Life is Awesome (Mnevermind Trilogy Book 3)

By Jordan Castillo Price

Daniel Schroeder wants nothing more than to repair his father’s broken memories, but it’s been a long time since he’s thought of himself as a memorysmith. Even though convincing Big Dan of their current reality is the most painful task Daniel faces every morning, somehow life manages to prevent him from finding a cure. He needs to keep their family business running. And he needs to moonlight at a competitor’s shop to keep all his employees paid. Or maybe he’s just trying to keep himself from exacerbating the situation.

A year ago, Daniel would have presumed he was clever enough to memorysmith his way out of their predicament, but nowadays he’s not so cavalier. Playing with people’s memories shouldn’t be taken lightly, and things can always get worse. Even with the help of some of the best minds in the business, Daniel still isn’t sure how to navigate his way out of the persistent false memory that’s crippled his life. Is new programming the answer? Better gear? More money? Or is time the only thing that can heal Big Dan’s memories...if they can even be fixed at all.

What Daniel needs most is some breathing room, and Elijah Crowe is eager to provide it. Since he’s smitten with Daniel, Elijah is determined to prove himself—and he’s more than qualified to clear Daniel’s schedule by taking over some duties at Adventuretech. With the support of his new boyfriend, possibilities begin to open up for Daniel, hints of things he hasn’t even realized he’d stopped hoping for: the contentment of a harmonious family, the fulfillment of his creative expression, and a chance for a relationship with a man he loves.

• Language: English
• Publisher: JCP Books
• Release date: Feb 27, 2015
• ISBN: 9781935540724

Jordan Castillo Price

Author and artist Jordan Castillo Price writes paranormal sci-fi thrillers colored by her time in the Midwest, from inner city Chicago, to various cities across southern Wisconsin. She’s settled in a 1910 Cape Cod near Lake Michigan with tons of character and a plethora of bizarre spiders. Any disembodied noises, she’s decided, will be blamed on the ice maker.Jordan is best known as the author of the PsyCop series, an unfolding tale of paranormal mystery and suspense starring Victor Bayne, a gay medium who's plagued by ghostly visitations.

Book preview

LIFE IS AWESOME: PART 1

Memory is the diary that chronicles things that never happened or couldn’t possibly have happened.

-Oscar Wilde

Chapter 1

Most people have morning routines that involve a shower, a shave, and maybe a pit stop at Starbucks. Most people don’t realize how lucky they have it. I know I never fully appreciated my mornings, back before I had to answer the question where’s your mother? every single day.

I knocked around the dining room for a while, waiting for Big Dan to come downstairs so I could break the news before work. I’d allotted fifteen minutes. That seemed like enough time to say what we had to say. Then he could process the big, ugly surprise while I unlocked Adventuretech and got the place ready for our first shift of bright-eyed, bushy-tailed customers…or desperate guys who’d heard they would definitely bust a nut in our Love Connection.

Dad? I called. Hopefully he wasn’t lingering in the bathroom over a half-finished novel. You up?

I’m up.

I listened for footsteps. And waited. And watched the stairs. Nothing. Wanna come down here for a minute before I head out?

The upstairs floorboards creaked as Big Dan made his way downstairs without any particular sense of urgency. He’s not what you’d call an early riser, and it takes him longer to get going than it does me. Then again, I was the one waking up fueled by the sick sense of dread. He was always fine though, at least until he had his morning chat with me.

What’s so important it can’t wait until after my first cup of coffee? Big Dan shuffled past me, scratching his scalp.

I followed him into the kitchen, wishing I’d rehearsed something, knowing that even if I had, it wouldn’t have helped. It’s about a mnem.

You want to brainstorm? Now? He glanced at the clock. Don’t you have to go open?

Life is Awesome.

About time you dusted it off and started working on it again.

Dad….

Those four-bit mnems you’ve been running lately just don’t cut it.

Dad, let me finish.

He sighed and poured himself a massive cup of coffee. He spiked it with creamer, turned to face me holding the cup just below his nose so the caffeine could waft up his nostrils on a cloud of steam, then said, Okay, Daniel. I’m all ears.

