Unnatural Memory

By Terry Wayne Martin

As things occur in our lives, choices are made and we rarely grasp the consequences of the choice. Would another path have been better?

Sadly, we have only the results of the choice actually made and not the other and things that happen afterward may have been intended for the you who made the other choice.

Perhaps this is why some things unravel so quickly without seeming reason?

It might not ever be known but some puzzle pieces can be assembled.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Martian Publishing
• Release date: Dec 16, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005481582

Terry Wayne Martin

Born in Texas many, many moons ago, I had a very diverse upbringing. Dad was an agnostic metaphysicist that worked for NASA during the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs and Mom was a Baptist preacher's kid.No wonder I was raised so crazy/diverse (choose whichever answer fits best).Raised on the science fiction of Heinlein and that generation, that is the sort of thing I generally gravitate toward in my own sci-fi writing. For my other stuff, I cannot place the blame anywhere, yet.I do not have a blog at present but projects I am working on can be found at verbotham.com.

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PART ONE

NATURAL CAUSES

~~~~

CHAPTER ONE

[insert memory tag-line here]

What is memory but an internal dialogue to assist a person in anchoring the inconstancy of their existence within a framework that requires making sense?

It does not require adherence to concrete temporal points that others can attest to nor does it require any semblance of internal cohesion; many parts of memory can be contradictory to the remainder of the storyline that it matters not. Many people are known – or at least assumed – to have faulty memories, clunky things that require jogging or utilizing schema or aids to remembrance.

And all for what, precisely?

Just so that one's internal story makes sense in some bizarre fashion.

As humans we are well known in the ability to twist facts around like elongated balloon animals – squeaking and spluttering as the figures are formed or adjusted – into the menagerie that best suits our senses and sensibilities at that one given moment. When the universe rolls over a bump or crack in the pavement, we adjust the memory to fit the new reality.

And we accomplish this feat of magic so seamlessly, on the fly, that though it may confound the casual observer it still somehow makes complete and total sense to the one creating the mnemonic.

There are many very full and firm memories I have in my lifetime that I know after some research cannot have possibly occurred. The trek through the snow for the boys in the small schoolhouse to avail the use of the communal bathroom away from the main structure; the frosty breaths coming short and heated in the small space as we each released our own stream of piss into the ceramic trough, causing a much larger cloud of steam to rise.

I remember the chill to my fingers as I fumbled with re-buttoning my trousers; the off-color comments of a few of the lads as we turned to reverse our steps back into the schoolhouse where a potbelly stove kept the air some degrees warmer than the dimly lit winter exterior.

That is one of many hundreds of memories that I held from my childhood that could not have pertained to me. In this instance, the schoolhouse in question is not one that I ever attended in this lifetime – a fact verified by perusing the physical documents of my childhood. It was never my memory to own.

It is a firm memory but one devoid of anchors within any temporal construct I know.

It beggars the question: what is memory, then?

For the life of me, I cannot say.

What I do know is that trauma can – and often does – tangle the skeins of temporal morass together in patterns and connections beyond our understanding. Most often it is the foundation for a life lived apart, in some place where the walls are generally padded in order to prevent harm to oneself as well as to keep such madness muffled from all the correct-thinking people who have not the same issues.

Or at least who seemingly know better than to let on it has happened to them as well.

Sanity – that other lynchpin of modernity – requires such things be set aside. Such portions of memory need to be buried deep, far from inquisitive enquiry – boasting a mere step away from the cliff over the abyss of complete disconnection – lest a life once so fulsome should crash of the rocks in the tempest resulting from acknowledging the fine cracks in the firmament of agreed-upon illusion.

But what happens when they refuse to be so set?

~~~~

CHAPTER TWO

A DAY IN FORGIVENESS

Things might have worked out better for me if my life – even those portions most easily charted – had followed any sort of linear progression. Linearity was a boon my life seemed to avoid like the plague.

