And The Rat Laughed (13 page)

And then it struck me...

The nightmare that I woke into was much worse than the spontaneous dream that I’d forced on myself.

For the rest of my life...

In the bubble of the net...

Always trapped.

A programmed dream.

I want to wake up...

There...

In No-Net-Land...

In the
Bohu
...

All I remember of that dream is splinters of a story. No clear sequence of events or circumstances.

Just a sensation...

Fists beating and a strange sound...

Laughter...

Me banging against a solid mass...

A wall...

Closing in...

I think I was dreaming in black-and-white... More black than white...

Suddenly I was completely awake. My body struck me in all its tangibility.

Liquids poured out of me...

Forgive me, Stash. I didn’t mean to upset you.

I’ll spare you the rest.

If the little girl had been living in our time, with our readily accessible technology for healing after horror, we would have taken her to one of the clinics for Memory Excision – a safe and simple operation – on an outpatient basis. Once it is over, the patient resumes normal life, and the memory gap – this black hole they used to refer to as
trauma
– is completely eradicated.

I pull you back to the first experimental uses of memory excision, performed on adults who had witnessed a murder. Even back then, the results were impressive. The patients lost all traces of the violent episode and regained a normal continual memory.

First, the surgeons would perform a memory bypass procedure, and then they would excise the irrelevant information. Once the traumatic experience had been severed from its carrier, it was deflected to a dedicated submemoryfolder which could only be accessed by special court order.

Surprisingly, the operation is never successful in the case of children, and the younger the person, the lower their chances of full recovery.

The little girl, whoever she may have been...

How did she survive?

If indeed she survived...

Death seems preferable to a life with such a memory.

That rat...

That little girl who once was...

The Stefan...

The dream is beginning to decompose. I must hurry. My time is near.

***

A creature leans over me, forming a sign on my forehead. His lips are moving, but he makes no sound. Who is he? Maybe the REMaker has malfunctioned, and it is converting only sights, not sounds.

As if the creature is telling us both something.

What will you do with my dream, Stash?

I’ve turned you into one of the
Remembearers
, one of those who have the traumatic event registered in their consciousness without actually having experienced it themselves: the second circle of witnesses to the violent experience. The commonest problem among patients being treated with memory excision is linked to the fact that the event itself can’t be excised from the memory of the other carriers.

I’m your
Remembearer,
Stash.

I’ll give off a stench.

That’s what

I can

Promise
...

Only recently, the legal world was all worked up. Some victims had pressed charges, and were demanding full restoration of their missing memory link. The petitioners argued that the excision violated their right to determine their own fate, and that without the missing event, no matter how unsettling or horrible, they were not what they were supposed to be. The parties have reached a settlement though: the petitioners have withdrawn their claim, and a procedure has been launched for developing and testing a technology of controlled memory imprinting. It will allow memory stores to be mended without having to excise any “irrelevant information”.

Stash, have you heard about the guy who wanted to have a false experience imprinted in his brain? He said that he was under no obligation to actually experience it. When he entered an offer on the net to acquire traumatic experiences, his implachip was jammed with bids.

Look for him, Stash. He’s the ideal subject for your
Anthropology of the Future
project.

Why me?

Y-mee.

K-0005275-149.

I’m being retrieved 150 years back. The eastern side of Pan-Euro. A flashing Star of David...

Stash, we’re in a haze of thick info-clouds, enveloped by a dense and shapeless fog that the human mind cannot contain. Our only means of protecting ourselves from the torrents of information is to minimize it and package it so that it allows access on demand only. That’s what the separate, dedicated submemoryfolders are for. The research convention establishes that our individual implachips will be beamed exclusively to our own programmed submemoryfolders, to ensure that we derive as much as possible from whatever information is needed. But even so, we don’t stand a chance of accessing all of the information programmed into our 130-year lifespan.

Stash, let me plant a question in your dream. What do you think of the statement that all of human memory is visible to us? Isn’t it a kind of self-deception, aimed at making us think that since the information is out there somewhere we don’t have to look for it any more?

A braid of tails...

When I hop to the right, you hop to the left.

You’re in front and I’m in back.

The tails are intertwined between my legs.

I’m falling.

You hold out your...

I can’t grab it.

I know I’ve disobeyed the rules, but I couldn’t help using insights I gained in my attempts to break through the defenses of Ju-Ideah. Of course, legal permission to be beamed to other dedicated submemoryfolders is beyond brainability. Only people whose brains have been preselected or who have been programmed to withstand conditions of information overflow have that opportunity, and their brain operates under continual supervision, to avoid collapsing. I’m not one of the pre-selected ones. My brain is defined as normal.

What’s this strange part inside me? Something that is not a chemical conductor, or an electrical one, or an electro-biological one...

Carrying some secret information, with no name and no shape...

Sorry, Stash. A glitch in the control mechanism. My mind is throwing up...

Y-mee Prana. Is that really my name?

What’s happening...

Chaos.
Tohu
...

Like the day before the Creation.

Furthest down

Children

Of Jews...

I beam you to The Holocaust, a huge submemoryfolder. Yet only a handful of people are allowed to enter, and even fewer take an interest in it.

The Stefan...

Who is the Stefan...

Are there many more Stefans?

I’ll spare you the polemic about the Holocaust. It started during the lifetime of those who actually experienced it. A large part of the submemoryfolder is devoted to question marks, casting doubt on the many testimonies within. Most of the films are presented as reenactments, and many of the documents as forgeries or misrepresentations. With the gradual disappearance of the survivors and the dwindling of the
Remembearers,
the controversy surrounding the authenticity of these testimonies has died down.

