Alejandro waved away the boy’s concerns.
“I lived in this neighbourhood before your father and mother were born,” Alejandro said, laughing. “I walk where I like and no one bothers me.”
The boy looked unconvinced and again Alejandro saw his mother’s kindness.
Gideon remembered his manners, Filipe had been a good father, and rushed to clear a stack of boxes and papers from a deep armchair that was almost buried in one corner of the room. Alejandro sat, perched on the edge of the seat, and Gideon propped himself against the vast desk that filled most of the room.
“I want to remember the things they’ve taken away,” Alejandro said, tapping his shoulder where the small box of the Muninn was buried beneath his skin.
“Mnemosyne would do that, Mister Marichal.”
“Pfff!” Alejandro shook his head. “Too much money.”
Gideon nodded, biting at his lower lip, as he took a moment before making up his mind. He reached for something on his desk.
“How long have you had the Muninn installed?”
Alejandro had to stop and think.
“Well, Teresita and I were married in twenty-one so that would be, sixty-one? No, sixty-three years ago.”
Gideon whistled.
“Any upgrades?”
“Not since I stopped working. That was in fifty-eight.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever worked on implants that old.” Gideon looked impressed. “That must be first generation hardware.”
Alejandro shrugged. He’d never been much interested in technology.
“Teresita was desperate to have these things installed before we were married. She was determined that it would be a day we’d never forget.” The words caught in Alejandro’s throat. Surprised by the emotion he coughed and looked away. “Now they’ve taken even that.”
Gideon said nothing but got up and began to move around Alejandro, running a small device over his shoulder and neck, nodding and tutting.
“Everyone in the neighbourhood says that you are the best person to see about Muninns,” Alejandro said. “They say there’s nothing you can’t make them do.”
Gideon tried to pat him on the shoulder, clumsily trying to reassure the old man. But Alejandro grabbed the hand, surprising the boy with the strength of his grip, and pulled Gideon closer.
“Give me back my Teresita!”
Gideon bent over the old man for a stretching, silent, moment, not sure how to respond to the hunger in Mister Marichal’s expression.
“Let’s see what I can do,” he said finally.
Alejandro nodded and smiled and Gideon took it as a signal that he could disentangle himself and go back behind his desk. He swiped his device across a scroll. A display jumped into life between them and the boy began manipulating information. Figures streamed up from the desk, lines twisted and curled at eye level.
“I can do this,” Gideon said. “But there will be a price.”
Alejandro nodded.
“I have a few dollars.”
“I wouldn’t take your money, Mister Marichal.” The boy looked genuinely hurt and Alejandro had to smile. He’d known this was a good boy.
“Do you know how a Muninn works?” Gideon asked.
“I know what anyone knows,” Alejandro said. “It records your memories and lets you replay them later – you see what you saw, smelt, tasted, heard. Everything. All the experiences you had at the time.”
“That’s true, sort of,” Gideon said. “But the Muninn doesn’t store your memories. It puts itself between your sense organs – your eyes, your nose, your skin – and your brain. It records the electrical impulses that your nervous system uses to communicate with your brain. When you recall something from the Muninn it replays the electrical signals from that moment in the past and amplifies them so that they override whatever you’re experiencing in the present. It feels as if everything is happening again.”
Alejandro had sat through an endless demonstration by the Mnemosyne people back before the wedding. None of it had mattered to him then and he hadn’t paid attention.
“That’s not even the really clever part,” Gideon said. His enthusiasm brought out the young boy in him. Alejandro tried to imagine him as he had been, skinny, brown-skinned, always laughing. “The pathways and patterns in your brain are always changing. You learn new things. You add new memories. Old memories fade. You forget almost everything. The brain is always changing. The Muninn threads through those pathways and keeps track of the changes, adapting the recordings it makes to fit the new patterns so they seem no different from when they were first recorded.”
Gideon looked at Alejandro as if he’d just explained something vital.
“So?”
“My system can’t do that,” Gideon said.
