This is why I prefer Sam. Her vision is true. The way she sees the past, the way she sees the future, the way she sees everything is without fault, without embellishment. She is … unique in my experience. Well not completely unique, there was one other, my Yaya, but she passed years ago.

Others alter reality. You know, nobody is the villain in their own story. Sometimes changing little details, sometimes dropping entire memories altogether, retaining only a general sense of direction, hollowing out all of the gory details and leaving only a shell of the memory. Leaving a sense that they are the good guy.

It can be impossible to know from a single point of reference, whether someone is accurate or not. I experience what is stored. If they have stored a lie, then I experience the lie. That’s why I need multiple points of reference. Multiple witnesses. It doesn’t have to be a big event, anything could suffice as long as there is a conflict of interests, even a small one. Just as long as I can check the multiple perspectives to gauge the accuracy of each. The best gauge is if I am around them long enough to witness the event myself. To walk through a significant experience of conflict, allow some time to pass and then view and compare. Unfortunately, this is also the slowest method of validation. I reserve it for only the best prospects.

I’ve been tracking her for quite some time now. She is unaware of course. The conspicuous nature of my gift makes it risky and difficult to spend time around people. I am triangulating her memories across the others. T-roy, or T as we call him now, isn’t too bad. He has a very clear view of the past. There is a small amount of narcissism, but nothing significant when compared to what I’ve seen from almost all the other people I've come across. Like his sister, he too has a future capacity. I don’t really think he is aware of it. It can be a funny thing, the future. I can see it when I am with him, but he doesn’t seem to grasp it himself. He has some of the best reflexes that anyone has ever seen, preternatural really. Perhaps he can access those future memories in some unconscious capacity. I’ve never seen more than a minute into the future with him, and usually much shorter in the tens of seconds range.

I cannot see anything of the future on my own. I’m a parasite in that way. Only able to glean it from those with the talent. And looking into my own memories is just like any regular person, you just think and there they are. But, when I am experiencing someone else’s, I have to be close. Their memories are visible to me in a third eye kind of way. Visible sacks of experience. I would say balloon or bubble, but that gives an image too light and airy They can be heavy and very full, like a fruit. Some are tiny, just a glimpse. Some can be very very large indeed. Each one is filled with the experience the memorizer is holding onto. The sights, sounds, smells, tastes, feelings, and even thoughts. They branch out in connected vines or branches from the memorizer, usually from their head. The past memories stretch out behind them. They are literally looking back. The future ones, when they have them, are stretching out in front of them. It makes it very obvious to me when I come across a clairvoyant. Though, I don’t know if you would call them “clairvoyant” if they are unaware of this perception. They seem to operate as some sort of future antenna. They can pick up the future signals, but they can’t make them usable. I, on the other hand, am the radio, converting those signals from the antenna into something intelligible and usable.

Regrettably, the only way to get a valid point of reference on a future memory is to live it myself after I have experienced it from the receiver. Without that, they can be pure delusion, whether of grandeur or dystopian. These are not fleeting thoughts, but like memories, something that anchors you to an experience. Something permanent. Something I can return to time and again and find it consistently.

I once crossed paths with someone who had hyperthymesia, those rare few who can recall every event in their life when given a date or somesuch. It was amazing, at first. The extreme order and care they took in storing each and every day. Each sack is the same size, each on their own vine, and directly connected to the present. They recorded everything, whether it was eventful or mundane, and mostly visual experiences only. So, as I said, it was amazing at first. They were perfect for triangulating the accuracy of others. But alas, we parted paths a few years ago, and I have never encountered another since. I had let down my guard. Getting too close, too often. As if their orderly chronology of events was my personal library. They became suspicious of me, then eventually avoiding me, and then disappearing.

It can be unsettling, the way I experience others’ memories. As I mentioned, I see the sack in a third-eye kind of fashion. It’s there, like an aura. You can choose to focus on it or choose to focus on the other 5 senses. I move up to the memory, grasping it in both hands and pulling it into my head. Imagine being able to inhale a complete episode like putting your head into a helmet-shaped experience. So, I have to be close.

And then there’s the experience itself. For me to be in it, to really be in the moment and experience it, I have to lose connection with myself. Only, I am expressing how I would react to their experience. I find that most people are better at multi-tasking than I am. Experiencing an incredible meal can leave me focusing so hard on my Pavlovian drool control that I am distracted from the visual memory, etc. And all of this is perfectly plain to anyone watching me going through the experience.

