|
#
The clues that something was wrong kept
appearing, sad little warning signs that Scott had tried to ignore but
never forgot. A broken shoelace on the bedroom floor that did not belong
to one of his shoes. A blue bandanna between the bed and the wall ---
where did that come from? Terri washing the sheets when she'd just
washed them the day before. Why? Checking under the bed because he
couldn't find his shoes, discovering a disgusting, dried up used condom.
They hadn't used condoms since he'd had his vasectomy. Could it have been
there that long?
Terri worked
nights. Scott worked days. They had four hours a day together plus
weekends. Scott never saw a problem with it until the sad little clues
started chipping away at his willingness to ignore them. He didn't
consciously admit to himself the reason why he took a day off from work
and didn't tell Terri about it. He got up that day and prepped as usual,
ate breakfast with Terri (it was her dinner), kissed her goodbye and left.
Scott drove five blocks, parked, and walked back. There was an old 1950's
car parked in his driveway, shiny and lovingly maintained, and Scott knew
exactly whom it belonged to. It was an intern that worked with Terri at
the trauma center, a cocky jerk named John Wahler. That quick?
Scott thought. John must have been sitting in his car waiting for me to
leave!
He crept into the house feeling
like he was floating, feeling light and full of air. Like he was dreaming.
He was detached, calculating, suspended in utter disbelief. Terri was
cheating on him? Terri? A side of her he didn't know, his own wife
... they shared everything with each other, they told each other
everything. He loved her with a conscious single-mindedness that he felt
was pure and joyous. It had never occurred to him to mistrust her, to be
jealous of her ex-boyfriends --- Scott simply accepted and loved her. She
was it, his woman, his wife, and his life partner. How could it be
otherwise with her?
The bedroom door was
open a crack and he peeked in. He heard noises, and expected to see him on
top of her. It was a shock to see them side by side and upside down to
each other, pleasing each other orally. All he saw was Terri's black hair
and John's hairy legs.
It was like a
dark mask was pulled down over his face. The light seemed to go dim and
his vision pulsed and flickered, the scene lit by flames. His chest hurt.
Scott spun on his heal and rushed with terrible purpose to the hall
closet, yanked open the door, and pulled out a long gun case. The sound of
the zipper ripping open filled his whole head. He pulled the long, heavy
gun out and then fumbled with his free hand for the box of shells on the
top shelf. It rattled as he picked it up. There were only two shells. He
didn't think about it, he just chambered them with a reflexive motion and
walked back down the hall.
"Scott?" It
was his wife's voice. It sounded scared and startled. "Is that
you?"
He heard scrambling sounds and
rustling cloth as he pushed the door open. John Wahler was hopping on one
foot, trying to get into his pants. "Was it worth it?" Scott said to him.
He let go the first shell, a shocking explosion in a small room. Fire
blossomed out the muzzle of the long barrel, and skin and blood sprayed
apart from John's hairy chest. It slammed him into the wall, his eyes
bulging. Scott didn't see him fall. He turned the gun on his wife, who was
on the other side of the room, naked, her mouth wide open. She was trying
to scream but couldn't get enough air into her
lungs.
"Was it worth it?" Scott had to
shout to hear his voice through the loud ringing in his ears. "Was it
worth it?" He put the barrel right into her pretty
face.
A few seconds after he pulled the
trigger, the horror of what he'd done wiped away the rage of her betrayal.
He turned and became violently ill across the gore-spattered bed sheets.
Lying there, shaking, finding it hard to breathe in the smoky room, he
bitterly cursed fate for only giving him two shotgun
shells.
#
Scott pleaded guilty
and asked for the death penalty. The judge called it a crime of passion
and gave him 20 years. For the first few months in prison all he could
think about was how to kill himself. Having all that time on his hands and
a single thought going through his head was worse than death. I deserve
this, he thought.
