Peak

Chapter 1

Alma counts. Five since Thursday. Two until the next one.

The photo of Amalfi glows on her phone — her mouth open in joy, hair blown horizontal, sea catching the late light like coins. She doesn’t press play. She’s saving it.

The train lurches. She hooks her arm around the pole, plants her feet wide. The car fills in layers: school bags, briefcases, a bouquet wrapped in crackling paper. A PSA decal above the door reads: RECALL RESPONSIBLY — LIMIT 50 MINUTES/WEEK. In the window, she watches the doubled city slide by — two sets of eyes looking back. She lets her face float over the glass and then shuts the phone away.

It’ll be her sixth session, and she knows the rhythm now. The high from last Thursday faded by Saturday. Sunday was gray. Monday worse. Today, Tuesday, she’s counting.

The morning had started like they all do now. The dog nosing the cereal bowl toward the edge. Her hand there first, sliding it back, wiping a milk thumbprint from the table. “Buddy,” she’d said. “No.”

Riley bent over one shoe, tongue caught in the corner of her mouth, laces making and unmaking a knot. Sam calling from the bedroom: “Left black sock?” The drawer opening, shutting, opening again.

“Second drawer,” she’d answered.

Somewhere outside a car passed with the radio up, a familiar hook thinned by glass. Sam hummed two notes without noticing and kept hunting.

She could see the sock without seeing it — pressed into the back corner, behind the rolled tights, beside a scarf that never made it back to storage.

The kitchen smelled like toast and soap. The table was scratched in long white lines, old lives showing through. The metal rang against the stone as she poured the kibble.

“Got it,” Sam had said, appearing with the sock and a grin like a small flag. He’d kissed her hairline by mistake.

_____

The office arrives around her — bright lights, tired plants, that bulletin board nobody looks at. Someone has set out cupcakes in a plastic clamshell with a handwritten note: PLEASE. The whiteboard shows a rocket drawn in black marker. SUCCESS printed underneath, carefully. She can hear the squeak it made.

Slack says good job in a dozen stickers. Her manager says, “Nice push,” in a voice designed to sound casual. Her mouth makes a smile because her mouth knows how. Inside, nothing moves. The compliment slides off like oil on water.

She answers questions, checks graphs, posts summaries with neat bullet points.

At noon she heats leftovers. The microwave carries the scent of old tomato sauce, the kind that lives there and never leaves. Food tastes like cardboard soaked in the memory of flavor. Corey tells a story about waiting for a table at a restaurant that believes waiting is character-building. Alma laughs where she should laugh. She steals a glance at the clock and finds it stubborn.

She turns her chair toward the window. Picks up her mug, drinks. Hot. Bitter. Nothing.

Her calendar holds a square of color at four on Thursday. Morgan. She put it there weeks ago. The square pulses in her peripheral vision.

She messages Sam: Therapy at four. Home after. A gray bubble appears, disappears, returns as a thumbs-up. She waits, watching the small icon as if another word might attach itself. It doesn’t.

That night, Sam tries to tell her about a small win — a client who finally approved a change he pushed for. She says, “That’s good,” in the right shape of tone. He stands there for a second, like he was about to say more, then decides not to.

On the train the next morning she thinks, Thursday.

Chapter 2

Thursday, finally.

At 3:50 she puts on her coat. Wallet, keys, phone. A pen has leaked in the lining; her finger comes away faintly blue. In the elevator she faces herself times four. The lighting is kind and not kind, the way elevator lighting is. A man in a blue tie reads his phone. The fan hums.

Outside, she passes the florist. A bakery door opens; heat and sugar lift and dissolve. She notes them without feeling anything about them.

The clinic lives in a brownstone with polished steps and a brass plaque by the buzzer: Morgan, MD — Psychiatry / Peak Recall Therapy. Alma presses the button. The lock clicks.

Inside, the receptionist looks up and says Alma’s name before she speaks it. “Your usual room,” she says. “Dr. Morgan will be right with you.”

Dr. Morgan is already waiting. Short hair, neat sweater, the practiced neutrality of someone who holds other people’s pain.

“How was your week?”

“Long,” Alma says.

They sit. No couch, just two chairs that face each other at an easy angle.

