PART I

I was sneaking between alleys and other streets till I was finally on Crown and almost at Fourth. The streets were empty. It was dark and raining heavily, but I saw the red light shimmering ahead.

I was looking for this guy they called ‘The Druid’. Forever ago, I heard about him at a business lunch. I was having a chat with George when this smarmy prick interrupted us. I could see him now, talking crap for most of the night, just wanting to whisper words in my ear, trying to get my attention to buy some stock in his company.

After his second bottle of wine, he said, ‘If you’re ever in trouble with anything, anything. Go to East Brill, corner of Crown and Fourth. You’ll see a door with a red light out the front. Knock and ask for the ‘The Druid’ and they’ll sort you out. Everything, everything, I’m telling ya. A buddy of mine told me about him. A few years ago, that same buddy killed a kid. Hit and run, nasty stuff. Cops were after him and all. He disappeared and not a blip since.’

Now it was my turn to become a blip.

‘Excuse me, sir,’ a man called from behind.

I ignored him and kept walking. Then a dog barked. I turned my head slightly to catch a glimpse under my hood, two police officers and a German Shepherd.

Shit.

‘It’s him!’ one called.

There was an alley to my right. I nearly slipped from the rain just sprinting into it. Hurried footsteps sloshed through the puddles as they chased me.

My breath came in quiet heaves, my lungs filling with the stench of piss. Where had I ended up, the slums? The wet cold was eating into my bones through my soaked hoodie, jeans, and sneakers. I nibbled my cuticles, and the familiar quiet calm came over me.

Beams of gold from their lights illuminated the grimy, wet walls. Their sloshing drew closer. I could feel my heart about to burst through my chest.

I ran full pelt, breathing controlled, arms bent. Years of triathlons prepared me for this. Had I known my life would depend on it, I would have trained even harder. My hood flew back, making the rain drench my face.

‘Get him! Get him!’ the voice echoed throughout the alley.

My hoodie was heavy, and my skin was already moist. Damn this rain.

I could almost smell the dog’s slobbering breath while it bolted behind me.

I darted behind a giant dumpster and saw I was at the corner of another alley that branched off. At the end of the new alley, I could see the lines of rain falling underneath some street lights.

My escape.

Thankfully, this alley was dark, so I hugged the slick walls and slowed my pace as I walked toward the lights, careful not to stop or make too much noise.

The snarling faded away, and I counted my blessings.

PART II

How many days had it been since it happened?

I still can’t remember how. One minute we were arguing, then the next minute my chef’s knife was in the side of his head.

George…

My rock, my go to boy, day to my night, the brains to my ego.

And I loved that knife. Japanese forged steel, it cut through an onion like it was butter. Why would I use that?

I didn’t understand it. Nothing he would have said could have been that bad, could it?

At most, it would have been about the latest version of the Fragment.

We started the business, George and I, what, ten years ago? I had the idea, and he had the know-how to get it done. 

Fragments, the best goddamn invention since the wheel.

It looked like a pill. Just stick into your head and boom, easily search through and replay your memories.

Want to see your wedding again or taste that favourite meal? Want to prove someone said something when they say they didn’t?

Easy.

The Fragment recorded footage of your day using your eyes and as you slept, it would back up to the cloud. Then it laid out your memories in searchable tags, think of ‘beach’, for example, and you would see a series of images of all times you had been to the beach. The Fragment knew which video you wanted to play and began displaying it as if you were there again.

But that wasn’t all. You could forget memories too. Want to hear a song again for the first time? Want to have sex with your partner like you were strangers?

No problem.

You could even sync those fresh memories back with your existing ones and have a playlist of your best one-night stands.

The world was reawakened.

We saved marriages.

Others discovered you could add celebrities into your memories. Just avatars, but damn, they looked real. Even dead ones, Freddie Mercury, Amy Winehouse, Elvis, you name it.

There was a whole black market for it. Some people became zombies, didn’t leave their beds once they could do that. Good riddance, sickos. Call it natural selection.

