Experience

The clinic was blank. It felt empty wherever you looked, though John could only look at the ceiling right now. There, the tiles were white, as was the light shining down into his eyes through a hazy puddle of tears. A globe-shaped, black  security camera watched him from the corner like some kind of floating pupil. Though he couldn’t remember exactly how many, he had had enough engram extractions to know that you were not supposed to move your head at this point. If he did, he recalled, he would see white walls, a white floor, the white lab coat of the Engram Extraction Practitioner, and a white tube protruding from his eye socket that, through some miracle of science, was sucking the memories from his brain. 

“Focus,” the Practitioner said to him in a practiced, flat voice.  “Bring yourself back to the memory. Recall the smells, the sounds. Look around. What happened next?”

The smell brought him back: mint. His nose tingled with the scent of mint. John was crowding into the venue through a cramped hallway with dozens of strangers. Though multicolored lights danced like a kaleidoscope on walls throbbing with music, it still felt dark. The mint burned his eyes. He remembered thinking to himself, I have to remember this. He and the dozens of strangers opened their burning eyes wide to soak it all in. He remembered watching them and wondering if he blinked as sparingly as they did. 

No, they don’t like that. I have to experience this. He remembered paying the doorman and thinking, this memory better pay well. He remembered climbing the stairs, actually dark, mint replaced with the dull smell of piss, and entering the experience proper.

Then, in an instant, he didn’t. He couldn’t remember any of that anymore. He saw himself in a vacant warehouse-turned-nightclub experience, looking up at christmas lights spelling out “CARNIVALE DU FREAQ!” He remembered thinking how cheap it looked, how he probably wouldn’t even make back the cover charge at the Memory Clinic. He remembered standing there in the entrance and watching what was on offer. He remembered the man on stilts juggling strobing LED flash balls pretending to lose his balance and falling towards a group of girls, catching his balance and every ball at the last second. He remembered the cage dancer whose body rippled like water, making eye contact with a thirsty young man, drawing him closer and closer. He remembered the server in a full sized peacock headdress and little else delivering a tray of glowing shots to a flock of sweaty partiers. He remembered looking to his left and right and seeing others watching, soaking it all in, trying to remember. But, as if in a dream, he couldn’t remember how he had gotten there. For a moment, the whole thing felt so unreal that he wondered if it had actually happened to someone else. Then, he remembered the smell.

“Cinnamon” he reassured himself out loud before the EEP could remind him. Experience organizers always make sure the smells are strong to help with recall. He was back in the memory. He marched into Carnivale Du Freaq, each step dissipating behind him like mist in the wind.

Little by little, step by vague step, he remembered and subsequently forgot the whole experience of the previous night. Though the Extractionist did not betray much, he could tell that he wasn’t doing well. He may have remembered, but vivid recollection doesn’t necessarily make an experience valuable. Value comes from pleasure, novelty, and something the memory clinics call “nostalgia factor.” As he walked through his night at Carnivale Du Freaq, one of countless “Experiences” out there trying to turn a buck with hackneyed attempts providing novel pleasures, he didn’t particularly enjoy remembering it. He definitely didn’t enjoy being there. He couldn’t stop himself from sizing up the value of everything happening around him. Then, when he would catch himself not living in the moment, he would think about how he wasn’t living in the moment, which is also very much not living in the moment. This vicious cycle was punctuated by cheap spectacles which seemed familiar, though he couldn’t remember if he had seen them before. He couldn’t imagine why somebody would pay for this memory, but he never bought memories anyway, only sold them.

After the Extractionist removed the tube from his eye she was quiet, the kind of quiet where something was not being said quite loudly. He had done this many times before, thousands even. He never heard quiet like this.

“I know it was nothing special. I’ll just take the minimum.” he broke in. The Extractionist sighed. Then, she seemed to hold her breath as she spoke.

“I’m afraid I won’t be able to do that.”

“Why not?”

“There’s no minimum anymore.”

“Since when?”

“This morning. Apparently the market is oversaturated.”

“That makes sense.” John conceded. The Extractionist seemed relieved. John figured that the first people she gave this news to weren’t nearly so accepting. He briefly considered getting angry, but he didn’t feel it. He couldn’t remember the last time he did. He couldn’t remember the last time he felt anything really. 

“I can put this back in if you want.” She offered feebly.

“That’s fine,” John replied, “if it was worth remembering I’m sure you would have paid for it.” 

“Do you have any sexual experiences you’re willing to part with? We still pay the minimum for those.”

“Unfortunately not.” John could sense she felt tremendously guilty, but he didn’t think she had any reason to.