None of the guards
or his fellow inmates ever gave him trouble. Everyone knew why he was
there. It was as if the local gang leaders and the warden herself felt
badly for him. It was the warden who approached him about the medical
experiments. When it was explained to Scott that there was a possibility
the procedure would leave him lobotomized or dead, Scott agreed to do it.
The warden nodded to herself, as if it confirmed what she'd been
thinking.
#
The FMA Center in
Livermore was a long, four-story glass and brick building built in a
semicircle, curved around a park with a fountain. From his cell window
Scott could see the fountain; it was usually surrounded by medical
personnel standing around in small groups, smoking their cigarettes. FMA,
Scott learned, stood for "Federal Medical Authority." From what he could
tell, the sole purpose of the FMA Center was for performing mandatory
sterilization and abortions, and for conducting medical research using
convicted felons. It was high security with auto-locking doors, metal
detectors, and video cameras everywhere he looked. Scott never came in
contact with any of the other prisoners. He only saw Dr. Louis Kline and
armed guards --- and there were always armed guards around Dr.
Kline.
Dr. Kline ran him though a series
of medical, psychological, and intelligence tests. Scott enjoyed the
intelligence tests, as they were all trick questions and it appealed to
his sense of humor. He thought they were funny. He gave a little laugh as
he answered them, which made Dr. Kline frown. Scott couldn't tell if Dr.
Kline was mad that he was laughing or because he wasn't falling for the
tricks in the questions. "I'm going to tell you the truth," he said to
Scott. "I don't like you."
"I don't like
me either."
"I know." Kline, who was a
small balding man with a gnarled, graying beard --- actually more hair on
his chin than on his head, so that his face looked upside-down --- he
looked over the top of his glasses at Scott, peering at him with owlish
eyes. "I have strong reservations using someone with a death wish as a
test subject. I prefer someone who hopes the experiments
succeed."
"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?"
"I ran an automated
warehouse system."
"System?"
"Yeah, I lived and breathed
FIFO --- you know. First in, first out. My job was to store things and
keep track of the date they were stored, so that the oldest was pulled
first and shipped."
"So, in your mind,
you're trying to figure out the human brain and memories in the same terms
you would storing packages in your
warehouse?"
"Well, not exactly,
but----"
"I see where you're coming from
now. Okay. This research I'm doing, it's rather … delicate. Even though
you're the person being experimented upon I can't tell you much
about what I'm doing and what I'm looking for. But I can give you an
answer to this… The software in your brain is not accessing your memories
directly though the hippocampus, like other researchers are doing. It's
going through your temporal perception."
"My, uh … what's that?"
"There's a
section of your brain that controls your sense of time. I can manipulate
this time sense to retrieve memories that were stored at a specific
time."
"So even though time data isn't
recorded with my memories, I have a section of my brain that … indexes the
memories in a, um … sequential log of some
sort?"
Dr. Kline was shaking his head.
"That's what I'm trying to find out," he said. "It must be … it's
working. But part of my research is to understand how it's
working."
"That's interesting," Scott
said. He wondered if he should tell Dr. Kline about the way he was able to
cause the reference index to skip numbers.
"Um…"
"Let's try going back even
further," Dr. Kline said. Before Scott could interrupt him, the image of
the spring brightened in his mind and began spinning
counter-clockwise.
#
Scott's dinner tray
always came with a little half-can of Coca-Cola. It was never enough, and
he figured it was part of his punishment. He couldn't have a whole can,
only a half-can. And they wouldn't give him
more.
In the silent, stale air of his
cell, Scott ate his dinner mechanically and downed his half-can of soda
--- an act that always left him wanting more --- and after he finished it,
he replayed the memory of drinking it. He hoped that in some way it would
be like drinking more. It didn't work, though, because the feelings of
wanting were present in the memory. He went back again, remembering
drinking it for the first time, then remembering the memory of drinking
it. Still nothing. He went back one more time, and out of frustration he
poured the soda onto the floor instead of drinking
it.