Normal people just used it to get to know celebrities. They knew they were fake, but there was something charming about replaying a memory back now with a celebrity in it talking to you.

For living celebs, some places even offered to wipe the memory of you even coming to the clinic, so you totally thought you met them for real. Talk about warped.

Then we saved lives. Want to forget your trauma? Maybe there was abuse you wanted to forget, or you saw something that traumatised you. Let’s remove that for you. Just like that, they were gone. Okay, not for everyone.

It only worked for people with recent trauma. There couldn’t be more than a year since the incident before removal. 

When we tried removing an incident from on people with years of trauma, it would change their whole personality. The choices they made and the people they became were hard to sever from the root cause, so when we removed the incident, the people had total psychotic breaks because they weren’t able to rationalise how they changed so suddenly.

We realised there were years of doctors’ visits and counselling that would have to get wiped. We would advise them that wiping the incident would mean wiping everything anything in relation to it.

Then the new issue: if we wiped too much memory they would become totally different people. Their memories needed replacing with new ones. A total personality shift. PTSD would be a thing of the past.

Naturally, there were protests everywhere. Even polar bears in Antartica had signs saying, ‘Fragments are killing us’.

People protested that we were taking their identities and that they would lose everything about themselves and turn them into corporate slaves. Conspiracy theorists thought would change them into basket cases, and that we had already done it. Yeah, because we want people to protest us. Then they would say, we mind washed the protestors so it would look real. 

I held a press conference discussing the quandary. We had philosophers and government officials by our side, new laws had to be made, we spent billions getting it off the ground.

We told the world that we would only do this for the people who wanted it. And by god did some people want it. 

Even I was surprised by how many people wanted it. Most of the people weren’t even trauma victims. Then it hit me.

You know CRISPR? Designing genes so your children are the perfect specimen. Well, that could fuck right off. With CRISPR there’s no guarantee of that person’s personality.

Total personality customisation. That’s what we were selling. Want to become a person who was more adventurous? Someone who wanted to study? Want to be driven to become a business owner? Want to help yourself work out more? We would implant memories of you doing just that. We couldn’t change people’s physical state but we could change their mental state to get them to become who they wanted to be.

It was great. We were making people into their dream selves. People weren’t totally destroyed by a terrible traumas that happened to them.

But it never works out forever, and it wasn’t long till people caught on.

I created a cure for a disease, so something worse took its place. A crime wave you wouldn’t believe, assaults, sexual or otherwise, went up by 1000%. People had no remorse anymore because trauma could be removed. Trauma centres were full every day, new incidents and people trying to forget just for them to return the next day and do it again.

One of our investors suggested giving return customers a 10 visit pass, get your 11^th free. Brilliant, but fucked up, right?

Early on we decided to make visitors forget they even visited a clinic, so they wouldn’t know had trauma. Every time they entered, it was new. New forms, new everything. Of course, on our end, we knew they had visited us before, but they were oblivious. We knew if customers knew they had visited a trauma centre before that, even the idea that something happened to them would negate the whole effect we were trying for.

Some would still say I was the architect of the modern apocalypse, the Antichrist. Now, did I feel some guilt for this? Sure. Was this my fault? Not at all. You can blame humanity’s twisted fantasy of violence. I was just trying to help the world and make a buck while doing it.

Then it was too late. Pandora’s box was open and I sure as hell close it again. The logics of making everyone forget the whole thing and starting from were far too complex. Even if everyone forgot there were still real world buildings, books, and information on all of it. The clean up would be Sisyphean, so that wasn’t an option. It gave me a headache just thinking about it. George and I would lose everything we had created. We would be back to lab again, and how could we guarantee that we wouldn’t create it again?

George was troubled by it all. I knew it as soon as we started hearing the statistics.

I felt the Fragment vibrate in my temple as I tried replaying the memory of that night.

I bit my cuticles again. Bliss. I know, risky to watch old footage while cops were looking for me. What can I say? I live on the edge.

