The Wiping

George Scionti walked up the grassy hill leading towards a small, thatch-roofed house. The sun was low in the sky and cast a golden light while a gentle breeze danced through the grass, as if a concert conductor was calling thousands of voices to say “hush.”

George’s linen pants scraped past the grass, his worn leather shoes crunched upon a dry dirt path.

In his right hand he clasped a small, golden heart-shaped locket.

This time, he said to himself. This time he would do it.

He crested the hill and took a moment to soak in the view: the plaster-walled house topped with yellow hay. A fenced-in yard filled with a few chickens and a dog. Rows of lavender bushes pulsing with fragrance and a laundry line strewn with sheets.

He took a deep breath in and strode down the hill, locket firm in his grasp.

With his left hand on the top of the fence he propelled himself up and over, causing chickens to scatter as he landed.

The sheets fluttered in the breeze revealing a figure standing behind them. Flashes of a striped, powder-blue dress were revealed, alongside delicate hands and long, golden ringlets.

“Marguerite!” George cried, grabbing the sheets and tearing them aside.

There she stood, still as a porcelain doll. Her dress, he noticed, didn’t flutter as the sheets did. He scanned up past her small hands, the bottom of the ringlets and up to her face – but her face wasn’t there. Instead, there was a void filled with indistinct but shifting light, like static on a screen.

“No!” George screamed, clenching his teeth. He threw a punch but the fist never landed. Instead, it passed through the figure and disrupted her form as though it were made of vapour.

The whole scene faded into darkness.

The soft breeze shifted into a mechanical whir, punctuated with beeps and dings. The scent of sun-warmed grass and lavender shifted to that of sanitizer and latex.

George sat up in bed, screaming as he ripped off a helmet covered with wires and threw it across the room.

Annette, the nearby nurse technician sighed and retrieved it.

“We’ve talked about this,” she said. “These helmets are worth a fortune, you can’t just throw them—”

Annette stopped as she saw George’s shoulders heave, a loud sob escaping his mouth.

“I can’t!” he screamed. “I just can’t do it anymore!”

His knotted hands, covered in spots, cupped his face and he continued to sob.

“It’s been, what, 45 years?” he said.

“Forty-seven,” she answered. She paused, absentmindedly running her thumb along the edge of the cold, steel table which held up the computer system attached to George’s helmet.

“My God,” he breathed. “Forty-seven years. I mean, Annette you weren’t even born yet. For your whole life I’ve been in here.”

She stood, motionless.

“Why?” he said. “I mean, I understand. My generation made the mistakes, we triggered The Wiping. We should be the ones tasked to remember things again. But why can’t I remember her?”

Again, he began to sob.

Annette wasn’t sure what to do. It wasn’t protocol to comfort the patients.

She walked over and sat on the end of the bed, still not touching George. It seemed like a good compromise.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I know she was very important to you. But in all your years here you’ve retrieved thousands of other invaluable memories; memories that will help us all rebuild.”

Annette paused, knowing what she needed to say but bracing for the reaction.

“Perhaps,” she said. “You should continue to pursue those other memories. Your involvement in the Michenko Nuclear Plant is key to understanding The Wiping and –”

“I’ve already retrieved as much as I can from the Plant!” George snapped. “I’ve relived those mistakes over and over and over again. For once can’t I have a moment of comfort?”

Annette stood, looking for something to do and decided to retrieve him some water.

Previously, nurse technicians were trained not to engage in the emotional outbursts which often accompanied memory retrieval exercises. Recent studies, however, found that engaging with these emotions could sometimes trigger memories. Still, it was a foreign concept to her.

After The Wiping, emotions were all that most people had. They were raw, chaotic and feral and in many parts of the world continued to control how people lived. In society – however small those enclaves were– there was order, logic and control.

It was thanks to the few people who had retained some memories, who had retained some self-control, that any semblance of society existed at all.

George had not been one of those people, Annette had been told.

When a rescue team found him, miraculously still alive at the outskirts of the Michenko Plant, he’d been frantic. Because of his proximity to the Plant even some of the most basic skills had to be relearned; holding a spoon, combing his hair, even much of his linguistic abilities.

The biological effects of the Wiping had, thankfully, not destroyed the technology people had created before. With enough survivors carrying partial memories key advancements were retained: power generators, basic farming, small-scale water sanitization and advancements in memory retrieval. Many other areas still lacked effective knowledge: large-scale sewage systems, advanced medicine, nautical navigation, aviation.

Annette sighed. Even family had been a mystery; sometimes her mother just stared at her as though she’d just suddenly appeared out of nowhere. It was something officials called “generational scarring,” a blanket term used to explain sporadic blips in memory in generations after The Wiping. So far it had been seen in as many as three generations.

The water in the glass overflowed, spilling over Annette’s hand and bringing her back from her thoughts.

She huffed, turning off the tap and grabbing the end of her apron to wipe her hand.

“Here you go,” she said, turning to give George the glass.

He looked at her blankly, not taking the glass.

“I gave her a locket,” he said, staring out. “I couldn’t afford a ring.”

Annette was confused. He gave her some kind of lock? What was he talking about with a ring?

Patients often spoke words or made cultural references Annette didn’t know, though a lock-it sounded especially mysterious.

“Was that the first time you met her?” Annette asked, attempting to engage.

“No,” George said. “I can’t remember when I first met her. Maybe if I did, things would all come together. All I know is after I gave her the locket I had to sail on a ship, far away.”

Ships. Annette knew that one: massive vessels used to traverse the ocean. At the Compound Pier there were many old ships, large and small.

“Did you see her again afterwards?” Annette asked.

George sighed, defeated.

“I don’t know. I think so. I think she was very important to me.”

He leaned back onto the bed with a long sigh, grabbing the corner of the blanket and turning over.

“Please,” he said. “I am so tired. I need to rest.”

Annette nodded and rose.

“My shift is nearly done,” she said. “I will let the next nurse technician know of your day. Have a good night, Mr. Scionti.”

Shortly after, Annette got changed from her work clothes and slipped on the Compound-issued olive-green dress and black leather boots. It had been a long day and she decided to take the scenic route home, past the Compound Pier.

As the sky dimmed, generators kicked into action and dim orange lights began to flicker along the streets.

The ships, however, remained dark. No one had used them since The Wiping, aside from squatters here and there. Compound officials ended up banning squatters after one accidentally set off an explosion.

Now the ships sat hollow and crooked like empty skulls in a boneyard, one occasionally breaking loose and sailing past the others like a phantom until it crashed. The concept of people sailing those across the world made Annette shudder.

Annette leaned against the pier wall. She absent-mindedly strummed a chain strung around her neck. She pulled until a clunky gold pendant fell out, pointed at one end and double-curved on the top; an abstract shape she’d heard was once used to connote love.

Her mother, in one of her stranger moments, had given her the necklace and told her it was an heirloom from their family before The Wiping.

She opened it and looked at the two figures inside, seated in silence. The black and white photos showed a young man in the left side: dark haired, dark eyed with a crooked smile. On the right was a pretty young woman with light hair in ringlets.

Annette often looked at the figures and wondered who they were, what had become of them; with so many holes in humanity’s history so much was left to wondering.

She closed the pendant, got up and looked out once more. Now in the dark the ships could hardly be seen.

Annette began to walk, letting out a long sigh. She hoped those people ended up the way they did in her pendant, close together, face to face.

She hoped they weren’t like the ships: empty and invisible, passing each other in the night.