“I think, therefore I am”
Noise. Phrases of wordless being. Chords. A pounding drum. The hiss of inhaled breath. The scream of exhaled. Lights in the smoke. Concrete beneath sandals. A thousand coalescing bodies. Music. Completing, fulfilling, breathtaking.
Comfort.
The concert tilted beneath Jessica’s mind, whirling around and around like it had on that night – Victor’s hand slid into hers, whirling her faster until all the watching faces were lost in the fog and the passion. Then he pulled her close, brushed her lips, completed her with the taste of his breath.
The band seemed as timeless as the memory but that tugging Exit held the corner of her mind until she couldn’t hold Victor’s breath any longer. She slipped out of the concert, out of the memory and into reality, rising to shaky feet in the middle of her cluttered room.
The closet mirror seemed to rock her just as much as it usually did. She ran a hand through her messy brown hair, pulled at the bags beneath each eye, turned away with a shudder. The hallway seemed narrower than normal, the bathroom smaller. Another problem with memories – the spaces were too easy to become accustomed to.
She showered, slid into clean clothes, ignored the door to her father’s office across the hall; then in the kitchen poured a mug of coffee. Her mom scrawled away at a crossword, just as she had been two hours earlier. Jessica pursed her lips, took a sip of the coffee as she leaned against the counter, then returned to her room.
What a mess. There were books and magazines all over the floor. One of her posters had slipped off the wall a couple days earlier, and still lay in a pile on a dresser. Clothes were hanging off her bed posts and draped over her desk chair. She stacked all the books on her desk, set the Recog frame on top, then grabbed her laundry hamper. Once it was full, she headed straight for the laundry room.
“Are you going to school for your spare?”
Jessica glanced up from the small white washing machine. Her mother leaned in the doorframe. Jessica lifted a curtain of hair and tucked it behind her ear. Her mother looked way too tired. “Nope.” She stood up from the laundry machine. “Thought I’d get some cleaning done.”
A moment passed. “That’s good. Let me know if you need anything.”
“Mom,” Jessica called, halting her mom’s retreat. “Did you… go back to the accident?”
“When was the last time you did?”
“It’s not right, mom.” Jessica threw a shirt she still held back into the clothes bin. “You’re just hurting yourself…”
“Jess, you let me deal with that. You stick to your happy memories.” Her mother turned to leave again.
The concert was still a haze. But that wasn’t a ‘happy’ one. “Dad’s gone, mom. It’s been three years.” Jessica followed her mom into the hallway. Their eyes met. “I think you should speak to someone.”
Her mother guffawed. “I’m not crazy, Jess. You’d better get your cleaning done.”
Left alone in the hallway, Jessica felt like she stood in the dark. She was scared. Not because her mother had been lost for three years, and not because she hadn’t spoken to Victor in two. She was just scared.
She got the wash going, wandered back to her room. It was looking a lot nicer now. She just had her desk to clean. She moved the Recog off the book-stack, and went through each text one at a time. There was a shelf above; the window on the opposite well always cast a strange shadow off it. Soon, the shelf held all of last semester’s books and the desk’s corner held her current one.
It was almost ten. She should leave on the hour. Ten minutes. She grabbed the Recog and scrolled the tiny screen up to ten. She hooked it over her ears, slid the frame up until it rested snugly against the back of her head, then clicked Go.
She was still sitting at her desk, but could clearly feel the Entrance ahead of her and the Exit behind. She thought back two days. Of course it was a blur, no one had perfect recall on a minute-to-minute basis. Focusing on this past Monday morning, she waiting until the Recog clarified it, giving her an increasingly accurate impression of the hours before lunch. Now she could remember putting in the locker combination, remember the slight surprise at Alex’s quick arrival. Right, her friend had been going on about the volleyball tournament.
Finally, she found the memory she wanted. She mentally pushed the Entrance, and found herself walking lazily down the Science hallway. Alex stood beside her, a binder and textbook held in crossed arms against her chest.
Jessica was talking. “… then Tammy said she was done! She told him right then!”
Alex laughed. “Unbelievable. What a – ”
“Hey Alex! Jess!” Curt appeared between them. “On your way to Chem?”
“You bet,” Jessica told him.
They filed into their lab. Mr. Marten, their Grade 12 Chem teacher was writing on the board: ‘Report 1 due January 25th. Midterm February 15th.’
