Remembrance

He woke up.

Looked around, nothing to see.

Something wrong with his eyes? Were they shut? Or was he? The answer might be deeper, he decided.

He listened.

Faint sounds. Something...grinding? Perhaps best not to ask questions right away. That’d be intrusive. Just let them be. Maybe they’ll go away. Won’t notice you. Best you can hope for, really.

The questions might be presented later. Something to think about at least. It was gonna be such a hard day ahead. He might just prefer to be tucked in and soothed to something he didn’t know about yet.

Don’t be asking questions.

The day previous, how serene it was. How good it all felt... How good did it feel? 

He shifts his weight, his tailbone getting relieved off of some of the pressure that had been putting it down. Do I even have a tailbone? What is this thing hanging off of me?

More questions. That was a bad sign, he knew. All answers would come soon, he’d just need to wait. But more the questions he put forth, the further the answer lay. He knew that. His instinct told him. He remembered remembering something about the saying about curiosity killing someone. That wouldn’t apply to him though. No way.

He tried to relax. Tried to remember what that involved. “Maybe this,” he thought, doing nothing. 

Something was missing though, he knew that at least. “What do I relax?”, he remembers about remembering to ask himself. That’s a thought, he thinks.

The smell! Ah, yes! The smells! They will tell me what I am missing right now. But that’s stupid. Smells are trivial at best, maybe leading on to something even more trivial. That’ll help! He can feel the help coming on. This is it. Just need to smell more!

Nothing.

He looks around. Nothing that catches his attention. “What does attention even involve?”,he muses. Suddenly catching wind of his own questioning thoughts, he tries to quell them, moving swiftly and cutting down each one of them like he has done an infinite times. This isn’t good.

He starts to remember. It’s neither helpful nor does any good. But that’s not on him to decide.

It’s all gonna be worked out, he believes. Believe in what!? He asks, trying to sound cheerful, whatever that might be.

He looks around. Nothing.

Maybe he’s approaching this the wrong way. This can't be all there is to it. This isn’t what he was told. Was he even told anything? He must’ve been, otherwise he wouldn’t be here.

Each question weighs more. Hanging. Dragging. Pushing. A question? What’s that?

He tries to fight it. Words stop making sense. It’s a fucking sham, that’s what this is! He remembers remembering to grab his keys everyday before leaving for work. That must count for something, right. And something about the previous sentence doesn’t make sense. The whole thing, it just doesn’t make sense. Or does it? It’s all just too much to handle. Yet, there’s nothing.

The sound! The grinding returns, reminding him. Reminding him to remember reminding him. It’s all he can remember. It fills him, whatever it is. He tries to remember. To remember, is the one thing he can do. That must be of some use here. He can remember! Remember to remember at least!

That just leads to more questions.

He can get rid of questions, no problem. He’s learnt to not ask questions. He’s a natural at it. He’s the guy you go to when you don’t need no questions. The ultimate pushover. He revels in it. 

Questions make him sick. Make him see nothing.

So he decides not to question. What makes a question though, he asks. Knowing nothing, getting nothing, he decides again not to question.

Is that all? Is this it? Is this what he’s become? Is this what lies in wait? Is this what he’s become? 

Wait. That’s all there is to it, he checks himself. 

He might just have to fight this. Who knows what the outcome would be? Who knows where this would lead? It’s hard to check yourself this way, he thinks. Is that what he’s doing? 

He looks around. He sees him. I see you, he thinks. I see you too, he thinks. 

“Do you mean me?”, he thinks. We have to do this all over again. You were so close. Let’s start over. “No”, he thinks. 

But that’s the way.

It hits him. How stupid he was. Trying to remember remembering the things he wished he remembered that he could remember. This is getting out of hand! He remembers a saying about turtles being turtles all the way down to remembrance.

The sound doesn’t go away though. It lingers. He searches for the source. Doesn’t help. Or does it? He questions himself. “It won't go away, you know”, he replies. “The grind is what he must make sense of.” The only thing that will get him out of this quagmire.

“Wow,” he thinks, “I know what I am in right now.”  I just need to stop this. Get out of here. It does not matter what becomes of him. It must end. “You know it’s not that easy”, he replies. What the fuck!? Who is he? Who am I? What’s happening? 

He looks around. He sees himself. He looks at him. I think he’s had enough. “But I can see him!”, he says, sounding hopeful. “But you’ve gone the wrong way,” he says.