I could see it now. The footage was blurry, but I could see George talking to me again. We were in the kitchen, as if I was there again. Tailor-made grey suit, receding hairline, thick moustache, but I couldn’t concentrate on his eyes. Every time I tried to look, they wouldn’t clear up, it was like they were always just out of focus. 

If only the Fragment could replay the thoughts going through my head too. Hmm, now that’s an idea.

But surely murderers remember why they did it, right? Even before Fragments.

Great, I’m calling myself a murderer now. Lance Terry – Genius Turned Murderer.

God, I’m a freak. Who talks like this?

Who thinks like this when they’re on the run for murder?

Still, who doesn’t remember why they killed their best friend and business partner?

I blamed the Fragment. We didn’t know it until about a year in, but an unknown side effect of using the Fragment was memory loss. Instead, all we actually remembered was how to find the memories we wanted to replay, not actually remembering them ourselves. The brain finds the easiest way to outsource effort to conserve energy. The phenomenon had been growing since Google, but god did it get worse.

The blur of the footage reminded me of something else, but I couldn’t figure out what.

I couldn’t believe I was a murderer. What had I become? Did the business turn me into a psychopath?

Then I heard a bark from right behind me. 

I know, you can say it. I’m a genius. I stopped replaying the footage. The sound brought me back to the rainy grey alley.

I looked behind and saw the shape of a hell hound barrelling toward me. I ran as hard as I could. Then I hit something. Hard. I crumpled over it, my head falling flat onto the saturated pavement. It was metal, but I couldn’t see what. My hips were aching from the collision. 

But that wasn’t the worst part.

Something was in my mouth. In my nose. It didn’t hit me at first, too much was happening for my mind to register.

The texture was soft and wet. The stench was –

Fuck. No, no, no, no. I threw up. You’ve got to be kidding me.

I won’t tell you what it was.

A hooded homeless person hobbled away in front of me. Was it theirs? God, what is happening today?!

Still vomiting, I quickly picked myself up and started running.

I rubbed the crap off my face as I ran. At least the rain helped with that.

The dog was close, bounding for me. Echoes of the barking and shouts of the cops were getting louder.

This was it.

To the left of me, a hand came out and grabbed me around the neck, yanking me through a side door.

PART III

The hand belonged to a woman. She was young with chocolate skin, a shaved head, and wore a heavy winter jacket. She had a word tattooed on her neck.

Lucid

Where had I seen that before?

I was annoyed that I didn’t have time to pull up any memories about it. And what was so off about her?  She was missing something, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.

‘Whoa, whoa, what’s going on here? Who are you?’ I asked.

She snapped the door shut and clicked the chain lock in place, ‘We’ve gotta move. In a minute they’ll be shooting that door down.’ 

I could hear the officers yelling and the dog barking just outside. They banged hard on the door. The chain jittered in place. Thank god for this girl.

‘Lance, come out!’ one officer called.

The woman yanked me by the collar. Damn, strong hands.

‘Hey! Easy, easy, I’m a delicate flower,’ I said.

She let go and began running away from the door. I followed close behind. We were in a dingy corridor of some slum building, spider webs in the ceiling, and peeling paint everywhere illuminated by a single fading lightbulb about to fall from the rafters. There was a tangy melange of body odor, alcohol, and cigarettes wafting throughout the joint, but at least it was warmer in here. There were open doors on either side leading into tiny dark rooms, at least ten on either side. Inside the rooms I could see single beds with frail bodies jerking in place, some hooked up to IV pumps.

I had heard about places like this before, ‘Dream Centres.’ More like a nightmare centres. God only knew what their Fragments were showing them.

We had reached a rickety wooden staircase that had at least four broken steps.

‘Is this safe?’ I asked.

The woman gave me a look. I turned around to get one last glance at the door thumping in place at the end of the hallway. The voices and barks were faint now.

