chapter
THREE

The use of the color red was restricted in New Seattle, because the cops held the franchise. That’s why they carried small red truncheons and guns, because it was a marketing thing. I learned all this from a chubby cop who chattered good-naturedly as he left the two of us in a small temporary holding area, composed of a dozen seats enclosed by a small cage. He kept my bag, saying I could pick it up on the way out.

A few other people were already waiting under the glare of a harsh fluorescent light that doused the area with a particularly soulless sense of inhumanity. Across from me was a gaunt man, staring off at things only he could see. His limp-waisted appearance made it appear as though his body had been blown up without quite enough air, and his thin lips didn’t seem as if they would have any words behind them. He saw me and smiled, and it creased up more of his face than expected. The girl paced slowly around, still taking in the layout, and I wondered if she would make a bolt for it when they took off our cuffs.

Then someone else was brought in, remonstrating fiercely with a cop. “But I have a license to drop melons,” he was saying. His voice was thick with phlegm, and he dripped water from a blotchy raincoat.

“Sure you do,” said the cop, shoving him through the gate and leaning his bulging shopping bag up against the desk.

“I do. I have it here. You want to see it?”

“There’s no such thing as a license to drop ripe melons from the roofs of very high buildings,” said the cop. “Make yourself comfortable. We’ll call you.”

“But I have license. Where’s the thing?” He began to thumb through his raincoat pockets, pulling out a variety of dirty objects. “I got it from the State Department. It cost me fifty dollars. Hey—you see? Here!” He flourished a piece of paper and shoved it through the bars.

“You write this yourself?” said the cop, handing it back.

“No! It’s a genuine license to drop ripe melons from the roof of tall buildings. Genuine! You haven’t read it, have you? An official melon license. Ah, goddamn it. Cops!” He took the thing back, rammed it into his pocket, and sat down grouchily across from us. I could see a melon protruding from the top of his shopping bag by the main desk.

I sat back and closed my eyes, and realized the smell of disinfectant in this place hadn’t changed at all. Another cascade of memories came at me, bright and clear.

Then a tiny voice filled me with a shiver, and it took me a moment to realize that it was someone whispering in my ear.

“They say there’s another city like this one, but it is empty,” it said, and I opened my eyes and turned.

It was an old man.

“What?” His deep blue eyes sparkled and then he leaned close to my ear again and whispered, “A place where there are no people. And you walk through and there’s not a sound. Just the empty buildings. I’ve dreamed of it.”

His delicate words slid through me and I felt them resonate.

“About an empty city?”

“Shh! Not so loud. Shh!” He pulled a wilted smile so fragile it was touching. “Secret,” he said gently, drawing away from me and making a wide welcoming gesture with his hands.

Then a cop grabbed him by the arm and hauled him through the gate and off down the corridor like he was a small child. “Mr. Zargowski, they’re all waiting for you.” The man held my gaze as he stumbled backward until the reality of his situation broke over him and he collapsed in a tantrum.

“Don’t do this to me!” he cried. “Please. Don’t do this. For the love of God!” Another cop went over to help the first as he began to kick and scream, lying like a child on the floor.

“I don’t want to live a waking death!”

“This is a routine head hack. You’ll be fine, like everyone else. I promise you, you won’t feel anything. I promise.”

And they dragged him away. As his shouts receded I thought, but that’s what the guy is scared of, that he won’t feel anything. That he’ll come out from that room numb and senseless to whoever the hell he was when he went in. The girl was still pacing and I closed my eyes.

“This is a genuine melon-dropping license, isn’t it?” said the man, nudging me back to the present again. He thrust the crumpled sheet toward me.

“Looks like it,” I said.

“You see?” he said walking back to the bars. “You see? This guy knows!”

But the cop behind the desk ignored him. And then another came and led away the limp-waisted man opposite, and I saw his eyes were sunken dark things, as though the pools that had once been there had been drained.

He had the kind of history you don’t sit down next to in a bar, and yet I had deliberately sat down to talk to too many people like him over the past eight years.

They had been a distraction. A way of filling time without being left to the mercy of my memories. So those last years had become a vast wasteland in my life, and I did not want to acknowledge they had taken place. For most of them I had worked in a Memory Print store in a mall in Saratoga Springs. I’d printed out people’s memories. Twenty-four pictures from the last twenty-four hours for ten dollars, glossy or matte. I hadn’t been there because I got some job satisfaction printing out pictures for people so they could go away happy, or because I had enjoyed operating the cumbersome, ammonia-reeking machines. I worked there to pilfer other pasts, immersing myself in other people’s lives so I could avoid my own. At Memory Print, there was always a fresh supply of someone else’s life to live inside for a while.

But I had never had my memories printed out, even though the company allowed employees free access. They would have been proof that all I experienced from day to day was my life, and if it was on paper it would be harder to disown.

Another cop headed over, his huge feet landing on the floor in untidy steps. He beckoned to the girl and me. “You two. This way.”

The girl stared at me, and I saw her brown eyes burn with adrenaline.

But there was no way out for her.