So you see, that about sums it up. It’s very difficult to validate trust in someone’s memories. It is very difficult to establish trust with the memorizer through relationship, it is very difficult for them to accept me and my insights into their private moments, and most of the time, it’s not worth it anyway, because most people are deluding themselves.

So when I saw Sam coming, I treated her with the utmost caution. I recognized her from a distance. For me, there was a gravity well pulling me towards her that simply couldn’t be resisted. The impressive trail of memories stretching back alone would have been interesting. But the fruit of experiences that preceded her were greater than even my most revered subject, my Grandmother “Yaya.”

I still don’t know if Yaya was intentionally training me, or just lovingly indulging what she saw as an eccentric runaway imagination. We would spend hours together. She raised me, mostly. Mom left first, and Dad would take me to stay at Yaya’s for increasingly long visits. Eventually, I was staying with Yaya and only visiting Dad.

We would sit out on her porch at the end of our day, as the sun was just starting to rise and announce its arrival. I would tell her of some memory from her life that I couldn’t possibly have known.

***

“And then he brushed his hand against yours. Quickly at first as if by accident and then slowing when you didn’t recoil from his touch. He then gathered the courage to lay his hand on top of yours,” I spoke to her in the other rocking chair with my eyes closed, fully feeling the experience. “The warmth feels good, exhilarating. There is trust in how he approaches you, gauges you, how he considers you.”

“Oh yes, he knew me! Knew when I would balk, knew when I would bide,” she flashed a little grin. Then her forehead pinched up a little tighter. “But surely you know all of this from listening to me just...carry on about him around here,” she said, and then turned towards me. “Tell me something I couldn’t have told you, no matter the facts, I simply couldn’t have.”

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

I wasn’t sure what to do with her challenge. “Tomorrow…” I started without knowing where I was going to take this conversation. “First thing, when you look at your watch…” I continued as if singing a song I could only remember confidently when it was paying. I pulled one from in front of her and pulled it into my head. “The time is going to be 6:23. But you’re going to think it’s 6:24.” I said with my eyes closed. “That seems pretty precise,” I thought.

“Sugar, you know I wake up around that time every day. There’s no rocket surgery to proclaim that I’m going to look at a clock just minutes before 6:30?” She questioned rhetorically. “Why don’t you tell me something I don’t know.

It was a hard thing to know. Over the years, the memories in front of her were fewer over time. And those futures I read weren’t especially remarkable. The remarkable ones I didn’t want to share. The hospital bed and room were in so many of her futures. Her memories behind were changing too. Ones I knew well, even those I had been a part of, began disappearing. I have revisited memories of Yaya’s so many times. Her memories of my Mom. Her memories of my Dad, before and after me. The first time she experienced me. I knew exactly where to find those precious memories. Then I noticed some that I had been a part of starting to disappear. They were just gone.

It can happen, I mean, there is a lot that goes into memory. It requires the investment of energy, biological talent, and a good measure of luck. I had seen memories disappear from others before, but it was rare for Yaya’s to go missing. At least it used to be.

“Bet it all on the Astro’s, Yaya, in 2066. They win the World Series!” I teased with a wink.

“You silly boy! What in the world am I going to do with you, Tom?” she called me by my father’s name.

***

She continued to deteriorate over the coming years. We had government-provided health care, but nothing seemed to help. Her memories were just pruned as the disease progressed. Eventually, I couldn’t find a memory of myself anywhere. At least, not a real memory where she knew who I was with any connected context of history. I had become just an NPC in her narrative. Just some stranger who was here to make her comfortable on occasion.

I stayed with her till the end. Our place was out in the countryside. Well, her place I suppose. We had a lot of recycling built in for water, waste, and electricity. It had been only Yaya and me for several years, but it always felt like there were so many more people around when I could spend time in the long tendrils of her memories. When she was gone, I was truly alone. I had always been a loner, but not truly alone like I was after Yaya.

The days stretched into months and my solitude began to make me feel really…detached. I had sold what livestock we had remaining over a year ago. We couldn’t work or take care of them properly anymore. They weren’t very interesting to read anyway.

I tried to sell the property. I sat on it for months with no activity. Everyone was moving into the covered network of neighborhoods or cities. Nobody was moving out to the country anymore, to work the land by night, to risk the exposure to the elements, the exposure to the wilderness.

