The Lost Mother

A silver locket is pressed tightly in the fist on my lap, the only tangible object I own; its heart shape pendant dangles from a broken hinge. Before logging in each morning, I stare into the shallow shell and recall the miniature portrait it once housed: my mother’s dark eyes, the short brown bob floating above her shoulders, and her smile back at me.

From this comes two memories of my time before. They work backward. The doctor would say they are no more than a vivid imagination put to poor use, but I feel their foreshadowing pull like a hazy impression of something profound, like the déjà vu of ideas that have yet to be fleshed out.

The first is short. It begins with tall men dressed from head to toe in protective gear. I walk between them when someone screams up ahead, another child. The man in front of me stops abruptly, and I fall, locket flying from my grasp. I snatch it back up before the white-gloved hands grab hold of my arms. Above their heads, I see white clouds sponged on baby blue—not at all the endless crimson-stained sky they would have me believe it to be.

“You are required to share your thoughts, Miranda. Speak,” says the doctor.

The second memory, it’s new. It begins with the same cotton-balled sky, but this time it cradles an unkempt field of deep purple lupins.

“What are you thinking about right now?”

“I’d rather not say,” I reply, looking up from my hands. The doctor wears her watery gaze like a cool parlor trick. She’s a thin middle-aged woman with large sea-green eyes. Twice per week, we sit in this white-walled room beneath fluorescent spotlights, six feet apart. I have tracked the grey steak that extends from her roots to the very tips of her long chestnut hair.

“That’s worrisome,” she says. Her favorite line. This time there is a warning to her expression, one which I will not heed.

“I have a memory I can’t explain. A memory of my mother. She contradicts the mother I have in The Old World.”

“That’s impossible. The mother you have is from The Old World, the one you see when you log in. She lives in a separate facility.”

“Can I please see her? In-person,” I add, biting my bottom lip as though to curl the words back in. No one has made a request such as this, I’m sure of it, especially not a seventeen-year-old girl.

“That implies a lack of trust in CWL Technologies. Do you trust your government?” She asks. I glance at the beeping red light in the far corner.

“Of course.”

“Thank you for sharing, Miranda.” As the doctor closes her notebook, she wishes to shut the door on this topic, but I can’t. A spark has been lit inside of me, and it burns hot against the skin of my right palm. I squeeze the locket tighter, and something snaps.

“But the memory. I’d like to discuss it,” I say.

“I advise against it. You can’t trust the images that appear in your dream feed. As soon as you entertain them, bizarre ideas latch on. Before you realize it, you are ungrateful. The only alternative for you is out there where you are no longer safe and cared for, where feeders live a dangerous existence—”

The doctor pauses to clutch her ear. She looks up slowly, like me from my fist, and I have this sudden urge to bridge the gap. I want to touch the hand that pressed her ear, to caress it and whisper, don’t listen to them anymore.

“My mother is chasing me through a field of beautiful flowers. She calls for me to slow down even though she knows I won’t. We’re playing together, laughing,” I relay. The doctor’s eyes widen as though a wild frenzy dances behind them. She disapproves of the direction we’re taking and she risks her position, perhaps even her life, to convey that to me now.

I have been taught that there is nothing worse than giving in to the selfish fabrication of a dream unshared. The belief in private feeds is what led to the destruction of our planet as we know it. A revolution can’t be risked, so all dream feeders receive the solitary fate they wish for. They are released to fend for themselves outside, forced to scavenge like rats for scraps of food and cloth discarded by facilities. Alone, they must face whatever threats exist on the other side of these windowless walls.

“You are mistaken and perhaps a little ungracious,” the doctor says. “You have been given the virtual gift of experiencing The Old World with your loved ones. You may use all your senses from a safe distance. Furthermore, you have a remarkable asset that will assist us in rebuilding Society.” She pauses to let the following phrase have its echo. “Gratitude for all that you have.”

“Gratitude for all that I have,” I say as I have countless times before.

This doctor is the only person I have interacted with face-to-face since Earth became uninhabitable. All this time, I thought she was another captor in this parallel world we call the old one, but she is just like me, an avatar made of flesh, a pawn in a game unbeknownst to its most prized players.

I may not know much, but I know my value now. It is not so easy to toss me out.

“Thank you for sharing—”

“But I haven’t shared it all, not the whole memory,” I insist. For the third time, the doctor opens the notebook and picks up her pen. Her eyes are glossed with worry, both for me—and herself.

“Memory?” She asks. “I believe you meant to say ‘fantasy.’ You shall not exercise it as real.”

