Scarecrow Has a Gun by Michael Paul Kozlowsky

Author:Michael Paul Kozlowsky
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: literary fiction, scifi thriller, speculative fiction
Publisher: Imbrifex Books
Published: 2022-08-02T00:00:00+00:00

The technician arrived first thing the following morning. I answered the door still groggy from a restless night of confusion, fear, and futile memory searches, to find a man dressed completely in white. Head to toe. Sneakers and laces, socks, pants, shirt and belt, even the rims of his glasses and the bag he carried. He made me think my home was an area of contamination. Maybe it was.

I checked his outfit (uniform?) and bag for any company insignia or logo. Who exactly did he work for, and where did this machine come from? But there was no telling.

Standing at the door, he didn’t say a word. He waited for me.

“Are you here for the black box?” I asked.

He nodded. Only after I closed the door behind him, did he say, “The Memory Palace.”

“Excuse me?”

“I’m here for the Memory Palace.”

“Is that what you’re calling it?”

“It is. Where is it?”

I led him to the TV and pointed.

He stood back a moment, staring at the box, taking it in, a look of quiet affection in his sunken eyes. He had dark hair with flecks of gray combed and styled in such a way that it was obvious he had no desire to keep up with current trends. His face was round, full, hiding his chin, although the rest of him was very slight. His mouth, as if in perpetual disappointment, was stuck in a pout. When he spoke, he seemed to mush the words around with his tongue and squeeze them through thin lips. “You think there might be a glitch of some sort.”

“I do.”

“Plug in. I’d like to see how it runs.”

I was hesitant about welcoming this man into the privacy of my past. My family was one thing, but strangers … yet maybe he was already watching anyway. Maybe the green eye of the box was a camera—two shows at once.

He grew agitated with my brief delay. “I can’t determine anything without you accessing your memories.”

Sitting on the couch, I reluctantly plugged the pads into my temples and a memory appeared on the screen.

Like most memories, it began with a burst of disorientation. I had no idea how long ago it was, where, exactly, it took place, or what I was in the midst of doing. That, usually, came with time. All I knew was that B. was escorting me through a series of winding hallways that I barely recalled being escorted through and certainly through which I haven’t been escorted since. There were many turns down many short corridors, passing many doors with no labels. After some time, and without a single word spoken, he finally led me through one of these unmarked doors and directed me to have a seat in a sterile room that looked like it had never been used. He exited nearly as soon as he entered, and a few moments later a woman came striding in from a side door. Vague recollection on my end.

“Hello, Mr. Whittlesea,” she said, taking her seat behind a bare desk.

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