“You’re at six sessions now,” Dr. Morgan says, opening the drawer. “Your brain knows what to expect. The pathways are well‑established. The pads cue the same circuits your brain fired when the memory formed. Your body experiences it the same way it did the first time. That also means the drops are getting harder.”

“But they’re still working,” Alma says, already pushing her hair back.

“For now. You’re building tolerance faster than most.” A pause. “Some people find the highs get shorter over time. The contrast is sharper. We should talk about spacing them out more.”

“After today,” Alma says. “We can talk about it after today.”

Morgan nods, then adds, almost as an aside: “If you get overwhelmed, orient to neutral details. Temperature. Fabric. Smell. It helps keep you anchored.”

The wipes are cool. The two pads sit in her palm like coins. She warms them with her fingers and sets them to her temples. The tACS pads hum once, catching her hippocampal rhythm. The chair takes her weight.

On the tablet, a timer waits at 50:00. Dr. Morgan taps once.

Alma leans back. The room dims to a border.

Wind. Not loud — close. Stone warm under her feet. The sea lifts and lowers like breathing. This is the Amalfi memory, the one from the photo. Sam’s laugh cuts across the water. She’s twenty‑nine, her body still surprises her with its strength. She jumps. The cold is clean. When she emerges, the light is lower, the air bright on her teeth. Sam is treading water, grinning. “Again?” he says. They’ve been jumping for an hour, they’ll jump for another. Their hotel room has a balcony. They make love with the windows open. They eat pasta at midnight. Everything is possible.

The scene crystallizes. Every sensory detail her brain encoded fires at once. The salt, the sun, the specific blue of that water that exists nowhere else. The feeling of being young and untethered and absolutely certain that this is what life is supposed to feel like.

The pads go still. The room steps back in.

Alma surfaces. There’s salt in her mouth that isn’t there.

“Good?” Dr. Morgan asks.

“Perfect,” Alma says.

She pays at the desk — $40 copay — and pockets a mint she won’t eat. Buttons her coat.

Outside, the florist is a spill of color she can name. Heat from the bakery door finds her skin and stays. The thrill is sharp and exact. She knows it won’t last the week. She takes it anyway.

Chapter 3

By Sunday, the lift is gone. Monday, she’s shaking.

Alma sits at the kitchen table at 3 AM, laptop open, scrolling through photos from Amalfi. She can see herself jumping, smiling, sun‑caught and glowing. She closes her eyes, tries to summon the feeling. Concentrates on the wind, the stone, the cold water. But it’s like looking at someone else’s life through frosted glass. The memory exists, but won’t answer.

She’s on a forum: Peak Recall Users. The posts have the desperate clarity of 3 AM:

Anyone else counting hours? 71 since the session, can’t stop shaking

My kid asked why I don’t laugh anymore

Success story: combining 3 memories, felt like god for 2 hours, worth the crash

A pinned post at the top:

Peak Recall Suites now offering extended sessions — 80 minutes, multiple memory stacking. Use code COMMUNITY for 20% off first visit.

Under it: 80‑minute Symphony — $449.

She does the math without meaning to. With the code: $359.20. Her hands are trembling. She makes fists, releases them. The tremor remains. Her skin feels too tight, like it belongs to someone else.

____

At breakfast, Sam notices. “You okay? You look pale.”

“Just tired,” she says. “Work stress.”

Riley’s telling a story about her teacher’s hamster. Alma watches her daughter’s mouth move, hears words, can’t connect them into meaning. Even Riley’s voice feels sharp.

She counts: four more days until Thursday.

Wednesday evening, Sam comes home optimistic, a cardboard tube under his arm. “They used my layout,” he says, grinning. He unrolls a poster on the table — clean lines, a small risk that paid off. She tries to match his smile. The shape is right. The feeling doesn’t land. After a moment he says, softer, “It’s fine” and rolls it back up.

____

On the train Thursday morning she opens her calendar, stares at the square of color. She could move it. Ask Dr. Morgan for an emergency session. She’s already texted twice this month for earlier appointments. She knows what Dr. Morgan will say about tolerance, about spacing, about the trajectory she’s on.

She opens a private tab. The Peak Recall Suites booking page is elegant. Soft colors, testimonials, a video of a woman laughing in slow motion. Friday at four is available.