A year ago…more than a year ago, we were testing Life is Awesome. You and me. I could tell he wanted to add that he didn’t understand why I hadn’t looked at it since, but he held his tongue. And the last time we ran the mnem, it went persistent.

Big Dan’s eyebrows screwed up, but he said nothing.

It went persistent on you, I explained. And it damn near killed me, even now. Some pain dulls with age. But every time I tore off this particular scab, the wound underneath it only got bigger. Something happened. Only you don’t remember.

His eyes cut to the clock again. Did we sell? Is that why you’re not going in?

I’m going in, Dad, just as soon as we—

Tell me we didn’t sell out to Recollections.

I sighed. Adventuretech is still ours. For whatever it was worth. But Mom is gone.

Big Dan looked at me like I was nuts—this was the one part of our daily discussion that never seemed to vary—but then he started looking around. Over the years, plenty of details had changed in his ex-wife’s absence. His eyes fell on three blenders herded together on the counter. One was for smoothies, one was for…well, I had no idea. If Big Dan said he needed three different blenders, what difference did it make to me? But in Mom’s household, he would’ve been forced to pick one. Not because there wasn’t enough space for him to have what he wanted. Just for the sake of proving who was boss.

The evidence of Mom’s absence was everywhere, from the forbidden ash tray on the countertop to the dirty dishes piled in the sink, but Big Dan was collecting evidence to support his reality, not mine. If Jeannie’s gone, then why was she at your aunt’s birthday party?

Because she left her second husband and she’s back in Wisconsin now.

Second husband, he chortled. Daniel, do you realize how you sound? Would she have fawned over that mai tai I made her if we were divorced?

Even as I drew breath to argue, the ramifications of his last encounter with my mother struck home, and those ramifications hit hard. Back at the party, he’d been primed with the knowledge of the persistent mnem. He’d spent the day observing changes in our home that never would have occurred had his wife been present. And maybe he’d even been reminiscing about some of the better memories he’d had with me, memories that were so much better with her out of the picture. When my mother had marched into my aunt’s party and Dad suspected something was up, she didn’t deny it. No, Jeannie Schroeder (or whatever her last name was nowadays) didn’t stoop to lying. Not when she was an expert at forcing the truth to suit her purposes. She hadn’t tried to weasel out of admitting what she’d done. But she minimized it and swept it under the rug, and everyone else was content to play along with that version of events. Because God forbid we have a confrontation. Heaven help us if we actually let my mother know we were all onto her games.

At the time, Big Dan accepted that she’d been gone. But he’d also been too damn intrigued by the thought that she was back. And now his erroneous brain had decided to forget the most important part of the evening, the part where he semi-believed he had a persistent memory and she verified that she’d been gone. All he remembered was their chemistry.

Let’s try this again. Somehow, I’d forced my voice to stay calm, even though what I really wanted was to scream, and scream, and scream. We’ll work backwards this time. You woke up alone this morning. You went to bed alone last night. You woke up alone yesterday, and yesterday we had this same conversation. Only yesterday you let me convince you about the persistent mnem.

Whose persistent mnem?

Yours, Dad. Yours. I took a breath to stop my voice from shaking. Six years ago, when we got our bank loan, you and Mom had a huge blowout.

How could I forget? She was so pissed off she actually slapped me.

This was new information. For all the arguments those two used to have, I’d never known anything to be raised other than voices. The blows they fought with were verbal, not physical. Unless you count the time my father kicked a hole in the dining room paneling, which he never lived down.

We fight, Daniel. We make up. That’s how it is.

How it was. Christmas. Do you remember her at Christmas?

Well, sure. She was wearing a burgandy sweater and her hair was in a twist.

No, that wasn’t Christmas. That was Pipsie’s birthday, the day before yesterday.

Dad’s good humor began running low. His tone took on an edge. I can hardly be expected to memorize your mother’s wardrobe.

Think about it. Christmas day, she wasn’t even at the dinner table. You sat between Ken and Harry and talked about football half the night.

Then your mother must’ve been working….

