Amnesiast

He pressed the silver button and could hear the rising and falling melody of the doorbell inside the house. The small retina display on the door of the house lit up and a woman with impeccable hair stared at him from the screen.

“Yes?” came her voice through the video intercom.

He had never become used to these digital communications and leaned forward, speaking too loudly at the screen. “Hi. My name is Menashe from Amnistech. I’m here –”

“Are you the Forgetter?” she interrupted.

He pulled a foil business card from his pocket and held it up to the display. Below the thin black logo, it read:

MENASHE ALTMANN ,

SENIOR LAPSE ENGINEER ,

Registered Operator 01111010

He lowered the card and continued talking into the display, “I’m here for an eleven o’clock appointment with Mrs –”

But before he had even finished, she said “Wait there” and the screen went blank.

While he waited on the doorstep, the hum of an approaching car caught his attention. A pale green sedan floated along the suburban street, its undercarriage lights bathing the bitumen in a soft glow as it hovered along. He recognised it as a Lexus Volitant, probably the 2064 model. As it passed by his own ’38 Toyota parked on the curb on its outmoded wheels, he noticed how out of place it was in this upmarket neighborhood. Its white paintwork was unfashionable. Its doors were hinged rather than modern auto-sliding ones. It didn’t even have a self-drive function.

A soft breeze rustled the leaves and he scanned the quiet neighborhood. The houses along the tree-lined avenue were architectural marvels of polished concrete and glass, set back from the road with impeccable landscaped gardens.

The door clicked behind him and he turned as it slid open, revealing a spacious home of marble floors and stainless steel, filled with light and decorated with expensive kitsch. No one stood there to greet him, as was the custom these days for tech-loving suburbanites.

Menashe stepped over the threshold, clutching his black case in one hand.

“Hello?” his voice echoed through the immense home as the front door hissed and slid itself closed.

The woman with impeccable hair appeared at the far end of the entryway, well within the open plan living space. Well-dressed and holding a glass of wine, she beckoned him through.

“That’s it. Keep coming.”

The expansive room opened up before him. A mezzanine spanned one wall above, artworks hung below, and the glass ceiling filled the space with natural light.

“I’m Maggie,” she said and waved a hand toward the couch. “This is my husband David.”

Sitting on the end of a long leather sofa, David looked up with a cursory smile then returned his attention to the toddler on his lap, keeping the child amused with a toy rocket.

Menashe nodded a greeting to the gentleman.

“And this is Toby,” said Maggie after another sip of wine.

“You’re the Forgetter?” asked David.

Menashe cleared his throat and spoke meekly. “We prefer ‘Amnesiast’. And yes, I’m… am. Yes. My name is Menashe.”

Maggie sat on the far end of the long lounge and left Menashe hovering awkwardly until David gestured for him to sit. He gently placed the black case on the floor beside his feet.

Toby cooed at the rocket ship as David let go of the toy above the child’s head where it hovered, gently bobbing on the faint air currents passing through the house.

“So what are we dealing with today?” Menashe eventually broke the silence, looking from Maggie to David and back. They were clearly uncomfortable, as were most of his customers. He only ever met people with problems.

David watched Maggie place her wine glass on the ceramic coffee table with a resounding clink. She clearly wasn't going to lead this, so he responded, “It’s Toby. He was bitten by a dog about six weeks ago. In the park.”

“Mutt should have been put down,” Maggie snorted.

“He’s OK, it was just a little nip.” David gently rubbed Toby's forearm where the faintest hint of a scar remained. “Gave him a fright more than anything.”

Menashe could see where this was going. This was his three hundred and sixtieth appointment and he had seen it all. “And now he’s afraid of dogs,” he offered.

“Yes,” snapped Maggie. “And the problem is we have a dog.”

“Banner,” added David, his softness countering her pique. “He’s like our other child.”

The dynamic in the room made it clear Banner was more David’s dog than Maggie’s.