A childhood wracked by bizarre dreams and visions – horrors that led to an eight-year-old's bungled attempt at suicide – was wrangled under control by several therapy sessions involving drugs and hypnosis. That and long periods of the surety of being constantly watched; so signs of… well, you know.

Somewhere in the morass in my head, the tormented visions appear to have been seemingly brushed aside and replaced by other scenes, other wisdom, othernesses not within my experience. In later years, I would wonder if it was the trauma of the visions themselves that caused the temporal aphasia or the mental cut and paste of the healing therapies visited upon my small person that rid me of those demons.

The visions, or whatever it was, had been so deeply transfixed that I can no longer know anything about them; nor, if truth be told, can I even verify that they existed in the first place. Except for the scars on my wrists where my youthful flesh was seared by the passage of a razor blade, there is really no physical evidence that anything untoward had ever occurred.

There were some tales, of course. Latent bits of family lore of a two-year-old me waking the family by screaming at the top of my lungs while locked in one of the dreams at three in the wee hours; Dad and Mom shaking and yelling my name did nothing and the incident ended only when Dad's firm hand slapped my cheek. The slap was not so very hard, so the story goes, but the imprint of his hand remained a week outlined on my face; perhaps the cells there clung to the contact that had removed the dreamer from the horror in which he had been trapped?

Certainly not physical evidence but a story told in the family bears a different form of weight than my memory of the incident alone.

Dad, who had drugged and hypnotherapied me to some form of sanity, would never discuss the subject later even on the couple of occasions I tried pressing the matter to him. His only response was that he would tell me about it someday.

And then, far too suddenly, he breathed his last and the unanswered question hung over the funeral like some Damoclean sword spelling my doom, in most uncertain terms.

I simply tried my best to put it out of my mind.

What was left remaining of it in any event.

~~~~

CHAPTER THREE

CASTLING YOUR ROOKS

Where I got my notions about life and the method in which it should be lived are as unclear to me.

Most people I know can tell you where their concepts came from or how they derived them from datasets they have been given. Me, not so much except for, as I mentioned, memories that most certainly could not be my own.

Romance had been on a back burner for me early on. Who can possibly consider starting a family or a lifelong journey with another being while you are adrift in the cosmos? I figured there was time enough for that sort of thing when the right one came along.

When she did happen along, the stars seemed to have aligned and the universe suddenly began to take on some semblance of rationality. Looking back, I still cannot locate the folds of the cloth which came unraveled; the universe was upended and there seemed no rational trail of actions/consequences to be followed.

For many, life seems naught but a series of puddles fallen into.

Several wives later, I am still in confusion about this sort of thing. Concrete reality seems far too ephemeral; conclusions formed on the stuff of clouds do not seem to hold their shape for long enough to draw conclusions.

And it was not just romance that seemed elusive, a career path seemed to be carved into the same slippery slope. Whichever career path I started, I found myself wallowing in the quagmire between worlds. Situations changed, upheavals occurred, hostile takeovers reaped their damages.

This has not been the life-well-lived that many would hope for – at least, so I assume – but it is the train wreck I was given.

In far earlier centuries, I might have been accepted as a philosopher or a bard. In today's world, it seems I am really a far remove from anything resembling something qualified by the title career.

Many have lamented that my end would most likely be in one of those earlier mentioned padded rooms. Fortunately, I seem to have evaded capture. So far.

I drifted in and out of employ in a wide variety of venues. None of them a stable foundation for anything like a lifelong profession, none of them feeling anything akin to home. And the duration of each was left to the vicissitudes of fortune, fair or foul.

~~~~

CHAPTER FOUR

ENOUGH BELLY-ACHIN', FULL SPEED AHEAD

Enough about me and the insanity I keep hidden so well, I suppose, although I could continue the piss-and-moan for a few more chapters quite easily. It is time to get off the pity-potty and try and make some sense of this wild ride of a life.

