Chapter 7 - Memory Without Ceremony…
“Next stop, Chancey Lane. Exit to the right.”
Lester pulled his forehead from the commuter car’s cool window and shook the want of sleep out of his eyes. He would arrive at his stop in a matter of minutes, no time to close his eyes hoping to find the sleep which visited him so rarely following the riots in the park, since the night he unloaded his gun into a stranger in that crowd.
The train jostled along the rails and helped Lester snap out of his lethargy. The city streets snaking below the window remained congested with traffic. The highway renovations were supposed to have been completed over a year ago. Only, such a schedule had been written before that Gus clone attempted to leap across Mr. Moon’s divide, before that clone had flown into flames and had fallen, before the memory of that clone’s last, death vision had been shared with the masses, before that clone, and his brothers, had been transformed into messiahs. No clones worked the highways anymore. None wielded the sledgehammers. None poured concrete. None shoveled asphalt. The Company provided no more of that hardy, clone model named Gus, and so mankind’s traffic snarled and congested.
“Invitations to the Risen Moon. Join us at temple and share in the divine memory. Know that death is but a divide. Know that another world waits for you on the other side.”
A tall, an attractive, young woman twirled down the commuter car’s aisle. White, fabric moons were sewn into the orange and yellow sundress whirling from her hips, and the small invitations she dropped in her wake left little doubt she was another acolyte of that church born from Mr. Moon’s motorcycle stunt. None of the other commuters in the car may have moved to gather the invitations left behind her, but neither did any of them request the woman find a seat and turn quiet.
“We freely share the memory. Taste the vision in the presence of our divine vessels. Come today to our temple and taste the memory in the company of our Gus clones.”
Lester yawned and stood from his seat as the commuter car slowed in its approach to his stop. His fingers drifted to the knot of his pink tie, and Lester wondered how much the streets outside the commuter car’s window would truly change following the emergence of the Risen Moon. Was the world truly turned upside down? If the strongest and healthiest of all the Company’s clones were to be considered divine, then where would mankind find the labor to maintain their crowded world?
“Please accept this invitation to our temple.”
Lester worried he did not have the time to try to deny taking the card the woman presented to him. The double doors were already starting to open at the stop, and so Lester nodded meekly and clasped the small invitation. He peeked into the woman’s eyes as he did so. Framed in wavy, blonde locks streaming to her shoulders, the woman’s face was an attractive one, without the wrinkles of many years, without any of the marks of hardship, or of age. Hers was a face to make many another woman envy. Yet around her right eye the woman had tattooed the duel rings of the Company’s brand to display her solidarity with the clone. Lester shook his head and pushed towards the exit. The world was too blurred for him, too strange when such a whirling, young woman in a twirling sundress would mar such a face with those rings that were intended to mark product.
The woman smiled as Lester neared the exit. “I’ll keep an eye open for your pink tie in temple.”
Lester suspected his pink tie marked him as a special man to those of the Risen Moon. Digger Newman often sent Lester hand-written invitations to his temple’s services and events. Digger Newman often left messages on his cellphone telling the registrar how he hoped he might one day soon help Lester honor Marlene’s memory. Lester believed the man’s sentiments were likely true, but Lester thought there was another motive, one more vital to the temple, behind Digger Newman’s correspondence. Lester knew the high priest wanted what was in the Registrar’s black briefcase, what was in his tools, what was in his training. Lester knew the temple desired those lost, last pieces of the Company’s clone recipe so that they might birth new, divine Gus clones of their own instead of writhing and wailing abominations. Lester knew he possessed those last bits of knowledge the Risen Moon needed. He realized how that pink tie marked him. But dwelling on it did him no good. Dwelling on it only made him paranoid that there were always eyes staring upon his back.
Chancey Lane appeared empty. He heard only the low murmur of flies that swarmed about the trash piles rotting in the street as clone labor grew increasingly more difficult to find. A new wave of weariness washed over him, and Lester turned into a dimly-lit and empty diner in search of a warm coffee.
The shopkeeper behind the counter grinned at Lester’s order. The tall, paper cup soothed Lester’s cold, agitated hand.
“What do I owe you?”