“A family pet is part of the family,” Menashe smiled back to the man. It was something he had heard, although he had never owned a pet. Not even an Aibo when they were all the rage. “May I see?”

Maggie rose languidly from the couch and walked to a door on the far side of the room, her shoes clipping and clopping on the marble. It gave Menashe the impression of a horse he had once seen at the zoo in New Pembroke.

When Maggie returned, she was leading an enthusiastic dog. Banner appeared to be one of the latest designer breeds, a labramute as they were called. Menashe didn’t understand these breeds. His understanding was that when a dog has mixed parentage it was called a mutt, but apparently everyone was mixing whatever two or three breeds together and the portmanteau name meant they could be sold for thousands to the kinds of people that marketers referred to as ‘early adopters’.

But he reminded himself, these early adopters are what kept him in business.

A piercing shriek of pure terror broke his reverie. Toby had spotted the dog and was burrowing his face into David’s armpit, his body curled into a ball. A hedgehog defense.

“Ok. That’s enough. Thank you,” said Menashe and Maggie returned Banner to the adjoining room.

“You’re kind of our last resort,” David said pleadingly.

“I usually am.”

Menashe lifted his case onto the couch beside him and laid it flat with the embossed Amnistech logo facing up. Placing both thumbs on the sensor locks, it clicked and he opened the lid.

From where he sat, David couldn’t see what the door-to-door technician was fiddling with inside, his hands tapping away and the occasional button clicking.

“Do you know how this works?” Menashe asked without looking up.

“No,” said Maggie, rejoining them on the couch. David shook his head. Toby had calmed down and peered out from under his father’s arm, curious at the strange man’s black case.

“As you would have read in the online literature,” Menashe began, reminding his clients they should indeed know how this works, “We are able to target specific neural networks within the hippocampus, located in the brain's temporal lobe where episodic memories are formed and indexed for later access.”

He looked up at the blank faces staring at him.

“Neural pathways connect bits of information enabling the brain to access them quicker. The more often they are accessed, the stronger they become.”

David nodded, but it was one of obligation rather than understanding. Maggie reached for her wine.

“By disrupting those pathways, we can dissolve the memory origin. If Toby doesn’t remember being bitten, he has no reason to be afraid of Banner.” Menashe was speaking a lot slower now, letting his simplification sink in. “Now, what sort of dog bit him?”

David’s brain shook off the tech-laden cobwebs to recall the breed, “Huh? Oh, it was a - a - a dober… dobermationn. Why?”

Menashe began tapping inside the open lid of the case. “To detect the synapses storing this event, we use a mnemonic device – a photo, a song, a scent – to fire up the synapse relating to this specific memory.”

While this babble washed over the two parents, the technician spun the case around to face them, revealing the inside – a computer of sorts, with a display screen inside the lid of the case and the bottom containing the body of the computing device bearing a few buttons on a panel set among the heat fins. Resting in a curved cradle was what appeared to be a sun visor, a single curve of dark plastic.

The screen showed the result of Menashe’s internet search – an image of a lithe and muscular dog with jet black head, brown muzzle and legs, and a body of mottled spots – dobermann cross-bred with dalmation.

“That’s it!” Maggie sat forward, vividly recalling the beast that took to her child.

As Menashe removed the sunglasses from the case, they lit up with a faint blue glow. He leaned over the coffee table and carefully slipped them onto Toby’s face, nestling the two ends behind his ears. The boy went to shake them free, but David pretended it was a childish game to calm him.

“Now, to ensure the child focuses on this image I need to send it to the visor,” Menashe explained as he returned to the computer. “He will react. But that’s perfectly normal. It’s forcing his hippocampus to fire up the memory so we can locate the synapses.”

With a few taps, the visor’s light turned green and the screen in the case revealed a 3D scan of the child’s brain.

“Three… two… one.”

And with that, he pressed the green button.

Toby shrieked.

In an instant, the scan was flooded with a spectrum of colours. Before the boy could tear off the visor, the algorithm targeted the centre of the blue area and when it beeped, Menashe tapped the red button. There was a flash of light, and Toby collapsed in his father’s arms.

