Love Lost

McKenzie’s eyes were sunken, shadows of exhaustion. His hands twitched where they gripped the table. Sweat streamed down his face, stinging his eyes. After three days of interrogation, he searched his mind and flung open door after door, only to find them all empty. Opposite him, a hulking man directed a spotlight (Thegor was his name). He rasped, “We’re running out of time. We can still help each other.” The man was deformed. His back revealed a grotesque formation of vertebrae creeping up his neck.

After noticing McKenzie’s taking in his vertebrae, Thegor’s eyes landed on McKenzie. There was a moment of tense silence before he spoke, his voice carrying a hint of weary resignation. “Do I offend you in some way?”

“No. I’m sorry.”

Thegor reached behind his neck and rubbed the vertebrae. “Earned in the 2049 campaign. Two medals in the American Theater." He was lost in his thoughts, until his body tensed, and he focused once again. "Now, let’s go over it once more. Have you been in contact with your wife? We’re tracking, and we KNOW the source begins with you. I promise you. Lead us to her, and all this ends. We both want this to end, do we not?”

“I’ve told you. I haven’t seen her in years,” McKenzie said. This was true. After his father’s death weeks before, he’d returned to the estate, now his. His father’s paneled library contained thousands of books, most leather bound, many collected from antiquities. He found a tattered photo on his father’s desk. It was of himself and his wife, Maria, taken on a crisp fall day. He was bracing Maria’s neck, as if leaning in to kiss her. Someone with a red pen had scrawled, Friday, Feb. 14, 2045—Valentines Day, on the image. The two of them were in Paris. Buttressed stone arms rose behind them holding a church, Notre Dame. And seeing the photo, he remembered he kissed her, and for a long time, and deeply. And why not? They were young, desperately in love, and it was their wedding day. He touched Maria’s cheek in the photo. I was twenty-two, he thought. Ten years ago. “Why did you leave me?” he whispered. His voice fell silent in the empty room, unanswered.

Thegor’s adjustments to the spotlight were exacting, like he’d been in this room many times. To Thegor’s right, another man fidgeted at a side table with a metallic device that looked like a glittering crown. He was wearing a red cardigan, a white dress shirt, necktie, and his manacured fingers fiddled with the electrodes on the front of a sparkling device. Red and blue lights skittered on and off, like living rubies, reflecting in his wire-rimmed glasses. “We’ve powered up,” he said to Thegor.

“Thank you, Doctor,” Thegor replied. He moved to slam both of his fists on the table, then stopped with his shaking palms spread wide. “I’m begging you. We know she exists because the emotion sensors lead directly to you, McKenzie. A simple question. Your wife, where is she?”

“If I knew where she was, I’d tell you.” His voice scraped against a dryness.

The room was silent for a long time, the crown's hum the only sound.

“Let me ask you. Did you love her?”

This is when you need to be on guard, McKenzie thought. Love was illegal, punishable by death. “Love is outlawed by the state,” he said.

“Yes. I know. I also had someone I loved once, before the war, before THIS.” He pointed to his back. 

The doctor leaned to the side of Thegor’s ear and held his hand so McKenzie couldn’t see. He whispered into Thegor’s ear, who slightly nodded.

They pulled apart, and Thegor’s hardened look fell once again on McKenzie. But something changed inside the hulking man, he relaxed, and his eyes slanted sadly with a light mist, as if betrayed by a best friend. “The doctor thinks you’re lying,” he said. Thegor pointed to the shimmering crown on the side table. “I’m sorry about this McKenzie. Show him the headset, Doctor.” 