Eventually, I too walked away, thinking I could always return if I needed to. I often wonder what it’s like there now on the farm. Did the systems continue to function? Did the gardens continue to grow without my care and maintenance? Had someone else has found the abandoned homestead and settled in to make it their own? I didn’t return, of course. Just knowing it was there for me if I needed it was all the hope I needed. I made my move a couple of hundred miles towards the coast, to a community shelter outside of Houston, Texas.

If the homestead had been maddening for its drought of relations, then Houston was maddening for its drought of opportunity. Every soul I crossed there in the community shelter was beyond despair. No significant work, no ladder out of the shelter, just meandering about, trying to stay out of the way of forced gang recruitment, either as a perpetrator or victim of the required initiation. I didn’t have anything to offer and so only passed a couple of months there before deciding to move on to the substation border town.

It took me months to get there. I had to work odd jobs on tankers on a circuitous route that eventually brought me to Dammam, outside of Bahrain. From there I made my way across the Arabian Peninsula and down the eastern coast of Africa to Mozambique and then inland to Swaziland. I ate what I could trap or find on the side of the road if it was fresh enough. Walking at night and sleeping in the shade of rock crevices during the day.

I was exhausted and on my last thread of hope when I walked into the glowing ring of lights in the tent town. I had spent so long alone or pushing people away, that it took me over a month to let my guard down. Similar to Houston, the people here had a sense of desperation about them, but here it was mixed with a sense of direction. Like fear of the dark crossed with momentum towards the light at the end of the tunnel. In that sense, it was the most hopeful place I could remember.

These people were poor, like me, having come from nothing. Well, most of them were poor. But there was another element that was beginning to grow here as well. They would arrive by van or bus. Clean. Protective clothing. Money. This wasn’t somewhere you could just visit, like a tourist. This trip would require everything you had to give. A “commitment”, they called it.

I had been in camp for a couple of months when Sam showed up with her family. She was one of the clean ones from the vans. I didn’t have anything to give up to go down. I had simply enjoyed the life here around camp. Playing games, getting to know the pilgrims and their stories as they would journey here and then pass on to the substation. There was nothing forcing me, and there was plenty of work to keep camp clean and running smoothly. I was … appreciated.

Sam, on the other hand, had left a life of relative riches. She had parents, they had nice stuff, and they had protection. When I could get close enough, without drawing attention, I could see their story, reading it across all 4 of them. The background was too consistent to be delusions of grandeur. Unfortunately, they had been placed in a separate tent from my own. I found the best way to read someone, discretely, was to pretend to sleep in their proximity. Then I could search through without drawing suspicion as we were cramped in the sleeping tents. It did have its drawbacks. Reading when I should have been sleeping left me jetlagged at night, and I wanted to be up and about, witnessing the events, and doing my part to contribute.

All 4 of them had healthy memories. Of course, T had some near-term futures and Sam was amazing, as I mentioned. Her parents didn’t show any futures, but their histories were impressive, though not consistent. I could only get glimpses, with there being so few opportunities to read adults in general. But it was enough to tell me that they weren’t all on the same page.

***

“You can give me everything you want, it is not going to make up for leaving me with Dad,” the pretty middle-aged blonde cuts her words off sharply. Her face is hard with her arms crossed and her back is stiff. I know her well, and I’m comfortable with her. I have a lot of things here that I also know well. There’s a chest of gold ingots. There are chests filled with silverware. Jewelry, lots of jewelry. There is a whole storage unit of similar, expensive, things. I pull the unit’s roll-down door to the ground and slap the sliding pin in place. The blonde punches some numbers into the keypad and the door is locked into place. I know the numbers.

“I am going to sell this stuff if I need it to cover expenses,” she says. “If he loses his hearing aids again, or falls again, I’m going to have to,” her face eases a bit.

“I don’t have a choice. Phillip is determined to go and take the kids with him,” Sylvia says. “Something happened at work, and it really impacted him. He’s willing to throw it all away.”

The blond’s posture softens a bit, “Look, sis. I get it. You’re scared. Phillip is acting crazy. I’ll hold onto this as long as possible. I just hope your little vacation is over before anything else happens with Dad. The last spill cost a lot, and without Phillip’s income, I may have to lean on some of this.”

“It’s not a vacation. It is going to be awful. We have to live outdoors in a temporary encampment…with no AC. The food is rationed, the water is rationed. I think the kids will be shocked to see how great we have it here and then everyone will return to their senses before we get too far along.”