Memory Blank

by John Stith

  Lost in his thoughts, Cal shut off the desk computer and left. He retraced his path to Machu Picchu, where he followed Vincent’s directions rather than squint at the map on the screen. The walkways were significantly busier than they had been earlier, but with fresh clothing on Cal didn’t worry about other people’s reactions.

  According to Vincent it was mid-afternoon, but the sun still hung centered in the overhead mirror. The clouds might have been slightly more substantial, but he couldn’t tell.

  Cal was passing a wristcomp store window when Vincent whistled.

  “Look at that body,” said Vincent.

  Cal stopped by the window and peered in. There were more selections than on a multiple-choice ethics exam. “Which one are you looking at?”

  “The one on the far right. It’s got infrared sensors, and twice my storage. And look at those diamonds. Wouldn’t you like it?”

  “Are you getting tired of me, Vincent?”

  “No. It’s for me. Just transplant me into it and you’ve got all the new features, but you don’t have to start all over.”

  “I think you’re fine the way you are.”

  “I think you’re cheap.”

  Cal grinned and moved to the next store window. The Sterile Cuckoo carried everything from autoclaves to disinfectant. Everything you needed to be absolutely clean. Cal resumed his walk.

  This time he had to climb stairs rather than descend, so he was relieved when he finally saw the Forget-Me-Now sign ahead. The small shop stood in a long row of others nearby. Thick closed curtains over the display window concealed the interior view. Between the dark curtain and the glass, a simple sign said, “Shed your painful memories, while you wait.”

  Cal stood before the window, wishing the mere fact of returning would dredge still more memories to the surface, but nothing new came. “Vincent, if I—if I come back out of here and don’t remember you, will you recap the past day’s events for me? I’m going to the police if I forget anything more.”

  “My pleasure. But I don’t remember everything—I purge nonessential data periodically.”

  “But if I give you a few sentences I want you to repeat later, you can do that, right?”

  “Sure. Anything you want me to remember, I will. Just think of me as an elephant.”

  Cal summarized what he had learned so far, then turned to the door. Under his touch it slid aside, revealing a conservatively appointed office with a desk and a few visitors’ chairs. There was no one inside.

  “Hello,” Cal called. The door slid shut, sealing him into the office, which made him decidedly uneasy. He resisted the impulse to open the curtains.

  Set into the gleaming desktop were a bank stick slot and a white thumbprint square. No doubt this was a cash-in-advance establishment. Still no proprietor emerged from the closed door at the back of the office. Were their normal customers so insistent that even a lengthy delay would not discourage them?

  Cal moved to the back door and opened it. Beyond lay a slightly larger room reminiscent of a dentist’s office, but more unsettling. Three reclining chairs on pedestals were positioned with their backs against one wall. Next to each was a curtain on a ceiling track. There were no trays of clamps and picks, but behind each headrest hung two parallel plates with wires running to short equipment racks. On shelves next to each chair were lightweight gas masks with straps. The equipment was much smaller than he had expected. Cal’s uneasiness remained, and no sense of familiarity came to him. A second closed door was set into the far wall.

  “Hello,” he called again. Why was no one here? Had he even been here? He looked at the chairs again, but felt neither revulsion nor recollection. To see if he could trigger more memories, Cal sat down and leaned back into one of the chairs. The cushion and arms were cool against his flesh, and his body tensed. The headrest met the back of his head at just the right height. But he could summon no prior images of his presence here. He strained so hard he barely heard the soft noise of the back door opening.

  “The business office is out front. You shouldn’t be back here.” Approaching uneven footsteps sounded. Embarrassed, Cal pushed himself quickly out of the chair and turned to face the proprietor.

  The tall man stopped as he neared. “Oh. It’s you.”

  As Cal stood mute, wondering what to ask first, the other continued. “Let me guess. You don’t remember me.”

  “Well, no. I suppose that’s normal.” Cal read his nametag. In truth, the man was a total stranger.