McKenzie went back in his mind to the photo on his father’s oak desk. When he turned it over, there was a message. ‘Remember Love Poems’, was all it said. He and Maria had read the love poetry to each other so many years ago, the warm wind drawing white silk curtains across their bodies, their arms enteined. Remembering, his throat constricted. He knew the book was on the top shelf of the north walled bookcase. After sliding across the railed ladder needed to reach it, he removed Love Poems. As he did, a switch threw. A click, a whirring sound, and a wall of books slid open. A doorway led into a hidden annex, where he found row upon row of dusk covered books. Many were the same, one stack saying King James on the cover, another in script he didn’t understand. A label affixed to a shelf said, the Quran, another the Torah. Why hide so many books, and why were they mostly the same? He didn’t know, but what caught his interest most was on the shelf in front of him. It held dozens of letters from Maria to his father. He poured through them. Set to the side, wrapped in a loose red ribbon, was a postcard postmarked on their wedding day. The postcard said, “They’re close. Protect him.”

A light from the window bounced off the oak paneled bookcase. There was a pair of binoculars next to his father’s desk. Bird books scattered the desk. He chuckled inwardly, remembering the plaid Scottish outfits his father wore while birding. After putting the glass to his eyes, her peered into the night. A dark car pulled to the curb on the winding street in front of the estate. The car exhaled grey exhaust in the winter air. In the driver's seat was a glowing cigarette, a pulsating ember as the driver drew on tobacco. Was this the same car he saw last night? Last week?

There was a crackling noise as the power on the doctor’s device ramped up higher. “It’s quite sophisticated,” he said, his eyes admiring the crown. “An extender to The Firmament satellite array, the neuron probe crown concentrates the effect—for special needs, like you McKenzie. I like to think it’s similar to the sun on a magnifying glass. Not to bog down in the science, mind you, the device strips your memory, delightful in its efficacy. The electrodes are just placed—”

“And it hurts,” interrupted Thegor. “It hurts like you can’t imagine. Right, Doctor?”

“We’re still working on the nerve endings near the memory cortex. There are some disadvantages for the host, unfortunately. The device needs some work, yes.”

McKenzie knew The Firmament spanned the entire world with thousands of solar satellites. The result, since 2060, was wireless electrical power. There was no more need for fossil fuel, wind, nuclear, none of it. 

Thegor opened a manilla envelope, pulled out a photo, and placed it in front of McKenzie. “Your father,” he said. “I respected him.” 

In the photo, McKenzie’s father was clearly dead. His eyes were open but sightless, slumped in the same chair McKenzie was in.

McKenzie remembered: ‘Your father has had a heart attack,’ the voice said on his cell-phone weeks before. ‘You need to come home. I’m afraid he’s died.’ He heard the words and his heart broke. At that moment, he met a pain he’d never known, and an absence he’d never get over. And yet, slowly over the short weeks since his death, like a sentient being had burrowed into his head, the emotional pain dissipated, his love waned. He was being rewritten.

Thegor looked sadly at the photo. “You see, the neurons went a little haywire when we had a conversation. A simple question: Where is Maria? If he’d told us, there’d be no need to bring you in. He was stubborn, your father.” 

“Accidents happen,” the doctor said.

Thegor struck out at the doctor. He slapped him hard. “Accidents! You’re an accident!”

“I only meant—.”

“You only meant, exactly.”

McKenzie set aside his naivete. The array has another mission, he thought. The rumor was the power grid wirelessly re-wrote the neurons of the human brain, re-formatted new thoughts and memories. But now he knew The Firmament was rooting out emotion itself, and when found, eliminating it with both the array and the laws of the state. Conspiracy theories, he had assumed. But the rumors were true. His wife had been protecting him from the sensors, the sensors that meant the emotion of love could mean the reformatting of who you were. She had saved him.

Thegor opened his mouth and flexed his jaw. “But we’ve fixed the reformatting capability, have we not, Doctor?” 

The Doctor dangled in front of McKenzie the electrodes as if they were from a science experiment. “You see, McKenzie, the brain is only millions of chemical reactions wrapped in electronic impulses. Our satellites simply tap in, monitor, rewrite. At just twenty percent power, in what I call the sweet zone, we don’t NEED to convince you. We can simply TAKE your memories, the memories of your wife, your flawed emotions stripped away.”