On Christmas? I was yelling now—damn it, after trying so hard to keep it together, I was yelling. She’s a bank officer. Since when are banks open on Christmas? Damn it, Dad, think. Just think. She wasn’t there on Christmas, she wasn’t there on Thanksgiving, and she wasn’t there on your birthday, either. She’s gone. Not just this year, but every year since we opened the business. She’s been gone since we signed our business loan. My mother’s career, and the fact that we’d signed the loan without her input or approval…suddenly it all clicked.

Why we’d gone about things that way, I couldn’t even say. Dad and I never planned it or had a specific conversation about going behind her back. It wasn’t so much to purposely exclude her, it was that we had to avoid her negativity. She’d been so busy spouting predictions of doom, about how most businesses fail and mnemography was just a flash in the pan, that we needed to cut her out of the loop to preserve our momentum.

I turned away and pinched the bridge of my nose. I’m sorry, I mumbled, not knowing who the hell I was even apologizing to anymore, or for what.

She wasn’t there on Christmas?

I sighed.

Chapter 2

Selling the business. That was a new one. The mental gymnastics my father will put himself through in order to accommodate his persistent mnem never ceased to amaze me.

I pulled into the parking lot, stubbed out my cigarette and gazed for a moment at the single story building with its cinderblock foundation and corrugated PVC walls. Adventuretech Mnems. My baby. In the wintery pre-dawn glow, the modest structure pushed up from among the snowbanks, quiet and unassuming. Next door at the hospital laundry, already steam billowed from the ventilation system and the fogged windows were all lit. Those guys ran two shifts, sometimes three, and the parking lot was always teeming with delivery trucks, food carts and minimum-wage labor. But my little business could only run if I was there to make it happen. At least since Big Dan retired.

For the sake of argument, I tried to imagine my mother pulling up to the property and feeling the same sense of ownership and pride that I did. Was that what she’d wanted—something to be proud of? Maybe, maybe not. Maybe she’d just wanted to run the show. And maybe her reasons didn’t much matter now that it was all ancient history.

Morning rounds began with me flipping on the lights and turning up the heat, and then I moved on to the technical stuff. I plugged in the box that would send my first client of the morning into mnemland, and hooked up the tester. The readout lit up green. I did a visual inspection, signed the log, and moved on to the next machine. Between my day job and my moonlighting, I could carry out an inspection in my sleep. Even so, I’d never dream of half-assing it, and I forced myself to keep my attention on the task. Maybe Mom truly had wanted to be part of the business. She was sharp. Even if she was too high-strung to sherpa, she’d make a great tech. With the right training, she’d be perfectly capable of running through the mornings’ inspections, no problem. But I couldn’t imagine her enjoying it once the novelty wore off. A tech job would be too solitary for her. She was a people person. Not because she cared about them, but because they were so happy to mirror back her self-importance. And not only was my mother charismatic. She took pains to ensure she always looked fantastic.

Like when I saw her at Pipsie’s party a couple days ago. She’d looked good. Too damn good.

You’d think I would be biased, but even I had to admit she’d aged remarkably well. Either she was bathing in the blood of sacrificed virgins, or she had a decaying portrait stashed under her mattress. Or maybe it was just Botox. But I was partial to the virgin idea.

I headed for the kitchenette—it was crucial that I got to the coffee maker before the rest of the staff. I’m not sure why, but my aunt made terrible coffee. Two ingredients: water and ground coffee, and still, hers tasted like mud. I was busy ruminating over the notion that Big Dan thought I would actually sell out to Recollections when I turned to grab the carafe, and nearly had a heart attack. Elijah was splayed up against the kitchenette window, pressed up against the dingy pane so hard, his palms, fingertips and nose were all flattened against the glass.

When I think about Elijah, his spectrum disorder isn’t usually the first thing that comes to mind. But then I see him…and he does something.

A normal person would’ve knocked on the door, or maybe called my cell.

Normal. Or, more accurately, neurotypical. I supposed that was the technical term I wanted.

The more I tried not to notice how weird he was, the more it hit me over the head. Then I felt guilty for the way my heart sank when I saw Elijah pressed there like a bug on a slide. Talk about being an ingrate. Who cared about his lack of even the most basic social skills? This was the guy I was trusting to help me clean up my mess—the only one who seemed to have any grasp at all on the scope of the persistent mnem and the potential for fixing it. I forced myself to look at him and act natural…not that I knew if the way I acted even registered with him. Hi, I called out.