  “Except that most people don’t come back.” The proprietor had worried eyes, the kind that slant down on the outside, giving him a perpetually nervous expression, but Cal couldn’t detect any actual signs of nervousness in the man. His voice was smooth and even. No telltale twitches or abrupt movements broke his calm.

  “So I was here last night?”

  “Of course,” said the man impatiently. “Didn’t you keep the brochure?”

  Cal could imagine the man treating a shoplifter just as politely. “I didn’t know there was one. I didn’t see one when I recovered.”

  “Sure there was. I watched you read it when you woke up. And I told you to take it with you. The treatment scrambles your short-term memory, too, for a couple of hours.” The man continued, apparently noting Cal’s blank expression. “Most of your memories stay in a short-term holding area while the brain processes them for long-term storage. If it’s not working, you don’t remember anything except the immediate past. How far back can you recall?”

  “Maybe ten or twelve hours.”

  “You’re fine, then. What’s the trouble?” The man gripped Cal’s arm. Without obvious effort, he maneuvered Cal toward the office.

  “The trouble is I’ve lost my memories.”

  The man halted and gave Cal a hard look. “I can’t help that. You paid me to do it.”

  “Okay. Okay. But was anyone with me? Did I act like this wasn’t necessarily the right thing to do?”

  “You must be joking. You were alone. You couldn’t wait for me to start.”

  Cal slumped. “You’re sure no one was with me?”

  “Look around you. How big is this place? You think I wouldn’t notice if someone followed you in?”

  “I don’t understand. I’m told the normal erasure is for about a year. But I’m missing more like a decade.”

  “Look, mister. I only work here. You came in here in a fantastic rush, told me you had to speed up the process, and you ignored my warnings. What do you want me to do?”

  “I want my memories back.” Frustration made Cal’s voice harsh.

  “You’ll get them. Eventually. But it’s usually a few months before they start, and it’s a slow process.”

  “Is there any way to speed it up?” Cal didn’t ask about the fragments that had already returned to him. Maybe only the most recent year was thoroughly erased. But without that year he was almost as bad off anyway.

  “Sorry,” the proprietor said, attempting unsuccessfully to move Cal closer to the exit.

  Cal shook off the grip on his arm. “Do the police make restrictions on whoever uses this place? Do you need a license?”

  “No.”

  “Did I say anything about why I wanted it done?”

  The man merely shook his head, as if to say he didn’t ask questions like that and didn’t cultivate his curiosity.

  “Can’t you tell me anything more?”

  The proprietor shook his head again.

  “Well, do you at least have another copy of the brochure you gave me last night?” Cal asked.

  In answer the proprietor opened the door to the office and retrieved a pamphlet from one of the desk drawers. Silently he handed it over.

  “Thanks so much for your understanding,” Cal said.

  The man was still silent as Cal left.

  Outside, Cal looked again at the two overhead continents, feeling highly annoyed, but much less nauseated than he had felt earlier in the day.

  “I don’t understand,�
� he said.

  “Why you came here last night?” asked Vincent.

  “Right. Tell me what would happen if I overrode your instructions to purge most of what you see and hear. If this happened once, maybe it could happen again. And if you have as much data to work with as I get, you could help me more.”

  “How much would you want me to remember?”

  “Use your own judgment unless I specify. You can erase anything that seems unlikely to have a bearing on the situation. For instance, what I eat.”

  “I can keep most significant events for a few months without overflowing, as long as you don’t mind the privacy invasion. The police have the right to ask me anything I can remember unless you explicitly encode it.”

  “Okay. Any other problems?”

  “My reactions might slow down a few microseconds if I have to search through that much data, but I don’t think you’d notice unless you’re awfully particky.”

  “Go ahead, then. If I want you to forget anything in particular, I’ll tell you. For starters”—he looked at the brochure—“this guy’s name is Paulo Frall. The shop is open twenty-four hours a day. If he’s got a motive for lying, it’s not obvious to me.”