Jessica nodded at the Exit, slipped out of the memory and back to her bedroom desk, then yanked off the Recog frame. There were still four minutes on the clock. She held the power-off button and stood up.
The room seemed so small again. It was, of course, smaller than her science lab. She took a look in the closet mirror again. She always did. Something to ground her back now.
She passed her mom in the kitchen. “See you later,” she said.
Her mom didn’t make a sound.
Jessica sat at the bench beside the shoe rack, zipped on her long black boots. She chose her blue coat from the cluttered closet. It was a dark navy, with light grey around the color and hem. It wasn’t her favourite, but close. Grabbing her gloves, she stepped out the front door.
She had a twenty minute walk. It wasn’t snowy out, but everything was thick with frost, casting a grey shade over all the orange and browns of the fall.
One of those images got stuck in her mind. It happened from time to time, frames from a Recog memory getting fixated by the mind’s eye. It was weird: she had spent an hour in the concert memory with Victor, and only five minutes to check the report due date, but the image that got caught in her mind on the walk was from the high school flashback
He had blonde hair, dark eyes, a bright smile. Sitting close to the front, but not at the front. On the right side of room. Jessica always sat on the left.
She couldn’t lose the image until running into Zach at the corner of Maryland and 70th. He lived even closer to the school than she, so they walked the last two blocks together. “Good-morning,” she said, smiling.
He couldn’t help but laugh. It was one of their jokes. She made a habit of always saying good-morning or goodnight to her friends, one of those things they thought she didn’t have to do. “Hey, you know everyone in chem, right?” she asked.
“Sort of. I take way too many sciences.” She ran the description of the image past him, but he shrugged. “That describes at least five people I could name. Point him out sometime.”
“Sure.”
Zach could only take a couple steps of silence. “Anthony Kingston is on Entertainment Daily tonight.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, he’s making a couple announcements. I’m hoping for some news about the Infinite Learning program. Think about it, instead of going to class every day, the memories of your classes are downloaded into your head in like, ten minutes!”
Jessica grinned. Zach didn’t mind school, but loved technology even more. “What time’s that?”
“Six.” A passing car caught his eye.
“What’s that?”
It took him a second to stop ogling it. “Porsche Carrera – a turbo.”
She smiled. After a beat, “Is that… expensive?”
He just laughed. They reached the school soon after. A school bus was parked right in front of the south door, so they had to walk around it and up the handicapped ramp to get to the doors. A group of kids stood nearby, smoking as far from the smoking sign as they could without being caught. There was a cloud drifting in front of the door; Jessica coughed as she followed Zach inside.
The hallway was the hectic hurricane that one could expect at ten-to on a weekday. Jessica’s locker was at the end of the corridor, Zach’s on the other side of the building. “See you in class,” she called as they split up.
Her locker looked messy. She straightened some books before hanging her bag from its hook and grabbing what she needed.
It was a long day. In chem, she looked for blonde boy from her memory, but he wasn’t present. The teacher ran through attendance, but none of the names stood out to her. She probably just didn’t know him. What an annoying image to have stuck?
That evening, she tossed her bag on her bed and stepped out into the hallway. She threw together a salad sat at the kitchen table to eat it. The TV was making a racket in the living room. After eating, she sat at the computer for an hour. Most of the normal sites were raving about Mr. Kingston’s appearance, though a couple had actual news. Jessica pored over an article suggesting that New Dawn might be the lamest conclusion to a series in history, but Jessica couldn’t finish it. They really didn’t know what they were talking about. She checked Facebook, and finally put the computer to sleep.
Her mom had Entertainment on, where Stuart Jefferies was preparing to introduce night’s guest. “Tonight we have one of the most influential individuals of the century on our show, so I hope you’re all ready to meet the man behind the Recog industry, the winner of a Nobel prize and a hundred other rewards, the richest man alive – Mr. Anthony Kingston!”
Amidst the flashing lights of cameras and a deafening cheer, Anthony Kingston IV appeared on stage. He was wearing a brown leather blazer, a graphic tee beneath. He had a white scarf thrown over one shoulder, his greying hair fluffed up in a far too modern style. He bowed to the crowd and took a seat in the chair across from the interviewer.
The interview was an hour long. At one point, he described their newest project, a tentative form of education that implanted memories into Recog users so they could learn without attending an institution.
