All That Was Lost

The outside world was unknown to her, but she could see a glimpse of it through the window in his room. It was an ugly place, barren and monochromatic, but he insisted it had once been beautiful. She disbelieved him. How could a place that looked so dusty and lifeless have ever sustained anything, much less done it with beauty? The idea was too strange to her, no matter how many times he invited her to the top of the tower to gaze out the compound’s sole window.

The real beauty was inside, to her thinking. Inside, she could walk the rows and rows of illuminated grow pods that he tended and gaze up at the uniform hanging gardens that his fellow botanists and growers nurtured. The grow rooms where the gardens grew sustained life with the food they provided and offered a visual complement to the silver walls and concrete floors of the compound. Outside, she saw nothing; what little there might have been, was dead.

Still, he persisted in his absurdities. The outside world had been as lush and green as the grow rooms he told her. Greener, even. It had blossomed flowers she could only read about in books and grass she could only view through glass pane. The sky, which hovered thick with greenish clouds, had once been the brightest shade of blue. The clouds had been white and full as the cotton the compound’s fabricators spun into thread.

Irritated with his ramblings, she rebuffed him. She refused to visit his grow room, so she wouldn’t have to look out of his precious window. Life thrived within the safety of the compound’s confines, and she was content. In her books, she had colorful flowers. In her work in the compound’s depths, she had clouds of soft cotton to feed into machines. She didn’t need his fanciful theories. Life’s beauty was right before her; she didn’t need to relegate it to her mind’s eye.

Then one day, a message came for her and summoned her out of the compound’s depths and back to the height of the grow rooms in the tower. She grumbled and apologized profusely to her colleagues running the fabricators, but she went. With any luck, he would be busy, and she would be in and out before he realized she was there.

She had no such luck; he was the one who had summoned her. When she realized, she groaned and dragged her feet. The botanists and growers had produced a bumper crop of cotton, and she and those who worked among the fabricators were behind – behind on analyzing and combining it with other fibers it to produce stronger thread, behind on feeding it into the machines, behind on supplying materials for the compound's clothing. Despite it all, he’d called her away from her work to hear more of his dreams about a world long gone, no doubt.

His grassy earth and blue skies could turn to smog for all she cared.

“There’s a problem with the cotton plants,” he said when he greeted her. Then, he turned and walked off.

She hurried to follow if only to keep up appearances. When she was matching pace with him, she hissed, “If the cotton plants were ailing, you could have gotten someone else.”

He didn’t reply as they stalked through the rows of plants. A few growers looked up quizzically as they passed, but no one spoke up to question her presence. They continued past rows of herbs and flowers and crossed into a room of root vegetables and then into a room where vines climbed the walls via trellises. In a room dotted with many hues of fruits, an arborist waved, but after, they continued undisturbed until they entered the final rooms.

Here, plants grew to supply fibers for clothing. He led her through a room filled with flax reeds peppered in pale blue flowers, then through another where stalks of jute stood in vast beds of standing water, and another, and another, until they entered the last room. His room, where he and other botanists raised bushels and bushels of cotton.

She looked around, searching for some sign of quarantined plants or shrubs festering with mildew or whatever else could ruin a cotton crop. When she saw nothing, she rounded on him, her eyes alight with irritation.

"Out with it," she demanded. "What do you want?"

Before answering, he looked to the door to make sure they were alone. When no intruders were forthcoming, he looked to the window. "I've got something for you, since I could never make you believe me on my own."

She scowled. Had this not been laid to rest weeks ago? Her mind flicked to the fabricators spinning without her watchful eye. "I should go, she said. "You have your work, and I have mine, and mine doesn't allow for foolish distractions."

"Just let me show you one thing," he pleaded, "and if you're not interested after this, I'll never bother you about the window or anything that was once outside again."

It was a promising offer, so she accepted. "You get one chance," she warned him, and she followed him to the window.

Outside, the expanse of hard-packed dirt and clay still stretched beyond the compound, unchanged as ever. Cracks carved their way across the landscape and small clouds of dust tumble toward the horizon. She looked away from the disappointing sight and glared pointedly at him.

"It's right here," he said. He removed a clumsily wrapped paper packet from the pocket of his dirt smudged uniform and handed it to her. "A memory from someone who knew what the outside was meant to be."

She took it and unwrapped it to reveal a standalone diode and electrode of the small sort that rested on a person's temple. Her skepticism grew as she turned his meager offering over in her palm.

"Just stick the electrode to your head and hold the diode out. They'll take care of the rest once they're connected to you," he said. His voice hitched, as though he was nervous, and he looked to the door of the grow room once more.

"Are you supposed to have these? Stealing memories is a bit crazy, even for someone deluded as you," she snapped. Her glare hardened at the thought that he might be dragging her into trouble over his foolishness.

