Asimov's SF, April-May 2008

by Dell Magazine Authors

  It was not all bad. Some learned to control their memories. The visual used pictures or objects to set off links of associations.

  Meditation, emptying one's mind, became big. Our minds and memories tortured us. Forgetting was a blessing.

  Many people had permanent memory-release modules implanted in their bodies, and some, like myself, were genetically engineered to produce the necessary enhancing chemicals.

  I will never forget the whole of Elizabeth's being after Wendy, our three-year-old, died.

  That, and my own grief, and Jolly's, is the key that I hold.

  * * * *

  It really was my fault.

  Because, Elizabeth screamed, after we came home from the hospital, gently ejected from the E.R. and then the chapel and then the lobby after Wendy was pronounced dead, I had taken too many memory drugs, too much of them, and could no longer pay attention to the simplest thing.

  “Mike! You didn't even know she was out in the street!”

  It was true.

  I can see the various angles of Elizabeth's fury-stretched face, her anger-stunned eyes, her chest heaving as she gasps for breath, hear the hoarseness of her voice as it devolves into small shreds of sound. Her face is mottled red, like some pale, mineral-dappled stone, and her straight blonde hair is pasted onto her cheeks by tears. Her smell is of sweat too, sharp, one she has never had before. It tastes sour and unpleasant.

  This grief is memory, and it is Jolly's memory, for our collie rushed out the front door after Wendy, tried to keep her from the road, the neighbor who was also running toward her at the time told us. When we got back from the hospital, Jolly ran to Elizabeth, emitting hoarse barks, licking the back of her hand, pawing at her leg, and then jumping up, planting her paws square on Elizabeth's chest, barking like fury right in her face until Elizabeth drew Jolly tightly to her and they both collapsed backwards onto a chair, Elizabeth crying, Jolly licking her face as she was never, never allowed to do, while I stood dumb and stunned and empty.

  The next day, Jolly disappeared. We knew she was looking for Wendy, trying to find her and bring her back. As Elizabeth made funeral arrangements I walked the neighborhood, and later that night while Elizabeth sobbed I called “Jolly!” out the car window, driving slowly down nearby roads. I put up signs. The next morning, while I was walking into the dog pound, Elizabeth called my cell phone. “A man just found Jolly in a ditch next to Bartello Street. Down where it curves.” Her voice was flat. She thought Jolly's death was my fault too. She was probably right. I was supposed to fix the fence. I hadn't.

  I went and lifted Jolly from the ditch. He was stiff. I took him down the road to our vet's and asked that he be flash-frozen. They do this all the time at the vet's; people don't always have time to deal with their dead pets immediately. “Step back,” he said, as he lifted Jolly's shrink-wrapped body into the open freezer, but I didn't and tears froze on my face.

  I was not fit to be a person. I wasn't fit to be alive at all. Not any more. I shared Elizabeth's opinion in this matter.

  * * * *

  After everything was done with, after we buried Wendy, after I realized that Elizabeth would never speak to me again and with good reason, I watched her take up with Arnold who was a good man, an exemplary man, a man dedicated to the good of humankind and not addicted to memory pills. You would never find him standing in a daze in his kitchen being perhaps his grandmother cutting carrots in a another high-ceilinged marble-tabled kitchen while his toddler wandered out the door. He was definitely not me.

  I decided to become a dog.

  I would doggedly survive. Perhaps at some point I could be of use to Elizabeth.

  Oh, of course, the form and deep being of many creatures were inviting to me, as I contemplated. The long life and intelligence of elephants, of parrots. The interior brilliance of panthers, snow leopards, tigers. Yet I could have them all, in this form: the dog.

  No mammal save the human kills itself. But there was no room for big cats, or elephants, where I was going to live: in this world of humans. Was it penance, of a sort? I cannot say I do not remember, for that is about all I do. But there are rooms I do not go into. I do not go into the room of Wendy. There is no understanding that room.