Reclaiming anything like a normal childhood seemed to be doomed from the start. I mean, where does anyone even start on something like that, huh? So I took the next best option: try and figure out what any of this could mean if, indeed, any of this mischief needs to actually mean anything.

I had read case studies where people had created false memories to cover up trauma so devastating that it could not be viewed head on. Thus I came to the conclusion that my false memories were in some way covering up things I really did not want to know.

Most often such was regarding cases of alien encounters – shades of Whitley Strieber! – or cases of serious child abuse. Since I had no evidence of any abuse while younger – I mean not having witnessed anything of the sort being done to my siblings – I discounted the hiding abuse scenario. Whatever my mind was trying to shelter me from had to have been personal… meaning it was all in my head.

Not wanting to admit to some horrors glimpsed, my mind actively changed those sets of images into other, more comfortable, less charged memories whether they made any sense or not. But was there any rhyme or reason to the substitutions?

Much like dream therapies where certain imagery was used by the mind to equate to something else in the real world, I must have adopted such memories to hide other stuff. The trick was to figure out the decryption equivalences for the data sets.

It was a long and tedious process of self-analysis and I will not bore you with the details, the false starts, the dead-end rabbit holes followed in the quest. I haven't even reached the end of the search as far as I can tell but it is definitely a different place than where I had expected to be.

Fantasy, I call you home.

~~~~

CHAPTER FIVE

STRADDLING NIRVANA

Without a career to keep my mind occupied after working hours – let's face it, most menial jobs do not burden one with a lot of problems to take home with you at the end of the day – I found myself with plenty of time for reflection.

Having tried before to tear through the layers of false memories I knew I had, I went the opposite direction: back to the circumstances surrounding my first suicide attempt. I figured that if I could open my memory up to the event itself and the mental process that drove me to that eventuality, I might be able to start unraveling the Gordian Knot that was my childhood.

Diving back into that memory, I was able to painstakingly reconstruct the steps taken to acquire the blade from my father's razor, to lock the bathroom door, and then to proceed to cut open the veins in my wrists.

I found that during the entire exercise, my mind was busy convincing myself that it had to be done. With the convincing, there had to be some sort of rationale for the action and, digging ever deeper, I began to unravel the mysteries of the universe.

Well, my small part of it, regardless.

The visions were about being responsible for a world-wide disaster where millions died. I seriously doubt that I dredged up even a quarter of the really graphic details from my mind but it was enough to scare the crap out of an adult version of me – I cannot imagine what the infant me might have made of the gore.

One thing I knew for certain: I really wanted none of that on my hands. Most of the horrors had been buried in my psyche ages before any of the preliminary events began to unfold and I had no inkling of what was beginning.

An invention at age nineteen garnered me millions but I turned my back on it because I could see that it led inexorably to the end results I had seen in the vision. Perhaps with a bit more time and experience under my belt I might have gone for it but I was overcome by the fear seen of events supposedly to come to pass.

It was a chance for a future I felt uncomfortable with.

I don't mind making the world a better place and I am sure a struggle to do that is going to harm a great many people, but I don't want it on my conscience.

Better it should be someone like Trump. One with a character large enough to carry it off and to shoulder the burden thereby.

~~~~

CHAPTER SIX

A MOMENT'S MINISCULE MISGIVINGS

So, does this semi-restored memory actually mean anything?

Not any more than anyone else's memory means anything to the world at large. Memory is, by nature, a one-sided affair and only means something to the holder if (and only IF) they want it to.

Still, having spent the time and effort to undredge this malaise from within my cranial crevasses, I have the ability now to sidestep out of this normal matrix and into another of my own devise.

Some will call it daydreaming or such but it really is a bit more than that.

Daydreams, as with other mental functions, impinges only on the beholder.

Stepping halfway into another different timeframe… well, that's a bit more complicated.