  “Noted.”

  Cal started back toward the tubeway to Greenwich. He was silent during the journey, until just before entering his house when he stopped to say, “Nikki may be back. I’m going to shut you off for a while. Good-bye, Vincent.” Cal waited a moment. “Can you still hear me?”

  There was no response, so Cal unlocked the door and went in. The house was silent. He checked the living room and stood listening for a moment.

  “Hello, Vincent,” he said.

  “That didn’t take long.”

  “No one’s here. Can you turn off when Nikki comes back home?”

  “Sí, Señor.”

  “Okay. There should be some more news on the body by now.” Cal quickly figured out how to bring up the live news on the desk computer screen. The default filter level was set to unexpurgated, so he left it there and switched the video to the wall screen.

  He had to wait through only a few unrelated stories before a woman he recognized as the same woman who had interviewed the Vittoria commander, Russ Tolbor, came on the screen.

  “Authorities have confirmed that the man found dead in the dock area this morning was murdered,” she said. “The victim was Gabriel Domingo, a construction worker.” She continued with a recap of what Cal had read earlier.

  The man’s name meant nothing to Cal, but a moment later when the holo projector displayed a slowly rotating bust of the victim, Cal clenched his fingers onto the chair arms.

  “Gabe,” Cal said involuntarily. Then he wondered at his connection with the victim and felt the certainty he was beginning to recognize when he connected with an old memory. Despite remembering the shortened form of the man’s name, he couldn’t recall anything about their relationship. Coworker? Longtime friend? Accomplice? Cal couldn’t believe he had killed him.

  Domingo’s level gaze bore into Cal as the image turned to face him. The unreadable look could have concealed defiance, curiosity, or perhaps a quiet self-confidence. Cal’s memory did nothing to fill in the blanks. The man’s hair was short and black, almost wiry, partly covering his ears. Although he seemed to be in his late twenties, his face was more wrinkled than Cal’s, as though he had spent a lot of time under pressure or in strong sunlight.

  “…last seen at approximately seventeen hundred yesterday,” the woman’s voice continued, “leaving his job aboard the Vittoria. Police are investigating bloody handprints found on the victim’s pants legs.”

  Cal took the revelation about the prints more calmly than he might have. Apparently he had been conditioning himself for the worst.

  “Police say they want to talk to the owner of the handprints, not necessarily about murder accusations and drug trafficking.” The reporter shook her head lightly and grinned the barest grin possible, but the message was plain.

  “The police have also confirmed the discovery of Vital Twenty-Two at the scene. Health officials stress that this illicit cell-regeneration drug has not been adequately tested, and carries the risk of severe, permanent damage to anyone who uses it. Domingo may well be one more victim in a series of drug-related killings. And this time it may have been for drugs to prolong life. This is Michelle Garney.”

  An unrelated story began, and Cal turned the sound down.

  “This must be what they call overwhelming circumstantial evidence,” he said.

  “You mean because pretty soon this guy’s going to be grinning at the daisy roots?”

  “That’s not all,” said Cal. “There’s the blood.”

  “Plus, you know the guy, right?”

  “What do you know about him?”

  “Nothing,” Vincent said. “You said his name.”

  “Well, his face is definitely familiar, but I still can’t imagine where I know him from.”

  “Can you wear a wristcomp if they lock you up?”

  “Vincent, I think this is really the point where you say, ‘Don’t worry. You couldn’t possibly have killed anyone.’”

  “Don’t worry. You couldn’t possibly have killed anyone.”

  “Damn it. Can’t you—oh, never mind. There’s no point in my trying to force you to be glum too. But I’m worried.”

  “It’s spilt milk under the bridge, but I can do a good glum if you insist.”

  “No. Be yourself. I’ll be all right.” Cal hesitated. “What could be more normal than me telling a computer to ‘be yourself’?”

  “Maybe there’s hope of salvaging your sense of humor even if they do lock you up.”