This process, he said, could be nearly instantaneous thanks to a new self-evolving tech they were introducing. The tech allowed a program to actually attain some characteristics of artificial intelligence, growing almost organically in the network. There were, of course, restraints in place to keep this evolving program from evolving too far.
When the interview finally ended, a couple lines stood out to Jessica. She had never thought Anthony Kingston was actually the visionary everyone made him out to be, but in many ways he was. A line that would later appear on headlines: “And then I realized that there is something intrinsically wrong with human ‘life’ if we cannot remember the start by the finish.” It was after this revelation that Anthony Kingston had begun his research into human memories, and eventually made the break through that led to Recognitive Tech.
Later that night, right before calling it a night, Jessica tried searching for other instances of the blonde guy. She didn’t really care. It was more just out of curiosity. After all, she didn’t know him at all.
Grade 9s aren’t really supposed to drink, but they do. She was at Cassandra’s place, slumped on a couch watching Zach make out with some girl neither of them knew. They had been friends since Grade 6 after all, so they knew most of the same people. Man, she hated that girl. Victor was working, so Zach was supposed to be her plus one. And Zach didn’t get it.
“Jessssii!” someone screeched, collapsing on her lap. “Let’s grab a beer!”
Jessica followed Gabby toward the kitchen where they poured red cupfuls of beer from a keg. Jessica wasn’t a heavy drinker – Gabby was. But there were boys here, and Gabby was the kind of girl that needed that. Jessica followed her from cluster of hammered friends to cluster. She finally found Zach again, who was now dancing with a different girl. They were right beside a subwoofer and he couldn’t hear a thing she said.
Cassandra grabbed her hand and dragged her out onto the porch. It was much quieter out here, though more smoky.
There was a blur, one of those weird moments where even the Recog couldn’t access the memory. It often occurred when people were high or under the influence. It really took Jessica out of the realism of the memory. Everything seemed so real, exactly as it had happened, until you experience a blur, or until the Exit started feeling too close.
Oddly though, once this blur had passed, Jessica lost any sense of the Recog. She was at the party. Almost everyone had either passed out or left, she sat on a couch again, beside some drooling guy.
She looked up, across the coffee table. And there was the blonde guy. His dark eyes caught her by surprise. “Hey,” he said.
“Hi.”
“Name’s Brandon.”
She smiled. “I’m Jessica. Jessica Morrison.” Awkwardly, she stammered, “Not that you needed my last…”
He mirrored her earlier grin. “Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone. My last name is Bennerson, also that’s a secret.”
They laughed.
“What grade are you in?” she asked.
“Nine. You?”
“Same.” She grabbed her cup from the table. “I’m empty,” she said.
“I’ll grab it,” he said, and stood up to leave.
The Exit was there again, and she hesitantly reached for it, waking up in her bedroom. Of course his name was Brandon! She slid the Recog off. How could she have forgotten his name? Now she could remember meeting him at the party and that study group a couple weeks after. How had they fallen out of contact?
She stood up from her desk and walked to the door. The house was quiet now – it was late. She booted up the computer. Facebook was the homepage. She typed in ‘Brandon Bennerson.’ No results. There was a couple Brandon Tennersons, but no one she knew. Actually four, and they all seemed to be the same person. From Texas.
She sighed, put the computer to sleep, and returned to her room. Maybe he was just one of those weird people who didn’t have Facebook. Unlike the guy with four.
She awoke twice that night, from dreams. It wasn’t unusual. She often wished she could remember her dreams, but had never been able to. The morning passed the same as it always did. She showered, struggled with skinny jeans, did her hair and makeup, passed her ghost of a mother, walked to school, joked with Zach. She spent lunch with her friend Tammy – they had second period English together.
That evening, as she walked home, she wondered if Brandon had moved. That was one way he could have disappeared. Man, why couldn’t she remember? It was just like Anthony Kingston had said. Something was wrong with human memory.
There was a car parked against the curb in front of her place. She didn’t have a clue what kind, but it looked nice. She was sure that Zach would have commented on it. The more important question – what was it doing in front of her house?
She almost slipped on the steps up to her front door. There was a small hill alongside the road, and the house was built on top of it. The fence against the sidewalk hadn’t sported a gate in about ten years, but the snow always seemed to collect there instead. “Hello?” she asked, stepping inside.
Her mom stuck her head out of the living room on the left. On the right was the kitchen, the lights out inside. “Hey, Jess. There’s an investigator here. He’s just got a few questions.”
