suddenly she clapped her hands.
“Yes,” said Stephen. “Exactly. That's why I wanted to carry on working. So I'd have something to do and people to watch over me.”
Lucia laughed.
“Well, if that's all it is, it's easy to fix. Stay with Jennifer and me. Don't go away from here until it's time for your transmission. Jennifer will find you work to keep you busy, won't you Jennifer? And we'll both watch over you and see you behave yourself. It doesn't matter to us what you remember or what you forget, and when you've gone, we'll never see you again.”
“Yes, of course,” Jennifer said. “If you really want work, there's plenty to be done round here.”
“Well . . . Wow. Thank you. That's great. If you're really sure, of course.”
Stephen's relief was so palpable that Lucia laughed and kissed him again.
“That Agency of yours is really stupid,” Jennifer said, “telling you to say goodbye to everyone and go away on your own, when anyone can see that what you really need at a time like this is other people around you. Other people can be Yava's eyes for you, even if you don't believe in him. And then it doesn't matter if you remember or not.”
Lucia nodded.
“You know what the trouble is with you Agency people? You try and work everything out in your heads. You try and do it all with words and ideas. And when they're gone, you think nothing's left.”
“Yes,” said Jennifer. “A person's more than the thoughts that go through their head, and whether they remember them or not.”
* * * *
On Day 39 Stephen got up early in the morning. His head was throbbing from the night's drinking, but he worked all morning for Jennifer Notuna, feeding the pigs, weeding the bean patch, and mending an old shed door. And all that afternoon, after eating lunch with Jennifer and Lucia, he worked on dismantling the remains of an old pigsty, carefully chipping the mortar off each baked brick, so it could be stacked and used again. By dinnertime, both his hands were bleeding and his back was aching, but he felt very cheerful and content, and the dinner tasted like the food of paradise.