Memory Bank

It had been 22 years since the war ended.

He walked down the street where the government had erected a 100-meter-tall anti-invasion wall, forever closing off every beach and coastline in the country. He placed his hand on the wall, closed his eyes, and took a deep breath. The air around him was putrid and thick with pollution. But for that mere moment, he remembered and felt as if he had inhaled a breath of salty ocean air.

He put his hand back in his pocket and continued on his route. It had been several days since he’s had any luck begging for cryptocoins. Either way, he took the long three-mile trek. He used the rubble of the collapsed Panorama Tower as his marker for where to turn. The flag pole with the tattered, lifeless flag indicated to him where there was an opening in the fence.

He maneuvered through it to reach his destination: a 15-mile radius where the ultra-elite gathered before the war started and stayed after it ended. The infrastructure wasn’t much better here than it was on the other side of the fence. Neither was the air quality. But it was here where he could come across someone who might pity him enough to give him a cryptocoin. A life sentence was the punishment for those caught begging here by the military police. But he needed the coins, and there were no other means.

Sunrises and sunsets no longer existed in this desolate world. Now there was just midsun – when the sun passed the walls and sat directly over the city for a few hours. The acids churning in his stomach with nothing to digest made him light-headed and dizzy. His lips were cracked and on the verge of bleeding from lack of hydration. He couldn’t verbally ask people for coins because it was too risky. All he could do was sit and wait and hope someone had the intuition to recognize why he was there.

Most days were unsuccessful. Midsun had come and gone. It seemed as though he would have to head back with nothing but hunger. He was about to get up and leave when a young woman sat beside him.

“Sorry I’m so late. The energy shortage had all the stores in a frenzy.”

He was disoriented to begin with, but the stranger talking to him left him too stumped to speak.

She laughed and playfully hit his arm. As she did, a military police officer walked by them and eyed him up and down. It was then that he realized what she was doing. She probably didn’t want to see another person like him get dragged, beaten, and thrown into prison. He played along and tried to laugh with her but couldn’t open his mouth or smile without his lips ripping. The officer looked distrustful but walked past them. When he turned around to thank the woman for saving him, she had already stood up and walked away. In her place, she left a container of food, a plastic bottle of water, and a cryptocoin right on the cap.

He opened up the bottle of water and quickly chugged it. He strategically held the coin between his fingers and tossed the bottle and the cap on the ground. He got up and scarfed down the sandwich while walking towards the fence he entered through. He walked several blocks to one of the few remaining bridges that let him cross what used to be a river. His left hand was in his left pocket. He clutched onto a small cloth pouch. Every few minutes, he checked over his shoulder to make sure no one was following him.

Once he had made it far enough, he turned into an alley. He looked over his shoulder one last time. Then, when he was certain he was alone, he pulled the pouch from his pocket. He opened it up, dropped the coin in it, and then emptied everything onto his open palm.

He counted slowly.

Ten. He had the ten cryptocoins he needed.

To be sure, he counted them again as he put them back in the pouch. He then put it back in his pocket and pulled a steel beaded necklace up from under his shirt. He stopped for a moment and held the dangling heart-shaped locket between his thumb and index finger. After some internal silence, he pressed the locket onto his lips.

“Soon,” he said softly.

He tucked it back under his shirt and kept walking. The water and sandwich he had consumed were giving him just enough energy to keep him from collapsing. Luckily, the illicit Memory Bank wasn’t too far of a walk. It was illegally operated in a long-abandoned and mangled railroad car. When he arrived, he hurried up the stairs and knocked on the window of the sliding metal door.

It was forced open by an older woman who had no teeth and just a few thin hairs on her head. They exchanged no words. He opened the pouch and held it close to her face for her to see. With no change in her facial expression, she nodded and let him in. The old woman then forced the door shut again. She secured the padlock with a key and shook it vigorously to be sure she locked it.

When she turned around, she found the man already sitting in the dentist chair. She looked for the cryptocoins and found them perfectly laid out on the counter. She took small, irritatingly slow steps to the file cabinet that was right next to the chair. She opened it and removed a roll of gauze, bandages, four medical electrodes, and a giant pill that seemed like it was made for a horse. She turned around to face the man and began setting everything up.

When she stuck the final electrode onto the man’s right temple, he reached under his shirt and lifted the necklace over his head. He handed it to her with the heart-shaped locket attached to it. She doused it with a thick, foul-smelling gel and inserted it into a small chamber connected to the armest. Finally, she handed him the pill. At first, the large pill was difficult for him to swallow. But he’s been here so many times since then that he perfected the technique.

In fifteen seconds, the machine was revved up and he was knocked out cold.

The beads of sweat rolled off his forehead and into his closed eyes, causing them to sting a bit. The blazing sun made his entire face feel red with warmth. Although his eyes were closed, the sun was so bright that he placed his hands over his eyes to shield them.

He felt the cooling sensation of a gentle breeze.

He felt the warm sand blanket his feet.

Finally, he breathed in a breath of salty ocean air and he realized where he was.

He opened his eyes and there she was on the towel beside him – his wife. Her hair was drenched and her face was covered with droplets of ocean water. When she realized he awoke, she gave him a long kiss on the cheek. Her wet skin refreshed his. He turned on his side to get a better view of her.

She gave him a second kiss, this time on the lips. And then she started giggling and talking about whatever they were talking about before he fell asleep. He couldn’t tell if he was more entranced by the sound of his wife’s voice or the rhythmic crashing of the waves. She playfully grabbed a handful of sand and spread it all over his stomach.

“Now you have to get in the water,” she says to him.

He abided and they took a dip in the crystalline water together. In this memory, there’s no one else but them. They walked deep into the water until she could no longer feel the seafloor beneath her. Then, she gets on his back and wraps her legs around his waist. They shared silence for a few minutes until she broke it with a whisper.

“I have something for you.”

They got out of the water and sat down on their towels. She put her beach bag between her legs and started scouring through it to find the gift. After a few seconds, she turned to him and held the heart-shaped locket up for him to see.

“Happy anniversary, sweetness.”

She placed the locket in his hand. He clutched it tightly near his heart. When he finally lifted his head back up to look her in the eyes, she noticed that he was crying.

“I love it,” he told her.

They kissed passionately for several minutes. Then they hugged as if they somehow knew it might be a while before they saw each other again. They took a deep breath in unison, almost as if their lungs were working symbiotically. They watched the sunset in each other’s embrace.

After what felt like a few hours to him, the memory was coming to an end. It was time to pack up their belongings and head home. They rolled up the towels, stuffed them into the bags, and emptied the cooler. As they walked towards the street, he spotted a homeless man sitting on the sidewalk, shaking his coffee cup full of coins.

“Let’s cross the street here so that we don’t have to deal with the homeless guy over there.”

The wife stared at him quizzically. She then held his hand and led him directly to where the homeless man was sitting. The poor man didn’t say a word but continued to shake his cup gently. She opened up her beach bag again and rummaged through the towels to find exactly what she was looking for: a coin. She bent down to look at the man directly into his eyes. As tender and as lovingly as she could, she placed the coin into the cup. When she stood back up, she noticed her husband was now looking at her quizzically.

“You never know where that coin could take him, my love.”