“In this fantasy, my mother tells me she loves me. More than anyone or anything,” I say, unable to stop now. I can’t do this anymore. I need to know the truth, even if it means I never log back in again. To live my days untethered from my body has been a kind of death unto itself.

“Your mother loves you, but not more than The Calling. You know this,” she says. The pen trembles in her grip.

“I’m not talking about the mother I have in The Old World. I’m talking about the mother I had in the old world. My mother.” The doctor takes a quick breath, and her pen falls to the floor. It slowly rolls away, but she makes no move to retrieve it.

I go still as my heartrate speeds up. I have gone too far, I know, but I am right. What else have they lied about? What really exists beyond these four white walls?

I spring up to search for an exit, shielding my eyes from the intense light that threatens to keep me in the dark. While feeling along the smooth walls, my fingers find a doorknob. I turn it.

“Stop!” The doctor yells; the bright lights wink out. Through a squint, I notice a small window for the first time. Sunlight streams through the sheer curtain that shades it. I notice the doctor standing near an outlet with a long cord in her hands.

“What’s going on?” I ask.

“You’ve never tried to leave before,” she says quietly. I look around the square room. There’s a bed in the corner and a nightstand beside it. There is no décor, only a landscape painting lying forgotten on the floor. She catches me looking at it.

“Oh no, I meant to put that out when you asked.” She touches her forehead and shakes her head, frustrated with herself for something I don’t understand.

“Who are you?” I ask carefully. The shaking starts in my bones and works its way out. Is this the result of entertaining my dream feed? Is this what happens when bizarre ideas latch on? When I am ungracious?

“Please, sit. Let me explain.” I let her take my left hand and lead me back to the chair. She finds her spot and fumbles with the fingers in her lap before speaking next. “You are Daphne Lockhart, quite possibly the most notable science fiction writer of your time. We are in one of twelve bedrooms in this grand home you own. Every day, we repeat this scene in your favorite book, and every day it plays out as it was written.”

Except for today, I think.

“I’m sorry to say that you have Alzheimer’s. You are not seventeen; you are seventy. You insisted that you would not let this disease write the story of your demise. You would live on in your fiction. In this white-on-white room—your blank page—you recreate this scene of your bestselling novel, again and again.”

“I don’t understand. If I’m losing my memory, how can I recall it?” I ask. My voice has aged in the last few minutes, and I’m afraid to look down at my hands.

“Although you forget the details of your own life, you possess an incredible memory for the thread of a story structure. You recall the characters and their arcs, exact lines from their dialogue. It’s truly remarkable,” the doctor—this woman— explains, tilting her head in awe.

“I don’t believe you.”

The woman walks over to the nightstand and pulls out a handheld mirror from the bottom drawer. Gingerly, she hands it over and sits back down.

“Take a look,” she says.

Slowly, I raise the mirror to my face. In it, I see the lost portrait of my mother. Her hair may be silver, skin loosened around the eyes and mouth, but it is her.

I am her.

I avert my eyes to study the oil painting on the floor. A young girl runs away from me through a field of purple lupins. The swift strokes from a knife has raised the grass blades and round petals from the canvas.

“Who are you?” I ask for the second time.

“My name is Miranda. You hired me to help,” she says softly.

“Miranda. Like Miranda, in the book?”

“Yes. Like the heroine in your book. When we reenact this scene, you believe you are her,” she says. Then: “Do you remember me?”

I see the anguish in her eyes: the watery gaze I mistook to be deceitful. I know the plot twist she is looking for, the acknowledgment she seeks, but I will not give it to her. To forget who I am like this, I must be in the later stages of the disease. I won’t put my daughter through any more pain by delaying our goodbye.

“I don’t know who you are,” I lie. At this, her green eyes dim, and the hardened disposition of my doctor settles back into them. For the first time, I open my right fist to examine the silver chain, now severed from its heart-shaped pendant.

“You hold onto that so you can recall the most vital part of yourself, Daphne Lockhart. So that the writer in you is not lost,” she says, placing the notebook back in her lap.

She doesn’t know I keep the locket close to remember her. After all, a woman is not a mother without a child.

I never thought I would want to log back into The Old World. In fact, I have never felt more grateful to have had all I was given. I strayed toward the dream feed that beckoned me. I let its sharp talons grip hold of my sanity, break open my loyalty, and morph me into a feeder unworthy of The Calling.

But, nevermore.

“I’m leaving this room,” I announce. “I can leave this room.”

“You can,” the doctor says dryly. She picks up the pen lying inert on the wooden floorboards and returns to her chair, always six feet away. “But you won’t.”