Hello. The muffled word fogged the glass.

Go ’round back. I gestured with broad arm sweeps and pointing. I’ll let you in.

I met him at the back door. A blast of frigid Wisconsin air hit me when I let him inside. Be careful what you touch. If it was any colder out, you’d stick.

No. Thermal conductivity would be an issue with metal. Not glass.

So much for lightening the mood with a little humor. The awkwardness was thick enough to cut with a fork. Still, it seemed important to treat him like any other guy I might be dating. Can I kiss you?

You don’t need to ask. Part of me enjoyed the way he leaned in for the kiss this time, instead of waiting for me to come to him. Part of me noticed he tasted like window.

It was a chaste enough kiss, a simple hello, and we both seemed to be on the same page about the intensity and duration of the contact. Or were we? If Elijah was unable to pick out his own clothing without an elaborate system of labeling, how did he know that it was fine to grab a quick kiss in the back room, though it was probably best to not to indulge in public displays in front of the customers?

For all I knew, he had no intuitive grasp. So he was wrong—I did need to ask. It was safer that way. For everybody.

When the greeting kiss was concluded, Elijah said, So I need a 00-size helix screw and don’t want to wait for Memtronics to open. Do you have one? I’ll buy it off you.

You don’t need to buy it. I cocked my head toward the break room. C’mon in, I was just making coffee.

Yes. Although I don’t know how you can stand it.

It’s not that bad. At least when I make it.

No, not the coffee. The clock radio. I had no idea what he meant, until I followed his gaze to a tiny plastic radio on top of the fridge. Carlotta had brought it in a couple of years ago, when she was convinced that she would win a $50 prize if some radio station randomly chose her birthday and she managed to call in before anyone else. But eventually she decided it wasn’t worth spending her entire lunch break listening to that stilted white-people banter. I hear enough of that from y’all.

While her ambition faded fast, the dusty little radio remained. Its readout was currently flashing 12:00.

Just a power blink, I said.

I know, but…. Elijah shuddered.

I pushed a button to nudge it up to 12:01 and the flashing stopped. Elijah continued to stare at it.

I’m not going to bother resetting it, but if you want to, be my guest. That dumb clock radio, which no one listened to and usually read 12:00, was the only thing the occasional power spikes seemed to affect. The voice mail system hadn’t needed resetting since Alliant accidentally dug through a buried cable a few years back, we never had a problem with the computers, and all the boxes had passed inspection ten minutes ago. The power surge was probably ancient history by now, anyway, since those tiny, barely noticeable brownouts and flickers tended to happen during thunderstorms, not snowstorms. Elijah still seemed bothered by the numbers, given how intensely he was staring at the 12:01, so I attempted to reassure him. The equipment’s fine. The boxes would throw an error if anything tripped the varistors on the inline protection.

Obviously. I was just thinking.

I expected him to follow up that statement with some explanation as to what he was thinking about, but no luck. I stood there waiting for an excruciatingly long pause, then finally I couldn’t stand it anymore. If he had an idea about undoing the persistent mnem, even an embryonic idea, I had to know. Thinking what?

LCDs shouldn’t show a blinking twelve when the power’s interrupted. It’s more logical to display a string of zeroes. Or maybe even flash the word ‘set’. Otherwise it reads as midnight, or noon. Just for a second—but it still generates cognitive dissonance.

Yeah. He didn’t need to sell me on the distress that people felt when their facts refused to line up. If anyone knew how much cognitive dissonance could suck, it was me.

Once the coffee was brewing, I went about digging up some helix screws. Mnemography gear is made of the same basic building blocks of computers, radios and other electronics, but certain components are manufactured in a highly specialized way to keep people from doing the sort of home mneming Big Dan and I got away with in our basement. After all, we’re both trained professionals—and look how it turned out for us. You can’t even pop open a mnem machine without a helix-head mnemography screwdriver, although I suspect if you weren’t too worried about the technical legalities, you could find someone willing to sell you a functional knockoff on Craigslist.

Helix screws were always rolling off the edge of the table and disappearing into the carpeting, especially the small ones. Since they were so easy to lose,