Jar

After the invention of the memory jar, a lot of people believed that it would give everyone the equivalent of a photographic memory. In a way it did, but not how they thought.

The jar is simple, and a lot like a home movie. It did allow you to extract a memory for storage. It did allow you to re-integrate the memory so that you could have it back. But what it didn’t do was keep the copy. The memory was either in the jar or not. You couldn’t remember it if it was in the jar. If you kept it in your head, then it had the same ability of fading and distorting as your other memories. the technology is amazing, but it isn’t perfect.

It makes my line of work a lot easier in some ways. Memories are now admissible as evidence. What is taken is like a hard copy photo, so as long as it is fresh, it is guaranteed to be accurate. I can watch someone do something, then pull the memory and give it to the client to use how they want. You want me to follow someone and keep tabs on them, then you will get to experience the end of the stake out from my point of view. If I need to go to court, I just deliver a jar and go on my way. Case closed and pun intended.

The jar came out expensive for something like six months, then the price dropped. Now, everyone has them and it is nothing to get them. Before long, people will have shared so many memories that you’ll have trouble remembering what you did and what you didn’t actually do. Whole industries have popped up around selling people memories of things they didn’t do. Doesn’t matter if you went on the vacation or not, you remember it. Good, bad, legal or illegal, memories are the latest thing.

Which is why I am in the trouble I am. How in the hell do you process this? I woke up in a nice, soft bed. Woke up on clean, fresh sheets in a comfortable room and looked over to see a jar beside me with the word murder written on it.

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Something Clever

I always thought I was clever. I figured out how to get things free and how to get in when I wasn’t supposed to. I did things I shouldn’t, but wasn’t the one who got caught. I was smarter than they were. I was clever.

When the spiders started crawling down the shelves, Tony and Sam freaked out. Marcus stayed with me and we finished loading our bags. A little hairspray and a lighter sent the skittering away. A few of them were even burning as they ran.

Tony was lying on the stairs two floors down. He was swollen and kinda purple.

He was also covered with em.

I told Marcus to check his pulse and one of the hairy little beasts dropped down on the back of his neck. He was spinning and smacking at it when he tripped on Tony’s leg.

I heard the snap when Marcus his the stairs. He was crying, his leg bent in three places, when I jumped over him. He grabbed for me, but missed. I glanced back and saw him throw me the bird but I didn’t go to help him.

The spiders were coming down the wall.

Two more floors and I started to hear screaming.

The big freight entryway was covered in creeping black dots. Some moved slow and steady, while others darted and zig-zagged around. The only thing they had in common was that they were all headed towards Sam. He was standing in the middle of the room, spinning in circles, smacking his bag down on the floor.

I headed the other way. Security system or not, I was headed out the front glass even if I had to smash through it.

I grabbed a chair from the receptionists waiting area and slammed it against the window, but it wouldn’t break. I tried another window and a door before the chair broke. I turned to grab another and stopped because it was covered in bugs. The freaking things were all over the room. They were crawling through the door, using the floor, walls and ceiling so that more of them could get in faster. There were so many of them that I could hear a hum from the noise of them walking towards me.

We weren’t supposed to have guns, it changed what we could be charged with if the cops showed up. Of course, I still had one in case one of the others thought he might be the clever one. I drew and aimed at the window. five shots into the glass and if it was bulletproof, I was going to put the other in me. I took a deep breath and fired.

Bulletproof, and the ricochet hit me in the hand. The gun went sliding over o the wave of legs and eyes that started slowing down. I looked around, thinking that they must have known I was trapped. I lunged after the gun, but fumbled it and had to back away when a monstrous brown one crawled on top of it.

I thought I was clever, but they were going to prove me wrong.

Together

In all the things we tried during those early days of our work, I had always held doubt as to the possibility of success. My rational mind could not fathom why muttering words and making strange shapes with your hands might allow you to channel some esoteric energy to change the world around you.

But she believed, and that was enough to keep me there.

We worked together. Spending our evenings on strange and alien research. We had no family, though not for lack of trying, and that was why we worked as we did. She wanted a family and I wanted her happiness.

The first time we achieved some repeatable result, the pair of us had celebrated for days. Our bodies fused as our shadows held hands and danced. We bound ourselves together in ways that most people didn’t believe were possible and because of it, we stood apart.

I believed, but we were still just the two of us.

She was pregnant when we tried to open the gate. She miscarried, lying on the basement floor. I wanted to hold her hand, but I was struggling to keep something black from walking out of a shadowed corner. By the time it was gone and I was sure she was safe, she had fainted. Her shadow was hiding underneath her.

I carried her to bed. Washed her body; changed her clothes, and mopped up the blood that was staining the concrete.

It wasn’t long before she disappeared.

The state called me, telling me that she was in the hospital. Telling me that she had attacked a free clinic and that she was now restrained. I sat in silence as she raved about what they were throwing away. I watched as my shadow tried to hold hers, but her own darkness punched and kicked at mine. I was holding her hand, but watching as her heart disappeared through a door I hadn’t closed. Part of her walked away and I wept.

I watched the long, dark shape reach out of the corner. I thought about leaving, about having my shadow hide from whatever it was, but I couldn’t. It grabbed my shadow and dragged it away as she took her final breath.

The color drained out of everything as I felt the cold begin to cover me. My final words were a prayer, to a god I didn’t worship, begging him to let us be together again.

The Machine

The machine was not as complicated as I had thought it would be. In my naivety I had imagined my vision to have required whole new fields of science to bring it to life. How could an idea as wild as this be possible in this day and age?

Now, I am working in an abandoned factory. I have an electrical bill that is due and I have no way to pay it. I must flip the switch before they turn off the power. I would have liked to have gone through the math again, but there just isn’t time.

I flip the switch and the magnets power up. The fields fight to establish themselves and in that invisible world where things overlap, it happens.

I can’t see any results, but I can feel it. The hair on my body stands up and goose flesh rolls over my skin in waves. The sensation is not pleasant. I feel sick and it is escalating much faster than I expected.

I flip the switch thinking that I have enough to go back to the university with my findings. I will be able to take my machine and demonstrate my success to those who shunned me.

My sensation of illness grows stronger. The gauges still twitch as they monitor everything. I move to the breaker.

The breaker doesn’t stop it.

It is when I am down on my hands and knees, looking for a way to shut off the power, that I realize what this means.

There are tears in my eyes. I sit there, watching the needles lean to the side and listening to the clicking of my geiger counter as it gets faster.