Short story #1 – The memento project

The girl was wandering in the Edinburgh streets.
Her mind was a mess. It was like hundreds of voices were hammering her brain but in all that confusion she knew exactly where to go.
“Shall we do that?” Eleonor asked.
“Don’t know. I need to see him for the last time,” Katrin replied. It was like a dialogue with two entities in the same brain but in reality, wasn’t different from a neverending eco.
The gate of the building was open.
Five floors and she could find her peace… But something was wrong. Both of them knew that somebody was following them.
Two men in black were stepping meters away looking for her, for them, to do a move.
They were agents of the Memento project.
She steps into the building and starts to climb the stairs when one of the voices emerged. It was the memory of an old man who lived in that apartment all his life.
Katrine knew him. The man died a year before. She never spoke with him. They were just neighbors, she didn’t imagine that he could possibly afford the memory transplant.
In the last decade, the memento project operated thousands and thousands of people who fancied to safely lose some memories or gain a new one or simply trying to recover faces from the youth.
We know for sure that some people just did that to recover a bank pin or a password.
Such a waste of money if you think but for some it worth it. And all of us know well that if there is amaze in new technologies, there is even a dark side because nothing comes only for the medicine and if the military could extend their dirty hands on something. Well, you can imagine.
Katrine, Eleanor, Tom, and other hundreds of people were in front of the door of Katrine’s house, of course, they were all in the Eleanore mind.
She could hear the steps of the men that were coming upstairs.
She knocked at the door and when the man opened the door she was totally frozen.
“Adam!”
“Yes?” he asked.
She swallowed and continued “I’m… I’m Kat”
“What a fuck are you trying to tell me? What do you want? Is that a kind of bad joke?” he replied with wet eyes.
She forced herself into the house and locked the door “I came here to say goodbye forever”.
He was unable to understand at that time.
“It was funny at the beginning. Me and El chatting in an eco. It is not like the brochure says, is not just memory, is a complex system of connectivity that interacts because they move neurons around. But is really like a void, a black, never-ending emptiness”
“You did it? You gave your permission for the transplant? I supposed you were against it” Adam said.
“I know but… You know, the desire of immortality and everything connected but then I realized that is only a curse, nothing you really want” she took a deep breath “God! I speak like a philosopher. I think I have one in here. He is just an eco.”
“Why you came here?” Adam asked.
“Is over. I got in my brain the only memory that counts. The founder of the Memento project. After this will be impossible to recover the system.” She said while the men entered the house.
“Ma’am we won’t hurt you. We just need to…” one of the men said before the girl felt on the floor in convulsions. Adam running to help her but was too late. She poisoned herself.
“WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO HER?” He shut to the guys in a river of tears.
“Nothing Sir. She just starts to fall into madness when two consciousness was filled into the body. She started to think about a conspiracy but we never meant to hurt her. Nobody wanted to.”
“How can I trust you? She came here telling to want the destruction of your organization”.
“Sir. She is the founder of the memento project” the man said when Adam had a shock.

-ldmarchesi