Unreliable Memories

Memory used to be my “superpower.” I could close my eyes and rattle off any facts or trivia I had learned at any point in my life, almost always as though I was reading straight from the source I had gained said knowledge from. I would astound my parents’ church acquaintances with my ability to accurately quote scripture from any holy book, needing only to know the general topic before spieling off with the exact chapter and verse they were looking for. And I aced every standardized test the teachers could set in front of me; especially helpful when I was pregnant, high, and trying to get my GED. In a world of lies, misinformation, and “fake news,” my memory felt like the best asset an autistic adult like myself could have. Unfortunately, I wasn’t the only one who saw my memory as a major asset; and the others who did, had no qualms about treating it like every other asset they have ever acquired. In other words, they used and abused it until it was no longer working properly, then they tossed it aside with the other garbage. Not really shocking, I suppose, to be used then disposed of by one’s government; still feels like a slap in the face when it happens to you, though.

My memory issues are somewhat difficult to explain, but I will try my best to give you the run-down. You might be familiar with brain damage from traumatic brain injuries, or strokes, or seizures. Maybe you knew/know someone with dementia or Alzheimer's. Those disorders are, sadly, more straight-forward than what I’m dealing with. (Not to imply that these disorders/disabilities are straight-forward, or easy to deal with! Just far more well-known than what I am currently going through.) My memory isn’t spotty, I’m not confused about what year it is or who my loved ones are. I’m not a danger to myself, my confusion is not likely to lead me to wander unfamiliar streets thinking I’ve found my way back to a home that no longer exists.

My issues are more along the lines of; was my childhood the one spent with 8 other siblings in a 1 room shack with a dirt floor, in a neighborhood so awful the cops wouldn’t even drive past it? Or was it the one where I grew up in a mansion, summering in the Hamptons, skiing in the Alps? Was I the refugee from a war-torn country, bullied for my accent and lack of cultural knowledge? Maybe I was the average, all-American child, who went to summer camps and applied for scholarships and student loans; maybe my childhood was nothing like any of these experiences.

You see, my memory is still as strong as ever; I just have too many lifetimes of experience strolling around in there. And none of these experiences feels fake, or enhanced, or anything. They all feel equally real, equally mine. Maybe because there are certain threads that seem to run through each set of memories, marking all of the experiences, indelibly, as mine. For example, every single lifetime contains a government agent recruiting me for a new project; each time, due to said agency hearing about my unrivaled memory capabilities. Every childhood I can recall, included religion as a major portion of the family culture. These, and other minor similarities, seem to suggest that there must be some kernel of truth in all of these memories, but there’s just no earthly way I could have had 15 different childhoods!

Okay, I’m breathing normally again, and now that the panic has subsided a bit, I think I know how to start putting some pieces together. I woke up this morning (in my house? A stranger’s house? Where even am I?) and saw a huge, overstuffed manila envelope sitting on the nightstand. I was so concerned about the number of childhood experiences (and entire lifetimes) bouncing around my brain, I didn’t bother to start trying out my short-term memory. My last memory from any lifetime in my head is being recruited by the United States (or equivalent country, depending on timelines) to be a part of a time-traveling project. Well, experiment, really, but that wasn’t how they phrased it during recruitment. At any rate, I have no idea what happened to me during my time with them, and that overly full manila envelope seems like it might just hold some answers to all of the questions swirling around my noggin.

What’s that saying everybody declares when things don’t go the way you hoped? “Be careful what you wish for; it might just come true,” I believe is how it goes. Well, that cliche definitely seems to fit here. Five years of my life are documented in these files, but according to the newspaper on my doorstep this morning, closer to 10 years have passed since my conscription. Five years undocumented, aside from a minor note - “subject has missed 3 consecutive check-ins; assumed dead.” To be fair, it’s not like they would have had any way to find me, even had they wanted to; it just seems cold to have put it so bluntly.

Not that they were necessarily wrong, though, if I’m understanding the rest of this correctly. While I was brought aboard for time-travel, it turns out there’s more steps involved than just, “I want to visit precolonial North America.” In order to travel to a point in time that is not your current location, you have to find a place for your energy to exist. The universe abhors a vacuum, which is what would happen if you tried to introduce a brand-new energy out of nowhere. But, you also can’t just “swap out” energies; you have to hit a sweet spot of somebody matching your energy dying or (far less likely) also traveling through the space-time continuum. But they literally have to be in the process of dying/traveling, otherwise you have to find a different time. Which, I think, is why I have so many memories of so many lives - the people whose bodies I inhabited, and those who inhabited mine while I was out.