"I'll return them to the hall of memories when I'm done," he retorted. Under his breath he added, "Besides, I, if anyone, should have them."

"What? Do these belong to some relative from long ago?" she snorted. She ripped the backing paper from the diode a little more forcefully than necessary. "Let's just get this over with." As he'd instructed, she stuck the electrode to her temple and held the diode out in her open hand.

Suddenly, the tiny thing leapt into the air and lit with a piercing white light. Before she could remark on how it hovered and shone, a shock from the electrode jolted her. Perhaps she cried out. She wasn't sure; the shock felt so strong she could only close her eyes against it.

When she opened her eyes in the body of the memory's owner, she understood. Every desperate conversation, every hurt expression when she refused to believe, every seemingly inexplicable smile as he looked out at boundless wasteland she understood.

There was another window before her in a room she couldn't recognize but felt familiar all the same. She was in a kitchen, the kitchen that belonged to the memory's owner, and beyond the window, the sun was shining and the sky was blue. The clouds were fluffier than any piece of cotton she had ever held, and the flowers – oh! the flowers – they were more vibrant than anything she had ever seen. In the compound, color was a counterpoint to an expanse of cement and chrome, but in this moment the flowers were surrounded by green grass and brown tree trunks and red vegetables in the garden and purple fruit in the bushes. She was nearly overwhelmed with it all. All her life she had only seen these things in books and grow rooms, but here they were, free and thriving.

A child's joyful shouting sounded from a distance. She didn't know this child, but nestled as she was in this other person's mind, she could tell he was deeply loved. Somewhere nearby, he was outside, experiencing all this color, and that thought filled her heart with joy.

"Look, Mom! I'm doing it!" the child's voice shouted, and a second later, a child came speeding down the pavement on a two-wheeled contraption (a bicycle, she realized, belatedly). "I finally did it!" he shouted before turning the bicycle off the pavement to collapse into the grass.

A moment later, a man came running down the pavement with an equally joyful expression on his face. He looked out of breath, as if he had chased this child for the duration of his efforts on the bicycle, but still he swung the boy up into his arms once he reached him. "You did it, boy!" he shouted. "You did it! I knew you could do it!"

The boy and the man – the man, whom she also knew was loved – danced across the grass. They spun, whooping and cheering. The sunlight on their faces was bright and warm, and their entire bodies seemed full with the exuberance of experiencing happiness outside. There were no walls to hem them in, no chrome or diode lighting to make their faces seem gray and drained. They looked so natural.

She understood his eagerness to share this knowledge, his determination that she should experience this for herself. She wanted to experience this joy for herself. The view from the kitchen window was beautiful, but to feel the outside for herself could only be extraordinary. As if on cue, her body in the memory turned toward the kitchen door and hurried out to these people she knew were loved. Nestled away in the memory, she gasped. Never had she met a light that could give such a warm embrace. Never had she walked on ground so cool and gentle as the dirt and grass she walked on now.

She thrilled at how each blade of grass tickled her feet as she hurried toward the boy in the memory. A breeze brushed by her and rustled the leaves in the trees and bushes, and she wondered at the subtle noise. There was no breeze to ruffle the leaves in the grow rooms, only the steady whir of ventilation fans that cycled air up into the ceilings at a sluggish pace. As the memory owner smiled at her boy, she smiled, too, at how much she loved all the tiny details she was recognizing for the first time.

An electric jolt sent her hurtling back to reality. When she opened her eyes, she was standing back in the chrome and concrete of the grow rooms. The only things that greeted her eyes the cold and over-bright lamps that sped each plant toward growth and rows and rows of stark, colorless cotton shrubs.

She wheeled on him. "What was that?" she demanded, though he had already told her. "Who was that?"

He offered a sad smile. "My grandmother," he replied. "My great-great grandmother, actually. I like to think of it as her gift to me."

"Her gift?" she asked, her voice wavering. She thought of the cool feeling of the grass beneath her feet and how blue the sky had been. "Her gift of showing you all that was lost? What we no longer have?" She felt distraught at the thought of never truly being able to experience what she had in the memory. The thought of only looking out of his window to see cracked, barren earth sickened her.

"It is distressing sometimes, yes," he admits. He reaches out and gently peels the electrode from her temple and stows the diode in his pocket. "Sometimes I think of how warm the sunlight feels, and I worry nothing will ever feel that good again."

"Then why would you show me this, if not to have a companion in your sadness?" she asked. The thought of the blue sky was enough to make her want to cry.

He held his hand out to her, and she took it, if only to stave off her tears. "Because," he replied, as he guided her closer to the window, "I like to think that it's not a gift of showing what was lost. It's a gift of showing what could be again if only we try."