Vacant Memories

Alvin Isaacs, 32, lies in a hospital bed. The bed sits in a sparsely furnished room outfitted for patients recovering from surgery. Two windows along the eastern most wall and an assortment of beeping and booping machines all attached to Alvin in some manner adjacent to the singular bed in the room. The same bed Alvin has been confined to for the last 8 weeks. A deteriorating cancer has put his body into a coma, but now that is about to end. 

“Doctor I think he’s waking up”

A voice, a woman’s voice. He can hear it but can’t see who’s speaking. Endless darkness gives way to blindly light as Alvin opens his eyes.

“ Well hello there, welcome to the waking-world!” Another voice says.

This one is different, male possibly European. A blurry figure comes into focus. It’s an older man, balding mostly gray to white hair, and an unkempt beard. He wears a doctor’s coat and wire rimmed glasses. 

Alvin then asks the most logical thing to ask, “Where am I? Have we met before?”

“You are in a hospital, my own private actually, my name is Dr. Schroeder and this is Nurse Caldwell. You’ve been in a coma for sometime.”

Alvin takes a moment for his memory to wake up and recall who these people are. His eyes scan the room, processing as if seeing the world for the first time. 

“It’s an interesting place, the world, isn’t It?”asks the doctor, noticing Alvin’s curiosity. 

“Give it time you’ll adjust. Now I’d like to run some tests and see how we did here. It took quite a bit of work fixing you up.”

“What happened? Why was I in a coma.”

“You came to see me about 3 months ago complaining of headaches. We soon discovered a very aggressive form of cancer was eating away at your brain. Not long thereafter you slipped into a coma. We continued treatment while you were sleeping so to speak. And well it appears we were successful, wouldn’t you say Nurse?”

”Appears that way Doctor.” 

“What about you Mr Isaac’s, do you feel like a success!?” asks Dr. Schroeder

”I don’t know how I feel”

“Ah that’ll pass.”

The doctor begins a series of tests on Alvin. Among other things, lifting his arms in various positions. Answering general knowledge questions like what color is the sky, 2+2, even what his address is. Dr. Schroeder has Alvin get out of bed and walk around. 8 weeks of sleep has atrophied his muscles. A wobbly first couple steps but soon the messages sent from his brain telling his leg muscles go unhindered. He’s up and walking figure eights around.  

“ Well Mr. Isaac’s, your motor skills are optimal, your cognitive ability seems to be in fine working order, facial recognition may need some work.” Says a smiling Dr. Schroeder, like a proud father addressing an excited child.

Alvin is alone now back in bed, the tests took most of the afternoon and Alvin sits up with an increased feeling of suredness about himself.

Dr Schroeder comes in followed by Nurse Caldwell and someone new. A young woman, fair skin, attractive, dark hair curled at the end just down to her shoulders. She wears a pastel floral dress and has flowers in her hand. Her eyes suggest she’s recently been crying. 

“Ah Mr Isaac’s, you have a visitor.” Cheerfully proclaims Dr. Schroeder. 

The woman takes a step forward but hesitates as the look on Alvin’s face stops her. He has a look of uncertainty, fear. The feeling of confidence over one’s existence has passed, Alvin is back to feeling scared.

“I’m sorry have we met before?”asks Alvin 

The woman’s face sinks deep into her own fear of uncertainty. Both bring their attention to Dr Schroeder. 

“Oh well Mr Isaac’s surely you remember Sylvia, your fiancée?

Sylvia turns back to Alvin smiling a smile she hopes he will remember.

“Oh yes Sylvia…Sylvia Parks, we met 3 years ago in October. It was in a coffee shop, we were both reading the same book, Sirens of Titan……you love reading biographies and hiking…sometimes we hike together…You and I vacationed at Niagara Falls once…We drink wine together…you’re allergic to cats and cucumbers…and we’ve made love….numerous times.” He recounted these facts as if reading from a cue card. His eyes drifted off to a vacant space, as he listed the cold details of Sylvia’s life. 

Sylvia moves to the bed, takes his hand in hers. Tells him how scared she’s been and how happy she is that he’s awake. Alvin feels flattered that a person such as this is concerned for him. She tells him he loves her, Alvin was not sure at first how to respond. He looks at her blankly, but soon a smile develops. He is still unsure of his connection with this person but he is sure she loves him. The memories in his head all prove he loves her back but he is unable to find the emotion. The memories are vacant. As if he only witnessed the memories as one would watch a movie. 

The following morning, Sylvia is back with a fresh set of clothes for Alvin to wear home. Dressing in what Sylvia brought for him he had the sensation of wearing another man’s clothes. The distressing that a singular person can do to one’s own clothes over time is unique to the individual. The clothes become an extension of one’s self. To wear something broken in by someone else, well it could feel like putting on another person’s skin.

