The Power of Forgetting (3 page)

Suddenly I was
aware of the room again. Hanson was sitting back white faced in his
chair; ‘Dear God!’ he said, ‘I’m so sorry Jared…. I never knew. It
was awful….’

I saw his ashen
faced shock, and realised that while I had been bombarded with the
results of Hanson’s experience in the Warren experiment; he had
just taken a shuttle ride through the dark into my mind as
well.

We sat there
for a minute looking at each other; for the first time, with some
real understanding. There crawling at the edges was the past, all
of it. I felt the ache in the left forearm; and realised, as the
rain streamed down the windows that I had been much more of a
burden to Hanson, than he had ever been to me. I had always had the
power to choose. And even if he did, he just didn’t know it, and
ploughed in deeper to the Bank Collective than any sane person
ought to do. It was only the fact that he believed himself to be
invincible that stopped him from crumpling. I wasn’t gifted with
that kind of egocentric capacity. I started to edge from the room.
I felt in the pocket to make sure the pen was there. A ghost. I
stumbled. Hanson picked me up. ‘Don’t....’ I said weakly; I could
feel the boiling of those same separate Andrew Hansons that were
walking around in the city somewhere. I was not that kind of
person. I was too dark in mood, too intense. Hanson wasn’t without
merit for knowing that much. I was sinking. Somehow… I found myself
on the other side of the door. Hanson was still in his office. Ten
minutes to start to forget…. Come on George. Will it mean I’ll be
able to walk out of here?

Jean held out
her hand as I crashed into her desk. The floor didn’t feel like it
was attached to me. I was lighter that gravity….

‘Jared!’

‘Look Jean…
just get me out of here. I have to get home…. right now.’

She guided me
to the lift in the out hall, ‘I’ll take you to the first floor. Go
out the back door. You’re on ground level there. Just cross the
paved area between the two buildings opposite. The bus stop is
there.’

‘It’s alright.
I’m not far away.’

‘Shall I call
you a taxi?’ she asked as I bent over groaning. As soon as the
doors were open I headed out of the lift towards the exit.

‘Shall I call
the others?’ Jean was being too worried.

‘No. I’m okay.’
I waved at her and skidded through the automatic doors. The fresh
air hit me and fat drops of rain, ‘I’ll bloody well walk!’ I
muttered. The rain had cleared the place of students and as I got
on to the main street I didn’t shock too many of the curious
onlookers. So intent were they is getting out of the wet.

It wasn’t so
bad. I felt as if I was swimming through the water falling out of
the sky. This was like the last time, but with a different cause.
Time streams are like taking drugs; they really, really make you
sick. Oh; and did I mention crazy as well? I had spent a long time
even before I went on the expedition trying to avoid this sort of
thing. I have a family that keeps its secrets well. But the one
thing that you cannot ignore is your own nature. My sister… my
older sister. She can control these streams of time. She is quite
adept at it. She warned me that I would find this a problem if I
didn’t face who I really was. She was so calm when I got cross
about that. Karis is… well just so matter of fact about it all. She
doesn’t get upset by things being bizarrely ordered in time and
space. She can accept that she lived in a time that was not the one
she should have lived in as a child. She is, to all intents and
purposes the most perfect example of her kind….

I get to the
street with my local shops on them. It’s pouring down now and I’m
soaked to the skin. I’m glad of this. Water calms things; it halts
things in their tracks. I turn my face upwards into the torrent.
But it is quite chilly all the same and being soaked is not really
any fun at all.

I’m inside at
last. It’s still raining. I’m lost in time. I can’t remember
getting to the main door and climbing the stairs to my flat. I make
a mug of tea. But I’m shaking too much to hold the cup. I sip it
stood near the kettle and then go and stand under the shower for
ten minutes. It’s a good job my watch is waterproof. Ten to four.
I’m wondering what happened to the intervening time.