  I admire Elizabeth. She lives in the room of Wendy. Still. That is her anger. I cannot get in the door, because I am Dog. Wendy, the true real room of Wendy, is in the smack I so carefully composed, encased in its protective bubble. I have locked myself out. If I went in the door I would kill myself. And that is something I cannot do. Understanding is in the hands of God and God does not exist. There are many logical conundrums on the threshold of Wendy's door, and, as a dog, I am free to not examine them.

  It was not really much of a decision. I remember those days as great swaths of scent, of grief-smelling spring wind that Wendy would never again smell, the green rich sea-smell, fresh and mineral-damp when I lifted a handful of wet sand to my eyes to see what she had seen, translucent prisms of obsidian green, pure true brown, golden sharp-planed bits that dried and blew away before I could move, so perhaps I was already inclined to dog, thinking in dog-memories of overwhelming smell. I guess that somewhat distantly I was considering my options and I can see so much more clearly now what I was thinking, as I have said: the elephant; the cat. Animal seemed the only option: to change shape; to give misery a different vessel, a different shape in which to bounce its energy about, as if emotion were the straight geometry of billiards. On this day, I saw a dog running down the beach between a man and a woman. Their child ran with the dog and grabbed his long black tail. The dog twisted free, frolicked and leapt, and he seemed happy.

  I craved the relief of what looked like simple happiness.

  * * * *

  That afternoon I drove back from the beach, went to the big-mart, and loaded up on dog food. Ellie Wills was in the next line; we all shop at the big-mart now, even for a gallon of milk.

  “I thought your dog died.” Then she looked aghast and embarrassed for an instant, remembering my greater loss.

  I pretended not to see the look. “I'm thinking about getting another one.”

  “What kind?”

  Huh. What kind. A dog-like dog. Wag, bark, happy.

  “Another collie.”

  “Collies are stupid.”

  I'd never much liked Ellie Wills, but for an instant I purely loathed her. “No they're not,” I said, bristling in advance for my future self, and for dear Jolly.

  It was the right choice for various reasons. I wouldn't want to be a menace; collies are kind, not inclined to viciousness, and filled with love like me, bursting with love, with infinite flavors of regret.

  I wiped my eyes. “I've got a cold.”

  “I know,” she said. “I'm so sorry about Wendy. It's not your fault.”

  I reeled with memories not just of Wendy but of everything, everything, echoing into forever, and reached for the seventy-five-pound bag and hauled it onto the belt.

  “Any coupons?” asked the check-out clerk.

  * * * *

  Love has no pride.

  I needed Elizabeth. She did not need me. She despised and hated me. She wished me dead. So when I left the note saying that I was leaving and that she should not try to find me I am sure she did not grieve. She was probably relieved.

  There was penance, too, in my decision to become a dog. I had enough reason to feel guilty, certainly; enough for several men for several lifetimes, even without the weight of Wendy. Because of what we did to the snails, the mice. We transferred memories from one mouse to the other. Memories of how to run the maze. Then we killed them, casually, by the thousands. It was the job of a grad student, his or her choice about how to do it. But that was long before the drug, long before my addictive hypermnesia, the opposite of amnesia: remembering everything; having, even, mental events that you think are memories but which are not.

  Dr. Lorenzo, at first horrified, finally agreed after hearing my whole story, after knowing who I was and
what I had done and why it was so necessary to me. I had read of her work for years in journals; we had spoken at the same international meetings. I offered myself as an experiment. There was no paper trail, none at all—so both of us knew that actually it was too subjective to be any kind of an experiment. It was a favor to me. For all she knew, she was murdering me, but I easily convinced her that otherwise I would kill myself anyway, because it was true.

  It took me several months in the lab to distill the essence I was after. Almost all of us are able to feel grief and loss. But it is so painful and overwhelming that we soon become numb, in various degrees. Some of us can kill others without feeling any remorse. We can justify it. Others of us are capable of causing pain on a large scale. We command armies and call it necessary and civilized.

  What might change this?

  Arnold Wentworth had his ideas.

  I had mine.

