The Lightyears Series Episode 16 - The Memory Flood

For the next hour, Jake tried to talk to me, trying to make me laugh, get angry and forgive him.  “Come on, talk to me, yell at me.  Just talk to me,” he pleaded.  I refused to give in to him.  The next hour, none of us said anything until Jake looked around with curiosity.  “I remember this place.  We used to meet here when you could get away from Josh.  I didn't remember that until now.  I swear.  We used to leave messages for each other somewhere in here.”  He searched the tunnel carefully, moving his hand across the wall as we walked.  

I didn't remember any of what he was saying. Maybe it was one of those implanted memories.  I would remember if I had been here with him, right? I would remember sneaking away from Josh to meet Jake, right?  What would we have said?  What would we have talked about?  Did we talk about the fact that I was marrying Josh to save Jake’s life?  Did he convince me to do it? I didn’t remember any of it.  If he was telling the truth, why did I not remember?  Why did I have implanted memories and missing memories?  Maybe Jake did too, I didn’t know.  Why all this tampering with our memories?  What were these people really hiding?  

Five minutes later, Jake reached up into an exposed pipe and pulled out a stack of letters, and as he did, a chip dropped to the ground.  I leaned over and picked up the chip.  I slid it into the slit in the side of my QuanPad.  When the information came onto the screen, it was encoded.  “Of course, it is encoded,” I said in a low tone.  I sent the file to my friend Fireball.  “I sent it to Fireball to decode.”

“She speaks,” Jake quipped.  

I rolled my eyes, pointing forward.  We continued our trek until we reached a wall.  I tapped it several times in an unique sequence before the doors slid open, then I motioned the group inside. 

I touched the walls of the room, flooded by memories of fights and tender moments that occurred between Jake and me and me and Josh.  I pulled out a blacklight device from my sleeve cuff.  I turned it on and flashed it at the wall.  I started at the left corner, recording the words that appeared.  I remembered I wrote everything I found on that wall in invisible ink when the guards took my research, when they took my QuanPad because I tried to contact the outside world.  It was as if it never occurred to them that I might want to go home, to resume my life.  They gaslit me by telling me I was specifically chosen for this mission, that maybe I was not up to the task if I wanted to go home, that I was not as smart or as talented as they thought me to be.  I remembered feverishly writing all my findings on the walls, the floors, whatever surface I could find.  Did I find the cure?  I felt as if I did, or was close to it when…when something happened.  What happened that prevented me from…I remember being all caught up with the marrying Josh thing because they were going to kill Jake.  I wrinkled my brow, getting a sinking feeling in my stomach.  Did they know I found the cure or was about to and focused my attention elsewhere?  Was finding the cure not their goal?  I felt so weak in the knees just thinking about it that I grabbed the back of a nearby chair.  Emotions and memories started to flood back with such vigor that I nearly collapsed under them, barely hearing Drew and Jake ask me if I was alright.

Suddenly the doors slammed shut behind us.  Then the voice filled the room, saying, “You have returned to the scene of the crime sooner than anticipated, but we are glad you are all here.  I’d like to welcome you to the start of the end for you all.  Take me to your parents, and marry Philippe, and we will let the others go.  You have forty-eight hours to make up your mind.  If you choose not to, you and your companions are going to be eliminated.  Your time starts now.”