The Power of Forgetting Read online

  ‘Got to watch that Jared…. could be difficult to find yourself on the other side of some parallel world.’

  I breathed in sharply then. How could he know? I stared at the light and the thin black cigarette in the edge of the wooden surface. A lecturer’s desk, I remind myself. All those eager young minds, ready to receive a lasting impression will be fed from the man who spreads his secrets on this desk. And I was one once… I was that snow field, marked with no foot print.

  ‘You are familiar with the experience. And I know that you have experienced first-hand the crossing of reality. That jump back into one’s self. It is true isn’t it? You did this without drugs…. Without any kind of scientific interference….’ Hanson’s voice became lower, softer, and more persuasive, ‘We want to know how you did it; and perhaps a little information on the samples would be helpful too. Then you can have the thing you most desire. That way out you want so desperately.’ He was in control now. He was offering me that end to the torment…. And even if he was part of the reason why it had been so wide and so deep… I still felt that pull; that willingness to accept the credibility of the notion that Hanson held my answer in the palm of his hand.

  ‘What possible guarantees have I, that this isn’t just a trick?’

  ‘Read the first two pages, and then you tell me.’ He pushed the file into my hands.

  I flicked it open and scanned down the sheets. I looked back at him. I picked up the cigarette and clicked a flame from the slim red disposable. Hanson looks nonplussed. I pulled the ash tray towards me and tap the first flakes in. I feel that slight buzz; just a hint, and the thin white ribbon of smoke curls round me like the spell from a magician’s wand.

  ‘Well?’ He clears his throat rather unnecessarily, and frowning holds out his hand for the file. I glanced back down at it again. The ability to speed read is never lost and I’ve been scanning the pages while he was distracted by the cloud of tobacco fug.

  ‘It’s not a very safe thing to do is it? Keeping a portable transmitter on a person?’

  ‘You got to that bit?’

  ‘Of course,’ I was flicking through a little bit more, as he leaned forward a little more.

  ‘The file please,’ he said firmly, ‘I really need to get on. There is only half an hour to the next lecture.’

  ‘I’m sure they’ll wait,’ I glanced at the clock as I held out the closed folder. Quarter past Ten. Hanson takes hold of it. And at that moment I moved… springing out of the chair and slamming my other hand down on his left hand as he reaches across the desk. I slid across the corner and with the small pen delivered the shot into his shoulder… high up near the neck.

  He reacted by reaching back and grabbing me with his right hand, and twisting out of the chair into the same swift movement. I end up sitting on the floor, with Hanson crouched over me. He was growling like a dog and his chest was heaving with anger and shock. I felt the weight of his whole body on my shoulders. He prized the pen from my hand. I let him take control. The drug will be swift and effective. Two minutes.

  He released me and slumped on the floor. I edged away from him; I’m breathing rather quickly myself. I look at the clock. It will only last ten minutes at full intensity, and leave the system within the next five. The chemistry of it is activated as soon as it goes into the body. There’s some relaxant in there as well. It helps the subject be much more compliant. I can see it’s working…. time to hear the truth.

  ‘I’m going to ask you some questions Andrew, do you understand?’

  ‘Yes…’ he looks at me surprised.

  ‘You will answer briefly and clearly.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘The first is this: Who do you work for in the Bank Collective?’

  ‘The circle of Five.’

  ‘Who are they?’

  ‘Alexander Rimmington; August Charles; Ira Shore; Io Ream; and John Briar.’

  ‘Who is in charge of these five?’

  ‘Ira Shore.’

  ‘Do they act with the knowledge of the Board?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do some of the Board know what they are doing?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Who knows?’

  ‘I do, and Janey Amber.’

  ‘What?’ I am startled, but must make use of the time I have…. It could be part of the parallel.

  ‘We pass messages to them.’

  ‘Does Janey Amber know she is doing this?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘A suggestion planted.’

  ‘Who else?’

  ‘I……’

  ‘Who else has a suggestion planted in their mind?’ I look at the clock again.