“Oh my god!” shrieked Maggie, her first real display of concern.

David straightened the limp child in his arms, jostling to wake him.

“Don’t worry. That’s perfectly normal,” soothed Menashe as he carefully removed the visor and returned it to the case. “It’s like his brain is rebooting. The younger you are, the faster you wake up.”

As if on cue, Toby’s eyes flickered open groggily, he yawned and cuddled into his father as if disturbed from a long nap.

“And the memory is gone,” said the engineer confidently. “Bring Banner back in.”

Hesitantly, Maggie stood and fetched the dog once more. When she walked him around the couch, the young boy beamed, “Goby!” and lunged into a cuddle around the labramute’s fluffy neck.

“That’s amazing,” David whispered.

Menashe had already packed his case and was leaving the family to reconnect. His business card lay face down on the coffee table, the obverse side up to reveal the glowing payment code ready for a digital transaction.

Having let himself out, he walked the long path across the landscaped yard and opened the door of his car. As he leaned across the driver’s seat to secure the black case in the passenger footwell, his cell phone tweeted.

When he pulled it from his pocket he saw the caller’s name on the screen: Rebecca. Quickly getting into the car, he answered the phone and pulled the driver’s door closed. The soundproof glass muted the short conversation.

As soon as he ended the call, the car started and sped away.

* * * * *

He knocked on the door of apartment 1702. When it opened, Menashe’s smile instantly faded. Standing in the doorway was a handsome man, looking very tired.

“Are you Rachel’s friend?” the man asked.

“Rachel?” Menashe shot back, confused.

“Thanks for coming,” he said, not noticing the question mark. “I’m Ryan. Come on in.”

Menashe followed Ryan into the apartment, closing the door behind himself. No automation here, but the flat was modern and neat if a little sparse. He was just about to ask where Rebecca was when he saw the woman leaning against a side table, her arms folded and her eyes burning the redness of recent tears. Despite the sadness, she was still beautiful.

“We need you to save our marriage,” she said dryly as Ryan flopped into an armchair.

“Marriage?” asked Menashe as he approached her.

She backed away from him and crossed to the other side of the room. “We’ve both made mistakes,” she said.

Ryan sat forward in his chair, eager. “And we know if we forget those mistakes, we’ll be able to move forward. With each other.” The desperation dripped from every last word.

“What kind of mistakes?” Menashe inquired, eyeing them both suspiciously.

“Does it matter?” Ryan whined.

It did.

“Well, I need to know what memory I’m working with,” explained the memory engineer. “Plus, I’m legally not allowed to remove memories of a crime. Theft, arson, murder.”

“Oh, it’s nothing like that,” Ryan blurted.

“Infidelity,” said his wife.

Menashe placed his case on the coffee table but didn’t sit. “OK. Tell me what happened. I only need the basics.”

“He fucked a stripper. Is that basic enough?” The bitterness in her voice was at odds with her beauty.

Menashe looked to Ryan who sheepishly muttered, “At my bachelor party. A year ago.”

“A year ago?” Menashe probed.

“I slept with the stripper because I found out Rachel was having an affair.”

Menashe looked to Rachel. She nodded.

“So, you both made mistakes,” he agreed.

Rachel sighed and let her body relax. It was all out now. She moved to the couch. “He wants you to remove my affair. If I don’t remember it, it didn’t happen.”

“And remove the night I found out and cheated,” Ryan added. “So we can start fresh. Can you do that?” His pleading eyes looked to the memory engineer.

Menashe thought on it. He had never done a double before. And he still had a lot more questions, but did not expect to get the answers he wanted so he pressed on.

“Yes. I can erase just that night.” He sat down and opened the case.

“What about me?” Rachel asked.

Menashe didn’t look up from his work.

“For you it’s a bit more complicated. You said affair, so I assume this was over a period of time? Not a single incident?”