“And rewrite them,” Thegor added. But then he rubbed his sloping forehead, itched the sweating vertebrate behind his head, and took a deep breath. “Sometimes I hate my job,” he said. “The things I need to do. I don’t want to hurt you, McKenzie. Destroy your intellect and leave you a vegetable? Who would this help? So why are you fighting us? By rewriting memories, we have a safer world. A trauma occurs, deadly disease, the death of a child. Doesn’t it make sense to write these incidents out of the human psyche? Isn’t emotion; jealousy, fear, love, all pathways to trouble? Why shouldn’t they be illegal, and if we were lucky enough, re-programmed?”

McKenzie thought: Your neurons are already being re-written, your memory fading? And now, with these men, you must hang on to your memories, who you are, and who you could be. What matters is doing something about it. What matters most is finding Maria.

 “What did it feel like? Love. What was it like, you and Maria?”

“It was illegal.”

“Yes. Yes. Against the policies of the state. I know. But what was it like? Tell me."

"It was life itself."

Thegor put his hand to his chin and stared at the concrete wall. He turned back. "So back to business you and I? One more time, McKenzie. Where is her terrorist organization based?”

“I don’t know where she is.” This was a lie. He felt he could lead them by instinct, even if he didn’t know why. “But if I did, I wouldn’t tell you.”

“Love, right? It makes no sense does it? So have it your way.”

The Doctor affixed the electrodes from the crown to McKenzie’s shaved head. He then set the crown on McKenzie’s head and adjusted it firmly. Thegor looked on as his breath quickened. “Is it on, Doctor?”

“I don’t have a clean connection on the frontal lobe,” the Doctor said, his hands shaking excitedly, his face going flush with the effort. “If I just re-attach to the red cable...here, I think…” 

“Stop!” Thegor yelled. He grabbed the doctor’s wrist and pulled him close to his chest, then twisted him violently and held him from behind. The doctor turned his head, facing McKenzie’. This is not supposed to happen, his eyes said. 

“It’s quite sophisticated,” Thegor said. “The device needs some work, yes?” He placed the crown on the doctor’s head. He fixed the electrodes, and then yanked the dial to one-hundred percent. There was a sound like the crackling of teeth splintering, as if the doctor’s molars were extracting themselves, ripping from his jaw. McKenzie could smell burnt silver, a bitter metallic on his tongue. Smoke exhaled from the doctor’s nostrils. 

Thegor let the doctor drop to the floor. “Run, McKenzie. Run. Go to your wife—while you can. While there’s still time.”

He ran. But as he did, his memory faded. Could he remember growing up? No. It was like he’d only been born as an adult. He flailed from one city street to the next, the traffic thick, the cafes crowded. People crossed the street to avoid this staggering man. Is he drunk with emotion? The idea of eyes watering, forbidden senses, was unacceptable. “Stop it!” they cried. “Emotions are wrong.” They nodded to each other. “Love is the worst.” One woman covered the eyes of her young daughter, protecting her from the sight of what no longer existed. Love was an illegal sin, a crutch for renegades and terrorists. As McKenzie ran, he searched his mind, and like shingles ripped from a storm, he could feel his emotions stripped one by one by The Firmament. He ran as if chased, the breath on the back of his neck. Concentrating, he could remember no further back than leaving for university. His father was shaking his hand. But what school? he asked, and soon those memories were gone as well. He ran with a void behind him, sucking his memories into non-existence, hungry to eat his outlawed emotions. 

And where was Maria? He could never forget her. He crossed the Seine at the bridge near the Notre Dame and fled down a stone street he guessed led out of the Île de la Cité—which led to Maria. Hours later, he staggered to a gate with Napoleon grillwork. Did he know it? He entered the lawn, which hovered in the periphery of where his imagination lay, but what would he find? What would he say? 

As if from a dream, he found himself at a grave, one among thousands. Maria Ellen McKenzie, Bn. June 1st, 2022, Dd. Feb. 14, 2046. He didn’t know who this was. Despite that, the warmth in his heart was undeniable, the source of which he couldn’t guess or know. It was a love untraceable and real, existing apart from synapses and chemical reactions. It had led him here, and it just was.