The shopkeeper waved away the concern. “It’s on me. I’m just thrilled to see someone walk into the diner at all. Used to sell a lot more than just coffee on this street. This street used to just hum with folks. That was when everyone was visiting the memory shop on the corner.”
“Memory shop not doing very well?”
“How can it?” The shopkeeper shrugged. “Who wants to buy any of the old memories anymore? Who wants any of even Mr. Moon’s early stunt memories now that the Risen Moon temples are giving away the divine memory everyone’s wanting to taste for free? I tell you, Mr. Moon damned us all when he harvested that clone’s memory from that motorcycle jump and just sold it as another thrill. Someone should’ve stopped it.”
Lester sipped at the hot coffee’s vapor. “There were folks who wanted to do just that, but no one wanted to give those folks the right. Said it was censorship. Said the law had no right dictating any memory a person might choose to view in his or her mind.”
“Yeah, I thought that too back then,” sighed the shopkeeper. “I was a fool.”
“You ever taste the memory?”
“Not yet. I’m not going to that temple until it’s the last option I have left.”
Lester thought something slightly amiss when he took his first taste of his coffee. “There seems to be something off around here. Something different from the last time I walked down Chancey Lane.”
The shopkeeper sighed. “It’s that terrible mudder stew. You can hardly smell the trash piling up outside for the stench of that mudder stew in the air. It’s getting to be the only thing people can afford anymore. Only thing people ask for. I won’t sell it. I’m not that desperate yet. I don’t care what anyone says about the stuff being plenty enough good for a person, it’s all foul. The smell and the taste of that stew just seeps into everything, no matter what we do trying to keep it out.”
“If the coffee’s free of charge, then just think of this as a tip for the company.” Lester tossed a roll of bills onto the counter.
“Bless you for it.”
At the street corner a few more blocks down the road, the memory shop’s neon sign no longer glowed. The shop’s door, however, remained unlocked, and Lester considered that ample evidence the shop remained open for business as he pushed through the doors and floated down the short corridor he recalled leading to the reception room. The man there behind the counter jumped as Lester entered the chamber.
“What do you want? I don’t keep cash in the register.”
“Are you still open?”
“Are you serious?” The man chuckled.
“I want Mr. Moon’s last memory.”
“Now I know you’re not serious. That’s the only memory anyone wants, and the temples are giving that one away for free.” The man’s eyes narrowed, and he scowled. “I think I place your face. I think you’ve been in here before.”
“I’m just not wearing my suit today,” Lester answered.
“Yeah, that’s it,” nodded the man. “You’re wearing that pink tie, though. You’re a Registrar. So want do you want with me? I got all the paperwork in. My shop’s in order.”
“Like I said, I want the memory,” and Lester held up his hand before the man protested further, “but I want
to taste that memory in private. I want to experience it without all those clones staring at me in the temple.”
“Well, I got plenty of privacy, if you’re willing to pay for it.”
Lester nodded. “I’m willing to pay what Digger Newman paid the day I gave your shop approval to play it for him. I don’t even want any of the discounts that came in the end.”
“Say no more,” the man behind the counter clapped. “You just paid my meal ticket for a while longer.”
“Tell me something.” Lester ran his debit card through the register. “Have you tasted that memory?”
The man shook his head. “Don’t feel much like partaking in the very thing that’s making me go hungry. Maybe I’ll step out into that new world when my stomach finally hurts enough to make me. But I’m holding off for as long as I’m able.”
Lester followed the man down the long hall and entered the memory chamber, where the jade sensory-deprivation tank waited. A thin layer of dust had accumulated upon the tank, dimming so slightly the luster of its pearls. But the warm water within still soothed Lester’s aging muscles, and the dark, and the quiet, were nearly enough to satisfy Lester’s soul. He exhaled a long breath and felt the water float him in the blackness. He wondered if he would fall asleep before the tank might deliver to him the memory of that motorcycle stunt, an event Lester himself had witnessed from the crowd. He wondered if it would matter much if he let sleep hold him.
Lester’s eyes grew heavy. The darkness around him, somehow, seemed to thicken and grow heavy. And as he floated seemingly without weight, without substance, the memory arrived.