Jessica paled. Why would an investigator be here? She unzipped her boots, and hung her jacket in the closet. The blinds were open in the living room. They hadn’t been in for months, it felt like.
A man was sitting on the couch. He had dark hair, almost black, and very cynical features. “My name’s Blake Quinn. I’m investigating some Recog errors on behalf of Kingston Innovations.”
Jessica sank into the arm chair and her mom took the other couch. With the sun streaming inside, she could barely see her mom, so she looked at the investigator instead. “Is there a problem with one of our devices?”
Quinn shook his head. “I’m not sure. Are you familiar with the update web?”
Jessica nodded. “I’ve heard of it, but I’m not sure of details.”
“In order to prevent delays, and avoid having to take all Recog devices offline at once, the company updates their tech by using a web-like strategy. At any time, each Recog is in contact with about ten other devices, randomly chosen. When updates are released, they are randomly synced through this web,” Quinn explained. “We’ve had a couple Recog devices crash on the same web.”
“Oh.” Jess nodded. Some of it sounded like science speech, but she understood what he meant.
Quinn continued. “Device ID16893 is registered to your last name – I’ve checked your mother’s device, and that’s not the one in question. May I look at yours?”
“Sure. Do you think this error might affect it?”
Quinn shrugged. “There’s no way of knowing. There’s a one-in-ten chance that is. I’ve just been following the web to find a device before it fully crashes.”
She fetched her Recog frame from her room. He took a look at it for a minute. He flipped the inside of the U-shaped object outward, making it an oblong oval – she had never seen that before. The back of the U was a small box that fit snugly against the back of the user’s head. It also split in two when he unhinged the U. He plugged a wire from a laptop into the back of the object and ran a scan. From what Jessica understood, the Recog didn’t store data, but simply scanned the hippocampus where memories were stored and then fed the experiences to the parietal lobe and whatever governed experience. How then could a Recog store a virus?
“Nothing here,” he said at last, folding the Recog back into its U-shaped frame. “Thanks for your time, Mrs. and Ms. Morrison.”
Jessica made herself a salad.
That night, she ignored her Recog. She spent a couple hours on the computer, finished up that report even though it wasn’t due for a week. She slept well, woke up and repeated her routine.
“Good morning,” Zach said, beating her to it.
She smiled. “His name is Brandon Bennerson… know him?”
“Nope.”
It was snowing today, so they hurried. “He was at one of our grade 9 parties. And I’ve sworn I’ve seen him in classes.”
Zach shrugged. “Maybe he moved.”
At lunch she saw Zach sitting with Alex, one of their other friends. Alex had moved to the school during the summer and Zach had been taken with her since September. He often told Jessica about it… a fact she loathed. Purposefully ignoring them, she sat with Curt and his friends.
In chem, she looked for any sign of Brandon. It was killing her. How had they lost touch? She could remember late night conversations on Facebook and weekend study groups. How could she have forgotten where he had gone? Anthony Kingston was right – there is something wrong with memory.
“Why were you sitting over by the windows?” Curt asked. “You always sit on the left side of room.”
Jessica shrugged. “I don’t know. Thought I would change it up.”
She walked home as soon as she could get away from the school, thus avoiding Zach. He could hang out with Alex if he really wanted.
Her mom was at the kitchen table again, doing some bills with a crossword puzzle not too far out of reach. “I made rice, if you want some.”
Jessica nodded. “Perfect.” She got a plateful and sat at the kitchen table. After a meal of awkward silence, she sat at the computer desk to do some homework. She had a journal to do for English and she hadn’t read the Taming of the Shrew. Once that was done, she put on her jacket and boots again and grabbed gloves and a hat from the closet.
“Where are you off to?” her mom asked.
Jessica shrugged. “I’m just going to shovel the driveway.” It had snowed for most of the day.
Her mom laughed. “You decide to start doing that now?”
“What?”
Her mom went back towards the kitchen table. “You’ve haven’t shoveled in years.”
Jessica paused. Weird. She just liked helping her mom with chores…. The driveway was half cleared when she paused to catch her breath. Her arms were aching. When was the last time she had shoveled? She got back to work after a short break and didn’t stop until the driveway was as clean as it could be.
She took a quick shower to warm up. As she was drying off, she ran a hand through her hair and glanced in the mirror. Probably time for a haircut.