He stared at the foaming puddle of
soda on the concrete as it spread, wondering how in the hell he'd done it.
The empty can was in his hand. He looked at it and at the puddle again. I
changed my memory? he thought. That was weird. Scott tried to will
the image of the spring clockwise again, but it wouldn't
budge.
He was in the
present.
#
"Of course it's
possible to edit your memories," Dr. Kline told him. "We do it all the
time, even without the intrusive software. I knew you'd discover this. I'd
been expecting it any day now. There was a chance you wouldn't, and I was
hoping for that … that's why I never brought it up. But now that it's on
the table so to speak, here's the deal." Dr. Kline leaned forward
and spoke in a low, evenly measured voice. "With this software in your
brain, you can edit yourself right into an impenetrable wall of
delusion."
Scott folded his arms across
his chest, frowning. He hadn't really figured Kline out as a person, his
motives, likes and dislikes, his quirks --- they were all a mystery to
him. But the words the man was saying, the inflection in his voice, the
expression in his eyes … it didn't ring true. "What do you mean?" Scott
asked him.
"If you start going back and
editing your memories, you will cut yourself off from reality and go into
a catatonic state. It won't help you or
me."
"How would editing my memories do
that?"
"It will change your inner
reality and cut it off from outer
reality."
"You mean, I'll be
insane?"
"Yes." Dr. Kline fumbled with
his watch. "Delusional catatonic. Completely turned inward. It's a really
bad idea and I'm asking you not to do
it."
It occurred to Scott that not only
was Dr. Kline lying, but also he was frightened. Frightened for Scott?
Frightened for himself? Frightened that if he lost one more test subject
that his funding would be cut off? Scott decided to play it safe and
appease the man. "Okay," he said. "Becoming a delusional catatonic doesn't
sound like a good idea to me, either."
"Good," Dr. Kline said. "Good. Good." He nodded.
"Good."
Throughout the rest of their
session, Scott's mind was unable to focus on what they were doing. He just
gave control over to the Doctor while he kept hearing the man saying
"Good" over and over again. Kline must have been able to see it on his
computer screen, because he kept giving Scott dirty looks. Something was
definitely up with this wall of delusion thing. Maybe, Scott thought,
that's my way out. Maybe it doesn't cause insanity as much as it causes
some sort of fatal brain seizure.
He
could only hope.
#
There was one glaring
memory of Scott's that Dr. Kline never visited. Until today, Scott had no
wish to relive it either. But after his session was over and he'd eaten
dinner and downed his half-can of Coca-Cola, Scott turned off his light
and flopped back into the cot and stared up at the ceiling. He took a few
deep breaths, preparing himself for the trip. The image of the spring came
to mind, and he turned it
counter-clockwise.
He was taking a
morning walk through his old neighborhood, up to his house. There was the
old 1950's car in the driveway. John Wahler's car. Scott already felt the
deep, black undercurrent of fury. It carried him into the house, down the
hall, peering into the bedroom. His wife and John Wahler deeply involved
in mutual oral pleasure. It was too disgusting for her to do with Scott,
her own husband --- why was it okay to do it with this guy? That was it,
Scott realized. That's what pushed me over the edge. His wife's betrayal
was deeper than he'd thought possible, harder for him to accept.
Impossible to accept. Shut it off, his mind just wanted to shut
it off.
The dark veil went down over
his eyes. He went for the gun, the big old heavy shotgun. Pulled it out of
the case, loaded it up. I was going to stop this, he thought. I can't stop
this. It has to be done. The moment demanded it be done.
Scott burst into the bedroom, more outraged than the first time, screaming
and pointing the gun. "Was it worth it?" he shouted at them. "Was it
worth it?"
"Oh god, no…" John was
muttering, holding his hands out as if they would block the blast of
death, like he was going to catch it. "God, no, please … don't, no,
please…"
"Scott," Terri said,
breathless, her voice quavering. "Scott,
no…"
He swung the gun on her, the barrel
right at her face. "Well?" he shouted at her. "Was it? Was it worth
it?"