“If you don’t mind me asking, do you have any other source of income?” she asked sheepishly, while glancing up to the camera in the corner of the room.

“No.” John noticed her kneading her hands together until her knuckles reddened. She sighed again.

“Have you considered doing anything else?”

“Not really.”

“What do you like to do?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, what do you do when you are not doing something just for someone else to remember it?” All he could come up with was a shrug and a shake of his head. The Extractionist looked pained. John wasn’t sure what kind of test she was administering to him with this line of questioning, but he was sure that he was failing it. “I think,” she choked out, stealing another miniscule glance to the camera, “that you may be a candidate for a new trial program.”

 “Here at the clinic?”

“No,” The Extractionist shot back firmly, “this is an outside group, completely unaffiliated with Memoryworks and all of its subsidiaries. While Memoryworks Extraction Professionals may provide referrals to qualified clientele, we are not responsible for anything that may happen between former clients and third party entities.” 

John thought that he should probably pass. He had heard of cases like his before, people becoming detached from experience. He knew about the training centers that taught people like him how to have quality experiences again. He knew about the medications that promised increased experiential potency with minimal side effects. He knew that Memoryworks provided both of these services, and he wondered why the Extractionist was not offering this to him instead of this mystery trial program. He wasn’t curious about it. He wasn’t afraid of it. But he did have one question.

“Does it pay?”

The address the Extractionist had given him brought John to an abandoned industrial district. As he walked through he felt a certain peace, like the whole neighborhood was a cemetery, and the abandoned smokestacks and silenced machinery were monuments to long dead souls and forgotten gods. 

He finally arrived at a colossal property covering a whole city block, wide and long but just a single story high. The mortar between its thousands of weathered red bricks had almost completely vanished. Despite this, the squat structure looked solid, like it had stood for 1,000 years and would for 1,000 more. John circled the perimeter and found no windows. The only interruption in the facade was a single, brand new steel door. John thought that it looked as heavy as all the bricks combined. He pulled the handle with considerable effort and slipped through.

The inside was no less decrepit than the exterior. A dirty tile floor of red and green motley creaked beneath his feet as he stepped carefully into the dimly lit lobby. The leather chairs that stood in what appeared to be an ancient waiting room were scattered and variously tipped as if their previous occupants had left in a hurry. On his left, a foggy reception window slid open.

“Welcome!” A jolly voice beamed from the other side. John turned to find a smiling bald man whose face was almost a perfect circle. 

“Hi,” John replied unsurely, “I’m here for the… uhh…” John suddenly realized he hadn’t been given a lot of information at the memory clinic and he hadn’t asked any questions except the one. 

“You’re in the right place.” The round-faced man’s tone was as bright and colorful as his blushing face. “We are so happy to have you. We can get right into it in a moment but first we need to ask a few intake questions. I apologize for the formality, but we want to make sure everything is right.”

“I thought you said I was in the right place.”

“You are in the right place but you also have to be the right person and this has to be the right time. Are you ready?” The round-faced man smiled with such warmth that John momentarily forgot to answer.

“Yes, sorry.”

“No need for apologies here. Question 1: what is your name?”

“Uhh, John.”

“Thank you, John. Question 2: What is your most painful memory?” John was surprised by the question. He thought for a second that it might be a trick. Surely they knew the answer, it was the same answer anyone would give.

“I don’t have any painful memories.”

“Of course, why would you? It is truly a time of miracles we live in, don’t you think? Wait, don’t answer that. That’s not one of the questions. I’m supposed to ask these in order. Question 3: Do you have any painful memories that you would like to have removed today?” John blinked. The round man whispered, “I know it doesn’t make a lot of sense but I am going to need a verbal response.”

“No.” John said flatly.

“Question 4: what is your most cherished memory?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Great.” the man said in a way that seemed like he meant it. “Now if you would just proceed into the exam room we can get started.” The man gestured to the left and John noticed for the first time that he seemed to be wearing some kind of robe, his sleeve flowing off of his arm like a waterfall. John looked to where he pointed and saw another door, a perfect match for the first.

“Over here?” he asked. The round face nodded vigorously and kindly.

As John walked away, the man called out, “Don’t forget to stop back here on your way out. If you don’t answer the outtake questions we won’t be able to get you paid.”

John gripped the handle and pulled hard like the first door. This time, he barely felt the weight at all. At the same moment, two more bald men in robes pushed through from the other side. They never stopped smiling as they led him into the next room and hooked him into the Extractor.

