I frowned. Something bothered me but I wasn’t sure what it was. The feeling was like when you’re sure you’ve forgotten something but cannot remember what, and I couldn’t shake it. I spooned some raspberry jam onto a piece of croissant and popped it into my mouth. I felt fidgety. I picked up my Devstick to thumb the Dev again, keeping the volume down. The image changed and I was watching a roundup of global news.
The restlessness grew and suddenly an image of a stark room flashed in my mind. It felt like a dream, only I knew this wasn’t a dream. With those, if I focused, I could recall the remnant images. With this, when I tried, the images hovered just out of reach. I flicked the Dev channel back to messages and scanned the received list again.
I opened it again, and it said the same thing. ‘Jonah, Jonah, wake up’. That was it, the sender a series of numbers and an @ sign that made no sense. It was weird. Another flash hit me with searing clarity: throwing up into a recycler, a golf cart in a tube. I pressed my fingertips into my shut eyes and smoothed out over my eyebrows, pulling taut skin over my cheekbones and down my jaw, breathing deep. It wasn’t from a dream. They were memories, recent memories. Mariko gave a little snore, bringing me back to the present.
I picked up the cup of coffee and walked silently to the sliding door to the deck. Knowing the right side opened with a loud squeak, I swapped my right hand for my left to hold the coffee cup and opened the left side of the clearfilm door on to the deck. Closing the door behind me, I turned and went to the railing, leaning on it, looking out to sea. The midday sun beat harsh on the sand turning observation into a squint, the blue green of the sea easing the glare from the strip of white sand. The gap between the sea and the house was narrow with the morning tide fully risen. The sundial I’d made from a circle of wood found beside the house and mounted on driftwood showed the sun was at its zenith.
I pinched the bridge of my nose and shut my eyes to blackness, swarms of red, a new image. A white room. A naked man sitting on a Biosense. Jibril. Gabriel. The runner. My brother. The thought punched me in the stomach and I threw up the coffee over the railing into the hot white sand. I stared at the spew of coffee as I wiped my mouth and sniffed. It wasn’t a dream.
I turned to reenter the house but seeing Mariko lying on the floor, froze. The runner Gabriel was my brother. Somehow I knew that was true, and then another memory. A loud laugh, Gabriel sitting on a sleeper talking to me.
How will she react? I couldn’t begin to guess. I hoped favorably — that is she’d believe me and help me. Help me for what? I couldn’t trust my mind. What had seemed real was not, and reality was being displaced one chunk of memory at a time. One chunk of memory at a time, where had I heard that? Gabriel had said it, on the Moon. The sun beat viciously down on the top of my head. I walked across the deck and slid the door open, it protested with a loud squeak and Mariko woke, coming upright, shielding her eyes from the glare and looking at me from under the shadow of her forearm.
I walked over to her and sat down, leaning my back against the edge of the sleeper.
She said, “What’s wrong? You look like you’ve just seen a ghost.”
I leaned my head onto the sleeper and, staring at the ceiling, groaned. My head hurt. It felt as if my brain had swollen and wouldn’t fit in my skull, pressing against the sides. I brought my hands up to my temples and pushed in on both sides with knuckled fists, groaning again. Another memory came. Gabriel sitting on the sleeper opposite me, talking, and this time the images came with sound. Gabriel saying, ‘It isn’t as bad as it sounds. At the beginning you will think that you are remembering a dream, but over the course of a couple of hours, the details of the dream will be filled in with ever-increasing clarity. Your mind will return again and again to the little reservoir of information that I’ll plant and the signals, travelling from the outback of your brain, will come in ever-larger memory chunks, until you will reach the moment where this description will be relayed to you word for word, complete with the images of me and this room’.
“Jonah, Jonah, what’s wrong? Talk to me.”
The pain disappeared as quickly as it had come. I dropped my hands to the floor and looked at her.
“I’m OK. It’s all right,” I said, and reached up with a hand to stroke her cheek. She made to kiss me, but I held her off with my hand dropping to her chest and pushing lightly. “No, no kiss, not unless you want to taste vomit.”
“What, you threw up? Is it a hangover or what? You hardly had anything alky last night.”
“It’s not that. Look we have to talk, but let’s go for a swim. OK?”
“What, now? It’s midday, and way too hot.”
“Come on, trust me. It’ll be fine. Just follow me. OK?” I got up and, taking the wrap off, put on the swim outers that were lying on the bed. Without saying another word I picked up a waterproof Devstick I had and headed outside, walking down the stairs and onto the beach. I strode quickly over the hot white sand, a glance over my shoulder showed Mariko following, and I dived into the sea.
I was stroking hard in a crawl for the cliff that marked the southern end of the bay. It was about two hundred meters away from me and I had a good lead, but she was the stronger swimmer and she caught me up as I was nearly at the cliff. The waves slapped against its base. She stopped and treaded water. I kept going and then when nearly at the cliff I dived.
In front of me, through the sunlight-filtered green water, I saw that the blunt black edge of the cliff stopped short of the bottom. I dived for the gap that was about a meter wide. Coming up through the gap into a small cave, I climbed up onto a rock. I unfolded the Devstick in front of me, the white light from the screen guiding Mariko to me. She pulled herself up the dry rock face and sat down on the ledge, leaning against the smooth dry rock wall. Marks on the wall indicated that it was man-made or at least enlarged by someone.
“This place is amazing. When did you find this?”
I held up a hand while I caught my breath and panted out, “The first day we moved here, when I went for a walk. I wanted to see what was around the corner of the bluff. It was low tide. I saw the top of the gap and went to look. When the tide’s low you can just see the top of the entrance but you have to be looking for it.”
“OK, so what’s this all about?” Mariko asked, taking deep breaths from the exertion of the swim and holding onto the edge of the ledge. With both hands pushing down, she moved her bum further in.
“When we came up here, you told me what had happened on the Moon. You told me that you couldn’t live a lie, not with me, right?”
“Yes, right, and so?” She said this with a defensive tone in her voice. She’d thought the subject closed and forgotten, and now here it was again, with all the insecurity attached reloading in pallets on her heart. I saw the look and reached out to take her hand, cutting through the light of the Devstick.
“No, this time it isn’t about you. It’s about me, and what happened to me on the Moon, and it’s about what that means to you. I came here because I am scared and what I have to tell you places both of us in extreme danger, the kind of danger where you lose your life or get mind-wiped. Before I continue, let me ask you, do you really want to hear this?”
“Jonah, right now I could have your seed fertilizing me. Of course I want to hear it. Good or bad, in my world you come before everything.”
I smiled at her statement and squeezed her hand. I took a deep breath and blew it out hard, drawing my legs up to sit cross-legged beside her, the Devscreen a block of white in between, backdrop for my hand holding hers. “OK, what happened on the Moon was caused by what happened on a Thursday in December on Earth. It was the 5th of December, in the morning.”