She shook her head. "No … no, it
wasn't."
Scott swung the gun back toward
John. John was shaking his head, still holding his hands out as if to
block the shot. "No," was all he could
manage.
The gun swung back at Terri,
then back at John. No, Scott thought, it wasn't worth it. It
wasn't. It never was. He lowered the gun, then swung it around, trying to
figure out how to point it at himself. He couldn't do it, though --- the
barrel was too long. In frustration he pumped the two pathetic, unspent
shells out and dropped the gun on the bed. Looking up at his wife and her
lover, both of them trembling and completely white, he said, "I'll be on
the front porch."
He left the room,
walking down the hall and out the front door. Sitting on the steps he took
deep breaths, trying to calm himself. He could hear the two of them
arguing with each other but their voices were indistinct. It didn't
matter. Scott didn't care what they were saying. This was all just a
delusion anyway.
Scott summonsed the
image of the spring and willed it to spin clockwise. Just as he'd hoped
--- and feared --- it wouldn't spin. As far as the software was concerned,
he was in the present.
After ten minutes
or so, Terri and John stepped fully dressed out onto the porch behind
Scott. Scott turned to see John holding the shotgun. It was obvious he'd
thrown his clothes on in a hurry, as his shirt was only half tucked in and
his buttons were done up crooked. "You going to shoot me?" Scott
asked.
John shook his head. "I'm just
going to hang onto this for a while."
"It was my idea," Terri said.
Scott
nodded. It didn't matter. "You going with
him?"
"Um … I don't know." She looked up
at John.
Scott had to look away. The
anger was welling up in him again. This really wasn't helping … it didn't
relieve his guilt. It was just some sort of computer-enhanced fantasy
while he lay in a coma in his cell.
"You
wouldn't have shot us, would you?" his wife was saying. "If we stay to
talk this out, you're not going to hurt me are
you?"
"Hurt you?" Scott said. He
could barely keep the hysteria out of his
voice.
She nodded. "We can talk, can't
we? Or should I come back?"
"It doesn't
matter. I did shoot you. You're dead." He laughed at her expression.
"You're dead!"
"Maybe I'd better go,"
she said.
"You're already gone. You're
not even here." He laughed, and it turned to a sob. "I'm not
even here."
Terri and John shared a
glance. John's expression was unreadable, but Terri's was full of guilt.
"You go," she said to John. "I'd better
stay."
"It doesn't matter," Scott said
to her. "This is too pathetic for me to stand. It was a big mistake. I
shouldn't have done it." Then he looked at her. "Then again, I
deserve it. Nothing was worth your life. What I did to you was way out of
proportion to the little betrayal of yours. I would have killed myself,
too. I swear it. But what I really should have done was just walk
away. I mean, I could have started over again. It would have
seemed hard, but compared to what I've been through…" He turned
away, shaking his head. "I had no idea what 'hard'
was."
John didn't leave, but he did walk
over to his car and get in, the shotgun on the floor in the back. Scott
was aware of him, but he was nothing but an annoying little presence far
in a corner, like knowing there was a fly somewhere in the room. Terri had
taken his hands in hers and was bent forward, staring hard into his eyes.
Hers was an expression of worry. "You haven't done
anything." He looked at her and she shook her head. "You
didn't do anything. It's okay."
"It's okay?" He snorted. "Okay?" He looked around him,
as if he could actually see the wall of delusion --- as Dr. Kline
had called it --- like it was a pane of thick, marbled glass he was
trapped behind, unable to see through to reality. "You know, I think you
really should go with him," Scott said to her. "Just go, be with your
lover. You were meant to be with each other." He pulled away from
her. "Just go."
"I don't think I
should," she said. "I don't think you should be alone right
now."