  Hanson looks as if he’s trying to get the words out, but something is stopping him. It must be him. I try the next.

  ‘Forget that question. Tell me about the “Warren” project.’

  ‘I’m one of the test subjects.’

  ‘How many test subjects?’

  ‘Twelve.’

  ‘Name them.’

  ‘I don’t know who they are.’

  ‘Very well. Show me the portable generator.’

  He lifts his shirt. There is was; a little flattish black block strapped in a band around the torso, at just about the natural waistline.

  ‘Is it controlled by a central program?’

  ‘No. they are all separate.’

  ‘Does it send a signal back to a central control?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘When do you next call in to your control?’

  ‘On the first of April.’

  ‘Indeed,’ I try not to smile, ‘when does the experiment run to?’

  ‘It has no end point.’

  ‘Does the box have a limited power supply?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How long will it last?’

  ‘Eighteen months.’

  ‘How long has it been going?’

  ‘About eight months?’

  I looked at the clock again. I could risk a couple more questions, before the answers became unreliable. ‘Did you volunteer?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Do you remember starting the experiment?’

  ‘I….err…’

  ‘What is the earliest memory you have before today?’

  ‘The Christmas party…. I think you were there too?’ Hanson is starting to come out of it. I’ll have to make this quick.

  ‘What happened there?

  ‘I was there. And then the assistant said I should leave. Then….’ He looked at me startled, ‘you punched me!’ he rubbed his jaw as if the memory was still fresh. ‘Why did you do that?’ he asked.

  ‘Do you remember what you said?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you remember anything?’

  ‘Rimmington asked me to speak.’

  ‘What did he ask you to do?’

  ‘To….to….’ Hanson was blinking and shaking his head. I thought I must have gone too far. Eleven minutes after the start point. But I needed to know. It was the only think that mattered.

  ‘Damn that woman!’ said Hanson vehemently.

  ‘You mean Lorraine?’

  ‘Yes. She was doing something…. But I don’t know what.’ He looked up at me, and put his hand up to rub his neck. I didn’t ask him any more questions. A few more minutes and the disorientation would pass. Hanson clambered to his feet and sat back in his chair. He seemed to be trying to say something. As if running through a list. Truth serum, plus a little this, and a little of that…. George was a clever sod! This was one that had a little sting in the tale. In an hour he wouldn’t remember anything that had happened in the room. I would melt away like the ghost I was. I suppose though that there was no accounting for Hanson in the normal sense of the word.

  I was about to sit down again, but he grabbed my wrist. ‘I want to know why you hit me Arden.’

  ‘I hit you,’ I said trying to shake him off, ‘because you insulted me very badly. And frankl
y you have had it coming for a very long time.’

  ‘Really?’ he grabbed by left wrist as well. There we were, two combatants locked together. I locked my hands around his forearms too. I wasn’t to be outdone and pulled him to his feet.

  ‘Lorraine’s a bitch,’ I said, ‘you really ought to avoid her.’

  ‘That, we do at least agree on.’ He pushed me backwards a couple of steps. Outside it had started to rain.

  ‘You’re hurting me.’ I said.

  ‘Can’t handle a little game?’ asked Hanson as I pushed him back.

  ‘Game? What game?’

  ‘Oh you don’t what to do what I can do Arden!’

  Then I was trying to get him to release me. I felt the burning in my fingertips. It was like rope burn. I could feel that electricity of the tension between two realities. But his wasn’t two. I was falling now. Down and down. I tried to stop it. But he had me, and wouldn’t let go. The room was full of him. Different points in time; and different versions all interacting with each other. It was like Rimmington and his creatures. But this was like being in the nightmare. Hanson’s mental images were rough and undisciplined. I had found that the connection of time impressions was usual met with a rather unpleasant sensation of vertigo. But his was far worse. It was time spinning out of control. I saw Hanson meeting Rimmington… or rather; I saw it through his eyes. Then I saw another Hanson facing him. But I also saw him through his eyes, while looking out through the eyes of the other at the same time. Them another was added, then another; until I was begging Hanson to let go of me.

