Voices

Voices scream, shrill inside my head. Young, old, male, female – all there, and all screaming that desperate, terrified, broken cry.

Blackness is all around. I can’t see anything. I stumble, blindly, just trying to get away from the screaming as it rebounds inside my head that is driving me closer to insanity with each shriek.

I see a door, with light coming out from the crack underneath. I stumble towards it, somehow knowing that the door will provide an answer. I reach the door, turn the handle, and open it.

I bolt awake, sitting straight up, my breath coming in short gasps. I look around, not sure what I am expecting to see, but my bedroom looks just the same as it has for the last three months – a simple room with a bed, a dresser, and bookshelves lining the walls. I sink back onto my bed, sighing. The dream is already slipping away. It always does.

As my rapid heartbeat subsides, I wait for the wave of emotion to hit, wondering what it would be today – lethargy or restlessness? Usually, when I have the nightmare, it’s restlessness. Sure enough, it comes swiftly, breaking over me and already beginning to dictate my day. I feel it compelling me to get up and do something, a nagging voice without words in the back of my head. I need to pace the boundaries of my world again. I need to search again.

But I force myself to follow my schedule, which I have followed ever since I woke up here a couple months ago. After all, I have to have some measure of self-control. Getting up, I walk out of my bedroom and into the kitchen. It’s nothing too extravagant, just a food processor in the corner, a small refrigerator, a sink, and a dishwasher, with a table and chair in the middle. I have to force myself to sit down and eat breakfast. I order my usual, a muffin and some scrambled eggs. While waiting for the processor to assemble the food, I fruitlessly search for something interesting to read on my tablet, scrolling through the lists of books and trying to ignore the nagging question of how they all got there. When the food is ready, I eat quickly, already wanting to be done. I finish soon and move on to the next items on the list, shaving and getting dressed without allowing myself to wonder too much.

I am jogging on the treadmill, which I hate anyway, when give up. I can’t physically force myself to continue. I turn off the treadmill and begin to wander through my small quarters again, looking for something to distract me from the multitude of questions that had been building up in my mind for the last few weeks.

I pace through the kitchen, opening the cupboards and staring into the food dispenser, trying to see where the food came from. I return to the exercise room in a vain attempt to follow my schedule, this time trying different types of yoga – anything to distract me from my lack of knowledge. Nothing works. I end up in the entertainment center, sitting on the brown sofa and browsing through the hundreds of videogames on the holocomputer, trying to find one that holds my interest. Each one only lasts for five minutes before I get bored and move on. Eventually I throw down the controller in disgust and began pacing again. Finally, I explode.

“Why? Why am I here?” I demand of the holoscreen. “How did I get here? And why can I only remember a few months of my life? How is it I know I’m 38, and yet I can only remember three months of that? Where did the other 37 years come from?”

Predictably, the screen doesn’t respond. My fury growing, I swear at it and punch the wall. An explosion of pain runs through my hand and up my arm. Swearing some more, I stagger around the room, cupping my wounded hand until the pain subsides to a manageable level. I would have a nice set of bruised knuckles to show for that. Slowly, I return to some measure of self-control. I can hold back the restlessness, the pain of not knowing, at least for a while.

I decide to go to my garden. More and more, it has become the only thing that can distract me now. My last sanctuary. I walk out of the entertainment room and cross the kitchen to the door to the garden. I open it almost reverently, stepping through the door into the sunlight.

I’m met by the soothing sound of the trickling brook that flows through the center of the garden, cascading down a small waterfall as it goes. Next to it runs a short path, shaded by the line of apple and pear trees already beginning to bear this year’s fruit. Next to the door, large flowerbeds greet me, filled to the brim with violets, daffodils, lilacs, and roses. Over to the right are the vegetable gardens, for when I get tired of the slightly fake taste of the processor’s food.

I stand there for a minute, surveying the plants, determining the work that needed to be done. The vegetables need to be weeded and the rhododendron bushes at the base of the trees need trimming. I open the compartment in the wall next to me and get out a trowel, my gloves, and the hedge trimmers. My questions are already beginning to recede to the back of my mind, now that I have something else to focus on.

I start by trimming the rhododendrons, snipping off any branches that are dead or poking out onto the path. I soon settle into a rhythm of chopping and sweeping the branches into a pile. The repetitious work is soothing, and I find myself relaxing for the first time in what feels like days. Snick, snick, sweep. Snick, snick, sweep.

All too soon, the trimming is done. I clear up the fallen branches and dump them into the incinerator. Time to weed the vegetables. As I kneel down beside the tomatoes, I notice that the soil is dry and cracked. I look up, searching the sky for any sign of clouds. There is rain scheduled for today, but I can’t remember when. There are some clouds forming, but they are few and far between. I can easily make out the curve of the semi-translucent force-field high above me, which encloses the garden and controls its weather. All I see is another boundary, keeping me from finding out how I got here and why.