  * * * *

  Becoming a dog: I cohabited gently, slowly. The initial work took weeks. It was a matter of the cells remembering; deep memories, cross-species, the work of a brilliant memory-master, experimental and forbidden. And: remember: we could do specific. So from Jolly, frozen since her death, I got Jolly's Wendy, and Jolly's extreme grief. We could also do long-term change. We could fix an emotion, a vision, a scene, in long-term memory by precisely implanting specific molecules of one brain into the other.

  In the early days of memory work, we learned how to change the neurostructure of mice in various ways. We took out genes or inserted them. We traced protein encoding; we traced the precise mechanisms by which long-term memories survive in the brain. By then, we were able to transfer exact memories—how to run the maze; what color symbolized an exit; what sound meant food—from one mouse to another. Behavior was then replicated without the experience needed by the first mouse to form the memory.

  That was the dawn, years ago. There were many more steps to go, much more to learn, before we reached the final, complex product: me. The puppy had preparatory genetic work done; the infusion of identity structures—mine—distilled from a myriad of information Dr. Lorenzo retrieved from my human body. I am, perhaps, a precursor. Perhaps not. My reasons for becoming a dog are unique, and neither the process, as it stands now, nor the product, would be approved by any government.

  The puppy, so new, welcomed me, not surprised, and our neurons intertwined quickly, for she was growing like all new things, swiftly, her brain branching and branching. I thought I could keep out of her way; I had no real wish to use her body in any way other than to be near Elizabeth. But it was inevitable that we become one.

  It was just my way of driving into a tree.

  I am happy with the results. I am always happy, now. I am a dog.

  * * * *

  I had to learn to be a dog. At first it was awkward to have four legs, but then it was liberating. I surprisingly remembered what it was like to be human and a toddler, like Wendy, so low to the ground. As I tumbled along on four short legs, I remembered my own two short ones, the sense of growth and maturity I'd felt when finally I could balance on one leg, take the next step, then balance on that leg, and take the next step, instead of putting both feet on each step at the same time. In six months I had grown to be an almost-full-sized female collie, tricolored.

  I was cast off, taken for a ride, thrown out of the car, for the wrong I did, for my deep negligence as a human, but I came back. But it was my own ride, and I will always come back, now. I am a dog.

  * * * *

  One of Dr. Lorenzo's grad students released me near my old house, as agreed, though she hadn't a clue about anything. The student loved me. She'd walked and fed me for weeks. She scratched behind my ears, patted my side heartily, called Dr. Lorenzo three times to make sure. “I can't just leave her here.” Doglike, I loved the student so much that I wouldn't have minded staying with her, but she obeyed my previous instructions, sternly relayed by Dr. Lorenzo, and put me out eventually.

  As you see, this was no remedy for my problem, as I had hoped. Already the minutiae of memory crowded round. But it was intimate memory, the memory of learning how to control one's own body, the second sensory explosion my own consciousness, my own identity, had experienced. My love of the world returned, and my guilt receded. For a time.

  First, I walked doubtfully down the sidewalk. Next, I trotted, and then galloped, liquid memory, a mere outline of a dog, through which flowed images, smells, imperative, striking me fully in the brain, loudly, immediately, like a live symphony orchestra. The spring earth was thawing, rich and damp. I scrambled beneath the fence, using the same hole Jolly used to escape, which I ought to have boarded up but, assailed with too much memory, paradoxically forgot to do. I ran to the basement crawl space door, pushed away its rotted door, and bellied inside. I ripped through the industrial-strength plastic bag I'd wrapped the dog food in and crunched down on the brown, intensely delicious nuggets. Upstairs I heard Lester Young on the stereo, and Arnold. “What's for dinner?” he said.

  What's for dinner? The bastard didn't even cook for her. I barked.

  “What's that?” she said, and her voice thrilled me. A million instants like stars shot through me in the underhouse darkness: her.

  I barked again, and ran around to the front door, squealing and jumping up onto the door. She opened it and laughed. “Look, Arnold. A collie!”

  “I see.”

  She opened the door and let me in.

