Short story #1 – The memento project

The girl was wandering in the winter night, the cold was a welcome friend. 

Her mind was a mess. It was like hundreds of voices were hammering her brain like a jackhammer but even 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 house was open but the idea of entering was vanishing.

Lots of emotions were trying to find their way to the surface but she was able to keep them quiet except her and Katrin, only two among a whole cloud of poor souls.

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 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 emerges. It was the memory of an old man who lived in that apartment for all his life.

Katrin 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 was worth it, and all of us know well that if there is amazement in new technologies, there is even a dark side because nothing comes only for the sake of progress and nobody could imagine the quantity of pain that the project was causing.

Katrine, Eleanor, Tom and hundreds of other people were in front of the door of Katrin house, of course, they were all in Eleanore’s mind.

She could hear the steps of the men running upstairs, following her, treating her.

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 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, he was paralized by anger and grief.

“It was funny at the beginning. Me and El chatting in an eco. Is not like the brochure says, is not just memory, is a complex system of connectivity that interacts because they move neurons around… But it is really like a void, a black, never-ending emptiness.”

In that moment he understood, he knew what the woman was talking about.

“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 did you come here?” Adam asked.

“It’s over. I got in my brain the only memory that counts. The founder of the Memento project. After this it 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 fell on the floor in convulsions.

Adam ran 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 started to fall into madness when two consciousnesses were 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? Did you hear her? You are hurting people, I believe she wants to destroy the memento.”

“Sir, you don’t understand, the woman, your wife, is the founder of the memento project.”

Like a creator that understands the danger of its creation she tried to solve the problem but in the end there was only one solution.

Memories are the most sacred things, the only real thing humans had left and she understood that nobody had the right to take them away.

-ldmarchesi