“Why do you know so much about this?” asks Mer, now nibbling delicately at the point of a talon.
“When you’ve lived as many lives as I have, you learn a thing or two.”
But Sarya barely hears this argument because she’s hearing a different one: one from the past. Her mother’s face fills her mind, clicking in annoyance and exasperation. I do not remember, child, says Shenya the Widow. She must have repeated that phrase a thousand times, in answer to a thousand questions. Sarya never understood it: Mothers do not lie to Daughters, that’s what the proverb says, but how could her mother have forgotten so much? How could a mother not remember where her adopted daughter came from?
Unless…
She rolls the device over and rubs the corporate logo on the side. “They’re not my memories,” she breathes.
They’re something better. They’re everything she’s always wanted to know.
Sarya has now been in her quarters for eleven consecutive hours and she has discovered a fundamental truth: obsession, it seems, is the key to sanity. She knows that because in all that time, she has barely thought about Watertower at all. A hundred times, possibly. Maybe not even that.
Unfortunately, in that same time she has also developed a killer headache. The spot directly above her left eyebrow throbs with her heartbeat, and every time she moves too suddenly it instructs her sharply: don’t do that. She should probably sleep; she can tell from the softness of her room lights that the ship is deep in its night cycle. But how can you sleep when you are so close?
She sits on the lower of the two bunks, knees drawn up to her chin and arms wrapped around her legs. This is how Mother always liked for her to sit, in her nest, as she called it—see, and that is exactly the kind of memory she is trying to avoid. No. She is here now, in a bunk. She is now. She is alone, and she has no interest in useless reminiscence. She wants those memories, the ones locked in the Memory Vault. There it is, lying at the other end of the bunk where it was most recently thrown. She turned it to Network-only mode hours ago because the real light was annoying, but with everything off it looks small and black and naked. She moves, and its half-sphere of light snaps on instantly. It’s orange, still displaying its last error message.
[Identity: valid (Sarya the Daughter). Key: invalid. Please assume the mindset used to lock this device.]
Sarya has, over the eleven hours, extensively interviewed the sub-legal intelligence inhabiting this device. She has asked questions, requested sections of its manual, argued with it, shouted at it, and thrown its tiny indestructible self multiple times. She has learned two things. Number one: she was right. The memories aren’t hers. She’s gleaned from the errors and warnings that they are not even her species. Which fits precisely with her working theory. And two?
She knows how to unlock it.
Unfortunately, this second piece of knowledge is entirely theoretical. To quote [Section 51: Keeping Your Memories Secure], subpart 4, paragraph 1:
A double key is the only unique combination of identity plus mindset that will unlock a Memory Vault. In other words, to access the memories stored in a Memory Vault, the user must assume the same mindset that was used to lock the device in the first place. As mindsets can be difficult to reproduce, we recommend an extreme yet unique combination of emotions. To further improve key recognition, try adding a mnemonic phrase during the lock procedure (see [Section 12] for examples and other helpful tips).
What this means, both encouragingly and frustratingly, is that she was there when it was locked. Her identity itself is half the key. Which means, in turn, that she must have the other half somewhere in this useless hunk of brain. There is a mindset somewhere in there, a unique combination of emotions that only she can provide, but it is lost in the wide wasteland of her own mind.
She clicks the worst Widow profanity she knows, one her mother would have been shocked to hear, and jams the heels of her hands into her eyes. What is wrong with you, brain? Is it so much to ask, that you supply one simple little goddess-damned memory?
Of course, it’s more complicated than that and she knows it. Sarya has long realized that her memories are divided into three basic categories. The vast majority of them are the regular kind: memories of school, of neighbors, of unkind classmates, of long afternoons in the arboretum, of the exploration of the lesser-known parts of Watertower, that sort of thing. They’re not all pleasant, but they’re all very humdrum. Typical. Then, below that, there is a second category. These are pale impressions of…somewhere else. They are insubstantial memories, so delicate that she can’t even look at them directly for fear of destroying them. But they do not come from Watertower, she is sure of that. They are warmer than that, and louder. There is…well, if not joy, then at least something positive. But the third category of memories?
That’s the nightmare fuel.
Unfortunately, category three is nestled mandible-to-mandible with category two. This is the reason she has to watch her daydreaming, because you don’t dive too deeply into your childhood recollections if at any moment you know you could come across a horror. For example: start with a warm and flickering glow in something that looks like Watertower’s arboretum. Add a circle of intelligences around this glow, each one laughing and talking. Throw in an amazing, mouthwatering smell—and a very specific image of glowing bugs wobbling through air. It’s a wonderful image, and one she would love to dwell on…but then it goes and ends in blood. There are lifeless eyes, there is a deafening shriek that never ends, there is something cold and hard and chittering that drags her into darkness—
It only gets worse from there.
But it’s not as bad as it could be. She hasn’t awakened screaming for years now—well, almost a year. She’s not even afraid of the dark anymore—anyway, no more than anyone else. Surely that’s universal, though. Hasn’t everyone awoken, sweat-covered, from a broken sleep? And then lay awake in a cold blackness so complete that it’s impossible to tell whether your eyes are open or closed, trying not to whimper because of what happened last time? And then come to the horrific realization that a set of faceted eyes has been hovering centimeters in front of your face, watching you the whole time?
Isn’t that just childhood?
“You know, I didn’t have a childhood,” says Helper’s voice in her ears. “But if I did, I think I’d prefer it not to be like that.”
Sarya rubs her eyes. Apparently she’s been talking out loud again. “I don’t remember saying your name,” she says.
“Well, you never technically said goodbye last time, so—”
“And don’t you have some research to do?” she says. She can’t help it. Eleven hours of focus can erase anyone’s natural civility—more so if you don’t have a lot to begin with.