This story, then, is a convoluted attempt at self-analysis on an entirely different level. It requires some serious soul-searching, admission of serious mistakes having been made, erroneous decisions, and a glimmer of the meaning of purpose in one's life. And by that I mean the purpose for our individual creation by some All-Knowing Hand in the great beyond.

If, indeed, any of this means anything at all.

Hopefully it will be an instructional passage of time for all who find this even if it does not carry the same weight that it has borne on me.

Second-guessing oneself, or even second-guessing God, is something one does all the time. We have choices in every day – none as weighty as described in this tale but choices with consequences nonetheless – and each choice creates ripples flowing outward through the universe. Only a fool would attempt to spend much time in ascertaining all the effects throughout the cosmos on every single decision made and we rightfully just make the choice and move on with our lives just as the multitude of our ancestors had done.

Rest assured, however, that the world we have, the one known by you in this place, would not have been here at this time except for all the cumulative choices made by every single ancestor of the race. A single difference at some remove in the past would have changed substantially everything we know today.

Not trying to weigh you down with such trivialities but, you know.

~~~~

CHAPTER SEVEN

FREEDOM CHAINS

Wrapped up in this dilemma was my first attempt at romance. Oddly enough, it became the key to unraveling the entire morass though I had not until recently seen the connection between the two.

Having always assumed that the right one would come along someday, I had avoided romantic interactions for the first twenty years of my life; no dating, no stolen kisses, nothing.

The reason my first fated romance did not work out was because I had already turned my back on the course that she was to assist with in my life. Had I known the two were interwoven so minutely, I might have chosen a different path.

I did not understand that she was anticipating a role as the business leader's wife – whether it was something she knew on a conscious level, which I doubt – so, for some reason unexplained, the thing just felt wrong to her even though she had seemed excited by the thought of marriage. In a heartbeat, it all vanished. She gave several differing excuses for breaking off the engagement though none of them stuck to the wall and left her almost as confused as I by the entire episode. Still, she stuck to her guns and exited my life to become another page, another truncated chapter, in my history.

How was I to know that the role I had recently rejected was the role wherein she was to play a part and – as such things go – the lack of such a role meant no one need be cast to fill that part.

It was sort of like a casting call for a part that was subsequently scrubbed from the film.

Not knowing the two were so inextricably linked, I was devastated and confused when the growing closer – even to the point of setting a wedding date – disappeared like breath on a frosty window pane.

Today, a great many years later, I can see the pieces in play and where they should have connected had not an earlier decision been made to change the course on which I was headed.

Alas, my choices eradicated that future.

I won't say that my life was ruined thereby because I think I've done fairly well over the years. Two failed marriages and several kids who don't talk to me later, I am happily partnered with a third wife who shares my zest for humor and I am satisfied to be doing what I have loved since before any of this occurred: writing.

Perhaps there is always another road for us should we decide to not take the one prepared so diligently for us.

I would certainly like to think so.

In retrospect, I would not have changed a single decision made. No message to my younger self to grab that golden ring as the carousel turned. No regrets.

~~~~

CHAPTER EIGHT

THIS THING CALLED CHOICE

The way the world seems today… well it seems a bit haywire. We have members of Congress lying directly to the people and getting away with it. Their lies are so blatantly obvious – and they are frequently called out for it – but nothing is done about it. Criminals are released from jails without serving any time for heinous crimes and those who are convicted find the sentences are hideously disproportionately applied. The media is caught in lies and refuses to correct such even when pile-driven in court to pay millions in restitution – they double-down and continue like they did nothing wrong. It is almost as though the world was upside down.

It calls to mind a portion of Stephen King's book 11/22/63 when the main character had stopped the Kennedy Assassination and returned to a future that was completely unrecognizable; electrical discharges in the atmosphere spoke to the imbalance created in the universe by one man's actions. It was not a very pleasant future, for certain, and in many regards it resembles what we have here now. The pictorial details of King's book are not evidenced per se but the remainder of the maelstrom is pretty spot on.

