Faulty Memory

A Science Fiction One Shot

Photo by Brian Fegter on Unsplash

Marek sat with her wrists chained to the table, she leaned forward, she leaned back, as far as she could, and each time steel rattled against a hole in the middle. The chains wormed down to a massive ring cemented into the floor. A black mirror, that she knew was two way, filled the wall opposite her. They were behind it, she knew they were. They'd make her wait.

Hours passed, not that the cramped, bright room had a clock, but Marek felt every second. She tapped her feet in rapid succession, shaking her whole body, causing the chain to tap the table with a shrill beat. The longer she sat the worse she felt. A thick nausea drilled into her that churned her stomach and throbbed behind her eyes. Each time the memory surfaced it repeated quicker and quicker, her response more visceral each time. It hadn't been her, it couldn't have been her. It hadn't been –

The door to the interrogation room hissed open and a man and a woman entered. Both in pressed white shirts with starched collars and black ties, both wore a wristlink, serving as watch, phone, computer, and both masked their true expression with an impassive glare. The man sat down opposite Marek, his shirt tight round his arms and shoulders. He scanned the room out of habit, checking the lower and higher corners, before leaning forward, elbows wide, hands together. 'You know why you're here?'

The woman leaned beside the two-way mirror more interested in something on her wristlink than Marek.

'Don't mind her,' the man said. 'I'm Horace, do you know why you are here?'

'No,' Marek lied.

The woman sniggered, tapping away on the projected display of her wristlink.

Horace shifted in his seat, 'Right. You were arrested this morning on suspicion of murder. Do you remember that?'

'No,' Marek lied again. The nausea receded as a deadlier panic coiled within her. Why was she lying, she knew what she'd done.

'Yvonne, have the psychs do an evaluation after this,' Horace said over his shoulder.

'Right,' Yvonne sighed, not once looking up from her wristlink.

'Those things steal your identity you know,' Marek glanced at Yvonne, jutting her chin towards the wristlink.

'Sure you keep believing that conspiracy,' Yvonne didn't look up. 'Psychs will be here in an hour.'

'Thanks, Yvonne,' Horace said. 'There's no doubt you committed the murder. Your victim's wristlink captured emergency footage of you at the scene. The victim's blood was found on your clothing. Better to admit guilt and a judge might be lenient if you show repentance.'

'Shouldn't I have legal aide or something?' Marek said.

'You can but it won't help,' now it was Horace's turn to lie.

'I'll wait for the aide,' Marek said. She leaned back in her chair, as far as she could, and the chains ragged against the hole in the table. 'Any chance for a glass of water?'

Horace stood up, 'We'll see if someone's free.' It wasn't clear if her was talking about the legal aide or the water. Yvonne left first, Horace a few steps behind her.

'She's insane,' Yvonne muttered as the door hissed shut.

What felt like an hour passed and a woman with a briefcase entered the room. Her hair was thick and curly, more mane than hair. She set the briefcase on the table, her chubby fingers uncurling from the handle with red lines from the weight of it. She rolled the numbers on the lock until they clicked and the case popped open to reveal a large camera along with a stack of paperwork and a trio of wristlinks. 'Put that on,' the psych tossed a wristlink to Marek.

'No.'

'Why?'

'They steal your identity.'

The psych inhaled loudly, her piggish nose flaring. 'Right. Well, I can't force you so I guess we'll do it the old fashioned way. Place your chin on this,' she slid the big camera across the table and flipped out a chin support beneath the eye sized lens. Ever larger concentric rings of black plastic grew behind the lens ending in a screen on the other side for the psych to peer through. Marek had seen these used before but never understood how exactly they worked. Three loud cracks sounded as the psych unfolded a trio of supports from the camera, 'So it remains stable throughout. Don't blink.'

Marek stared into the lens covering her left eye listening to the psych snort air. The woman in a too small jacket fiddled with her wristlink and then with a keyboard hooked up to the camera. 'I'm going to take a series of images of your eye and ask you some questions. Don't think too hard about them, they aren't interesting,' the psych said. She sat down and rustled a stack of paper before settling on a pink coloured leaf, 'What is your name?'

'Marek Tornvold.'

'What is your age?'

'Forty-three.'

'What is your favourite colour?'

'Err... green.'

'Don't err. What is your favourite drink?'

'Negroni.'

'When did you last travel off-world?'

'Never.'

The psych paused and made a scratch with her graphite on the pink sheet of paper. 'Do you sleep well?'

'Yes, solid eight hours a night.'

'Do you have a favourite coffee mug?'

'I do.'

'Describe it.'

'It's red with a trio of storks going around it, the storks have gold outlines. The rim is also gold. The handle is flat along the top and curved along the bottom.'

The psych made another series of scratches.

'Do you drink coffee?'

'No, I drink tea.'

Another scratch.

'Do you have any living relatives?'

'Yes,' Marek blinked a number of times, her eye dry and sore. The black lens reflected nothing back. Her other eye struggled to focus on the psych opposite her.

'Try not to blink.'

'Do your relatives live nearby?'

'Some.'

'Which ones?'

'My father lives three miles from me, my mother's dead. My sister is in Fenstaf, the town over. My children... Well they don't live nearby anymore.'

'Anyone else?'

'Not to my knowledge,' Marek furrowed her brow at that as the psych wrote something else on the pink paper.

'When did you stop wearing a wristlink?'

Marek stammered, 'Err... I've never worn a wristlink.'