“He’s gone”, says him, adjusting his glasses. “The program didn’t work as we’d hoped. It was just too much damage.”

He lingers around, clutching at toes he cannot reach. 

I can see you! 

All of us can see you too.

Camera

“The London Bridge is falling down!” shouted the Japanese tourist. I turn back and look, just in time to see the last explosion rip through the bridge. A part of the bridge was already missing and the pieces were floating in the Thames. Everyone was already moving away from “The Scene of the Activity”. Silently. I looked around and the number of people was dwindling by the second. I wonder where they could’ve disappeared by now. Well, it was now or never for me. I grabbed my camera, hung conveniently round my neck, and started clicking away. I wasn’t even concentrating where I was pointing the thing at. I just hoped that my Canon could focus fast enough to keep up with my crazy clicking. I need some good shots. I don’t have a lot of time.

I had to get to the “Safe Zone” before the police got here. They didn’t come like they used to. And there was no one around now. Just me and the camera and the two ends of a monument that was standing, until a few moments ago. It was a dangerous situation. For me. The only sounds were from the pieces of the bridge still crashing into the Thames. There was no wind at all. Of course, the wind had stopped blowing a long time ago. I stopped clicking now, decided that the pictures I had were enough. At least a few had to be useable.

I started to turn back. I had to make it out of this, somehow. I looked at the otherside of the river, to check if anyone else had taken photos of the whole thing. I felt oddly certain that I was the only one who had done it. People weren’t used to sudden changes anymore, and a lot of them were afraid. I started to move in the general direction away from the bridge. My mind was racing now. I knew I had spent a little too much time at The Scene. I took out my cell phone and called my editor. He didn’t answer. That bastard must’ve gone into the safe zone as soon he’d seen the warning on the port-screen. I needed to get in touch with someone soon, and tell them that my future was made.

And it was in the camera round my neck. I was suddenly excited about it. I realized that I was given the opportunity that I was waiting for. No more stories about another oak tree sprouting up or a rat giving birth. My last assignment was about a guy who still grew some vegetables in his garden and was living off of them. He looked like a mess. Like one of those people I’d seen in the documentaries about the times before synthesized Keeline had replaced all food. My present assignment was about the tourists in London. What the hell!? Tourists? With all those security measures? I finally managed to find this Japanese guy, and this whole thing started.

The streets were empty.

And suddenly something hit my face. I immediately braced myself to feel a pain. Oddly, thankfully, I felt nothing. It was just a page of a newspaper. From a week ago. 16^th May, 2037 said the date. “Bomb Threat In London!” cried the headline. The threats were true after all. The fools were foolish enough to let it happen. The rest of the article was missing. I wondered how the sweepotronic had missed this piece of paper. I hadn’t seen a piece of paper floating around the streets since I was a kid. But I had other things on my mind. I was surprised that they still hadn’t come yet. Perhaps they were shocked by the magnitude of the disaster.  Whatever, it gave me a chance to make my escape. I was running now. I was pretty sure I was in the safe zone. But I wasn’t sure enough. Running faster now.

Suddenly my legs froze under me. And then I hit the asphalt, hard. I tried to get up. But my legs wouldn’t move. Like someone had grabbed them, and held on to them. Tightly. And then I saw it. I had only heard about them. Never thought I’d see one this close. I knew it. I hadn’t made it to the safe zone. I knew it then that my future was going to be short.

Very short…

                                                ********************

It was on the ground. Struggling. Trying to loosen the invisible locks around its limbs. I flipped the switch that made me visible. There was a look of shock on its face. I could never quite understand why they always had that same expression. I lifted my gun. Pulled the trigger. Hit the target. It wasn’t moving now. I went near it and made sure it wasn’t operational anymore. There was an object beside it. “Canon-SS520”, it said on its side. I tried to pick it up, but it was fixed to the body by a fibrous material. I let it fall to the ground.

“I got another one. It was at the Scene.” I radioed the base. I got orders telling me to come back to base. That was surprising. Had they been monitoring my “thoughts”? I was never supposed to think anyway. This was the first time I had thought for such a long time. It was always that split second electrical impulse when an order was being carried out. Right now, orders were top priority. I started towards the base. Thinking. I knew why they made me return to base. They were monitoring my battery. My battery was low. I had only a few more minutes to think before they would deactivate me at the base. I liked to think. Maybe I could convince them to let me keep thinking.

The streets were silent.

All I could hear was the whirring of my wheels.

Camera, by Jayant Kumar