“You can read people’s minds?” I looked at the little gray box.
“Not really,” he lost the edge of intensity as he started to explain. “I can record some memories and I can record dreams and what a person is feeling. What they are seeing and hearing and touching and also what emotions they feel. I can get inside their scull and look out through their eyes.”
“And you scan many people?” I looked at him, but he didn’t seam mad.
“Oh no,” he smiled. “This is reserved for special clients. I’m a collector, looking for quality not quantity.”
“And you have Becky Ashford’s memories in there?” I nodded at the box.
“Not all of them,” he clamed down. “Just a little over nine months worth.” He looked up at me again, “You see I have implants that I fit to my clients that record the data while they go about their lives as normal. Then once every year, or so, I down load that data and store them here.” He patted the box.
“Why?” I asked. “What do you do with them?”
He smiled. “Oh, I can do lots of things with it,” he floated close and gripped the machines on either side of me. “For one thing I can replant them into organic computers.” And pulled himself close to me, “Like your brain.”
I put my hands to his shoulders to push him back, but he kept his grip on the machines behind me.
“That’s one of the reasons you where made,” he leant close to kiss me.
I turned my head away and he lightly brushed my cheek with his lips.
“That’s why Jazz brought you here,” he pulled himself closer.
I kept my arms between us, but didn’t try to push him back. “Where is Jazz?”
He shrugged, “She had other business to take care off.”
“When will she be back?” I could feel the pulse in the base of his neck and his breath on the side of my face.
“A couple of days.” He waited for me to talk.
“Why dose she want me to have Becky’s memories?” I realised that I was staring at the grey box and looked away.
He shrugged again, “I don’t know. But what could be more appropriate?”
I looked up at his face.
“You where made to take them. Becky recorded them to be implanted in you. Maybe you will discover something in them.” He caressed the side of my neck and my ear. “What else is there for you to do?”
“What have you found in them?” I hooked my hands around his neck.
He laughed softly. “To me they are just a blur, like a vivid dream and they fade from memory as quickly.” He tapped the side of his head, “There’s nothing for them to hook onto in me. But you,” he touched the side of my head. “Have plenty of space for them. They will form patterns with your existing memories, overwriting some, merging with others and being altered in turn. You will not be turned into an incomplete copy of Becky Ashford. But you won’t remain completely yourself either.”
“And then what will happen to me?” I began to feel frightened.
“Then,” he smiled. “You will have to make your own life for yourself.” He produced a Hypo-gun from somewhere.
“What’s in that?” my eyes where locked on it as he brought it up in front of his face.
“Just something to make you more receptive to the memories,” he held my arm against a piece of machinery and brought the gun up.
As he pressed the gun to my arm I felt a sharp twist, as if the muscles of my forearm where trying to tie themselves in knots. This feeling extended down my arm and my hand tried to clench and my fingers spread at the same time. Next my shoulder tried to dislocate itself. And suddenly my whole body convulsed.
Then everything turned soft. Soft and orange. And out of this orange softness flew an orange bird. This bird perched on my shoulder and started to systematically peck at my head. It pecked across my head, from left to right, in lines that started and ended just inside my hairline. And although it pecked only once at each spot the pressure of its beak did not diminish, but rather seamed to grow and press further and further into my brain. So that by the time it finished pecking along the last line across the nape of my neck, I felt like a hundred razor thin, super hot pins had been sunk through my skull and deep into my brain.
Then my brain exploded, or imploded, or flipped inside-out or something and all sorts of memories came flooding in on top of me. Distant childhood memories of sunny, summer days. Memories of crowded streets, of huge crowds cheering me, periods of intense pain and euphoria, and of trying to sleep in freezing cold darkness on hard ground. But they where someone else’s memories, yet by the time I realised that, they had some how become mine. And I had some how become someone else, neither Celia nor Becky. Not anybody really. Well nobody that special. Or so I thought …
The End