Michael Remembers Books 1

By Vassar Smith

Book 1
At the beginning of the 24th Century, when Michael Tadlock is born, the world is plagued by the double scourge of crime at an all-time high and human fertility at an all-time low. When he is ten years old, a scientific breakthrough is announced--the Retrogression Procedure—which, society believes, will signi¬ficantly alleviate both problems. Thereafter, those who are convicted of major crimes are retrogressed instead of serving long prison terms. This medical procedure transforms the subject's body back into what it was at 1/10 the subject's present age. Well-educated, cultured, kind, and witty, Michael Tadlock is nevertheless too fond of living "the good life" and too smart for his own good. Both at 27 and (again!) at 50, he commits horrendous illegal financial manipulations, for which he is arrested, tried, convicted, and retrogressed. The first Procedure transforms his body back to himself as a two-year-old; the second one (23 years later reverts him to himself as a five-year-old. In both instances Michael retains his adult mind and previous sense of identity and must adapt to living in a child's environment, going back to school, obeying well-intentioned but flawed adoptive parents, and trying to avoid or overcome the growing prejudice and hostility that so many "normal" people now harbor against retros.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Vassar Smith
• Release date: Mar 18, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301461172

Vassar Smith

V. W. Smith was born in Memphis, Tennessee and has lived most of his adult life in California. He earned and received his Ph.D. from Stanford University. He has been internationally published as a poet and humorist as well as a serious scholar and translator or Russian literature. His published translations include the novels BAD DREAMS and CONSOLATION by F. K. Sologub, and numerous poems by Pushkin, Lermontov, Sologub, Blok, and other Russian masters. Collections of Smith's original poetry include: BYZANTINES AMOK (1990), UNDER THE LIMERICK TREE (1991), THE OVEN-BIRD CHORUS (1993), and THE CALIPATRIA TRIOLETS (2008). BAST'S ASSIGNMENT is the third in a series of exciting, original novels that employ elements both of future fantasy and of social satire. Its story begins some three Earth years after the ending of the second book. That novel, BAST'S RECORD, is a sequel to Smith's uproarious satirical novel MICHAEL REMEMBERS, published by Midnight Express Books in 2012.

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MICHAEL REMEMBERS

(A Novel in Three Parts)

By V. W. Smith

Published at Smashwords by

MIDNIGHT EXPRESS BOOKS

MICHAEL REMEMBERS

Copyright © 2010 by V. W. Smith

Smashwords edition

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Then I saw a new Heaven and a new Earth.

—Revelation 21:1

This nightmare came upon me:

It seemed to me that then

I’d somehow been born over

And had to live again.

—Fedor Sologub

BOOK I

April 8, 2301—April 30, 2356

Chapter 1

My name is Michael Tadlock. I am a historian. Some would tell me to put that second statement in the past tense or the future, since I cannot officially work as a historian until I am an adult again. But I am still a historian. Nothing else quite so interests, indeed fascinates me as human history. It seems ironic, then, that I don’t remember my own childhood—my original childhood—very well. It’s not that I have bad memories of it, just very few from that time, thanks to the Retrogression Procedure.

One of those memories is a gift from my uncle on my birthday when I turned nine. He gave me a fine, gold-plated, old-fashioned writing pen and a green, leather-bound book of blank pages. He told me that, though few people do so nowadays, centuries ago cultured people would keep a written record of their daily activities, even of their thoughts and conversations that they wanted to preserve for reference. They wrote such things down every day, or nearly every day. The book was called a diary or a journal, after the Latin and French words for a daily record.

It seemed like a neat idea at the time, so I tried it—for about three days. It wasn’t that I didn’t like writing. It was just that, for a nine-year-old, most days are so much alike, for one thing, and, for another, it’s hard to distinguish the salient from the superfluous. Within a week the beautiful pen and book that Uncle James had given me lay unused in my desk drawer.

This time I’m determined to keep a record, to preserve the story of my life, or, to put it more accurately, my lives. This time I’m writing on a computer disk, and I’ll make both backup disks and hard copies. I’ll keep them somewhere safe. I may look like the same little boy who started a diary on the day he turned nine years old. But that day was over 45 years ago.

Chapter 2

I was born April 8, 2301, the only child of William and Margaret Tadlock, who were both biochemists, research scientists for the Proteus Corporation. I remember my Mother reading rhymes and stories to me at bedtime. I remember constructing models of buildings and spaceships with my Father. And I remember my Uncle James and that diary with the gold-plated pen.

But most memories of my original childhood are gone—obliterated by the Retrogression Procedure. I’m in not my second, but my third childhood. I’ve been retrogressed twice. And though it’s worse in other ways, at least subsequent retrogressions cause little if any memory loss. Even that first one doesn’t erase all one’s childhood memories, just most of them. Somehow the memories from the mid-teens onward aren’t affected.

It’s hard to realize