She was tired enough that she almost went right to bed, but decided to search for Brandon a bit more. She put half an hour on the Recog; the time limit was a required safety feature in the case that the Exit couldn’t be found. She could leave whenever she wanted, but in the case of an emergency, the device would turn off in a half hour.
Where to start? She went back to the memory of class where Mr. Marten was giving the due dates. Brandon had been sitting on the right side of class. But he wasn’t now. She exited that memory and drifted in the limbo of the machine for a bit. How could he be in a memory and then not? Maybe she just thought she saw him….
“Here’s your drink,” he said, sitting back down across the coffee table. She leaned forward and grabbed the cup, knocking the drooling guy over in the process. He groaned and flopped against the arm of the couch.
She was back at the party, and Brandon was sitting right across from her.
“Where are you from?” she blurted.
“Um… here?”
She laughed. “Sorry, I just haven’t seen you before.”
“You haven’t?” he asked. “I just introduced myself.”
“Maybe it’s just this then,” she laughed, lifting her cup.
Brandon smiled. “Talk to me some other time.”
She exited the memory and moved toward another vibrant one. She was in Grade 10, and one of only a handful allowed to go on the Senior Band trip. They were going to a classical concert in the city, after which they would be playing at a high school band competition.
She found herself sitting beside Brandon at the concert, and, as the strings moved upwards in arpeggios toward Mozart-ian glory, his arm slid around her shoulders. She laid her head back. This was so right. Why did he have to leave?
Thoughts about reality always made the Exit seem closer. You’re supposed to just exist in the memory, not bring the future with you.
She stood up from the concert and set the Recog down on her desk. Man, she missed Brandon. It had been a year since she had seen him. His stupid father had to move to the coast for work. She had been the happiest Grade 11 until he left.
Now, lonely Grade 12. And waiting for Zach to pick up that she liked him.
She almost missed Zach on the way to school. He wasn’t on the main road as she passed his street, but he saw her and jogged to the corner so they could walk the rest of the way. “So did you go on that band trip? In Grade 10?”
“Good morning?” he asked. She always started with good morning.
“Yeah. Hey,” she replied.
“Band trip…” he paused. “I can’t recall. Want me to check my Recog tonight?”
“Nah.”
In chem, she sat on the right side of the room. She shovelled her driveway again when she got home.
“Mom, can I take the car?” she asked.
Her mom nodded, without looking up from the crossword puzzle. “Where are you off to now?”
“Getting a haircut.”
She dreamed about Brandon that night. When she awoke, she decided she should call him sometime, even though they hadn’t spoken in a year. It wasn’t until she was in the shower that she realized she didn’t have his number. She started crying tears that were too quickly washed away by hot water.
Today, Zach was waiting for her at the corner of his street. “Good morning,” he called, but a bizarre look crossed his features. “Quite a haircut…” he said.
She grinned. She had cut her hair short. Instead of shoulder length, it was now as short as his. “I’m thinking of changing color too…”
“Why?” he asked, still holding that dazed look.
“I don’t know. Just changing it up. It felt way too long.”
She sat with Cassandra in English. They rarely hung out, but ever since that party in Grade 9, Jessica had been wanting to more frequently. The teacher gave a lecture on the men of Taming of the Shrew, saying that most summaries of the play look solely at the women. Jessica was so relieved when the bell rang. She packed up her stuff. Cassandra promised to call her sometime. In the corner of her eye, Jessica saw a BMW Z4 cruise past the school. Such a nice car. It was one of her dream cars.
A couple nights passed. After cooking supper for her mom, she would always pull on her Recog.
It was her parents’ anniversary last year, at their new house on the coast. Her dad got home late from work, but that was fine. They went to supper as a family, at their favorite seafood place. Her dad had bought an Audi A8 a couple months earlier, so even the 20 minute drive passed quickly.
She had a weird sense of urgency. As her dad told her about working in the big city, all she could think about was her friends back where she used to live: Cassandra, Alex, Curt, Joseph, Jessica….
With a bizarre lurch, the Recog powered off. She yanked it off of her ears and threw it back onto the desk. Why was she remembering herself? She stumbled towards the door. The hallway seemed like someone else’s hallway, it was probably just the spatial change from the seafood restaurant to a hallway. She opened her dad’s office door and froze. The desk was clean, the chair was gone, the walls were bare, the room was empty.
“Dad?” she asked.
“Jessica?”