Then you have to factor in the reality that once you have traveled through time, you no longer truly belong to any time period. Even if you travel to the future, just by leaving your original timeline, you have irreversibly lost your place within it. So many things happened in the last decade, when I basically didn’t exist on this plane. I may never know if I even made it back to my original world, or just one that is remarkably similar. I think there are some minor differences, but how would I prove that they aren’t just things I’ve misremembered? And it’s not like I have anybody that I could bounce ideas/memories off of. All of my family and friends were notified of my death 10 years ago, when I joined the program. I haven’t exactly been making a plethora of new friends in my line of work, nor starting my own family, so I’m on my own now. The only people I even vaguely know are my latest handlers, and they aren’t exactly people you can just track down to reconnect with on a whim.

Where was I? Oh, yeah, trying to figure out when and where I am, if not who I am. Well, this timeline seems a lot like the one described in the most detail in my file, so I guess this is where I’m from. This house seems as though it was custom-made for me; knowing our government, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was, to try and keep me at least somewhat compliant. Obviously, they don’t want my story getting out; out of 100 fellow recruits, I was the only survivor, according to this paperwork. The house is 100% mine, no mortgage, no financing headaches. I will be getting a generous government stipend each month - more than enough to cover bills, expenses, and a reasonable lifestyle. I won’t be buying designer clothes anytime soon, but I can putter around the house without needing to try finding work, or assistance. That part is probably so they wouldn’t have to go through the hassle of providing me with a real identity.

And there’s the kicker. I can do (almost) whatever I want, but I don’t officially exist anymore. The bank account where my money will be deposited each month is listed under an old, old alias of mine (fine, a childhood nickname that nobody alive knows about), I have access to that account via checks and an ATM/debit card. I can’t open a social media account (they hack every single one I try to create), I’ll never be able to fly or travel internationally. I never have to pay taxes again, though! As though that can make up for literally having no life.

According to my files, I spent five years as an active operative. Meaning, for five solid years, I was hopping from timeline to timeline, reporting my experiences back to my handlers whenever I would “wake up” back in my own body. At the start, all of us were returning very regularly; after about a year, though, people slowly stopped “waking up” in our safe house. In that second year, maybe thirty people altogether stopped showing back up; after three missed check-ins, they would be presumed dead, their bodies disposed of. I vaguely recall hearing something on one of my check-ins about the disposing of seemingly alive bodies being a difficult pill to swallow, and maybe there’s a better way to be certain the person is actually dead before getting rid of the vessel permanently. I can only assume that this is what happened for me, since obviously I eventually got back here.

In the third year, everybody else disappeared; within six months, all the operatives that were still with the project had missed at least three check-ins. For the next year and a half, I managed to make all of my check-ins, for fear of not having a body to return to otherwise. I still don’t know for sure what kept me from checking in for almost five whole years, but I have been trying to put together what pieces I can from my file. Not that there’s much to go by here; each trip is kind of a one-time deal, given what it takes to get there and back. I didn’t expect any clues to lie in the intel I gave them from my destinations; I went looking for clues about my last handler/s.

Again, I didn’t expect to find much; ever try to look up a Secret Service agent? How about a CIA handler? Yeah, they don’t tend to come up on a Google search. Quite honestly, I would have preferred to find a fellow operative. Even if anyone else was still alive, though, I assume they would be as hard to find as my handler, or as I am. Since I no longer have an identity, or any social media presence, or really ANY online presence, the only people who would be able to find me would be whoever set me up in this house built just for me.

Right now, there’s one thing that I know for sure - somebody knows that I am alive, that I am here, and that I have a story. They have no reason to simply discredit a woman who is already dead; if I make my story public, they probably will just kill me. There’s also one thing they don’t know, though, and that might just save my story, if not my life. You see, one of the lives I lived, was a software developer by day, hacker by night. The past five years are starting to come back to me now: I know how to force my story onto every newspaper’s headline; how to make my story trend on every single social media platform; how to turn my story into an integral part of the current zeitgeist. All of this is triggered the moment my energy leaves this plane; they can’t even force me to travel anymore, or they lose all control of the narrative. I don’t need to find the mountain; I know how to bring the mountain to me.