Alvin sat in silence for most of the drive. He looked out the window at the passing streets of their town. So many memories of bombarding his mind. Glimpses of past experiences pop in and out so quickly he can barely register them. As each memory pops and a new one inflates, his confidence of knowing himself only diminishes. Dr Schroeder said this will pass with more exposure to the familiar world. Instead with each new recall of a memory Alvin is pulled farther and farther away from knowing who he is. Faces are blank canvases until a name prompts the memory. He cannot discount the memories, they had to prove these events took place but he cannot shake the notion that he was not the one who lived them.

Sylvia breaks the silence with an honest yet broad question. 

“ Alvin, are you ok?”

“I’m sorry?”

“ It’s just you haven’t said much since we left the hospital. Are you feeling all right?”

”No…I mean..I have all these memories of you, of us, but I don’t feel that I actually know you.”

“ Well isn’t that all knowing someone is. A collection of memories. And the more memories you have the more you know a person.”

Well I suppose.”

”Oh don’t fret. You’re just groggy from the coma. Dr. Schroeder said your mind may be a little fuzzy at first but it’ll come around. We’re going to dinner tonight with Scott and Tabatha, surely your best friend will set you straight.”

Alvin sat with this for a moment. It made logical sense. He’d been asleep for almost 2 months, surely you are not your sharpest first thing in the morning and this is sixty times that feeling.

At Alvin’s apartment, Sylvia makes coffee in the kitchen, he sits on the couch. Sitting alone in this home of a stranger. Alvin can tell you the history of every piece of furniture in the room but yet he lacks a connection to any of it. He spies a few pictures on the shelf. He jumps to look at them. He picks up one, it’s a 5x7 of a man and woman aboard the Maid on the Mist ferry at Niagara Falls. The woman is Sylvia and the man, well he isn’t sure. He picks up another, this time Sylvia and the same man are feigning frowned faces with a foggy mist in the background. The frame reads “We got fogged at Mt Rushmore.” It occurs to Alvin that since he’s been awake he has yet to look at himself. He walks over to a small mirror on the wall. He examines this stranger looking back at him. A thought to ask “ Have we met before?” comes to mind but is interrupted before he’s able to say the words.

“Just as handsome as the day I met you”

It was Sylvia. She had two coffee mugs in her hand. She hands one to Alvin, He takes a sip and his face winces.

“ What’s the matter? Didn’t I make it right…don’t tell me your coffee order changed while you were asleep?”

“ Cream, 4 sugars…no, no it’s fine..it's just unexpected is all.” 

A knock at the door. Sylvia moves over to answer but before she does, the door is opened by a tall man, blond, clean shaven, tanned skin and styled hair, he wears a polo shirt and blazer with gray chinos, He enters the apartment with immediate energy

“ Where is he? Where’s the old boy? This new person excitedly asks

“My god they made you shorter?” Oh I’m just making fun, how you doing buddy?” This man grabs Alvin in a bear hug and lifts him off the ground an inch or two.

“Oh when Sylvia told me you were in a coma and it wasn’t looking good…well I just damn near had a heart attack or a stroke, one of them... I mean come on, not the old boy…that doesn’t happen to our Alvin, right Sylvia?

Alvin again finds himself in an awkward and mysterious situation. 

“Um, Have we met before?” He asked this stranger standing before him.

The stranger looks back at Alvin, he’s frozen without a response. Much like Sylvia in the hospital, the lack of recognition from a person you love so much hits you unexpectedly and you are unsure how to react. Sylvia felt shame and sadness, whereas this man took a different approach. As friends often do, he took this as a joke.

“ Oh what happened, that quack fry your brain? Huh, you playing a joke on your pal Scotty? You may forget your pretty fiancée but no way you’d forget your best and longest friend of 22 years, Come on Old Boy we’ve been through it all together.”

As Scotty says this, a slide show set at warp speed goes crashing through Alvin’s brain. Middle School. Summer camp. Little league. Basketball. Snowball fights. High school. Parties. Prom. College. More parties. Karaoke in bars. Bachelor parties. Best Man speeches, etc. Traveling through 22 years of time in a half a second. 

“ Oh yeah sorry, Scott, Scott…Kirkpatrick I’m just a bit brain fogged. The anxiety of new interactions is consuming Alvin when Tabitha goes in for a hug, he steps back and without hesitation asks

“ Have we met before ?”

Scotty intercepts before it goes any further. 

“Oh don’t mind him, Tabitha. It’s just this thing the Old Boy’s doing today. Now Sylvia on account this is a celebration and all, I thought it only appropriate to not wait til dinner but we head out to McLarens for lunch instead. The doctor didn’t say anything against day drinking did he?”

McLarens is a steakhouse, open in this town since 1909. The kind of place with white tablecloths and a bottle of Mclarens’ brand Steak Sauce on every table. It boasts a well stocked bar of over 100 bottles of whiskey and a damn fine martini. Alvin sorts through hazy memories of this place. Most of them involve Scotty and drinks. The foursome are seated and one by one handed a menu. The three captivated by celebration are unaware of the panic boiling over inside Alvin. The Maitre’d hands Alvin a menu, Alvin holds his look staring at his face. A look of fearful anticipation. Expectancy of an unfortunate outcome.

