Nanobots, Murder, and Other Family Problems

I had a dream last night. A really good dream. It wasn’t even a sexual one, like the ones I always have about the cafeteria girls. It was better than that. It’s fading, as they always do, but I’m trying to remember it now and get it down before it’s gone.

I can’t quite recall the location. Somewhere that felt familiar, but not here in my home on campus. Maybe somewhere I lived before? Not important. What mattered was that someone else was there with me. Someone that made me feel warm and safe.

I look out the window of my room. It’s still dark out. My dream scratches at my brain. I should know who I was dreaming of, but I can’t picture the face, or hear the voice. All I can remember is that feeling, that security. That love.

Mom.

That was Mom in my dream. I haven’t even thought of her in so long. I mean, avenging her murder is my motivation for everything, but I haven’t spent any time actually thinking of her. It’s been nothing but planning, coding, improving my implant’s index, and practicing with the bots all day every day. I miss her. I can almost picture her.

Wait.

No.

No photo pops up when I think the word Mom. She’s not hooked into the index. I don’t have an entry telling me all the facts I should remember about her or linking my logs of the conversations I’ve had with her or the times I’ve recorded thinking of her.

I should know what she looks like, but I can’t picture her. I can’t remember her face. That’s not right. I know what she looked like. She had hair. Her hair was...

Wait, what color was it? I can’t remember. She had a voice. I know that I knew what it sounded like. We talked all the time. But somehow, now I don’t. I don’t know what she sounded like. I can’t remember her voice at all. Why can’t I remember her voice?

Why can’t I remember her face!?

No. No. No!

Where’s that picture? I had a picture of her at some point, but it’s not on my desk. I sweep my bots through the room, looking in every drawer for anything that could be the right size. Nothing. I scan back through my logs. I don’t know what happened to it.

No, wait. I had it on the desk, right there. I remember now. Marc wrecked it. Dammit Marc! You ruined my only picture of her. I was going to get a new one from Grammy, but it slipped my mind every time I called.

How could I forget what Mom looked like? What she sounded like? My memory is great, why can’t I remember?

I try to remember the other people that I know. That I knew, back before I started relying on the descriptions in my index for everything. Grammy and Gramps are only vague humanoid lumps in my memory, and I just talked to them a few weeks ago. I have their words in my database, but I’m spacing when I try to think what they look like. I try to remember the kids that I went to school with, back at my old school. I spent years with them, but I can’t remember a single one of their names now. I remember Father and my siblings here, but they’re all in the index. The line between my real memory and the augmentations I’ve made to it is so fuzzy now, it all just feels like me.

DIAGNOSTIC MODE

I check the remodeling of my brain. Since the headaches got manageable, I haven’t worried much about how things were changing in there. I scan through my transcripts of Mr. Johnson’s lectures to see what areas of the brain are associated with memory. Hippocampus, amygdala, neocortex. I check each and compare them to previous scans. Shit! I’ve got extensive remodeling in all of those areas, most of it since the implant got upgraded.

I’ve been pushing myself so hard on using the implant. Did I wreck my ability to recall memories at will? I’ve barely needed to lately, since the index takes care of most of that.

How broken am I now? What can I remember? Words and ideas seem fine. Can I still do math? I run through some arithmetic, then algebra, geometry and calculus, though I find myself switching into the software solver without even realizing it. Good enough. I don’t care which side of my brain is doing the math, as long as I can get it done.

Books I’ve read. I remember some of those. The ones I’ve been reading for classes lately are all there. No, that’s the electronic storage. I can barely tell the difference for text.

Movies. I remember those, the stories anyway. I can’t seem to recall what the actors looked like. Music? I remember songs I heard recently. Marc had some high-energy pop crap playing in the common room last night. I used to listen to music with Mom. She loved the oldies. The Beatles and the Stones. Buddy Holly. I remember that about her now. I can’t think of any of the tunes, just some of the lyrics. I want to hold your hand. I would always reach out and hold her hand when that one played. She thought it was funny that I would still do it, even when I was a teenager.

What did that hand look like? Why can’t I remember that? Why did I have to lose her? I can’t even remember her name.

Who else did I lose? My first crush, what was her name? It was sixth grade. She was my dance partner when we had to do a ballroom dance in school. I remember stepping one-two-three. Her hair smelled like strawberries. She moved away that summer. I never saw her again after that. What was her name? What did she look like? I get the smell of her hair again and can’t remember anything else.

I can’t lose Mom. Not like this. What can I salvage? What’s still there?

DOPE-ME

Focus. I remember that she loved me. That feeling from the dream. That’s something. I remember that I love her. I can still feel that now. But I can’t picture what she looked like. When I think of things she would say to me, I can only get a few words now. Not how she sounded. Not her tone.

Shit. I am literally losing my mind.

Breathe. Calm. Breathe.

That was her. Those words. I remember that. She would say that to get me to calm down. I breathe now, long and slow. Between that and Louise’s dopamine trick, I get myself under control.

I remember Mom telling me to put on my jacket on cold days, but when I try to picture it, all I get is a monotone mumble from a featureless face. Her hair was long, I remember that now. It was long, and she would brush it while we watched TV on Saturday mornings. She watched cartoons with me. I ate cereal on the couch. I had to be careful not to spill. I remember that. But in my mind’s eye, I can’t see the person sitting on the couch with me. I know I wasn’t alone, but I can’t see what she looked like.

Was she tall? Was she short? Was she thin? Was she fat?

I can’t remember a single thing like that about her.

What was her name?

I can’t remember that either.

Wait, no. I have it. Father’s notes had it. I wrote that down.

Mary!

Her name was Mary!

I won’t lose that.

I can’t lose that.

Mary. Mary. Mary.