John had been hooked up to an Engram Extractor almost every day of the past decade. Nothing else felt like it. After the appropriate anti-inflammatory and numbing injections, the tip, which looks a bit like a flat head screwdriver, is carefully inserted between the eyeball and the orbital bone. The hose that is attached is carefully pushed and twisted through the ocular cavity and into the brain. John didn’t know what happened when they turned it on, but the feeling was like having to sneeze while your head inflated like a balloon. John was taken step by step through this familiar process and found himself once again staring at a ceiling. 

“We’ll be back to check on you in a bit.” One of the men said, although John didn’t know which one. He knew not to move his head at this point. He opened his mouth to speak but suddenly found that he wasn’t in the room anymore. He felt tears running down both of his temples, and then he felt nothing besides what the memories gave him. 

He remembered simple joys: hot coffee on a cold morning, home cooked meals, laughing with friends, a surprise party just for him. He remembered ecstatic sensations: runner’s highs, drug highs, sexual stimulation of every sort. His body remembered all of these simultaneously and repeatedly for hours. He remembered complex emotional satisfactions: victory, power, the achievement of long sought goals, the acceptance of well-deserved breaks, the look of trust in a lover’s eyes and the knowledge that you have the very same look in yours. He remembered feeling vulnerable, he remembered feeling proud, he remembered feeling empowered, he remembered feeling purposeful, driven and energized as well as cozy, warm, and lazy when nothing needed doing.

John had no idea how long he laid there and how long these memories were pumped into him, it could have been five minutes or five hours. He didn’t remember how he had ended up back in the reception area talking to the round faced man but there he was.

“How was it?” The face now seemed to glow like the afternoon sun. He could hardly look straight on it yet had to feel its warmth on his skin. “Wait, don’t answer that. I have outtake questions. Question 1: In reference to your experience today, would you do it again?”

John felt himself smile so big that his cheeks seemed to want to pull themselves apart. He giggled, “Yeah, I would say so.”

“Question 2: Do you have any memories that you would like removed?”

John shook his head slowly and deliberately. “No,” he beamed, “No, no, not at all.”

“Okay then. That’s it. Thank you so much for participating.”

“Thank you,” John said, dazed, as he turned to exit.

“Wait, don’t you want to get paid?”

“Right,” John chuckled, “I almost forgot.”

It was a week later when John came back to the clinic. Or whatever it was, he wasn’t quite sure what to call it. He had come back into that industrial graveyard to that endless brick wall of a building to the heavy steel door and pulled it with all of his force. It had taken him a week to forget. Forget might not be the right word. It had taken a week to come down. John still had the memory of the great cornucopia of pleasures he had soaked up like a fresh sponge last time he had come to this strange place, but he couldn’t feel it anymore. It was all distant, amorphous, like all of it had happened and it had been great but that none of it mattered one bit. They were images, flat, blank, and they no longer gave him any pleasure to recall. When he thought of them now, he just felt vaguely sick. So there he was, hoping to get juiced up again.

“Hello again!” The round-faced man greeted him with all of his usual glee. John found it quite grating this time though. He grinded his teeth together.

“Can we start the intake questions?” John said to the ground. 

The round faced man replied, “No need for that, that’s only for first timers. Please go ahead to–” John was at the door before the man finished his sentence and all hooked up within five minutes. In the moments before it turned on, he felt a small relief that his pain would be over. He was wrong.

This time, pain is what they gave him, and they gave him every kind. He remembered small annoyances: traffic, itchy clothes, uncomfortable chairs. He remembered all types of physical maladies: from hangnails to rashes to broken bones. He was shot, stabbed and beaten. He remembered pimples and pneumonia and flus and cancers. He remembered torture, war, starvation, dehydration, imprisonment. He remembered loneliness, humiliation, shame, guilt, fear, depression, aging, and dying, so much dying. 

He died in countless ways, repeatedly, all at once.

This time, he remembered how it ended. He came back into the room whimpering, his eyes stinging from tears. Nothing was glowing, he was not floating. He felt every heavy step as he walked back to the reception area. He felt his heart beating in his chest and his lungs rising and falling with every breath. When he stopped to talk to the round-faced man, he thought that this was the first time he actually saw a person sitting there. He saw the wrinkles on the man’s forehead, and the lines in his cheeks that emphasized his smile. He saw the stubble of his shaved head and the little scar just above his ear. He wondered what the man could see of him.

“Question 1: In reference to your experience today, would you do it again?”

“No.” John shot back. There was no need to think that one through.

“Question 2: do you have any painful memories that you would like to remove?” John looked around. I’ll remember this forever, he thought.  He looked at his hands, opening and closing his fists. He realized for the first time that he was alive. He looked at the man and knew why he was smiling.

“No,” he finally said, smiling back, “I want to remember.”