This bitter thought yanks me out of the relaxed state I had finally attained, and my mind again swarms with questions. How did I get here? Why can’t I remember anything about my life, but I can remember the conventions of society? How do I know what a “normal life” is? How do I know what other people look like? I have vague memories of faces, but no names, and nothing to connect them with me. It’s as if all my personal memories had been removed, but all my knowledge left intact. But who or what could do that? And, more importantly, why?

“Why!?” I scream at the ceiling. I can feel myself descending into a sort of frenzy. I try to throw myself back into my gardening, hoping it would subdue my obsession, but to no avail. After finding comfort within its walls so many times, my garden had failed me. I stand up, dropping my tools and pacing up and down the length of the garden in frustration. I had to find answers. I turn and leave the garden, ripping off my gloves as I went and leaving my tools where they lay.

I rush through my world, searching for anything, anything that would provide answers. Pacing up and down my small library, I snatch books off the shelf at random and tear through the pages, looking for something, anything, any small clue that can give me a hint about my past, and maybe even how to get out of this prison. I find nothing, tossing one book after the other to the floor, heedless of the mess I am making.

I search through the endless movies and videogames, scrolling through the long list on the holoscreen until my eyes blur and I can no longer read the text. I scour every nook and cranny of my bedroom, my kitchen, the library, and the exercise room, looking for a secret door, a note, anything. I search for what feels like hours. At last I collapse, exhausted, in my favorite armchair in my bedroom, the one I spent so many hours reading in. None of that holds any solace for me now. I would keep looking, but my exhausted body overwhelms my drive to find a way out, and I sink into sleep.

I’m in a forest – a beautiful, lush, green forest. It’s spring, and the air is heavy with the scent of all things new and growing. I’m walking along a small path that winds its way through the woods, thickly carpeted with a layer of pink blossoms. In the background I can hear a small brook, running higher than normal because of the spring runoff. But I barely notice all this, because my attention is focused solely on her.

She’s smiling at me, laughing at something I just said. Her lustrous, curly black hair flows around her in the light breeze, neatly framing her face. I realize I don’t know what her name is, but I know that I love her, and she loves me, and for a while we just walk and talk and laugh without a care in the world. She does most of the talking, pointing at blooming flowers and telling me about different types of trees. I drink in her presence.

Soon, a small hill looms ahead of us, steep, but not taxing.

“Race you to the top!” she says, and takes off, running with the ease of a long-time athlete.

A sense of unease strikes me, and I pound after her, but she quickly draws ahead of me. I redouble my efforts, somehow knowing that if I lose her, it’ll be all over. Soon, she’s almost to the top. Panicking, I run even faster, my breath coming in ragged gasps, heedless of where I’m putting my feet.

“No! Stop! Wait for me!” I plead.

But it’s too late. She reaches the crest of the hill and is gone, the lasts wisps of her hair sinking beneath the horizon. She has gone on without me. I slow to a stop, unable to run anymore, knowing somehow that she is lost forever. My legs give way beneath me and I sink to the ground, sobbing, pink blossoms still drifting down around me, mocking my pain.

Only then do I remember her name.

I wake slowly, trying to cling to the dream, wishing with all my heart that I could go back and fix it. This dream doesn’t slip away like the nightmare did. I don’t know why. Maybe it stays because I want to remember it. I want to remember her, despite the pain.

The weight of her loss settles on to me and stays there. I don’t want to get up and do anything. I don’t even want to search for a way out. I just sit in the armchair for hours in a kind of despair, staring at the blank wall across from me. I know my melancholy is irrational – after all, I can’t even remember who she is. She must have been important to me, though, in that time before, in the thirty-seven years I can’t remember.

The same questions still bounce around in my head, but the drive to know is gone. I don’t care anymore. Where before the questions had fueled my drive to get out, now all they do is prove the hopelessness of my situation. The small part of my brain that hasn’t completely settled into lethargy knows that a simple dream shouldn’t have caused this, especially since I can’t even remember the person I am grieving for, but I can’t shake it off. It doesn’t make sense, but I can’t bring myself to care.

I had had these periods of lethargy before, but they had never been this bad. It is a never-ending war to get my brain to focus on one simple thought, and all I want to do is sink into an endless, dreamless sleep. Maybe – the thought comes slowly, as if wading through a sea of molasses – maybe, my other low times are a result of this dream too, only it is stronger this time because I remember the dream.

Then my brain makes the leap. Would I start remembering the nightmares, too? And how bad would my anxiety, which seems to be caused by the nightmares, be if I did?

I can’t let that happen. I do not want to know what horrors plague my nights. I realize I can’t let myself sleep again until I find the answers to my questions, and maybe even the way out of here. Hopefully that will quell the nightmares. This gives me the motivation to get up and continue searching. I pace up and down the length of my bedroom, my depression beginning to recede as I try to think of a place I hadn’t ransacked already, much like my agitation had when I was gardening.