There is a code in the orient that if you save a person's life, you are now responsible for them from now going forward. Many people think it should be the other way around: you save someone and they owe you. Well, the universe doesn't work that way, my friend. So, if you alter the course of the future for one person, you owe it to them to assist them from now on along the future you have chosen for them rather than the future they had already been destined for. You play God: accept the responsibility.

In King's book, there was a simple mechanism whereby the character could reset the past back to its original course. In reality, there seems to be no such thing. We can only move forward and live with the mistakes made, adjust ourselves to the new course set, and go forth.

In the full run of the television series Touched By An Angel they made a big deal about free choice and what a gift it was from God for us. We have all been given a path in life – anyone who does not believe this need only take an intensive course in astrology to understand how this works – but we can still change it.

The problem with overwriting what God has writ comes with a hefty toll. You now become responsible for all the people who are now affected by your actions.

Deciding to not become a baker when everything in your life said that's where you should be comes with a lesser price-tag than some other destinations avoided. Imagine where Jesus might have wound up had he left his followers asleep in the Garden of Gethsemane and returned to the hills of Galilee, missing his appointment with Pilate.

Choices are powerful tools and dangerous weapons in the hands of the unwary.

One of the most powerful tools in the Scientology auditor's arsenal is the question: Has a decision been made?

People might even say that all of history is nothing more than a listing of bad decisions having been made a record of so that future generations might not make the same mistakes. As if we could actually learn something from history, huh?

We're still not that smart, I guess.

~~~~

CHAPTER NINE

WHAT'S THIS TO DO WITH THE PRICE OF BEANS?

When given a pile of broken shards of memory, one could conceivably construct a different version of history; an alternate history. If nothing more, it can be a useful exercise in understanding the present. Or… maybe not, if you are not so inclined.

So, we suppose there is a parallel reality wherein the twenty-year-old me did not shy away from the role to play and embraced the invention I had worked on and accepted the twenty-five million seed money to begin production.

The girl I met months later would have stayed and we would have had a very different life than otherwise lived; nominal control of future course of the planet would have, in essence, been mine to a substantial degree; not as emperor or anything so gauche but as a helping hand in many regards.

And so it is in this parallel world and it is a very different world.

Perhaps – with a little push in the right direction – we can make it a reality here as well. Only not with me in charge; that role has already been passed over.

There are millions who are going to die and anguish will reign supreme for a time as people try to sort through the false images a-la-matrix we have been forced to live through before the bright clear day dawns upon the planet. No, not a conspiracy theory – this is reality.

The timeline is not as clear as one might think and I am not certain it would have ended before now or if this decade was the earliest agreed-upon denouement regardless of the players running the show.

I have heard some people complaining about how could Trump be letting this drag out for so long; why not just reveal the truth and arrest the bad guys – why do so many more have to die?

Some question how can he live with that on his conscience.

Trust me, I know how easy it is to live with such decisions.

We all do it to some degree on a daily basis. Is there anyone so blithe who does not realize the ripple-effect for every decision they make? The universe has to make minute adjustments for every choice, every decision, every off-the-cuff move made.

God is the balance.

And he is constantly busy correcting the universe for us petulant children.

But…

Enough rambling, huh? Perhaps we should get to the crux.

Let me set up the tale by first relating what is factual history. Once that foundation has been established – regardless of how unreal it may sound to you – I will lead you on the excursus into the alternate realm.

~~~~

CHAPTER TEN

SOMETHING CLOSE TO HUMBLE BEGINNINGS

We sat around the dining table in the small apartment in Phoenix.