Stash, the last documented interview with a Holocaust survivor took place in TheIsrael in 2039. The man was over one hundred years old and he is referred to as “the last witness”. You would naturally expect a human wreck, someone ignited by hatred and revenge. But you will be surprised, Stash.

It’s an unusual recording. For some reason, nobody has bothered to make it beam-enabled, so that I’ve had to use an external apparatus to decipher the sights and sounds step by step. The smells could not be reconstructed though.

I am retrieving the deciphered version for you.

The old camera is shaky, and the imaging is uneven. The hands holding the primitive instrument are the hands of the last witness’s granddaughter recording her elderly grandfather. At some point, the camera swerves towards his three great-grandchildren and nine great-great-grandchildren. They’re sitting motionless at his feet, listening to his testimony face to face. Towards the end, he says: “You will never understand”, and performs an obstruction. If they’d been using modern technology, he wouldn’t be able to do that.

It’s just as well...

The eyes of the last witness... like black holes...

Lucky I was watching this man through the digital shield.

Stash, at last, I found the courage to plant my heretical thoughts into your dream, those I didn’t dare mention during our first mind-conference; if we were to excise all the horrific events from human consciousness, what would our memory consist of?

Yes, we would be trapped in a never-ending loop of murder, hatred and fear, with each generation starting the terrible cycle anew, having learned no lesson whatsoever.

True, a historical scar does not guarantee that the horrific events will never happen again, but the very existence of memory – the detritus at the bottom of our pit – might still leave us some room for hope.

I’m so tired, Stash. I would never have imagined that dreaming for another consciousness demands such an effort. Your eyelids are moving. You’re struggling to wake up. And me, I’m using every ounce of strength in me to stop you from awakening. The dream-time is running out.

A canopy of angels is circling over you, hovering above with their colorful wings. This is the most popular dream. Billions choose it every night. Years ago, I instructed the REMaker to tailor the dream to me, and it replaced the angels with a black-cloaked creature wallowing in dirt. I was never able to see its face.

When I woke, I instructed the REMaker to restore the colors, but the machine disobeyed me.

Night after night...

Always black.

Now there’s no need to send the REMaker in to be fixed.

Extra-hypnagogical thoughts pour out of me.

My insignificant research.

Ferreting through discards of history.

I’ve turned into the sum-total of this myth. Always a little girl, always a rat. Just not the Stefan.

Please, just not him. Explain to me, Stash, with all our technological advancement, why is it that the only gene we have not succeeded in correcting – the only one that has remained intact – is the gene of brutality?

Even if I wanted to, I would no longer be able to block the dream filtering through you and exploding the net.

Memory...

You don’t want

To know...

It isn’t part of the
Anthropology of the Future
project.

A never-ending cycle of murder, hatred and fears...

Your own clean future is my own filthy past.

Has my memory...

Been excised too...

When the Stefan climbs down

I bang my head and hope

There’s a child on the other side with a...

A recopied voice...

Where can I find my
Remembearers
?

Will they agree to
Remembear
for me?

I beam a recording of a rare theatrical performance from the twenties. The rat hardly stops laughing the whole time. The little girl returns to the pit to exterminate him. Before he dies, the rat asks why she is killing him, and the little girl answers: Laughter is not something that’s given out for nothing.

***

Laughter

Like crying.

A strange experience.

I sensed it only through...

Will I ever cry?

Or laugh?

A little girl gives birth to a rat. The Stefan offers her his flesh in a dish adorned with crosses. A little girl eats a rat. The Stefan eats a little girl.

I had not intended to beam this ancient horror film. Where did it come from? The entire system is collapsing and the dream is pouring out through the cracks. The audience in the theater is in an uproar.

There is no little girl.

There is no rat.

End of story.

I see people holding on to their stomachs, their faces contorted. It looks like pain...

But it’s...

I’ll unlog in a minute. With my very own hands, I’ll pull out the implachip.

K-0005275...

And it isn’t enough to be dead

Because even when I am dead

It won’t be over.

You’re in a frenzy, Stash. Every part of your body is fighting to get rid of the dream. All I have left is a tiny particle of time in which to entrust you with my discovery. Not only in your brain, but in your heart. In every single part of your body.

I won’t get another chance.

You’re my stowaway. Sooner or later you’ll wake up. I’m afraid of that split-second just before the final awakening. The realization. When you discover that the dream is not really yours. You won’t be able to bury
Girl & Rat,
and even though you decide to try...

You’ll have a tail too–

In the dark, which for you is light.

Who knows, maybe one of these days you’ll thank me for
Girl & Rat.
You may even pass it on to your offspring.

To be a parent.

If I were given that chance...

With my very own womb...

As soon as you regain consciousness, I’ll break through the electronic wall. I’ll set out into the unknown, holding my genetic card between my fingers. It was all I had when I came into this world, and it’s all I’ll have when I leave too.

Feel free to use this dream to prove to the mindnet authorities that you’ve done all you could to stop me from going on my crazy mission, and to absolve yourself of guilt.

Final separation. We won’t see each other again.

When we feel a longing for people, it doesn’t come from the brain ... I know now where it comes from.

Stash...

A name that I will keep retrieving myself towards again and again...

I will remember.

This promise I’ll keep.

Stash, my love, if only we could meet, body to body. Maybe some day you’ll see me in a spontaneous dream of your own making. You’ll follow me to No-Net-Land. Y-mee Prana is walking about, bodily. Her muscles, her tendons, her joints, her arms and legs. A womb. Internal organs that I’ve wandered through virtually so many times...