The Forgetting Machine (13 page)

“Why not just download the entire Library of Congress into my head while you're at it?”

“I cannot recommend that,” Rausch said. “You might forget your own name, and that would result in too many awkward questions. The more memories I load, the more you forget.”

“Why are you doing this?” I figured the longer I could keep him talking, the better my chances of being rescued. Billy was out there someplace, and he must have seen Rausch arrive. Rausch hadn't said anything about the drone, so Billy must have kept it out of sight. What would he do? Contact his dad? The police? That would be the smart thing to do, but knowing Billy, he probably would try to rescue me himself.

“Why am I doing this?” Rausch chuckled in a not nice way. “Why does the sun rise? Because it must. And why should I not receive credit for my accomplishments?”

“But what are you going to do? I mean, your machine isn't much good if people have to forget as much stuff as they remember.”

“That is where you are wrong! Forgetting is underrated. You must have seen things or done things that you would just as soon forget, yes?”

I thought for a moment. There were a few things, like the time I threw up on Danton Wills in biology class, and the time I accidentally killed my goldfish by giving him too much fish food—or maybe it was the gummy worms. But I wasn't going to admit that to Rausch.

“I like
all
my memories,” I said.

“In any case, you don't get to choose. Your new memories will simply replace whatever you were thinking in the hours before downloading the new memories. The more complex and lengthy the introduced memories, the more you forget. If I were to give you, say,
War and Peace
, you would forget this conversation, and whatever you are thinking about right now, and probably everything you experienced or thought for the past twelve hours. But if I downloaded, as you suggested, the Library of Congress, you might forget how to breathe.”

“That seems kind of random,” I said.

“I'm still working on selective memory extraction. Such a technology would be tremendously useful. For example, if a man commits armed robbery, instead of sending him to prison, one could simply erase his memory of having committed the crime. There would then be no need to punish him. It would be as though he had never done it.”

“The people who got robbed might disagree.”

Rausch shrugged. “They remain robbed, but the person who did the robbing becomes innocent.”

“That doesn't seem exactly fair.”

“I'm sure such minor details will iron themselves out. In the meantime, have you decided what you want to remember?”

“I'm thinking about it.” I looked at the machine. “Obviously this is a brilliant, amazing, innovative, and incredibly valuable invention—”

“Thank you.” He smiled a real smile. “I am, as you may have noticed, rather proud of it.”

“I hadn't noticed—you seem so modest.” Was I laying it on too thick?

“I try not to be too boastful,” he said. Was he
blushing
?

“How does your machine work?” I asked.

“Ho-ho, wouldn't you and everyone else like to know!”

“I
would
like to know,” I said. “I mean, since you're going to wipe my memory of today anyway, it won't matter if you tell me, right?”

“True,” he said, stroking his wispy, almost invisible goatee and looking lovingly at his REMEMBER machine. I looked past him out the window. A familiar dark shape rose into view, with my cell dangling from its underside by a scrap of tape.

I
. You could read about it in . . . oh, never mind.

“REMEMBER works by altering existing memory engrams,” Rausch said. “New information is implanted by flooding your brain with packets of trinary infocicles.”

“Is ‘infocicle' really a word?” I asked.

“I made it up,” he said proudly. “REMEMBER is so revolutionary it demands a whole new language. For example, the altered engrams are known as rauschions, and the memory insertion process is called rauschination, and the headset above you is the Rauschinator.”

“It looks like a bike helmet.”

“It was once a bicycle helmet,” he said. “Now it is a Rauschinator.”

“That's brilliant,” I said. “Tell me more!” The drone was still hovering outside the window. I wondered how much Billy could see with that cell phone camera. Could he tell I was strapped to a chair?

“Why not? You will forget your visit here, which will be very convenient for both of us. As I mentioned before, the system targets your most recently formed engrams.”

“Then how come Billy forgot
me
?” I blurted. “You loaded him up with all the American history, and he forgot I even exist!”

Rausch stroked his goatee. “That is interesting. Does he not remember you at all?”

“No.”

“In addition to recently formed engrams, REMEMBER targets extremely active engrams. He must have been thinking about you intently for those memories to have been overwritten.”

“He was thinking about
me
?” I said. I have to admit, that gave me a romantic sort of buzz—right down to my toes. My eyes flicked to the window; the drone was gone.

“Apparently. Was he in love with you?” Rausch asked.

I wanted to shout,
HE'S STILL IN LOVE WITH ME!
But I forced myself to remain outwardly calm and said, “So are his deleted memories just . . .
gone
?”

Rausch smirked. “I am not a monster. Billy Bates's memories are secure.”

“Then where are they?”

“You will soon find out.” He turned back to his computer and scrolled through a long list of files. “I have
War and Peace, Moby-Dick, An Introduction to Quantum Physics
. . . ”

“What about
Charlotte's Web
?” I almost had my left arm free.

“I'm afraid that file is not large enough for our purposes.”

“I saw your client key,” I said. “Are those all the people whose memories you changed?”

