The Defiant

I shook a guard’s hand off my shoulder and walked with dignity, at least until I tripped over my own feet and crashed to the floor.

They lifted me up and led me down the hallway. I searched for an exit, but saw nothing on either side but more cell doors, at least until we reached the end of the hall, where a plain metal door sat, with no barred window in it.

One of the guards whipped a long piece of black fabric from his pocket and blindfolded me. I heard the creak of a door opening, and I was prodded through and led down another hallway, the floor made of some kind of hard material that squeaked under my feet. We stopped suddenly and one of the guards spun me around several times until I felt dizzy and sick. I stumbled and they laughed thuggishly.

A little longer on the squeaky material, and then another door was opened and we went up a flight of stairs. A click of a door being unlocked, then we were outside. I breathed in deeply, smelling the ineffable smell of night, along with the scent of river and fish. Humidity settled on my skin.

We walked on a path that felt like gravel, then through another door and over carpet, and then finally I was shoved onto a chair and the blindfold was taken off.

I sat in a doctor’s chair, with some kind of complicated machinery in the shape of a helmet on a table next to me. A giant target was painted on the wall in front of me, with a red outer ring and a green dot in the center.

One of the guards clapped a restraint onto my left wrist, the one that had been broken on Cebos, and then they left through a door behind a glass wall that partitioned off half the room, presumably for observation. A row of expensive-looking computers lined the wall behind the glass.

I waited for a few minutes, twiddling my proverbial thumbs, until the door opened again and admitted a short, rotund man in a lab coat. He bounced over to me.

“Hello, dear. I’m Doctor Morris. It’s a pleasure to meet you, a real pleasure,” he said enthusiastically, his combover bobbing on his head. I recoiled.

“As I’m sure you are well aware, we’re here to recover your missing memories. I assure you the process will be quite painless. You won’t even feel it. After the procedure is over, however, you will experience a temporary, sometimes unsettling rush of memories. We like to call it Memory Madness.” Morris chuckled cheerfully, like he’d just told me I’d be receiving a pet pony for my birthday.

“This effect is temporary, I assure you, and not harmful at all. It is a result of the ‘uncovering’ of the memories. In layman’s terms, the memory processes are actually quite simple. We select the memories we would like you to no longer have access to, and put a mental block in to cover it. Memories can’t really be erased, you know.

“This procedure is even simpler. All we will be doing is removing the block, essentially returning your memories to your conscious mind, which can be a bit overwhelming for the brain. That’s why we have the Madness.

“Now, if you’re ready, we’ll begin.”

“And if I’m not ready?”

“Now, now. That’s not the proper attitude,” he wagged his finger at me like I was a child. “This will be much easier if you cooperate.”

Morris took the helmet device off the table and settled it on my head. He stuck various wires to my head and tightened the helmet until it squeezed my head uncomfortably.

Unable to move my head now, I watched from the corner of my eyes as Morris bounced to the glass-partitioned section of the room and began messing with computers, pressing buttons and pulling levers.

“Keep your eyes focused on the green dot.”

I determinedly looked away from the target, at the table where the helmet had been.

“Dear, if you won’t look straight ahead, I have eye drops that will paralyze your eye muscles so you can’t help but look at the green dot, and I assure you, they are not pleasant. Now please do as I say.”

I reluctantly focused on the center of the target.

I heard the whirring of something starting up, like a fan, and Morris counting backward from ten.

“Six, five, four…”

My vision was fuzzing around the corners, until the green dot was the only thing I could see.

“Three, two…”

My sight cut off altogether and I was plunged into an icy sea of memories.

Red rainboots sending up plumes of water as they stomped in a puddle. Tiny raindrops plinking on my head, dripping down my back...

One hand in front of the other, dangling above the ground, small hands on brightly painted titanium bars. A little slip, and landing in a crumple on the ground…

A painting of a house on a cliff by the sea…

The sound of crystal windchimes blowing in a breeze…

The flashes began to solidify into scenes.

The clicking of small fingers on TakeAlong screens ceases as a thin, tired woman with honey brown hair whom I don’t recognise walks to the front of the room.

As I watch her, I realize I do know her after all; Ms. Fontenelle, my first-grade teacher.

She addresses the class.

“We have a new student. I hope you’ll all make her feel at home.” She ushers someone in from the doorway.