She thinks of Dr. Morgan’s warnings. She thinks of the tremor in her hands. She thinks of the way the Amalfi water felt on her skin.

She types a message to Sam: Working dinner Friday with the Denver team.

He responds immediately: On a Friday? That sucks. Want me to save you dinner?

She stares at his kindness. Types back: No need. Don’t wait up.

She books the appointment.

Thursday night, after her regular session, she tries again with the photos. Sits in the bathroom with the door locked, scrolling through every image from that trip. She even finds a video — twenty seconds of her laughing, saying “Stop filming!” as she adjusts her swimsuit. She plays it on loop. Her body remembers nothing.

She sobs, quietly, so Sam won’t hear.

Chapter 4

Friday, four o’clock.

The Peak Recall Suites building smells like citrus and new carpet. Wrong. Too clean. In the waiting room, a woman sits with her eyes closed, tears streaming down her face, smiling. A man in a suit stares at his hands like he’s never seen them before. No one makes eye contact.

A receptionist says Alma’s name before she says it. The screen on the counter shows a waiver.

Dense text scrolls: liability… neural pathway alterations… potential for dependency… irreversible changes to memory processing… in rare cases, complete emotional dysregulation requiring permanent medical supervision and/or —

She signs without reading the rest.

Inside, the chair is leather. The tech is young, efficient. “

First time?”

Alma nods.

“You can select up to five memories for the symphony effect. They’ll blend together. Enhanced cross‑activation of neural pathways.” He sounds like he’s reading from a card. “Most people start with three.”

The screen shows her history. Every memory she’s accessed through Recall, tagged and categorized. She selects:

Kitchen Dance

She and Sam, exhausted, still in their clothes from the night before. He puts on music. They dance barefoot in the kitchen of their first apartment, her grandmother’s ring catching light, everything ahead of them.

Riley’s First Cry

Not the pain, but the moment after. That sound — furious and perfect. Sam’s face crumpling. The weight of her, impossible and real.

Beach House

Her father, before the diagnosis. The whole family playing cards until 2 AM. Her mother cheating brazenly. Everyone laughing so hard they can’t breathe. The sound of waves through open windows.

The tech nods, taps, leaves.

80:00 on the wall.

The hum starts deeper this time. The room doesn’t step back — it vanishes.

The memories don’t play in sequence. They braid. She’s dancing with Sam while holding newborn Riley while her father deals cards. The kitchen smells like the beach house. Her mother’s laugh becomes Riley’s first cry becomes Sam singing off‑key becomes the waves. Time folds into itself. She’s every age at once, feeling every pure moment of joy simultaneously.

Her nervous system floods. Oxytocin, dopamine, serotonin — all at levels her body has never produced naturally. The feeling is so intense it approaches pain. She doesn’t care.

When it ends, she can’t stand immediately. The tech brings water. Her hands shake too hard to hold the cup.

Outside, the world is nuclear bright. Colors vibrate. A child’s laugh sounds like music. The sidewalk feels like walking on clouds. She texts Sam: Celebrate tonight? with a confetti emoji.

She buys a cake. She buys flowers. She buys wine she can’t afford.

At home, she’s effervescent. She helps Riley with homework and every math problem is fascinating. She tells Sam about her fictional work dinner and makes it sound like an adventure. They eat cake from the box. She initiates sex for the first time in months. Afterward, she doesn’t sleep. Doesn’t need to. She lies there feeling her blood move through her veins like champagne.

____

Morning comes like a car crash.

Sam’s kiss feels like nothing. Riley’s voice is tinfoil on teeth. The dog’s nails on the floor make her want to scream. She locks herself in the bathroom and vomits nothing.

At work, she can’t type. Her hands won’t stop shaking. The fluorescent lights feel like needles in her eyes. Corey asks if she’s okay. She says yes while gripping her desk to stop the world from tilting.

On her phone, she searches: recall withdrawal symptoms. The results are scattered, unofficial. Forums and warnings and deleted threads.

She finds a medical paper:

Prolonged exposure to artificially induced memory recall may result in baseline anhedonia via receptor downregulation; increasing stimulation required to achieve homeostasis…

____

She texts Dr. Morgan: I did an extended session. Help.

The reply is immediate: Come now.

Chapter 5

“Show me your hands,” Dr. Morgan says.