“Have we met before?” A frightened Alvin asks quietly.

“ Not formally sir, no.” He replies

As he is about to leave Scotty orders a bottle of champagne. As well as martinis for Alvin and himself. Alvin looks over the menu, attempting a guess at ‘what does Alvin order?’ He is able to read the words printed. Words like sirloin, filet, peppercorn. But they are meaningless to him or to be more accurate they were emotionless. Reading each item he felt nothing, no hunger, no disgust, no nostalgia. He is unable to recall a specific memory attached to any of these words. He remembers eating steak. He’s smiling in the memory. But which steak? Ribeye? Filet? Hangar? Does Alvin get sides?

Scotty deflates the panic momentarily by suggesting they split the porter house “as per usual”. This is not enough to quell the panic fully. This world is too overwhelming. There is so much to take in, too much remember. 

“Here you are sir”

A voice from behind him, who is that? He turns and half gets up from his seat. The weight of uncertainty is anchoring Alvin. “Have we met before?” He cries out at the waiter carrying a tray of drinks. Not waiting for a response Alvin leaps from the table. Scotty gets up as well, to try and calm his friend.

“ hey, Old Boy, come down…it‘s just our drinks.”

“Oh yeah, a Martini? Is this what Alvin drinks huh? Well I’m not Alvin and I’m certainly not Old Boy!” Alvin’s panic is spilling out into the restaurant. He‘s louder, his actions more manic. “ Who are you people? Who am I?.”

Sylvia gets up to go to him. He pushes her away. 

“ No no, get away from me you’re not real…none of you are…you’re just memories in my head, actors in the movie of my life played on a loop!

Alvin is stumbling away from the table and crashes into another. A heavyset patron tries to help him, Alvin stares into his eyes, “Have we met before”? 

Alvin pushes off from this table over to another.“HAVE WE MET BEFORE!” Two stunned ladies enjoying their shrimp cocktail just quietly shake their heads. Alvin swings to another table and another “HAVE WE MET BEFORE?” 

“HAVE WE MET BEFORE?”

“HAVE WE MET BEFORE?!”

His manic hits a fever pitch and Alvin crumbles to the ground in a flurry of tears. The restaurant is stunned silent due to the episode they just witnessed. Sylvia shakes from her catatonic state and rushes over to her fiancée. She gets on the ground and cradles him. He cries in her arms.

“ Take me back to Dr Schroeder…something’s wrong with me.”

The two sit Schroeder’s office having just recounted the day’s events. 

“ I haven’t felt like a person, Doc, since I woke up,I know you said there’d be an adjustment period but my god I’m not right, I don’t feel human.”

Dr Schroeder looks at his patient with a face of disappointment rather than concern. Curiosity and dissatisfaction rather than empathy. 

“Well there may be a reason for this Mr Isaac’s. You see, you aren’t entirely human.”

“What in the hell do you mean doctor…not entirely human?!?

”When you first came to me and I knew immediately there was no hope. The cancer was eating away at your brain faster than I could treat it. Your brain was dying, and without the brain the body has nothing to control it, nothing to tell the heart to pump or the lungs to breathe. But if I could replace your brain, replace it with something better. I theorized it was possible to transfer human consciousness from a person into a piece of technology. An artificial brain. A radically advanced supercomputer embedded with a state of the art intelligence. A brain capable of superior problem solving, faster computation, instant recall, no deterioration from age or disease. You may not be totally human Mr Isaac’s oh no you are something more, something unique, you are the future!”

THE FUTURE! UNIQUE! I have memories but no feelings about them…I’m living in a world surrounded by strangers! I look at Sylvia.. and don’t know how I’m supposed to feel about her. Am I to love her? I don’t know what love is!

The revelation has crippled Alvin, the anger subsided and anguish sets in. He may know the truth but he’s farther away from knowing himself. He wipes tears from his face and pleads with the doctor to help him. Change him back, or take the memories away, anything, but not this.

“ I’m sorry Mr Isaac…there’s not much I can do at this point. I see the flaw in my work now. I was able to add every bit of you into this new brain with the exception of the ego, the soul if you will. The sense of self. All logic and reason but no ability to love.”

The shock of all of this is too much for Sylvia. Tears burst from her eyes just quickly as she sprints out of the room. 

Alvin gives chase but she ignores his pleas to stop. She runs out the doors onto the sidewalk, pushing through the throngs of pedestrians, right into busy traffic. Alvin arrives a second too late to stop her but in time to witness the woman he can’t feel love for, struck by one car, and then another. Dr Schroeder arrives behind him only seconds later.

 “ Quickly” he says ”We must get her inside.”. 

Hours go by and Alvin has fallen asleep on the couch in Schroeders office. It’s early morning when the doctor comes back in, exhausted, he tells Alvin the operation was a success. Alvin asks to see her, the doctor leads him to her room. Which only a day ago was his.

He goes over to her bed, her head bandaged. He grabs her hand and squeezes tight. Her eyes flutter open and she looks up at him and asks “Have we met before?”