Trapped memories

It was quiet inside the house. The storm outside receded, kept at bay by the thin wooden walls and the shards of glass that remained inside their window frames. But we had to be careful to listen - houses, I’d learned, had voices of their own. They were built to keep the world at bay, but they had their own little worlds inside; filled with creaking wood, sighing draughts, and whispering curtains. There were no people here anymore, that was true, but their lives had a strange way of echoing throughout the dwellings they’d once called home. It was my job to listen for those echoes, find their source - and silence them.

Today I was working on the last house at the end of Crescent Drive. All other houses on the street had been searched and cleared months ago. But just last week an Attendant had come to sign off, and found an extra house which hadn’t been on the records. Like the others, its grass was overgrown, the roof caved in, and the paint peeling off in strips - but it was yet to be assessed by Cleaners.

That’s what I am, a Cleaner. We search through the remnants of human civilisation for any traces of their presence, and then catalogue and retrieve anything of value to bring to the Department. It’s the least important job, with the shortest training period - but it’s an essential part of the Renegotiation and I’m proud to be a part of it.

My partner is Jane. She’s not new, like I am - she’s cleared through plenty of houses before, I can tell. She knows all the words - she can name the fireplace, the bedroom, the garden, the balcony. And she has a knack for entering a house and sort of…knowing it. She can tell where a smaller bedroom will be, for example, compared to the big one - ‘This house looks rich’ she’d say. ‘They wouldn’t have wanted their kids nearby, where they would be bothered by them.’ Or she’ll know the kind of people that would have lived there by what they’ve left behind - ‘They were handy people,’ she’d explain, surveying wooden shelves with alien tools neatly stacked, gathering dust. ‘They built half of this house, and they knew how to maintain it.’

I couldn’t do that yet. I didn’t have any ‘sense’ of a house when I entered it - except when I found them creepy. Knowing that humans had lived there once - wearing down the carpet, trailing their dirty hands down the walls - it frightened me. I’d never told anyone that, until Jane.

‘How can you be so comfortable in these places?’ I’d asked her.

‘How do you mean?’ she had replied, staring intently at the box she’d salvaged from an old living room.

‘I mean…human places. Places where humans used to live. Doesn’t that frighten you?’

‘Why would it?’ she asked mildly, scratching a fingernail along the rim of the box, trying to open it.

‘Well, I know,’ I stopped, suddenly afraid that she’d think I was foolish. ‘I know the stories. What they were capable of.’

They’d almost destroyed the earth, and the whole time they’d been entirely focused on destroying each other. So much of what we did was desperate attempts to repair what they’d broken - bringing back animals from the edge of extinction, whole environments almost lost to time.

Jane had looked at me then, her eyes unreadable. Finally, she placed the unopened box in her pocket, and settled her hands on her knees.

‘Flora, do you know what ghosts are?’ she asked.

I shook my head.

‘They’re things that humans used to believe in. Silly superstitions - they thought that the dead would haunt them. Walk around after their bodies had gone and whisper things to them.’

My eyes widened and I look around fearfully at the walls, expecting a whispering human to come striding out of the brickwork.

That’s when Jane placed her hand on mine. I remember that because her hands were cold - colder than mine, warmed as I was from within by my wiring. I was about to ask if there was something wrong with her internal system, when she said,

‘You don’t have to worry about them, Flora. We’re not humans, remember? We’re not haunted by silly little things like ghosts. We know better than that,’ she said.

She sat back and looked around.

‘There’s none of them left to haunt us,’ she whispered.

But there was none of that kind of talk today. The house hadn’t been cleaned yet, but it had clearly been stripped to the bones by its former occupants long before we’d arrived. We had our work cut out for us trying to find anything useful, so we had split up to tackle different rooms.

I ran my hand along the shelves in one of the bedrooms, picking up nothing but dust. I searched empty drawers, tapped on the thin walls, crouched down beside the bed looking for any loose floorboards underneath.

When I pulled myself out from it, I felt my head clang against the bed’s metal frame. I froze, the impact vibrating through the myriad sensors concentrated in my head. I opened my eyes, my vision a little dizzy, and spotted something shining in the space between the headboard and the wall.

Still holding the back of my head tenderly with one hand, I reached out to try and dislodge whatever it was from between the bed and the wall. With a tug, it came free. It was a long golden chain with some kind of…charm? Amulet? Attached to it.

I rubbed my hand over its surface and a faint layer of dust came free. The surface was gold and slightly reflective; I could see my face distorted on its surface. I didn’t recognise the shape. It was symmetrical, wide at the top and narrowing down to a point. But if it was a special symbol, I hadn’t seen it in any of the classes we’d taken on human culture.