The psych wrote that down, 'Don't err. You went to a local school, correct?'

'Yes.'

'All school pupils wear wristlinks, have done for a hundred years. You must have worn a wristlink at school?'

Marek blinked, her free eyes focusing on the psych for a second before blurring up once more. 'I don't know, I don't remember.'

'When did you first begin to think that wristlinks stole your identity?'

'I've always thought that because they do,' Marek said.

The psych wrote something else down on the pink paper before switching to a sheet of yellow. 'Just a few more questions. When you were eight years old you had a pet dog, what was his name?'

'It was a she and we called her Cali.'

'At seventeen your boyfriend broke up with you, his name was Treb but what was the reason?'

Marek breathed loudly, 'I don't remember. I don't remember dating a Treb.'

'At twenty-five you graduated with a Masters degree in Computational Inter-world Propulsion, what was your thesis?'

'The theoretical upper limits of various forms of propulsion, both linear and non-linear,' Marek said though she was unsure if that was the title or merely the topic. Everything she'd written was later disproven anyway so it no longer mattered.

The psych made another note. 'Thank you for your time, the officers will return shortly.'

'Could I get a glass of water, please?' Marek leaned back blinking hard.

'I'll see who's free.' The psych offered a sickly sweet smile as she packed up the device and paperwork. The door hissed open and close and remained so for another hour.

Marek licked her lips, not that they were dry. The nausea had passed to and she began to feel well, elated even.

The door hissed open and Yvonne entered, alone. 'Horace is busy.'

Marek knew that meant he was behind the glass, she didn't know how she knew this. Yvonne pulled the metal seat out and sat a few feet away from the table. 'Where's my legal aide?' Marek asked.

'On their way,' Yvonne inputted commands on her wristlink. 'First I want to show you the emergency footage from your victims wristlink. Don't worry it's short but I have some questions.' She twisted a dial on the side the device and a video was projected on the wall. It was grainy and frantic, but it clearly showed Marek running at someone with a knife. There was a struggle, a spurt of blood, and then the wristlink crashed to the ground with its victim and the video ended. 'Let's watch it again, it's dark so you might have missed something.'

Marek swallowed hard, she hadn't missed a thing, she remembered doing it, facing that man as clear as Yvonne sat before her now. She didn't have to watch it through the grainy recording, but she did, she felt she had to, not for Yvonne or Horace but because it wasn't her in the film it was someone else.

'The knife is from the victim's kitchen, you chased him out into the garden and as he failed to open his shed, probably looking for a weapon, you killed him. Do you know his name?'

The word yes boiled in her throat but she couldn't say it. She knew his name but something stopped her from saying it, from thinking it.

'Do you know his name?'

Marek's cheeks flushed, the panic coiled beneath the nausea sprang up and she screamed, 'NO!' but that was a lie. Wasn't it?

'Did you notice your hair? It's hard to see, better if we increase the contrast. Do you see it?'

'See what?' Marek felt hollowed out, like she'd sprinted for an hour. Bile rose in her throat but still there was an odd sense of elation even deeper than the panic. 'What's wrong with me?'

'That's what you're going to tell us. Now, your hair, notice anything?'

Marek forced herself to focus on the video filling on wall of the room, 'No.' This time she wasn't lying.

'Are you certain?' Yvonne stared, eyes wide in disbelief. 'Look again.'

Marek did so, if only to distract from the bile crawling up her throat. She stared and stared again until she saw it. She pulled her own hair. Her hair was shorter by at least ten inches in the video, 'When was this filmed?'

'This morning, a few hours before sunrise,' Yvonne answered. 'You don't have extensions in, we checked. Yet the victim's blood was on your clothes. Tell me, how does someone's hair grow ten inches in a few hours?'

Marek didn't know. The memory of the murder had cycled through her mind so many times it had begun to feel fake, like a word said too many times. A sense of unrealness crept into her, a feeling that if only she would wake up this would all be a dream.

'Who are you?' Yvonne slammed the desk with her hand, the projection from her wristlink faded.

'Marek.'

'Horseshit you are, the woman in the video is Marek, you are not her!'

'If I'm not her then why am I here?' Marek asked. The realisation came to her when she finished speaking. Why she hadn't received legal aide, why she never wore a wristlink, why the psych had pink and yellow paper forms, why she hadn't received a glass of water. 'The woman in the video didn't wear a wristlink either.'

'No, she didn't, which makes this situation more... annoying quite frankly. Infuriating even. We theorycraft this possibility in training every few years but this is the first time it has happened. We all know why, prohibitive cost, biohazards, inexact tech, blahblahblah. But it was only a matter of time. So, who are you?'

Marek thought about herself, did she remember growing up? Did she remember Cali, the feel of her fur, the force of her bark? 'Marek.'

Yvonne shook her head, 'Try again.'

'Ask the psych.'

'Inconclusive. Some shady answers but also answers too accurate to be faked. There's a slippage in the process you see, when one memory is copied over, details are lost and the copy makes up new ones to fill in the gaps. Problem is you caught some of those, yet got basic information wrong like which relatives living close by. Who are you?'

Marek felt the cold steel on her wrists and knew she'd never be free again, either she had killed that man and would be punished accordingly or she wasn't human, not truly, and Yvonne, Horace, and all the rest would poke and prick her till she perished. 'I want my legal aide.'

Yvonne stood up, 'Clones are not entitled to legal aide because they are not human.' The door hissed open and Marek wondered if she would ever see beyond those walls again.

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