  Suddenly I was aware of the room again. Hanson was sitting back white faced in his chair; ‘Dear God!’ he said, ‘I’m so sorry Jared…. I never knew. It was awful….’

  I saw his ashen faced shock, and realised that while I had been bombarded with the results of Hanson’s experience in the Warren experiment; he had just taken a shuttle ride through the dark into my mind as well.

  We sat there for a minute looking at each other; for the first time, with some real understanding. There crawling at the edges was the past, all of it. I felt the ache in the left forearm; and realised, as the rain streamed down the windows that I had been much more of a burden to Hanson, than he had ever been to me. I had always had the power to choose. And even if he did, he just didn’t know it, and ploughed in deeper to the Bank Collective than any sane person ought to do. It was only the fact that he believed himself to be invincible that stopped him from crumpling. I wasn’t gifted with that kind of egocentric capacity. I started to edge from the room. I felt in the pocket to make sure the pen was there. A ghost. I stumbled. Hanson picked me up. ‘Don’t....’ I said weakly; I could feel the boiling of those same separate Andrew Hansons that were walking around in the city somewhere. I was not that kind of person. I was too dark in mood, too intense. Hanson wasn’t without merit for knowing that much. I was sinking. Somehow… I found myself on the other side of the door. Hanson was still in his office. Ten minutes to start to forget…. Come on George. Will it mean I’ll be able to walk out of here?

  Jean held out her hand as I crashed into her desk. The floor didn’t feel like it was attached to me. I was lighter that gravity….

  ‘Jared!’

  ‘Look Jean… just get me out of here. I have to get home…. right now.’

  She guided me to the lift in the out hall, ‘I’ll take you to the first floor. Go out the back door. You’re on ground level there. Just cross the paved area between the two buildings opposite. The bus stop is there.’

  ‘It’s alright. I’m not far away.’

  ‘Shall I call you a taxi?’ she asked as I bent over groaning. As soon as the doors were open I headed out of the lift towards the exit.

  ‘Shall I call the others?’ Jean was being too worried.

  ‘No. I’m okay.’ I waved at her and skidded through the automatic doors. The fresh air hit me and fat drops of rain, ‘I’ll bloody well walk!’ I muttered. The rain had cleared the place of students and as I got on to the main street I didn’t shock too many of the curious onlookers. So intent were they is getting out of the wet.

  It wasn’t so bad. I felt as if I was swimming through the water falling out of the sky. This was like the last time, but with a different cause. Time streams are like taking drugs; they really, really make you sick. Oh; and did I mention crazy as well? I had spent a long time even before I went on the expedition trying to avoid this sort of thing. I have a family that keeps its secrets well. But the one thing that you cannot ignore is your own nature. My sister… my older sister. She can control these streams of time. She is quite adept at it. She warned me that I would find this a problem if I didn’t face who I really was. She was so calm when I got cross about that. Karis is… well just so matter of fact about it all. She doesn’t get upset by things being bizarrely ordered in time and space. She can accept that she lived in a time that was not the one she should have lived in as a child. She is, to all intents and purposes the most perfect example of her kind….

  I get to the street with my local shops on them. It’s pouring down now and I’m soaked to the skin. I’m glad of this. Water calms things; it halts things in their tracks. I turn my face upwards into the torrent. But it is quite chilly all the same and being soaked is not really any fun at all.

  I’m inside at last. It’s still raining. I’m lost in time. I can’t remember getting to the main door and climbing the stairs to my flat. I make a mug of tea. But I’m shaking too much to hold the cup. I sip it stood near the kettle and then go and stand under the shower for ten minutes. It’s a good job my watch is waterproof. Ten to four. I’m wondering what happened to the intervening time.