Scott thought this was funny. "I
am alone right now!" He stood up suddenly, and she backed
away, startled. "I'm in a cell with wires sticking out of my head!
You're dead. I'm stuck in my memories because the government
is experimenting with my brain!" He laughed at her uncomprehending
wide eyes. "Go away!" he yelled at
her.
John opened his car door and got
out. "Come on," he said to her. "You better come with
me."
Scott turned his back on the both
of them and walked into the house, shutting the door behind him. Once
inside he stopped and waited. Why am I doing this? he
wondered. What does it matter if she follows me in or not? He
realized he wanted her to follow him inside, he wanted her
away from that jerk asshole bastard. But as he stood
listening, he heard two car doors close and then the big rumbling engine
erupted to life. As it drove away, Scott wandered into the living
room and sat on their tattered couch, staring at the wall with a blank
mind.
#
Scott had never seen
the front of the medical authority building from the outside. He'd
originally arrived from the back in a secure bus, which drove into a
secure garage area where an iron door slammed. Here in the front was
the large fountain with at least fifty jets of water making a beautiful
interwoven pattern. The pool part of the fountain and the ground
surrounding it was covered with thousands of cigarette butts. White
smocked people stood smoking and staring at him as he walked past and up
to the front of the place.
Inside the
front reception area, his appearance made a small fuss as it seemed no one
ever remembered someone wandering in off the street --- there were piles
of papers and files everywhere, Styrofoam cups, and Coke bottles. A gruff
woman who was obviously not a receptionist said, "Can I help
you?"
"I need to see Dr. Kline.
I'm one of his test subjects."
"Oh!" She
looked around as if she'd lost something. "Go sit down over there," she
said, indicating a dingy set of gray plastic chairs, "I'll give his office
a call."
Scott sat down and waited,
wondering if he'd really thought his actions through. His mind was coming
up with all this detail? He looked at the dirty cups
half-full of coffee, and the dead flies on the windowsill. If I was
deluded, or dreaming, he thought, would everything seem so real to
me? He pulled a piece of paper off of the table in front of him and
read it over. Then he put it down for a moment, then picked it up
and read it again. It said the same thing, exactly. Scott
remembered seeing a TV program that said if you were dreaming and tried to
read, the words would be changing constantly because the words were
actually just thoughts in your head. Maybe this delusion is
different than dreaming? he thought. I am probably reading this
paper for real, but I'm actually somewhere other than where I think I
am. I might be in Dr. Kline's office right
now.
Dr. Kline showed up, looking
different than Scott remembered him. His beard wasn't as long. "You've
trimmed your beard," Scott told him.
The
doctor took a good long look at him. "Who are
you?"
"I'm one of your test
subjects."
"I don't think
so."
"I edited my memory --- just like
you told me not to do --- and I'm trapped behind a wall of delusion, just
like you said I would be."
Dr. Kline's
eyes narrowed. "You edited your memory? How exactly did you
do that?"
"You know, the memory
browser. The little spring in my
head."
Dr. Kline looked around the room,
his expression flustered. "You'd better come with me," he said in a low
voice.
Scott got up and followed Dr.
Kline through a secure set of doors and into the restricted areas
beyond. This was familiar --- it was just like he remembered it ---
but this time there were no armed guards trailing
them.
"What is today's date?" Dr. Kline
asked casually.
"I'm not really sure,"
Scott said. "I know it's
March-something."
"What
year?"
"Twenty-seventeen."
They reached his
office, and Dr. Kline opened the door and motioned him to enter. Once
inside and the office door was closed, Dr. Kline said, "What memory did
you edit to get yourself where you are
now?"
"I went back and un-killed my
wife."
"How did you do
that?"
"I threw the gun down instead of
using it."
"Your murder of your wife is
how you ended up here in the first
place?"
"Yes."
"Have a seat," Dr. Kline told
him. He took his own place behind his cluttered desk. "If you go back and
review your memories right now using the browser, can you get back here to
the MA building?"