At one end sat myself. To my right was my next younger brother, Philip, the gregarious people-person of the family. Next to him was his long-time friend, Steve, who was a budding musician. The last person on that side was Diane, the paralegal sister of the fellow seated to my left: Jason, a Viet Nam vet who had a streak of adventure not beaten out of him in the Marine Corps. Just beyond Jason sat the newest member of the group, Randy, and I was still a bit uncertain about him or his motives. Just past him was Willis, who had been working with my youngest brother for several months on the invention. At the other end of the table was that youngest brother, David, who did not always pull himself away from his experiments long enough to attend these weekly meetings.

All seven present understood that a device had been built and tested on a small scale which removed gravity from the transport equation. Only three, however, knew the workings of the device.

Looking over the group, I wondered how it had grown so quickly. As each present at the origin had been sworn to secrecy, there should only be three people at the meeting. It was a problem I could see needed correcting. Immediately.

Sighing, I straightened the papers before me and said, "First off, I need to stress that no one beyond this group is to know anything about what we've got here. We don't need this thing to spiral out of control – our control – until we are ready to go public with it. All right?"

After exchanging glances, everyone nodded and mumbled their agreement.

Then, setting the lie to the entire fiction of control, Randy said, I think I've found someone interested in investing in this enterprise.

After staring at him a moment, I turned to look at Steve and then Jason, wondering again who exactly had brought this guy into the group.

Okay, Randy, I sighed, I'll bite. Who?

Well, it's a group of businessmen that understand the possibilities here. They'd like to get in on the ground floor.

Well, I'm sure we'll be opening it up to investors in a while, but right now…

He interrupted. They're willing to front twenty-five million.

What? David stared at Randy.

Whoa! Jason grinned. Sounds like what we needed.

The others exchanged glances, mostly with their jaws slackened.

Still staring at Randy, I said, And what do they expect for that kind of investment?

A fifty-one percent share.

Grinning, I shook my head. No, I doubt we want to turn over control of this thing to the first pretty face that comes along. There'll be more than enough investors once we get the prototype working.

But this is a firm offer.

I'm sure it is, Randy, but I don't think we're quite ready to go there.

Shrugging, he nodded and the discussion went to other matters.

Shortly afterward, the meeting broke to be resumed next Tuesday, the regular day for these meetings. One might think that without working capital or a functioning device, the need for meetings was a bit premature but you would be surprised how many other things are involved in getting a new venture off the ground – primarily a lot of marketing research and that sort of thing. Mostly, we wanted to be able to hit the ground running when the prototype had been proven to be viable.

Though the offer had been tabled, you just knew that everyone who left the meeting was thinking about what we could do with a twenty-five million dollar nest-egg.

Most were able to contain any drooling.

Pretty much, anyway.

~~~~

CHAPTER ELEVEN

SPIKING THE PUNCH

It was about two hours after the meeting broke up that there was a knock on the door.

I was surprised to see Randy there.

I nodded. Hey, bud, what's up?

He appeared nervous and glanced side-to-side before leaning closer. Can I talk to you a minute?

Sure. I opened the door wider.

He drew back like I was gonna punch him. "No, I mean, like, in private."

Okay. I nodded. What do you have in mind?

Looking over his shoulder, he said, How about in my car? It's right outside.

Sure. Shrugging, I closed the door and followed him along the concrete pathway, past the swimming pool, and to the exit from the apartment complex. The fourth car down on the left was his deep red Mercury Cougar.

I climbed in the passenger side.

After he got in, he sighed. Whew! This is a bit intense.

What's that?

Grinning, nervous still, he looked sideways at me. Well, I gave my friends your message and he said he wanted to sweeten the deal a bit. Reaching over the seat, he moved a blanket on the floorboard to reveal a small briefcase. His hand struggled a moment before grabbing hold of the handle and pulling it over the seat. He pushed it into my hands.

And what's this?

This is a gift from our friends. Under the table. Untraceable. He says if you can convince the board to accept his offer, this is yours to keep.

I reached up to push the latches to open the case but he freaked and put his hands over the mechanism. No! Not here! He shook his head while once again looking