Author: Colin Jeffrey
“The total value of your haul,” said Twopenny Armchair, eyeing the console, “is twelve point five dweebles.”
Kentish Town sighed. It wasn’t enough. It never was. But there was no haggling with Armchair – Town had two fewer fingers on his left hand to prove it. So he took the money, stuffed it in his pocket, and left.
Trudging into the street from the refundery, Town turned the coins over in his hand. Just enough for one crash, but no dinner. Again.
The nearest crash bar was across the street. Not the cleanest place, but it was close and they knew him. Not that it mattered; they’d sell him out quick if he was on a purge list.
Pencil Sketch was on the door, nodding to Town as he entered. Sketch had been a breaker once, but bouncing at the Crash Barn was easier. He still disassembled the odd miscreant, but at least he worked indoors now.
The place was half full. Some were jacked in, others sat at the after bar, vaping synthadone.
Town found an empty crash sack, dropped his dweebles into the slot, and a jack reeled from the ceiling. He flipped open his chest port, plugged in.
The world fell away.
He drifted in velvet black. The crashfield unfolded under a moonlit sky. Floating corridors lined with fog doors swung inward. Stars formed cryptic alphabets in the sky.
He was barefoot on moss. The air murmured memories.
“Town,” said a voice like a whispered thought.
He turned.
Chattel Mortgage stood in a suit of branches, her hair a halo of static.
“You’ve rusted,” she said.
“I didn’t choose this arc,” Town replied, though he wasn’t so sure.
“You didn’t not choose it.” Mortgage plucked a floating door, held it like a mirror. Town saw himself as a boy made of chocolate cake, mouth all cherries. “We all return to where the forgetting began.”
“What is this place?”
“Below the forms. A plane the Crashdrivers can’t scrub.”
“You know me?”
“More than you know.”
A chime echoed, like a bell struck too hard. The doors began closing, one by one, with the sound of fluttering pages.
Mortgage stepped back.
“Damn. A tracebot. Unplug before you’re archived.”
The corridor bent sideways.
Town fell upward into himself.
He gasped awake in the sack, heart pounding. The jack slithered away.
Sketch stood nearby. “Hard crash? You were only eight minutes.”
Town sat up. “Felt like a year.”
Sketch shrugged. “No refunds.”
Outside, the world was harsh, loud. The dream clung like talcum powder on his skin.
In his coat pocket, something rustled. A torn scrap of paper. On it, just one line: Ask the egg what it remembers.
Town knew where to go.
The crash memory sat in his head all the way to the flatlands. Past shuttered stalls and flickering ads, Town reached an oval booth. A Memory Egg.
He hadn’t seen this one since he was a boy, but he remembered. You’d pay a half-dweeble, and it’d spit out a cryptic “memory prediction.” Some crashers said they foretold truths. Most called them junk. The fad faded. They were scrapped.
Except one.
It opened with a woosh. He stepped inside. The walls glowed, the Egg whirred. Illuminated text floated in front of him:
WE REMEMBER WHAT YOU SOLD.
He frowned. “What did I sell?”
YOUR TRUTH.
A flap opened and a silver slip slid out. The egg shutdown.
Town stepped outside, read the words on the slip.
THEY BURIED IT. DIG DEEP.
In his chest, something shifted. Not a memory, just the shape of where one used to be.