"No, I can't. When I
go back to the point where I edited my memory, it simply keeps going back
earlier. And the index numbers jump by about
four-thousand."
"Jesus Christ,"
Dr. Kline said. He was staring at Scott in what looked like
awe. After several seconds of not saying anything, he suddenly
smiled. "I want to thank you for coming here to tell me this. You've
helped me tremendously."
"Is there a way
to get me back to reality?"
Dr. Kline
leaned forward. "I'm going to tell you this just once. I'm not going
to admit to anyone I've said it, if you repeat it I'll call you a liar and
a whacko. They'll believe me, too, as I ought to know what insane is
when I see it. You are not behind a wall of delusion. You are in
the present right now. The year is twenty-fifteen and you have
not committed the crime that originally got you
here."
"How can that
be?"
"I'll put it simply. The
time/space continuum we exist in is not a flowing thing. It's just a
thing. Our perception of time is a feature of biology, not physics.
By altering your time sense, we altered where you were in the space/time
continuum."
"I … I don't
understand."
"You are where you perceive
you are." Dr. Kline tapped on his desk with his finger. "If you perceive
you are here, this is where you are."
"But if the space/time continuum is a thing and not a flow, how can I
change it?"
"I don't know. That's one of
the things I'm trying to find out." Dr. Kline stood up. "Since you didn't
commit your murder, I advise you to go out and make your life a better
place. If you show up again here, or start telling people your
story, I'll have you committed in a mental institution and perform a
lobotomy on you. Do we have an
understanding?"
Scott slowly stood up,
his eyes on Dr. Kline. The man was serious --- he could see it. "Yeah, we
have an understanding."
"Good.
I'll escort you to the door."
#
Terri showed up later
that night. The house was dark, and Scott had all the windows open so
there was a breeze blowing through the rooms, fluttering the curtains. He
could hear the wind chimes on the back porch. When she showed up and said,
"Hi Scott," he didn't know what to say. It was suddenly all
different. He had a question to ask her but he didn't want to just
blurt it out.
"John's not here," she
said. "I came to see how you're
doing."
There was just enough light for
him to see her; a diffuse glow that flowed and ebbed as the wind moved a
tree branch in front of a street light. She was wearing a familiar
white summer dress. Her hair was up, exposing her long graceful
neck. I killed her, Scott thought. I blew her face right
off. I wish I could edit my memories, I could cut that whole
scene out and forget it. Of course, it's still possible that I am
--- even now --- behind a wall of delusion. But if I can't tell the
difference, why worry about it?
"Are you
okay?" she asked him.
"I'm better," he
said. "I guess I went over the edge there for a while, but I'm
back."
"I really didn't want this to
happen," she said. "Things just got out of
control."
Here it is, Scott
thought. An opportunity. He composed his question for the
moment, hoping it wasn't too out of left field. "I need to know
something," he said to her. "Is there a mistake I made, or something
I did wrong, that caused this? Something that
happened?"
"I don't
know."
"Think," he said, unable
to keep the tension out of his voice. "Remember when you told me the
moment you fell in love with me? Was there a moment when you fell
out of love with me?"
"I never fell out
of love with you," she said. "I just succumbed to
temptation."
"Is there something I could
have done to prevent that?"
"It never
was something you did or didn't do."
"Nothing at all?"
"It's more that you
have a day shift and I have a night shift." She gave a low
laugh. It sounded sad. "I'm late for work as it is right
now."
"I remember," Scott said. "I
remember the discussion we had, when we decided it would be okay for you
to take a night shift."
"Yes," Terri
said. "I guess that was our
mistake."
He suddenly grabbed her,
startling her, but he gave her a big kiss. "That's it!" he said.
"We'll give that a try!"
"I don't
understand," Terri said.
"It's okay,"
Scott told her. "You don't need to understand." He had his eyes
closed, picturing the phantom spring in his head, and as he did he willed
it to turn counter-clockwise.
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