Alma extends them. The tremor is visible.

“When did you go?”

“Friday.”

“Which memories?”

Alma tells her. Dr. Morgan’s face doesn’t change, but something shifts in her posture.

“Eighty minutes?”

“Yes.”

Dr. Morgan opens her tablet, turns it so Alma can see. A brain scan, lit up like a Christmas tree. “This is you, six weeks ago. Normal dopamine response.” She swipes. Another scan, darker. “This is what I’m guessing you look like now. Those bright memories? They’ve burned out your receptors. Your brain is protecting itself by shutting down feeling.”

“For how long?”

“Without intervention? Months. Maybe longer.” She sets down the tablet. “There’s something we can do. But you won’t like it.”

“Tell me.”

“We can recalibrate. Take your strongest memory — the one your brain reaches for most — and dim it. Reduce its emotional weight. It breaks the cycle, lets your system reset.”

“You want to destroy my memories?”

“Not destroy. Adjust. You’ll remember everything. But one memory will feel… neutral. Like looking at a photograph of strangers.”

“Which one?”

Morgan turns the tablet back. One memory towers above the others in access frequency:

Car Truce — Our Song

“I’ve accessed that one at home,” Alma says quietly. “Just in my mind. When things get bad.”

“It’s the anchor. Without it pulling you, the others can normalize.”

“What if I say no?”

“Then you wait. Months of feeling nothing.” A pause. “And Alma… I have to log this as an adverse event to the post‑market registry. You’re not the only one getting hit after the Suites started extended sessions. The board is anxious. The insurers are stricter. I don’t say this to scare you, but we’re running out of gentle options.”

Alma thinks of Riley’s laugh, meaning nothing. Sam’s touch feeling like static. Months of that.

"There has to be another way.”

“There isn’t. I’m sorry. We’ll use a microdose beta‑blocker to dampen reconsolidation while we re‑encode with neutral cues. It’s safe. It is also final.”

Alma closes her eyes. Remembers the car, the rain, the fight that ended when the song came on. How they both started crying and laughing at the same time. How it became their song, played at their wedding, hummed to Riley as a lullaby.

“Can I… can I feel it one more time first? Before you dim it?”

Morgan hesitates. “That would make it worse. Like saying goodbye. Your brain would bind that farewell into the memory.”

Alma’s hands won’t stop shaking. She puts them under her thighs.

“Do it,” she says.

“Are you sure?”

“Do it before I change my mind.”

____

Cool wipes. The pads feel heavier. Morgan’s hands hover over the tablet.

“Once we start, we can’t stop,” she says. “A partial process is worse than completing it. I need verbal consent to memory modification with adjunct medication.”

“I consent.”

The pads hum. Different frequency. Lower.

Rain on glass. The car. The fight about money, about her mother, about everything and nothing. The radio cycling through static. Then the DJ: “Here’s one for the lovers.” The first chord.

Morgan’s voice, distant but present: “Notice the seat fabric.”

It’s torn. Slightly. Been that way since they bought the car.

“The temperature.”

Too cold. The heat barely works.

“The smell.”

Stale coffee. Someone else’s cigarettes.

The song plays. Sam reaches for her hand. His palm is sweaty. The steering wheel is cracked. There’s a parking ticket on the dashboard they haven’t paid. The song is just noise. Organized noise. The rain is just weather.

“Notice,” Morgan says, “that you’re safe. The fight is over. You’re going home.”

Going home to an apartment with thin walls. Neighbors who argue. A refrigerator that hums too loud.

The song ends. The memory ends.

The pads go still.

Alma opens her eyes. The taste of copper fills her mouth.

“How do you feel?”

She considers. The shaking has stopped. The fluorescent light is just light.

“Empty,” she says. Then: “No. Quiet.”

“The withdrawal will ease over the next few days. Your system will recalibrate. You’ll need to avoid Recall for at least six months.”

“Six months?”

“Minimum. Your brain needs to relearn how to process natural memory without enhancement.”

Alma stands. No vertigo. No tremor. No feeling at all.

She pays at the desk, takes a mint without thinking, buttons her coat.

Outside, rain has started. She watches it land on the pavement.

Chapter 6

Two weeks and the world returns in pieces.