“Yes. Mostly ACPOD employees who were becoming too familiar with my work.”

He stood and made an adjustment to the Rauschinator above my head. “I should probably shave your head for best contact—”

“No!”
I shouted.

“Relax,” Rausch said. “It is not essential, and we wouldn't want anyone to wonder what happened to that orange mop you call hair.”

“It's not
orange
; it's almost-but-not-quite red. And it's not a mop.”

“In any case, it will present no difficulties. The system has several layers of redundancies.” He lowered the Rauschinator onto my head. I felt several sharp, cold pricks. I looked frantically at the window, hoping to see Billy's face, or even better, a SWAT team. But there was only blue sky. I did, however, hear something scratching at the door—probably Gertrude.

“Since you have expressed no preference, I think I will gift you with the entire text of
The Iliad
, in both the original Homeric Greek and the Fitzgerald translation.”

“Wait!” I had no idea what I was going to say next. All I could think about was the Velcro straps holding me to the chair.

“Yes?”

“Did you know that Velcro was invented by a dog?”

That got his attention.

I said, “This guy was walking with his dog, and the dog got into some burdock—you know what burdock is? Those burrs that stick to anything?”

“Of course I know what burdock is!” Rausch said.

“Yeah, so the guy was looking at all the burdock stuck to his dog, and he saw that they were covered with these tiny hooks, like thousands of tiny flexible fishhooks. And he thought maybe he could make artificial burrs that would stick to artificial fur.”

“Then it wasn't the dog who invented Velcro, it was the man.”

“The dog brought it to his attention. You should never underestimate a dog. Your dog Gertrude, for example, is quite intelligent. I can hear her outside the door right now, scratching to get in.”

“All in good time,” Rausch said. “Pay no attention.”

“You want to know something else about Velcro?”

“What?” Rausch snapped. He was getting irritated by my delaying tactics.

“Each little plastic hook on its own is weak. It's only because there are so many of them that it holds. Each little hook is like a—what did you call it?
Engram
. Like each engram is nothing by itself, but a bunch of engrams together makes a memory, right? So if you lose a few engrams, the memory gets fuzzy, but you don't forget it completely until you lose them all.”

“Simplistic and crude,” he said, “but somewhat correct.” The scratching at the door was getting more frantic.

“Gertrude
really
wants to get in,” I said.

“She can wait. We won't be long. Now, you have one more decision to make. Goat, or Yorkshire terrier?”

“You're going to give me a pet?” I said, confused.

“Certainly not! I'm asking you to choose a receptacle for your memories.”

I didn't understand—and then suddenly I did.

“You put the deleted memories in animal brains?”

“Precisely. Digital media does not work—I have tried it. But the higher mammalian brain is sufficient to hold several months worth of fresh engrams. These four creatures all have excess space in their craniums—more than enough space for your trivial memories.”

I was rendered momentarily speechless. For a few seconds the only sound was that of Gertrude clawing at the door.

“What about Gertrude?” I said, hoping to buy more time. “She seems to want to come in.”

“It's getting close to feeding time,” Rausch said. “But never mind that. Now choose. Goat, or Yorkie?”

That gave me an idea. “Dog food!” I yelled. “Cat food! Goat food! Treats! Din-din!”

The goat unleashed an ear shattering bleat.
“Feed me!”
it said.

“Food,”
said the cat.
“Food! Food!”

The spaniel whined. The goat bleated. Gertrude took her scratching up a notch. The Yorkie began barking frantically.

“Now see what you've done!” Rausch said.

“Sorry,” I said. “I just love watching animals eat.” The goat was butting its head against the front of its cage, and the spaniel had begun to howl.

“All right! Settle down! I'll feed you!”

That only intensified the cacophony. Rausch glared at me. “I should download the entire Internet into your meddling brain and funnel your memories into a rat!” He got up and began to feed the animals. I couldn't turn my head, but I heard the rattle of food pellets falling into a metal tray. The goat stopped bleating; the dogs and the cat increased their demands. I used the distraction to work on the straps. The Velcro was loosening one little hook at a time. Unfortunately, there were thousands of them. I could almost pull my left hand free.

Rausch fed the two dogs next. That really irritated the cat because, as all cats know, you always feed the cat first.
“FOOD! FOOD! FOOD!”
The little speaker on the cat's collar sounded as if it was about to blow.

My hand popped free. I reached over and tore open the strap holding my other arm. My plan—I always have a plan—was to grab Rausch's Projac off the bench and zap him. It was a good plan, but I'd forgotten about the headset clamped to my skull. I tried to lift it off, but it was firmly attached with dozens of small, sharp points digging into my scalp. I was feeling around for some sort of release button or lever when Rausch grabbed my hands and pulled them away.

“What do you think you're doing?” he shouted in my face.

“FOOD!”
the cat demanded.

I kicked him. It was a good hard kick, but it glanced off his hip. He forced my arms down, reattached the straps, stepped back out of range of my feet, and grabbed the Projac.