I had lain down
on the seat cushions. I’m dressed in something warm, dry and
comfortable. I can’t get it straight in my head what I was supposed
to be doing about meeting Marcia. I think she said she was coming
here later. It’s all confused. I’ve got a try now with a whole pot
of fresh tea to work down. I feel a little better. I really don’t
know what effect this is going to have. I feel warm, yet a bit
chilled and rather swimmy in my head. It was truly, even on an
objective level, a horrible experience. Being more than one person,
at the same time! I have had all on just coping with being one of
me. And even so I remember different versions of the same event…
perhaps that is why I’m feeling ill and disorientated. I’ve got
travel rug that I keep for those times when It’s cold but I can’t
sleep. I’ve wrapped it right around me as I watch the rain on the
window.

There is a
warmth that shifts around into the body and the mind, when things
still. In the quiet afternoon the shadows dissipate. Since coming
home from the expedition; I’ve stopped going running across the
park and carrying on until I’m exhausted; and then to sit and wait
for the stillness to come back in. I was partly something Violette
said, and Marcia just bluntly announced that I will be doing what
I’m supposed to from now on. I wasn’t sure how to take that. Davey
didn’t say anything about it then. He just asked where I kept the
herbs and spices, and decided to invade the kitchen and cook
something. He seems to like writing notes out too. Notes to himself
I’ve discovered. I find post it type stickers left behind in odd
places. And they never make any sense at all. I have gathered them
up and given them back to him. Perhaps it’s the hope that someone
else’s way of accepting the new world they are faced with is more
successful than mine has been. But then again, I always had the
same difficulty, so nothing has actually changed; perhaps
irrationally I thought it would do.

Someone is
here. They must have been let in by another resident. I really feel
dire, and stumble to the door, hoping that maybe Marcia has brought
some of her ginger drink again.

‘Jared?’ Davey
stares at me likes he seen a ghost, ‘I’ve been calling you. What
happened?’

‘I…. do come
in. there’s time enough for recriminations later. But I went to see
Hanson.’

‘Oh? You did.
What did he say?’ Davey never ceases to trouble me with this
wide-eyed innocence. I thought it was a bit of a front, until I
realised he really is like that. But right now I feel strange. He
takes hold of me as something slips away. All the colours that
drained out of the sky are arguing with me in the room. Yellow and
bright green, and pinks that smell like exotic flowers. My vision
crowded out with impossible things like Escher’s staircases. I slip
downwards; Davey stops me from collapsing into a heap and sits on
the floor holding me firmly to stop me from cracking my head
against something as my back arches in a sudden rigidity followed
by going completely limp and a dead weight. He rolls me carefully
onto my side on the floor as my eyes roll and flicker and
consciousness splinters into weird pieces, and I dissolved into a
cloudy dream.

‘Jared… Jared…’
someone says my name softly. I can’t work out whom. There are still
little flutters of over bright colours trembling in the side aisles
waiting to gain some admittance to this world of muted
iridescence.

I find myself
on the settee and there is a tray on the small table. It has been
pulled forward and delightful strands of steam curl from the spout
of the pot.

‘I wondered
where that teapot had gone.’ I said weakly

‘Glad to see
you’re back with us.’ Violette lifts the teapot up and carefully
starts to pour. I try to raise myself up, but can’t.

‘What
happened?’ I ask her.

‘Perhaps I
should say what didn’t happen,’ Violette is looking at me in that
way that makes me feel about eight years old. Perhaps that’s why I
feel confident she is the right person to deal with all this mess.
Violette Rhodes, our personal physician. She is the only one who
can treat this type of malady. A rare condition, brought about by
mucking about too much with anomalous time distortions. “Time
Sickness” is what we rather uncreatively call it. I know I’ve gone
against her, and I think I might be in trouble. She is regarding me
with her cool appraising expression.

‘Tell me,’ she
said calmly, ‘why did you go and see Mr Hanson? Don’t you know that
this was not a good idea?’

‘I had to
know…. I needed to know.’ This time I’m up on one elbow and seeing
the room from another angle… the upright one.

‘Well, never
mind,’ she comes over and rearranges me so I can take the cup she
offers, ‘You are very much advised to not do that sort of thing
again. I am most…. concerned about your wellbeing.’

‘I’m
sorry.’

