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"You know I love you, right?"
The once-famous neurologist Dr. Nathaniel Locke echoed the words. Fingering his lips, he glanced around in confusion, to find himself standing alone in the mess of his lab. He'd been scrabbling around, tossing things aside with frantic determination. A rare, incurable degenerative disease of the mind had begun to rob him of his identity. Just as quickly as they cured Alzheimer's, derivative forms of the disease had formed, stronger, and attacking even earlier in life. Now it claimed a self-described expert in neurology and memory loss! Mother Nature's latest cruelty seemed especially barbed to Nathaniel.
A myriad of montitors and screens, some idle, some processing data, formed the backbone of the room. Off to the east side were numerous empty clinical test rooms. Thousands of tapes were stacked along the opposite side, though the once orderly pile was now in disarray. Thousands of subject's mindscapes - recorded and studied in great detail - remained behind on digital tapes. Not one contained his own - hypocrisy or an undefined superstition, he couldn't tell - but his late diagnosis had meant his own mind was too unstable and fleeting to be captured. He'd built a fort of other people's memories around him and now his own had gone and betrayed him.
"There is only the 'now', and anything else is just an illusion," she was saying, eyes concentrating on the middle distance, biting her lip for a moment before looking back to him. "We're constantly moving forward so the past is as false as what we imagine the future to be." Claire's heart-shaped face suddenly broke into a smile like sunshine and she chuckled. "The main thing to remember is not to remember anything. It only encourages attachment, and as my Buddhist guru tells me, that's a just a ticket to more suffering."
Her smile faded from his vision. His house had fallen into a state of disrepair. He was starting to neglect himself. How cliché was it that he blamed it all on one woman? Blame was a strong word - he acknowledged fully that it was his own curious whims that had brought him to this stage. She'd turned his dreams into memories, making reality even dimmer. Soon, it would all be gone, one way or another.
His friends were 'worried'. They expressed this to each other more than to Nathaniel, despite an occasional phone call. But as such friends go - the numerous academic aquaintances who term themselves as such - they hid behind the impression of a respect for his privacy when in fact they couldn't afford to miss this weekend's trip to the peaks with Sandra and Tristan and all the gang. Nathaniel was glad. Memory wasn't the only thing that was fleeting.
Morning sun shone through curtains onto two warm bodies. Like a dream, the myth of fusion had been dispelled in the morning light. The present always seemed to mock the past, belittling emotions that were cursed with impermanence. "Crap, Nate, I'm gonna be late. Flight is at noon. Lucky I packed last night, eh? Before..." Nate hauled her back into bed in a cloud of giggles. He could smell the lavender on her soft skin, feel her ribcage underneath. It was all so real, so immediate, but...
Did she ever come back? He was foggy again. It happened a lot these days. He quickly scolded himself to not lose sight of his immediate objective. He was searching for something and he couldn't let the lure of memory distract him. The living quarters had gradually become cluttered. The debris was rising - all dishes and cutlery had long since been soiled and lay piled up in the kitchen. As his brain drained like a leaky tap, the refuse of his life had built up around him. A tape! That was it! What was he doing back in the living room? He weaved a path through the takeaway boxes that littered the floor, knocking over empty bottles and cans on his way.
It would be in the lab somewhere, for sure. It was obvious that he'd turned the place upside down already. Slumping backwards into his chair he stared at a handwritten note stuck to his desk. It read:
LAST CHANCE, NATE - BOTTOM DRAWER ON THE RIGHT!
Did he write that? He followed the instruction and rooted through the drawer. Finally, his sweaty seach had ended. Along the spine of one battered little box were the words he'd been seeking.
'Bentham, Claire Elizabeth - DOB: 12/11/2048 - Recorded: 23/02/2070'
23rd of February 2070. That one he did remember. She'd been one of the many volunteers. A student of philosophy and religion, they'd had that conversation the day he copied her memories. He'd told himself he would marry her. He saw the future like a memory. In the tentative years that followed, his heart only beat to her rhythm. For her to exist on the planet without him would have made his heart tear itself out of his chest.
He rushed to the centre of operations, typing instructions and setting up the machine. As he finalised the settings for the transfer, tranquility settled over him. The feeling of being lost to the world didn't matter. He didn't care. In just a few moments he would get back his world. He switched on the Erase terminal and fumbled Claire's tape into the Transfer terminal, setting it to begin immediately afterwards. He then set the Transfer terminal to play on a loop, ad infinitum. As he plugged himself in, he realised he would never forget again. He would finally get his world back.
And this time he would experience her completely.
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