My garden… that’s the one place I haven’t looked. I curse my stupidity. I had assumed that there wouldn’t be a door there because it was already outside, just blocked off with a force-field. But if there is a way to turn the force-field off… that would be the way out. Why bother with another door when you’ve already got one leading outside?

Of course, whispers my pessimistic side, there is always the possibility that those who had put you here never wanted you to escape, so there wouldn’t be a way to turn the force-field off from the inside.

I doubt that, though. Although I don’t know how, I know that a force-field’s power source is usually kept inside the force-field – it is stronger that way, and in most cases it protects it from being tampered with. If that is the case, than all that's left now is to find the generator and switch it off. Pacing up and down the kitchen, I try to think what in my garden is big enough to house a force-field generator. There is no shed; all the tools are kept in the storage compartment in the wall by the door. It would probably be near the center of the garden…

Then it hits me. The waterfall. It is perfect, big enough to house the generator inside the rock, and it’s in the center of the garden. The perfect camouflage, but easy enough to get to after shutting the water off.

Of course, it could be underground, or any of another dozen possibilities that would make it impossible to get free. The more I think about my theory, the more I realize my logic is ridiculous – if I am a prisoner here, which is likely, why on earth would the key to my escape be right here in the cell with me? Why let me have a garden at all, or any of the other small luxuries of this place? None of it makes sense. I argue with myself for a while, but it comes down to one thing: I have to try. Even if I am completely delusional, it won’t hurt to try.

I walk through the kitchen to the garden door and rest my hand on the handle. I am about to turn it when I hesitate, oddly reluctant. I can’t bring myself to go back into the garden, even to find a way out. It almost feels as if the garden had betrayed me.

As soon as this thought occurs to me, I have to resist the urge to laugh. How can I be betrayed by a garden? But that’s how it feels. My garden had been my sanctuary, an effective distraction for so long, and now it had failed me. My perception had irrevocably changed, and I don’t want to see it with my new eyes.

But I have to try. I turn the handle and enter.

On the surface, the garden appears just as I had left it. The only difference is the mass of dark clouds overhead. The scheduled rain would happen soon. I press on the panel beside the door and select the option to shut off water to the brook, then slowly walk down the center path, looking around as I go.

I am right. My perception has changed. The flowers seem duller, the leaves less vibrant, and when I see my tools lying where I had dropped them hours before, I pick them up to put them away and feel no urge to use them. Then again, perhaps it is just the rain. I have never been in the garden when it was raining before. , I continue down the path.

When I reach the waterfall, I turn off the path and cross the short distance to the streambed, stepping deftly to avoid the irises lining the bank. The water hasn’t quite finished draining, but it shouldn’t matter. I bend down and run my fingers along the smooth section of rock right before the edge, searching for a button. I find none. I press my palm firmly down, just to see if I could trigger a handprint sensor.

There is a handprint sensor. Even more surprisingly, it accepts my handprint, flashing green and bringing up a list of options. I select the one marked “Disable Memory Field.” A window flashed, asking me for a password.

I regard the screen thoughtfully. More than ever, I doubt that my imprisonment is against my will. The generator accepting my handprint would only made sense if I had orchestrated the whole thing. The only question left is why, and I would discover that soon enough if I could guess the password. On a whim, I speak her name. If I had arranged this, then of course it would be Sarah’s name, the name of the woman I had loved. I wouldn’t have thought I would remember her name. Perhaps it is her loss I am hiding from.

A moment of bated breath, uncertainty – and the force-field collapses.

In that instant, it begins to pour, the clouds above destabilized by the release of the force-field. A howling wind sweeps over me, driving the rain sideways and causing each droplet to sting my skin like a tiny blade. All I can see outside the garden is a bleak, brown wasteland, the sun brightly shining outside the small radius the force-field had enclosed. I can’t see any signs of life, but I don’t have long to look before memories assaulted me.

For a moment, a sense of understanding overwhelms all feelings of discomfort or worry. I finally know who I am and what had happened to me. Everything fits together now.

Then come the voices, screaming, shrill inside my head. Old, young, male, female – all there, all screaming a desperate, terrified, broken cry. The screams of those I had murdered. One of them is Sarah.

I recoil in shock, overwhelming grief flooding me as I the memories of atrocities I had committed engulf me. Their deaths flash through my head one by one with a horrible intensity. With each one, the voices grow louder, reverberating inside my skull, an everlasting reminder of what I had done. The last one is of Sarah’s death. After what feels like an eternity, the memories free me from their grasp, leaving my body wracked with shuddering sobs of unspeakable horror. I clutch at my head, desperately seeking escape, each shriek driving me closer to insanity. I don’t realize I am crying until I taste the saltiness of my tears.

In front of me, the screen shimmers on the rock, still displaying a list of options. I jab my finger at the button marked “Restore Memory Field,” knowing that it would take me back to square one, back to the shadow of a life I had had for the last few month ago. I speak her name once more, lingering over it tenderly, thinking of all the wonderful times we had had together and how I am about to lose them again.

“Sarah.”

And the force-field is restored.