‘It is
alright,’ she smiles her sweet engaging smile that makes a person
feel instantly better, ‘Is there anything you might wish to
discuss?’

‘I saw Hanson’s
alter egos. It was pretty freaky. But he said he was sorry…. He saw
into my mind as well. But I don’t know if that was when he was
still drugged or not. I wondered if he would remember later what he
had sapped from me.’

‘Do you want
him to remember’ she asked me.

‘I don’t
know.’

‘Then perhaps
he will know nothing of what happened between you.’

‘But he is
different from before… it was really different.’

‘The leopard
has changed his spots?’

‘Maybe....’ I
said cautiously.

‘No one changes
tack on their life without a very good reason.’ Violette sipped her
tea in a very ladylike way.

‘Of course
not.’ I thought of all the other times I’d been taken in by
Hanson’s trickery.

‘Would you like
your friends to come back in now?’ asked Violette politely.

‘What time is
it?’ I suddenly felt confused.

‘Eight
o’clock.’ answered Violette.

‘Is that
morning, or evening?’

‘It’s evening.
And still on the same day.’

‘Alright.’

Violette stood
quickly and disappeared. I went to the window. I looked out towards
the western rim of the evening sky. There were colours there, pale
gold and the indigo edges of clouds, and that soft coral as the
light began to shift towards true twilight.

‘Where are
you?’ I whispered, ‘Find me…. Find me now. I’ll stop running….’ I
reached down into a little box. I took out a black cigarette, and
cracking open the window a fraction lit it with a match from the
small box I always kept there. For such moments…. when my mind
wandered into strange channels, I had felt more at home out in the
ice fields than I did now. I was wondering how long it would take
for them all to arrive back in the room. I heard slight noises.
There was a sound of conversation rising and falling, just on the
edge of audible. The leaves sang their own song outside my window.
They were talking about me. Was it rude? Was it concern? Out there
in the Cloud Field I had been their Captain…. Expedition leader,
after we had lost Hanson. That was partly Marcia’s doing. And then
again she was with me in the Summerland…. I had caved in then. I
wanted to stay away from her but I couldn’t…. she is “The One”. I
was seeing her in my dreams. I heard her laugh and I felt lighter
somehow.

I blew the
smoke out in a stream through the gap in the window. It was all
rather confused after that when we were in the mountain. There were
so many things layered onto each other, each one an island of
memory. Ironic that I should only find some peace in the one place
I was most afraid of. There at the edge of existence…. I had seen
my friend killed. The stuff of nightmares! But now I saw him come
into the room smiling; he came near and picked up the matchbox.

‘Are you
setting the world alight?’ he seemed intent on warning me of
something, ‘there is someone here you might not want to see. Shall
I send them away for you?’

‘That depends…’
I glanced towards the hall door.

‘On what?’
Davey leaned closer, ‘Marcia is in the kitchen…but she doesn’t know
about Hanson.’

‘Yeah, she
does,’ I said, ‘Come on Davey…. You really have to try to tell me
that Marcia doesn’t know that’s going on? That is not true.’

‘I thought she
had some sort of… err problem with Mr Hanson?’ He stared out at the
sky, as I looked at him.

‘You really
should stop imagining things Davey. We really need to stop seeing
what isn’t there.’

‘After all that
happened?’ he said mildly.

‘Especially
after that, it’s easy to get carried away.’ I thought of the
giants. Davey was looking at me, waiting to see what else I would
say. He seemed worried then, seeing my face. I must have been
frowning, or looking moody or something.

‘Come on Jared.
We’re all alright now. Aren’t we?’

‘I….’ the
clouds were moving again and the thickening twilight was invading
the room, ‘I really need to tell you and Marcia something. I don’t
think it’s something the Doc can hear though.’

Davey looked at
me intently for a moment or two as if measuring the significance of
an idea he was currently toying with. I thought he wouldn’t speak,
and drift into one of those extended daydreams, but he turned away
towards my kitchen.

They all came
in then: Marcia, Davey and Violette. The dear doctor was just about
to go anyway, and stood there with her coat on, and a tetchy
concerned look on her face.