Alejandro shrugged, not understanding.
“So... if I pull out the memory, you’ll only be able to review it once or, if you’re lucky, twice. Watching it will alter your neural pathways and the copy I make will become unplayable. And you can’t wait too long to replay it after I pull the memory onto a scroll. New experiences will change the patterns in your brain. A Muninn can compensate for those changes, my equipment cannot. You have a few days before the divergence starts to become significant, after that your brain won’t decode the signals in the same way and the memory will start to degrade. The visuals break down first but after a week or two all that will remain are scents and fleeting sensations of touch.”
“Oh?”
“And there’s something else.” Gideon leant forward. “When you replay the memory, Mnemosyne will know I’ve tampered with your Muninn. It isn’t strictly illegal but it does break their terms and conditions, there’s a chance they’ll cancel your service.”
“I didn’t know...”
Alejandro looked away for a moment. He knew his own memory wasn’t what it was. He knew he relied on the Muninn for a lot of simple things. Life would be difficult without it.
Gideon gave a tight smile.
“Mister Marichal, I would do anything to help you. You have always been good to my family. Gael was like my brother before...” Gideon stopped. Alejandro nodded. Some things didn’t need to be spoken about. “But I think you should go home and think about this.”
Alejandro looked into the palms of his hands. He hated his hands. They trembled slightly, they were lined and creased and dark with liver spots. They were old hands. He was old. He relied on the Muninn. But their fees and their rules – they were robbing him of everything he cared about.
He needed to dance with Teresita again, even if it was just once more.
There was no choice to make.
“No,” he said. “I don’t need to go home.”
“What if I paid the licence fee?” Gideon dropped his gaze to the floor. “It isn’t so much.”
“I did not come here for charity.” Alejandro tried not to shout but his voice was loud in the small room. He stood up – struggling out of the low armchair – and took a step towards the door.
“Just like my dad –”
Alejandro turned and opened his mouth ready to spit some angry response but the boy was laughing, hands raised in surrender.
“You’re certain?” Gideon asked.
Alejandro set his jaw firm and nodded.
“Then come with me.”
A
LEJANDRO HAD BEEN
expecting something that was more clinical, more futuristic. The walls of the little room may once have been white or cream but the paint had aged and yellowed, bubbled and cracked. You could tell from the edges that the carpet had started off a pale shade of blue but shuffling feet had worn the centre threadbare, the brown structure of the weave showing through. There was a single seat, a soft, battered armchair with a high back covered in a floral-patterned material that was thin and faded and had lost any charm it might once have possessed.
Gideon waved at Alejandro to sit down while he walked over to a scroll that lay on a small wooden table propped uncertainly against one wall. He tapped a few instructions on the scroll’s screen then pulled a skullcap of fine metal mesh from his trousers pocket. He swiped it against the scroll and then came towards Alejandro.
“Sit back, please, Mister Marichal,”
Alejandro did as he was told and the boy stretched the cap over his head.
“You’re sure you want to do this?”
Alejandro nodded, resolute.
Gideon went back to the scroll and tapped at the screen again. He paused, looking to Alejandro, but the old man gave no sign of doubt. The boy entered a final instruction.
“This will take about twenty minutes,” Gideon said, stepping towards the door. “It will work best if you can keep still and relax. I’ll come back when it is done.”
T
HE DANCE WAS
not elegant. Alejandro and Teresita did not sweep across the dance floor in a dramatic tango or spin in a light-footed waltz. They shuffled, they bumped and they wheeled around gracelessly to a long-forgotten pop-song that Teresita had loved.
It didn’t matter to Alejandro that his new wife trod on his toes or that they stumbled when he tried, unwisely, to sweep her up in a dramatic turn.
All that mattered was her smile. She stared up at him and he saw himself reflected in her eyes and it seem that the man she saw was bigger and prouder and happier than he ever remembered being. He was a man with hope, a man who would do great things and who would always have this beautiful woman beside him.