  I had lain down on the seat cushions. I’m dressed in something warm, dry and comfortable. I can’t get it straight in my head what I was supposed to be doing about meeting Marcia. I think she said she was coming here later. It’s all confused. I’ve got a try now with a whole pot of fresh tea to work down. I feel a little better. I really don’t know what effect this is going to have. I feel warm, yet a bit chilled and rather swimmy in my head. It was truly, even on an objective level, a horrible experience. Being more than one person, at the same time! I have had all on just coping with being one of me. And even so I remember different versions of the same event… perhaps that is why I’m feeling ill and disorientated. I’ve got travel rug that I keep for those times when It’s cold but I can’t sleep. I’ve wrapped it right around me as I watch the rain on the window.

  There is a warmth that shifts around into the body and the mind, when things still. In the quiet afternoon the shadows dissipate. Since coming home from the expedition; I’ve stopped going running across the park and carrying on until I’m exhausted; and then to sit and wait for the stillness to come back in. I was partly something Violette said, and Marcia just bluntly announced that I will be doing what I’m supposed to from now on. I wasn’t sure how to take that. Davey didn’t say anything about it then. He just asked where I kept the herbs and spices, and decided to invade the kitchen and cook something. He seems to like writing notes out too. Notes to himself I’ve discovered. I find post it type stickers left behind in odd places. And they never make any sense at all. I have gathered them up and given them back to him. Perhaps it’s the hope that someone else’s way of accepting the new world they are faced with is more successful than mine has been. But then again, I always had the same difficulty, so nothing has actually changed; perhaps irrationally I thought it would do.

  Someone is here. They must have been let in by another resident. I really feel dire, and stumble to the door, hoping that maybe Marcia has brought some of her ginger drink again.

  ‘Jared?’ Davey stares at me likes he seen a ghost, ‘I’ve been calling you. What happened?’

  ‘I…. do come in. there’s time enough for recriminations later. But I went to see Hanson.’

  ‘Oh? You did. What did he say?’ Davey never ceases to trouble me with this wide-eyed innocence. I thought it was a bit of a f
ront, until I realised he really is like that. But right now I feel strange. He takes hold of me as something slips away. All the colours that drained out of the sky are arguing with me in the room. Yellow and bright green, and pinks that smell like exotic flowers. My vision crowded out with impossible things like Escher’s staircases. I slip downwards; Davey stops me from collapsing into a heap and sits on the floor holding me firmly to stop me from cracking my head against something as my back arches in a sudden rigidity followed by going completely limp and a dead weight. He rolls me carefully onto my side on the floor as my eyes roll and flicker and consciousness splinters into weird pieces, and I dissolved into a cloudy dream.

  ‘Jared… Jared…’ someone says my name softly. I can’t work out whom. There are still little flutters of over bright colours trembling in the side aisles waiting to gain some admittance to this world of muted iridescence.

  I find myself on the settee and there is a tray on the small table. It has been pulled forward and delightful strands of steam curl from the spout of the pot.

  ‘I wondered where that teapot had gone.’ I said weakly

  ‘Glad to see you’re back with us.’ Violette lifts the teapot up and carefully starts to pour. I try to raise myself up, but can’t.

  ‘What happened?’ I ask her.

  ‘Perhaps I should say what didn’t happen,’ Violette is looking at me in that way that makes me feel about eight years old. Perhaps that’s why I feel confident she is the right person to deal with all this mess. Violette Rhodes, our personal physician. She is the only one who can treat this type of malady. A rare condition, brought about by mucking about too much with anomalous time distortions. “Time Sickness” is what we rather uncreatively call it. I know I’ve gone against her, and I think I might be in trouble. She is regarding me with her cool appraising expression.

  ‘Tell me,’ she said calmly, ‘why did you go and see Mr Hanson? Don’t you know that this was not a good idea?’

  ‘I had to know…. I needed to know.’ This time I’m up on one elbow and seeing the room from another angle… the upright one.

  ‘Well, never mind,’ she comes over and rearranges me so I can take the cup she offers, ‘You are very much advised to not do that sort of thing again. I am most…. concerned about your wellbeing.’