MEM by Bethany C. Morrow

Author:Bethany C. Morrow [Morrow, Bethany C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781944700560
Publisher: The Unnamed Press
Published: 2018-04-27T00:00:00+00:00

NO. 6

Once recalled to the Vault, the study of memory became a pastime for me. In the quiet solitude of my dormitory or during conversations with Ettie or Harvey, I found myself captivated by the way memory enriched over time and its capacity for maintaining a number of different contexts at once. A single event, I realized, was like a spool of thread that might be sewn into a dozen separate tapestries. At times that thread would be a scene’s primary focus, at others simply a decorative background. Memory could weave thousands of those threads together, and in what became my most intriguing discovery, memory often employed the senses to accomplish it. Textures, sounds, smells could all be time machines, sending a person back through life to discover moments that complemented or matched the present. The phenomenon not only captivated my scientific interest, but also restored a measure of my freedom, transporting me outside the facility. When in the courtyard the wind moved my hair, I might find that it was suddenly 1919 again, and instead of the enclosed space, I was on rue Sainte-Catherine, my hair being moved just as gently by an equally pleasant breeze.

A month after my recall, I spent three days in the sitting room of the Vault watching lawyers and executors and Sources flow in and out. There had never been such an influx of real people underground, to my knowledge, yet something about their hustle and bustle felt familiar. The way both men and women rushed in and out of the visiting area, alternating between impatient attempts at composure and agitated but intentionally hushed bickering. I had some idea what had prompted this rash of real people, but the sound of their overlapping conversations and the muted warmth of the fireplace sent my mind back through time, to a tragic day in March 1909. As in the sitting room, there was still a fireplace at my back, only now it was in Windsor Station and I was waiting for Camille to return to the ladies’ waiting room. In a moment she would collect me and we would leave the room to meet the Professor’s train. Minutes later, it would be destroyed.

It was St. Patrick’s Day. I know that but can’t be sure it counts as remembering, since the newsreels and papers immediately named the accident for the holiday. We attended no parades, had no plans to witness anything spectacular that day. We only meant to welcome home the Professor—returning from another speaking engagement for which I was the thesis—before the train collided with the station and changed everything.

I can’t recall precisely why we left the ladies’ room; that’s one of the many intermediary details my memory has discarded. In this memory, it’s been deemed insignificant, but I suspect that one day, if another tapestry is in need of embroidery, I may remember. Instead of only briefly seeing Camille cross beneath the archway, impatient and excited for the Professor’s train to arrive, perhaps I will recall why she asked me to go outside.

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