He lifted her off her feet and she squealed his name as he whirled them both around, her dress ballooning out, one shoe flying off across the floor to land at the feet of the band’s guitarist. And when he put her down she threw her head back and laughed, her face wide and open and honest with simple pleasure. And then all their friends were around them, clapping him on the back, kissing his new wife and then dancing themselves – just as clumsily – and laughing.
It was a perfect moment.
G
IDEON PUT A
hand on Alejandro’s shoulder and the memory dropped away. He lifted the cap off the old man’s head and rolled it up.
“We’re done,” Gideon said.
Alejandro sprang from the chair, surprising the boy with his sudden vigour, and gripped Gideon in a tight embrace.
“Thank you,” Alejandro stepped back, his eyes filling with tears. The old man wiped roughly at his face. “Thank you so much. You always were a good boy.”
Alejandro pulled out a small fold of neat bills and pressed them into Gideon’s palm.
The boy, as gently as he could, refused them.
“No, Mister Marichal –”
The old man pushed them back.
Gideon looked at the notes. He peeled away the top two and handed the rest back.
“That is enough.”
Appeased, Alejandro nodded; then he reached up to grab Gideon’s face. He pulled the boy’s head forward and craned to kiss him on the forehead, his lips touching a cool metal stud.
“Thank you for giving me back my Teresita.”
The old man turned and walked out the door.
“Mister Marichal?” Gideon called after him but he was gone. The young man stared, confused for a moment, looking around the room.
Then he went over to the low table with the scroll.
The download from the Muninn was complete, the copy ready to play, unused.
If he returned it, the old man could have his precious memories one more time. Gideon fiddled with the mesh cap in his hands then turned towards the door, intending to chase after Mister Marichal and explain there had been a mistake.
Then he remembered how the old man had looked and he paused.
Thank you for giving me back my Teresita.
Gideon sat down in the old, battered armchair and gently ran his fingers along the studs in his skull.
Mister Marichal had been happy and that was enough. The old man didn’t need the download.
He already had everything he needed.
STILL LIFE
WITH SKULL
MIKE ALLEN
Mike Allen edited a trilogy of weird fiction anthologies called
Clockwork Phoenix
from 2008 to 2010, and thanks to the miracle of a $10,000 Kickstarter campaign, he’s now in the process of assembling
Clockwork Phoenix 4
. A 2008 Nebula Award finalist, his stories have appeared most recently in
Beneath Ceaseless Skies
and
Not One of Us
. His first short fiction collection,
The Button Bin and Other Stories
, is forthcoming from Dagan Books, and his first novel,
The Black Fire Concerto
, is on its way from Black Gate Books. You can learn more about his work at
descentintolight.com
and
www.mythicdelirium.com
T
HIS PART
I remember. My old life ended here. What’s left starts this way:
When that girl from the belowground stole into my workshop, I wasn’t wired for running. I was wired for show. I had to be my own saleswoman without having to speak a word.
My cranium had corners, and each one sprouted a chain that helped suspend my head from the grid of railracks overhead. A bit illusory, those chains, as neurofibers wound through them, so I could sync the bearings as I rolled my dangling head along the grid from one end of the shop to the other. No need to stick close to my body. The tubing from neck to trunk could flex and telescope a long way.
I kept my body simple, an elegant cube with two slender alabaster arms worthy of any Venus curving out from each vertical face, balanced on a single pair of sleek, muscular legs. Everyone wants to perch on beautiful legs and that never changes. Who’d trust me with their bodywork if I couldn’t shape a pair for myself?
I don’t do the full works. Integration with nanorobotics, consciousness transplants, I don’t touch that ghost-in-the-machine garbage. Coming to me for genitalia removal’s like asking a hivemind to add single digit integers, but most everyone’s had that taken care of long before they ever consider my services. Removing a heart, replacing it, I’m happy to do that and good riddance to those useless antiques. Duplicate pumps throughout the body, replaceable on request, that’s the way to go. My most requested modification, but I can do so much more.