‘Found anything?’ I heard Jane call from the other side of the house. I quickly pulled myself up from the ground and rushed to her, the golden artefact nestled in my hand.

‘Something,’ I called back, trying to keep the excitement out of my voice.

‘Doing better than me then, there’s nothing left here of any use-’. She stopped mid-sentence when she spotted the chain dangling from my hand. I grabbed hers and laid it in her palm for her to see.

‘I’m not sure what it is, an amulet? It looks like gold, I remember learning about that, maybe it was meant as a sort of treasure? Financial surety? I don’t…’ I trailed off when I realised what was happening on Jane’s face. It had drained of colour - her skin was ashen grey. I didn’t know our skin could change colour like that. But her expression…it frightened me. Not because I was scared for her, but because…well, I didn’t know. Cleaners shouldn’t look like that.

Before I could say anything else, Jane reached out and took it from my hand. She brushed her finger over the golden surface, just as I had done, moments before.

‘It’s a heart,’ she said. I couldn’t tell whether she was talking to me or not.

‘It doesn’t look anything like the anatomical drawings I’ve seen,’ I said carefully. Those strange clockwork devices that ran faithfully inside human bodies, until some injury or illness brought their steady rhythm to an end.

Jane shook her head slowly, almost as if she was in a trance. ‘No, it’s a different kind of heart. A locket. It holds a person’s memories.’

I was about to correct her use of ‘person’ - we didn’t call humans that anymore, they’d lost that privilege of being called ‘people’ - but then she slid her fingernail against the edge of the locket, and it popped open.

I blinked in surprise. I leaned over to look and saw a picture - a photograph. The thought made me queasy - I had known humans were possessive, but to capture an image of someone and trap it inside a metal case? How much would you have to hate someone to feel the need to carry their likeness around with you?

I realised that Jane was looking at me, not at the picture. Perhaps she couldn’t bear to look? But her expression…she looked like she was waiting for something. From me.

I looked more closely at the tiny picture in the locket. It was faded with age, but I could see that it was of a young woman. Her black hair and the blue sky behind her were still discernible. She was smiling, looking past the camera at something I would never see. I squinted. She looked familiar. I knew that nose, those eyes, the crinkles around them when she smiled.

Jane was still looking at me. But those crinkles around her eyes, the dimple in her cheek, the faint glimmer of humour I saw when she let me in on a joke, were absent. She had the same dark hair as the picture, the same long nose, the same determined set to her chin. Jane was holding a locket with a memory of herself.

But how was that possible? What would a picture of Jane be doing in a locket which had belonged to a human? I didn’t even know how someone would take a picture of one of us. Unless…

No. No.

‘I’m sorry, Flora,’ Jane said softly.

I didn’t know what to say. What could I say? Should I report her? Reason with her? Was it even possible to reason with…with a human?

Jane wasn’t looking at me anymore. She’d turned her attention back to the locket and was pulling the photograph out of its frame. I shifted slightly, trying to move away from her without her noticing. She didn’t look up from the photograph, only turning it over slowly in her hand. There were numbers on the back; coordinates of some sort.

‘I’m not going to hurt you,’ she finally said, startling me, as I tried to back away a little more. ‘We’re not as evil as they’ve taught you.’

‘I don’t think you’re evil,’ I said, and it surprised me how strongly I believed it. This was Jane. Jane was my friend. I stopped trying to move away from her.

Friend. What a strange concept, having a human for a friend.

‘I have to go,’ Jane said, folding the photograph up in her hand and placing it gently in her pocket.

‘I’ll wait here,’ I said. I didn’t realise until I’d said it that I intended to cover for her.

‘Flora, you don’t have to-’

‘I’ll wait as long as I can,’ I interrupted her. ‘And when they come, I won’t be able to tell them anything.’

Jane flung her arms around me and hugged me. I froze for a moment, and then tentatively wrapped my arms around her as well. I could hear her human heart beating in her chest.

‘Go,’ I told her. Jane nodded and went to leave - then turned back. She placed the gold locket in my palm and curled my fingers over it, before rushing out the door. I heard her bound down the steps and rush out the front door.

I followed her slowly, after I was sure she must have long disappeared down the street. I closed the front door carefully behind me and stared up at the receding stormfront.

When the Attendants found me, I was seated on the path outside the front gate, staring down at my hands. I swung the locket gently on its chain as they approached.

‘Flora,’ one of them said. ‘Flora,’ they repeated harshly when I didn’t look up. ‘Where is Jane?’

I clicked the locket open in my hands and stared at the empty space inside.

‘Gone,’ I whispered.