I avoided the broken steps and made it to the top without losing a leg. The next landing was just as destitute.

‘Where are you taking me?’ I asked.

The woman turned around, ‘No more questions.’

Her voice was deep, velvety. I had to try one more time for luck.

‘Hi, I’m Lance. What’s your name?’

Nothing.

‘Are you the druid?’

She shot me another look. I shut my mouth. Not my crowd.

I couldn’t believe my life had brought me to a point where I was eager to follow a stranger into a rundown building in the dirtiest part of town.

There was a cracked window on the landing. The woman opened it gingerly, bringing in the sound of rain and the brisk cold. My arms and legs were freezing again. There was a metal staircase leading down to the alley below. We were on the other side of the building now and a whole new pissy alley lay below, lucky me.

I hunched through the opening and felt drops fall on my hood again as the rain dripped through the thin metal bars of the staircase. The woman followed, her hood on now. 

I heard a shot. The cops must have just gotten in.

We almost jumped down the stairs in our haste. I followed behind her as we reached a street around the corner. Basking in the awnings of the shops, free from the rain. There was no one around, dead quiet except for the sound of the rain, and the sirens in the distance. 

‘Whew, thanks for that,’ I started, ‘but I’ve got to head back to Crown and Fourth.’

’You’re not going to the druid,’ she said.

‘I’m not?’

‘You won’t make it within one hundred metres of the place.’

‘Can you tell me where we are going?’

‘You’ll find out soon enough.’

I couldn’t argue with that, so I followed her.

We walked for over an hour, ducking in and out of alleys when we saw more police. I asked where we were going, but I didn’t get an answer, and I wasn’t able to consult my Fragment to know why her tattoo was familiar to me.

And what was so off about her.

PART IV

Eventually, we ended up in another part of town, more my kind of neighbourhood. Still empty, but suburban, nice houses, and not dirty at all. There was a sign, ‘Welcome to Leverington’. I’d never heard of it. At least I thought I hadn’t.

The rain had stopped by then, and there was a lot more light around here. We were back on normal streets. I didn’t feel so much like a cockroach.

Okay, not so much, I still had the taste of throw up and you know what in my mouth.

We reached a large walled off area. It looked out of place near the typically normal neighbourhood. It was like a fortress, no one allowed in, no one allowed out. We walked around the corners of it a few times.

There was an intercom. The woman pressed its red button.

While we had stopped, I quickly searched through my memory, using ‘Lucid’ as the tag to pull up the memory. Nearly all the results were related to times I Googled or read books on lucid dreaming. I could never get the handle on that. There were too many results, so I had to try something else. 

Leverington?

Found it! I saw an image of Yasmin Bly, a news anchor for JPS News, and I knew this would be it. I was in my living room again, watching the TV.

‘The Lucid, as they like to be called, is one of the few groups in the civilised world to ban the use of Fragments within their community,’ Yasmin began.

On the TV, I could see footage of people protesting in front of the Fragment building.

Yasmin’s voice continued over the footage of the protestors’ chanting.

‘Originally, just a movement that was against the mass use of Fragments in society, over the years The Lucid have formed a community in a sectioned off area in Leverington full of like-minded people who now live totally disconnected from the rest of society. Choosing only to venture out of their compound to protest the newest version of the Fragment that is released every yea-‘

The woman was shaking me, ‘No time for dreaming, rich boy.’

‘You’re one of them,’ I said, chewing my cuticles, and finally noticing what had been nagging at me. She didn’t have a Fragment.

‘Great deduction, Sherlock.’

‘Why are you helping me?’

‘Because you can help us.’

A gravelly voice finally garbled on the intercom, ‘Name?’

‘Fen,’ the woman said.

‘With?’

‘Lance.’

‘Come in.’

The wall split and slid open. It was fake brick, for god’s sake!

‘How can I help you? Why would I help you?’ I asked.

Fen turned around and looked me dead in the eye, ‘Someone has framed you for the murder of George Lowe.’

To be continued