  “That’s part of the worry. I still can’t accept it, but if I get genuinely convinced that I murdered someone, then I’ll have to turn myself in. But if I really did kill someone, then wouldn’t it be more consistent for me to decide not to turn myself in?”

  “I think you’ve got a no-win argument.”

  “Yeah, but—” Cal cut off, interrupted by the sound of the door opening.

  It was Nikki. She walked in slowly and closed the door. “I didn’t expect you would still be here,” she said.

  “Because of what you said earlier?” Cal stood up.

  “No. Just because you’re so seldom here.” She put her jacket over the back of a chair and walked tentatively toward him. “I didn’t entirely mean what I said.”

  “It’s okay. I’m not entirely sure it wasn’t deserved.”

  Nikki tilted her head fractionally, then moved to one of the other chairs and sat. “You haven’t watched the news in a long time.”

  “I guess I’ve seen enough for tonight.” Cal reached over and turned the display off. When he turned back, Nikki was watching him intently. What did she see in his face? Guilt? “You never did tell me what you wanted to talk about earlier.”

  “For a while after I got home, I didn’t want to talk about it. And then I wanted to talk about it, but I was too angry.”

  “What was it?”

  For a long moment, it seemed she wasn’t going to respond, but then she took a deep breath and said, “You can’t be blind to what’s happening to our marriage. I need out.”

  Cal didn’t know what to say. He wasn’t even sure if he could say anything. Suddenly his mouth was dry and his body cold. The aches he had ignored before now all returned, and the worst of all was loneliness. “Too angry?” he said at last. “Too angry to talk about divorce?”

  “I don’t want to do this out of spite or anger, Cal. I’ve just been hurt too much. I need to step back and get a new perspective on my life. And I didn’t want you to think I’d do something like that in the heat of an angry moment.”

  Cal wasn’t sure which was worse—anger or cool restraint. “You’re like that, aren’t you?”

  Nikki tilted her head again, questioningly, but Cal shook his head and spoke again. “I mean I understand.”

  Maybe his troubled marriage had contr
ibuted to the pressure that must have been building recently; but he still didn’t know what had caused the tension. Was he simply too self-centered or too busy, or what? He had wanted to confide in Nikki; to tell her about his amnesia, but now—now it would seem like a blatant lie, an excuse to hold on to her. What was worse, he couldn’t convince himself that she would be doing the wrong thing. Maybe she would be better off without him. Who could say what he had been up to lately? And if he himself wasn’t convinced he hadn’t done anything wrong, he could hardly expect her to support him.

  “How sure are you,” he finally asked, “that it’s the right thing to do?” Without forethought, he added, “I need you.”

  Nikki stared at him, her dark-blue eyes strangely luminous. “We don’t talk like we used to. I’m no longer sure what I want.”

  “I’m not sure I see how being separated would help our communications a whole lot.” He heard resentment in his voice and wondered how he could be resentful and sad with Nikki when he didn’t even know her.

  Nikki was thoughtful for a moment. “You haven’t told me you need me in far too long.”

  “I suppose you’re right.” Somehow, without knowing, he had the feeling that she was telling him the truth. But how could he have been so blind? To have “lost” her and then “found” her, only to lose her again knotted his stomach. Cal’s guilt grew, and with it grew dislike of the man he had been. “I guess we don’t always say what we feel.”

  “What do you feel right now?”

  “Surprise, anger, nostalgia, loneliness. Love.” Only after he spoke did he realize it was all true. He couldn’t explain it rationally.

  “It’s not right that we should be together and both feel lonely.” The highlights in Nikki’s hair rippled as she moved her head.

  Confusion tore at him. He had to talk Nikki out of her decision. The urge grew within him, but, again without knowing, he was convinced that he had talked her into or out of things enough times to make it a sensitive issue. He hadn’t the slightest idea whether this was one of the rare times that Nikki wanted to be talked out of her decision.