“No,” she said softly. “I mean, not a single time. It was for a while.”

The barb stung Ryan.

“So, for you, we’d need to remove the memory of this other person,” explained Menashe. "Not just a single instance."

“Like she never knew him?” Ryan sounded hopeful.

“He’d be wiped from her memory. Completely.”

“Let’s do that,” said Ryan, all too eager.

The husband and wife exchanged glances. He earnest. She defeated. They nodded in agreement.

“OK. So who’s first?” asked Menashe, taking the visor from the case.

“Me,” said Ryan. He was clearly showing his desire to resolve this, move forward with his marriage intact.

“I’ll need a photo, or something to remind you of… that night,” Menashe prompted.

Ryan turned sheepish again. He didn’t want to have to dig up the past, but if it meant a clean future, he had no choice. He pulled his phone from his pocket and tapped away, looking up the stripper’s website.

Rachel peered over and caught a glimpse. “Oh, geez. Really?”

“Alright. Focus on her image,” Menashe instructed calmly, commandingly, as he put the visor over Ryan’s eyes and returned to his controls.

The screen lit up with the 3D image of Ryan’s brain, the rainbow colours spreading across it like oil on water. The target honed in on the area lit vibrant blue.

When the machine beeped, he tapped the red button, there was a flash and Ryan passed out.

Menashe immediately turned on his wife, eyes aflame. “You're married?!”

Her shoulders slumped, her face softened and she moved closer to him. “I’m sorry. I should have told you.”

“What the hell?!” he fumed. “Rachel? You said your name was Rebecca. All this time, I didn’t even know your real name.”

“I’m sorry, Menny,” she pleaded, taking his hand in hers, caressing his fingers.

“You said you loved me.” He jerked his hand away.

“I do. It’s complicated.” Rachel looked at her unconscious husband. “How long will he be out?”

“About four minutes.” He carefully slid the visor off Ryan’s face and reset the computer.

“But this doesn’t change anything,” Rachel went on. “We can still be together.”

Menashe looked at her and held up the visor. “What about this?”

She scoffed. “Oh, I’m not doing it! No!”

Silently he shot her a look. What?

“Don’t you see?” she explained as though her plan made perfect sense. “We can still see each other now. And he won’t know. He won’t remember.”

“Seriously?” Menashe couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

“Yes. Don’t you love me?” Rachel cooed, melting his heart a little.

“Of course I do. But –” he broke off. She had reached out and stroked his arm. Her touch was tender, wanted. She was everything he had dreamed of. But apparently also so much more. He pulled his arm away and quickly packed his case.

“It’ll be OK,” she insisted. “Now get out of here before he wakes up. I’ll call you later.”

When Menashe turned to leave, Rachel blocked his path and kissed him deeply. He kissed back, momentarily, then pulled away and pushed past her to leave.

Once the door had closed, Rachel looked at Ryan sprawled limply in the armchair. She took note of how his arms dangled, how his body mass sunk, and his head lolled.

She quickly fixed her hair in the mirror, tidying the fly-aways and curling a rather sexy bang over one eye, then sat down on the couch near her husband and made several attempts at copying his position. Her arms dangled, her body mass sunk and her head lolled. Satisfied she had found one that was plausible, yet still comfortable, she closed her eyes and let the smile drain from her face.

* * * * *

It was nearly an hour before Menashe arrived at his own tiny apartment. He dropped his keys on a small worn table in the dimly lit entryway and eased himself into the dilapidated couch. He stared into space.

After a moment, he pulled his phone from his pocket and tapped on the screen. Contacts. Favourites. The first name on the list was ‘Rebecca’. Her profile picture smiled seductively back at him. Locking his eyes on hers, he examined the curve of her cheek, the pout of her lips. A curled bang hung sexily over one eye.

With every pixel now firmly scorched in his memory, he deleted her contact details.

Drawing a long resigned breath, he opened the case, wrapped the visor over his eyes and hovered a finger over the red button.

Beep.

Tap.

Flash.

THE END

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