She yanked her head out of her dad’s office and stared at her mom. “Where’s dad?” she snapped.
Her mom’s hand went to her mouth. “Jessica…”
The memory crashed back into place. Her father was dead. A side-collision with a young drunk woman. Tears filled Jessica’s eyes. “What happened? I forgot… how could I forget?”
“It’s okay, come here,” her mom said, grabbing her for a hug.
Jessica squeezed her eyes shut. How could she have forgot this? Her father had died three years ago… who had she been eating seafood with? Whose memory was that? It felt like hers. She could recall his words. And the car. She squeezed her mom closer. “What’s happening to me?”
It was a long night. By the time she finally fell asleep, she could recall three memories that didn’t correspond with reality, three memories that weren’t hers. When she finally awoke, she called the high school.“Hello, I’m a student there, but I’m trying to contact someone who used to attend. I was wondering if you might have them on file?”
“Sure, what the name, dear?”
“Brandon Bennerson,” she said. She was sitting at the kitchen table. Her mom was having a shower, so the book of crosswords sat idle across from her.
“Sorry, dear. No one by that name has ever been enrolled with us.”
Jessica put the phone down and took a deep breath. How could this be happening? Who was Brandon Bennerson? After a moment, she picked up the phone again. She grabbed a business card that sat on her mom’s side of the table. “Hello, Mr. Quinn?”
“Hullo there,” he replied.
“It’s Jessica Be… Morrison. I was wondering if you could look up a name for me. You would have a listing of people that own Recog’s, right?”
“That’s hardly professional, Ms. Morrison,” he said.
Jessica nodded. “I know. But there’s been a couple discrepancies with my Recog and I just need to be sure it’s nothing to do with that virus you were investigating.”
“Oh, well… We deleted the rest of the virus after finding it in another Recog device in the web. I can still look up that name though, if you promise not to use the information to contact the individual in any way.”
“Sure. The name is Brandon. Brandon Bennerson,” she said. She crossed her fingers.
A moment passed. It felt longer than it should. “I’m sorry, Ms. Morrison. No one by that name has ever purchased a Recog frame. In fact, no Bennersons have been born in the state since before the last Census.”
“Thanks.” She put the phone down. She stood up. The picture on the wall was jarring. Who was the small brown-haired girl? Who were those parents? She slowly wandered towards her room. It smelled like perfume. She could hardly think with such a strong smell. It was like a girl’s room.
She found herself standing in front of the closet mirror. Short blonde hair, dark eyes. She shuddered and closed the closet door. “Who am I?” she whispered.
She grabbed the Recog, put ten minutes on it, and slid it over each ear. She was in the back seat of a car. Her mom and dad were in the front. She looked to her left. Brandon was sitting there. Her parents didn’t seem to notice. “Who are you?” she asked.
“Brandon…” he said, slowly. “You know that.”
“Why do I have your memories?”
He laughed. “Why do I have yours?”
“Who am I?” she screeched, grabbing his arm. Her dad continued driving, oblivious to it. She had listed this memory at the bottom of her preferences. The device would only recall it if she told it to. Or if there were no other memories.
“You’re Jessica.”
She was still hanging on that realization. “Is this… my only memory?”
Brandon frowned. “You have others.”
She looked for them. She was hiking up Mount Adams with her dad. Two men against the mountain, her dad had said. She was learning how to drive in the Volkswagen her dad drove before he bought that Audi. She was playing in the soccer tournament last year.
“STOP!!” she shouted, and they were back in the car with her real dad. “Those aren’t my memories…”
“They’re mine.”
“Who are you?” Jessica blurted.
“I’ve never existed before. Now I do.”
She sobbed. “Please… what’s happening to me?”
“Look where we are,” he said. She looked around her dad’s car. When she looked back at him, the seat was empty. Then the pickup truck smashed into the driver’s side of the vehicle, Jessica screamed and their car plunged off the highway. As she lay there, blood fanning out across the ground amidst broken glass and rent metal, she realized one final thing: this wasn’t her memory. It was just a way for Brandon to wrap up a loose end – her mind.
The Recog powered down. Jessica closed her eyes and Brandon opened them.
*
A short story I wrote last year for Writing of the Short Story. Similar to the other stories posted under this tab, it has no connection to Shadow Glyph, but I consider it one of my very unique pieces. I do not write many set in pseudo-modern times. Hope you enjoyed it!