The class watches as the girl makes her way to the front of the room, not quite avoiding our gazes shyly, nor fully meeting our eyes. She’s tiny, skinny even for a third grader, with braided brown pigtails. Her eyes are curious, and darting, a deep, rich brown. She has a cloth bandage on her chin. I wonder why her parents hadn’t used their Seamer on the cut. She must be poor.

“Go on, tell the class about yourself,” Ms. Fontenelle says, prodding the girl gently forward.

The girl grins nervously, showing dimples and a missing front tooth. “Uh… I’m Kate Benedict—but you can just call me Katie. My family moved here from Iowa. I like to draw.”

“Very good. Everyone, make sure to introduce yourselves to Katie today. There’s a spot open next to Eliana, there,” Ms. Fontenelle points to the seat on my right.

“Now, open up your math assignment on your TakeAlongs and start working…”

The scene dissolves.

It’s snowing, a rare treat, and Mom wraps me in my coat and sends me outside, promising cocoa later.

I’m eight, perhaps, and old enough to know when someone is watching me. I whirl around, self conscious in my puffy coat, and get a face full of snow.

Sputtering, I wipe the freezing crystals from my face and glare indignantly at the culprit, a laughing, cinnamon-haired boy in a threadbare jacket with patches on the elbows.

I scoop a handful of snow from the ground and form it into a ball. I hurl it at Mattie’s face. He ducks just in time, but my second projectile gets him right in the side of the head.

I laugh and run through the snow, heavy boots punching through the delicate top layer of snow and leaving disproportionately large footprints in my wake. I drop into the ditch between Mattie’s yard and mine, and keep running, up the other side. Mattie follows me with a huge snowball in his hand. I duck behind a tree, and when he reaches the ditch, I hit him with two at once.

“Oh, you’re dead now, rich girl,” he says, swiping snow from his eyes and clambering after me. I run again, peals of laughter echoing off the glittering white blanket of snow.

“Come on, up you get.”

I’m eleven, and still not old enough to ride in the front seat of the hover. Georges won’t let me ride next to him even when I tell him my mom said it was okay. He knows better, and tells me that children can’t sit in the front for safety.

I don’t think that’s a good enough reason. After all, how hard could it be to drive a hover? All you have to do is not run into anything.

It’s hot, and the window’s open, a slight breeze blowing on my face. My shirt sticks to my back with sweat.

Suddenly, an impact rocks the hover and I put my hands over my ears, blocking out the scream of metal as the left side of the car crumples inward like a piece of paper. Glass shatters, and I shriek and close my eyes. I feel cuts all over my skin, and a line of fire traces its way down the right side of my face.

Blood drips warm over my skin. I can’t move, trapped between the sides of the backseat, so spacious a minute ago, now only the width of my body. I feel a searing pain when I try to breathe.

Prying my eyelids up, I look into Georges’ eyes. He won’t blink, and a red haze coats the inside of the windshield, which is now a pattern of cracks, like a picture of a spider’s web I saw once at school.

Georges’ eyes are still open, and I realize that he’s dead. I scream again, and try to get out, but a piercing pain pricks my chest and my vision goes dark…

“One! One, can you hear me?”

I’m fifteen, and Mattie, Kate, and I are sitting on the cliff over the ocean. Mattie’s reading, and Kate and I are doing homework on our TakeAlongs, the brightness up to counteract the bright spring sun. At least I’m doing homework. I think Kate is drawing. She never was able to focus when we were outside.

All of a sudden, Mattie shuts his book with a snap and stands up.

“Want to go for a swim?” he asks, pulling off his shirt so he’s just in his swim trunks.

“Are we going all the way down to the shoreline?” I say, looking doubtfully at the twisty pathway that leads almost straight down the cliff to the thin strip of beach thirty feet below us. We’d worn swimsuits, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to get in the water. The sun was hot, but it had been cold the last few weeks and the ocean was probably frigid.

“No need,” Mattie says. He walks all the way out to the edge of the rock outcropping and leaps off.

Kate and I run to the edge in shock. In the midst of a huge splash below us, Mattie waves up.

“Come on, the water’s great!” he calls. I’m still doubtful.

“Let’s go together, Ieaheia,” she sings. We strip down to our swimsuits, and back up a few steps. Then, before I can chicken out, Kate seizes my hand, and we run to the edge and jump off, impacting hard a second later in the water…