****
Jason shuffled down the street, with Charlie leading the way, closely examining his new surroundings with wide-eyed wonderment. He was downtown, he now understood, as he looked around at the glowing advertisements of the storefronts lining the street. Some of the names he recognized, which gave him a jolt of excitement, before he realized that they had moved on to business ventures that weren’t quite as wholesome as he remembered. Others he didn’t recognize at all. The quiet buzz of a taxi cab passed beside them, keeping pace as the driver eyed the pair. Jason quickly looked away.
The future. It wasn’t too different than what he was used to, but there was a distinct aura in the air. It wasn’t something that he could see, exactly. Something felt different. Something had changed. “How is this possible?” he asked aloud, stepping out of the way of several policemen running past them, wearing sleek black helmets and holding their blast sticks high and at the ready. One of them kicked down the door of one of the storefronts up ahead and nodded to the others before they piled inside.
“It doesn’t matter, Mister,” Charlie replied in an even tone, gazing into the foggy distance. “All that matters is that you’re here.” It wasn’t quite the answer that Jason was looking for, but he played along as the pair continued their morning walk through the city. Solid grey concrete buildings began to replace the stores along the side of the street, signaling that they were entering a more industrialized area.
“Crap!” Jason shouted as he jumped away from the sidewalk, grabbing Charlie by the shoulder and pulling him along. Something had suddenly grabbed at his leg from the shadows of the alleyway they had just passed. He moved forward a few steps before glancing back into a dark alleyway, his hand still holding Charlie by the shoulder tensely. An old, withered hand wrapped around the corner of the building and stayed there. It looked emaciated, with the bones almost jutting through the pale grey skin. Long, brown fingernails grew out from the tips of the fingers like claws, grasping and scratching at the concrete surface of the building. Out from the darkness, two tiny yellow eyes shot back at them. The serpentine-like creature yelled something unintelligible and flashed a sharp, toothy smile before receding back into the shadows of the alleyway.
“What in God’s name was that?!” Jason stammered, his heart beating up against his chest. He let go of Charlie’s shoulder but continued to push him along.
“Don’t worry about them, Mister,” Charlie reassured him as they continued walking. “Those are just homeless people. Bad people. They sold all of their memories, and now they live alone in those dirty alleyways. They’re not really monsters.”
“What?” Jason looked down at him, perplexed. “What do you mean they ‘sold’ their memories?” Charlie pointed at Jason’s right arm, near the elbow, and he obediently rolled up the sleeve of his robe. What he discovered there surprised him.
A small device, no bigger than a lighter, was strapped to the inside of his arm. As he moved to examine it, he winced—the device was wired to his veins. “That’s your memory holder, Mister,” Charlie explained. “You see, in the future, everyone’s memories are recorded and stored on portable drives rather than their brains, freeing their minds from the need to remember.”
Jason looked at the device in bewilderment, as Charlie reached towards it and scrolled through several menus before pushing a button. Suddenly, Jason’s head snapped back, and his mind’s eye was flooded with images and scenes from the recent past—all of the family vacations and treasured moments that he’d thought he’d lost forever the night before. “This is incredible,” he whispered to himself, smiling as he relived the memories in rapid succession. His honeymoon, Belize, Lily when she was just a baby, his dear mother. Each of these memories ran through his mind in chilling detail. He was elated.
When it ended, he looked around them at the people who began to fill the streets. It was only then that he noticed that everyone he saw also had a device, or the hint of a device underneath their clothing, wrapped around their arm. “Incredible,” he repeated to himself. The ability to record all of his favourite memories, to relive life’s best moments in stunning detail, was something that Jason could only have dreamed of. He felt a sudden wave of happiness and relief, a stark contrast to how he had felt the night before. It was the ultimate record, the mind’s record. This future was bright, indeed.