“If they do, they do. If not, then–?” Scott shrugged.
#
The nanobots finished their job. Scott knew before Dr.
Kline told him, as the annoying flashes, spasms, and images grew less frequent then stopped completely. The fruit of their labors was a cerebral interface that allowed Dr. Kline to connect Scott’s brain to a computer network. The idea didn’t please him, but he was resigned to it. Kline used the interface to load very special software into Scott’s brain that would give Scott – and Dr.
Kline – complete control and access to Scott’s memories. Dr.
Kline called it a “memory browser.”
Scott closed his eyes and pictured something in his head, and there the image was on the computer screen. But also, Scott could picture the image of a three-dimensional spring, thick and red, looking like it was made out of shiny plastic. It was the control for the software. If he willed the spring to spin counter-clockwise it would take him back through his memories, and spinning it clockwise would bring him forward again. There was a numeric counter that had no real relevance except as a reference point for Dr. Kline’s notes. When the spring was red, Scott saw the memories as still images, pictures from his past. Scott could will the color to change to green, and then the memories came alive.
He saw Terri when she was twenty. Amazing how vivid the vision was – it was like he was there, he was completely reliving the memory. They were at a friend’s house, and she was being silly and childlike, rolling around on the floor and giggling, a bright-eyed, free-spirited dark haired girl. He was sitting at the living room table, talking to his friend’s father, and she was there on the floor at his feet. Looking down at her smiling face, he slipped off his sandal and placed his foot on her bare midriff. She reached up and took hold of his leg, smiling at him, still giggling. It was the moment he fell in love with her.
Dr. Kline took control; the spring turned red and then spun counter-clockwise. Memories were dim, then bright, blurry then sharp. Scott’s mind had recorded every moment of his life, but the quality of the memory was only good when there was some importance attached to it. The next bright memory was from a day or so earlier. Scott was sitting with Terri and their friend Leo at a white metal table beside a swimming pool. The image of the spring stopped turning, and changed to green.
Leo was a small guy, blond and skinny and always smiling. He was the one who’d introduced Terri to Scott. They were all dressed in tee shirts and shorts, a weekend during spring break. Scott had brought them all home to his parent’s house from college.
Another one of their friends, a redheaded guy named Kelly, was over in a corner of the yard beside a birdbath. He’d had too much to drink and was now on his hands and knees, puking. Scott was drunk himself – as were they all – he lurched to his feet, walking unsteadily along the swimming pool, and knelt by his redheaded friend. “You’re going to be okay, Kel,” he said. Leaning over, he put his arm around Kelly’s stomach and hugged, supporting the stomach muscles as they contracted. He held on, lending support, trying to ignore the disgusting sounds and smells.
Through the waves of alcohol, he heard Leo saying to Terri, “I could never do that. He’s really strong to do that.”
“He cares,” Terri said.
“He’s a good friend.”
Scott felt lifted by the words. Proud. Barfing was a hard thing – he didn’t want Kelly to go through it alone. Besides, Scott had bought the tequila that was making Kelly barf. It was partially his fault.
The memory froze to an image, and receded away from Scott.
It was no longer immediate and live. Again he perceived the phantom image of the spring, unmoving and red. He opened his eyes and saw Dr. Kline across the room tapping at a workstation keyboard. One of the two ever-present armed guards was giving Scott a strange look.
“What was the significance of this memory?” the doctor asked him. “It’s very vivid.”
“Oh
” Scott felt his face flushing. “My wife told me it was the moment she fell in love with me.”
“The wife that you killed?” Dr. Kline said. “Interesting.”
Scott opened his mouth to tell him he’d only had one wife, just one, just one damn wife. One. But he let out his breath. Why be mad at Kline? Kline didn’t kill Terri. He swallowed his anger and turned it inward, self-hate like needles in his heart.
#
Alone at night, Scott lay on the cot in his cell and mentally fiddled with the software hoping he’d crash it and give himself a lobotomy. He would go back five minutes, then back five more minutes, then forward five minutes, then back again until he got completely lost in his short-term memory, not knowing if he was reliving a memory or in the present. The clue, the giveaway, was if he willed the spring clockwise until it stopped and wouldn’t go any further – that was the present.
He found he was reliving memories of reliving memories, and so on, and so on again, and he kept it up all night, hoping it would foul the programming code. Jam it up. Freeze his thoughts into some horrible hellish spiral. It didn’t work, though. His memories of remembering – no matter how compounded – were just more memories. A guard had told Scott that this was how one of the other test subjects had died, going into a catastrophic seizure and expiring of heart failure. Unfortunately Dr. Kline must have fixed this bug, or the nanobots had done a better job in Scott’s brain than they did in the other poor bastard’s.
Strange, though. He was lying there, deep in his repetitive memory review, and he suddenly got tired and annoyed and he sat up and said “Shit!” He got up and walked across the room and then back. But he realized this was a memory. He was in a memory. But he didn’t remember
remembering it. He willed the spring to turn clockwise but it wouldn’t budge. He was in the present. It was like he’d broken out of the memory into the present without transition. He was disoriented for a moment, but it quickly faded.
He brought the memory back so he could review it, experience the transition, but there was nothing strange about it
it wasn’t disorienting in retrospect. Except, oddly, the reference number readout jumped several numbers the moment he sat up.
Scott wondered what that meant.
#
It was early morning but it was already hot, because this was the desert and the sun – even the morning sun – was harsh.
Scott didn’t really notice. He was used to it. To a young boy who had only known harsh sunlight and dry heat, this was just like any other day: he and a friend out in the desert beyond the small Tucson suburb where he lived. They were looking for horny toads but found a jackrabbit instead. It was trapped under a board, and his friend was laying on top the board, pinning the rabbit down.
It was brown with soft fur. Scott couldn’t believe they caught it, and he reached under the board and grabbed it by one of its back legs and pulled it out, and it kicked like mad and scratched the hell out of his arm before he could drop it. He barely saw the rabbit run off – he was staring at the long ragged scratches and the blood running down his skin.
His vision paled, receded. Scott became aware of the red spring and the index number. “How old were you here?” Dr. Kline asked him.
“About seven.”
Dr. Kline tapped on his keyboard. He paused, peering long and hard at his workstation screen. Scott asked, “What do the reference numbers mean?”
“They’re just reference numbers. The lower the number, the further back into your memories we are.”
“How did you correlate a number to the age of my memories?”
Dr. Kline paused, then pushed himself back away from his workstation, swiveling around in his chair to face him. “That was a very astute question.” His eyes narrowed. “Who told you to ask me that?”
“I was just wondering.”
“You were just wondering.” Dr. Kline sounded doubtful.
“Well, yeah,” Scott said, “I mean
memories don’t seem to be sequential things. They seem to be haphazardly stored. And, well, it seems unlikely that they’re stored with any kind of date encoded in them.”
“No, they don’t have any kind of encoding at all,” Dr. Kline said. His voice was dry and deadpan. Suspicious. “What did you do, before you murdered your wife? You said you worked in a warehouse?”