First: taste. Coffee tastes like coffee. Then: temperature. She notices she’s cold, puts on a sweater, feels warmer. Small victories.

She goes to work. Types emails. Eats lunch. Comes home.

She doesn’t go back to Dr. Morgan. Can’t afford it anyway, after the Peak Recall Suites bill — $359.20 on the card, interest ticking. Her plan never covered extended sessions.

She finds a regular therapist, Dr. Kim, who doesn’t offer Recall. They talk about mindfulness. About being present. About finding joy in small moments. It’s like learning to walk after an accident.

“I keep trying to feel things,” Alma tells her. “But it’s like there’s glass between me and everything.”

“That’s normal,” Dr. Kim says. “You’re rebuilding neural pathways. It takes time.”

She reads about memory online. Discovers that every time you remember something, you change it slightly. That memory isn’t replay — it’s reconstruction. That the person she was in Amalfi doesn’t exist anymore, has never existed except as electrical signals in her brain.

She tries to explain this to Sam one night.

“It’s like… the memories I was reliving weren’t even real. They were just my brain’s best guess at what happened.”

He looks at her carefully. “But they felt real?”

“Realer than real.”

He doesn’t ask about her “work dinners.” She doesn’t tell him about the extended session. They move around the truth like furniture.

____

Three weeks. She laughs at something Riley says — really laughs, not performance. It surprises all three of them.

Four weeks. She and Sam have sex. It’s awkward, tentative. Not transcendent. But she feels him. His weight, his warmth. It’s enough.

Five weeks. She deletes the Peak Recall Users bookmark. Takes a different route to work to avoid seeing the Suites building.

Six weeks. Spring arrives overnight. She’s walking Riley to school when her daughter stops, points at a tree. “Look, Mom. Flowers.”

They’re small, white, ordinary. Alma sees them. Really sees them. Not through memory or comparison or enhancement. Just small white flowers on a Tuesday morning.

“Pretty,” she says, and means it.

____

Friday night, Sam says it carefully. “You’ve been different. Since your therapy changed.”

“Different how?”

He looks at her for a long moment. “More here. But also… less.”

“Less what?”

"I don’t know how to say it. Like you’re performing being okay.”

She doesn’t answer. They both let it sit between them, unnamed.

____

Saturday morning, Sam makes pancakes. The kitchen fills with the smell. Riley sits at the table, drawing something elaborate with markers. The dog sleeps in a patch of sunlight. Sam hums while he cooks — just something he heard on the radio.

Alma watches from the doorway. The scene is ordinary. No one will remember this moment. It won’t become a story they tell. But standing there, she feels something shift in her chest. Not the explosive joy of Recall, not the desperate high she chased. Just a quiet warmth, like stepping from shadow into sun.

“Pancakes ready,” Sam says, catching her watching. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” she says, and for the first time in months, she means it. “I’m good.”

The feeling lasts through breakfast. Through Riley’s sticky syrup fingers. Through Sam’s terrible joke about why pancakes are flat. It’s small, this feeling. But it’s real.

____

Sunday they take the long road back from a birthday party. Paper crowns in the back seat. A balloon bumping the roof. Sam drives. The sun is low; the dashboard glows.

A DJ says, “You know this one,” like he owns the moment.

The first chord lands. Sam’s body recognizes it before his face does. His shoulders loosen; he laughs; he sings the line they always sing first. His hand finds hers on the console, warm, automatic.

Alma looks straight ahead. Traffic, brake lights, a green sign for an exit they won’t take. The song is there, whole. She knows all the words. She remembers the rain, the fight, the reconciliation. But it’s data now. Information without weight.

Sam turns, smiling. He’s already in the memory — the rain, the fight, the laugh that broke it, the way the chorus stitched them back together. He squeezes her fingers, waiting for the lift to catch her too.

It doesn’t.

She nods because the polite shape of the moment still exists. She lets him keep her hand. She listens to him sing a fraction off‑key the way he always has. The melody goes through her like light through glass.

She thinks of this morning’s pancakes. That small, real warmth. Already fading.

Outside, a billboard changes. Inside the car, the chorus opens something in him. For her, it’s just a song.

Sam’s smile falters as he registers the absence. The road hums under them. Alma watches the lane lines unwind.

She does not blink.

In the back seat, Riley hums along, off‑key like her father.