  I ran to every corner, sniffing joyfully, whining and emitting small barks, smelling her and smelling Elizabeth and Wendy and Jolly and our whole lives. I smelled this that and the other thing. I was bursting with the joy and sadness of the past. I ran into every room—her office; mine; the kitchen, faster than fast, at four-legged dog-speed, scrabbling and twisting as if bringing a gazelle to ground. Elizabeth laughed hard, with great joy. I shook myself into a frenzy, wheeling and barking until Elizabeth grabbed me and said Hey, HEY. She looked into my eyes and for an instant I thought she knew.

  But how could she?

  “Someone's lost him,” said Arnold. “We need to call the dog pound.”

  “Her. She doesn't have a collar.”

  “Someone will be looking for her. Dogs like this don't grow on trees.”

  No, we grow in labs.

  I licked her face. I swallowed her memories.

  A rumble arose in my chest and I transmuted it into a sharp bark. Elizabeth reached down, ruffled my head-fur, and I happily danced, all dog, threw in a few leaps. Elizabeth said, “She stays.”

  Arnold's scent was slightly sour. He smiled. “Whatever you want, honey.” His eyes, when he looked at me, were irritated. I didn't care. He was not the boss.

  She was.

  * * * *

  Memory is anatomical change. Period. Neuronal change. Synaptic change.

  Aplysia, a giant marine snail, has few brain cells, compared to mammals, and they are comparatively large. It was a good subject for early memory studies. It is a beautiful marine animal, its head arching up and around, topped by what looks like fronds of a stubby palm. However, it is usually ensconced in its shell, so you can't see all of that. It is a hermaphrodite.

  Training creates actual anatomical changes.

  Memory is physical.

  I wanted to remember love. I wanted to remember Elizabeth and Wendy. I wanted to remember the extraordinary web of being in which I had lived, and because I did not know whether or not the experiences that you or I might call “bad"—the disappointments, the setbacks—might have contributed to the overall flavor of that being, like a wash of one pigment over another gives a watercolor depth or a pinch of spice gives a dish an indefinable flavor and because, let's face it, I was a memory addict, I wanted it all. All of it in the skull of a dog.

  The heads of true collies are not pinched, and they are herding dogs, so their memories have to do with the big picture, and being bossy, and with speed, direction, and following complex signals. Their long, flowing coats are beautiful. I chose to
be a female because I did not want to be reflexively aggressive.

  Because I wanted to be like Jolly.

  Lying at Elizabeth's feet, I knew I had made the right choice.

  * * * *

  After they were in bed, that first night, I padded to the door of Wendy's room.

  This was not the room of Wendy that is inside me, the room I made, the room I can't go into, the room full of pain. This was her real, lovely, physical room, frilly purple and green like she wanted. Moonlight stretched across the bed, washed the pillows. Rumble, her beloved teddy bear, lay there, stub arms outstretched, his black bead eyes facing the window.

  I whined. I stretched out on my belly, put my chin on the floor.

  I howled, and was surprised. I did not know I could howl. It was a truly mournful sound, a soul-releasing “Owooooo!”

  “Goddammit!” Arnold's voice.

  “Shhh. It's okay. Get back in bed.”

  I still had teeth; I could bite if I decided to do so. My growl was low, but sufficiently ferocious. When I heard Elizabeth's moans through the doorway (they did not bother to close the door) I could have shot through that doorway, leapt onto the bed, and torn out Arnold's throat. Rapid pictures filled my mind. Elizabeth's naked legs, parted for me.

  I padded to the kitchen, tipped over the garbage can. “What's that?” I heard Elizabeth say, and then whatever Arnold did made her shriek with delight. I teased a trail of chicken bones and rotted vegetables across the kitchen floor and cracked the delicious bones between my teeth. Bacon grease drooled onto the rug beneath the dining room table.

  Deeply satisfied, I trotted back to Wendy's room. Without pausing, I leapt onto her bed, curled up, took Rumble in my mouth, and fell asleep, my mind a train wreck, a bonfire, an amusement park, of memories. A slide show. I saw it all going one way, each snapshot: Elizabeth's slow joy at realizing our love, a lazy morning in a sunstruck St. Paul hotel room, her smile across the table at the diner the day she found out she was pregnant. Fast, flash, flash, flash.