Username: Mairose
Prompt Used: Resistance, Muse
Word Count: approx. 3709
Score (Yes/No): Yes
Additional Comments: This is a concept I've been playing with for a while, and the song literally fit into the theme perfectly. I'm not much of a romance writer, so incorporating the apparent love story in the song into this piece was a real challenge, but one that I enjoyed. Overall, the title is the only thing I'm uncomfortable with. It's a bit lengthy, so please bear with me! sweatdrop
Title of Entry: The Rendered Recollection
The Rendered Recollection
By Mairose
"Is our secret safe tonight,
And are we out of sight,
Or will our world come tumbling down?
Will they find our hiding place?
Is this our last embrace?
Or will the walls start caving in?
...If we live a life in fear
I'll wait a thousand years
Just to see you smile again.
Kill your prayers for love and peace,
You'll wake the thought police.
We can't hide the truth inside.
...The night has reached its end.
We can't pretend,
We must run, we must run.
It's time to run.
Take us away from here..."
Resistance, Muse
-------------------------------------------------------------
"It'll all be over soon," Brian whispered.
"I know. But I don't want it to be." The tears built a crystalline lens over my eyes. I tried to blink them away, but they broke free from my lashes and stained the floor. The building trembled. I winced as the home we had made together was slowly destroyed.
"Julian," he said, holding my face in his hands. "I know you're scared. But it won't hurt. I promise it won't hurt." A chunk of plaster on the ceiling dangled precariously, spilling dust upon us. The foundation threatened to crumble, the glass in the windows shivered.
"It's just a test, after all."
My heart contracted with grief. "Don't say that, Brian."
"It's a fabrication," he continued. "You've known that since we met. They're going to find us soon. You're going to wake up, and you're going to be okay. I'll be gone, but it doesn't matter. I'm not real."
"You were real once."
Outside, something was happening: the sky appeared to be growing thinner. We watched in terror as the clouds parted and the azure endlessness of space was perforated. As it began to tear and give way to the force of my awakening, my senses went out of control.
I could literally feel the time ticking by, my skin growing older. I could taste the dust in the air, but also the white-hot light that poured through the open void in the sky. A vacuum was created, and we watched as trees were uprooted from the ground and ripped away. Slabs of concrete tilted awkwardly as they ascended, whirling dangerously. The shingles of the roof collided with each other as they broke free.
The ceiling cracked into a web, the middle bowing upwards, preparing to abandon us and leave us exposed. Meanwhile, the floor began to collapse, floorboards splintering like teeth threatening to devour us.
The universe was literally tearing itself in half.
He held me closer. "Do you remember how we met, at the beginning of this experiment?"
"Of course I..." My voice trailed off when it suddenly hit me; I
couldn't. Already, I was letting the pieces slip away, like the house that was crumbling around us.
"It was summer," he whispered, "and we were nineteen. We were at Heritage Park, standing in the empty parking lot. You were taking photographs of the sky."
"Don't let me forget," I begged helplessly. "Don't let them take you away."
"I was immediately attracted to you. I walked over and introduced myself, and asked why you were taking pictures in such a strange place. You said it was because you got dizzy if you stood on the grass and looked straight up."
I closed my eyes and clung to him as the ceiling lurched, struggling against the beams.
"Remember our first kiss?" he tried, desperately trying to keep me focused. "When we watched the sunset in downtown? You were scared. I kept trying, but you kept pulling away from me. And then, just as the sun went down,
you kissed
me. I was totally shocked."
The floor caved dangerously; we slid towards the middle of the room. Bricks from the fireplace crashed into the floor. Doors unhinged themselves and swung haphazardly in the chaotic wind. A picture frame on the mantle crashed beside us, sending glass skipping in all directions.
He wrenched his hands from my iron grip and retrieved the frame. "Look!" he yelled over the deafening roar. "You took this picture, remember? That's us at the river.
Remember?"I looked at the image, but I only recognized a young version of myself. The young man sitting on the rock beside me was unfamiliar, but he had his arms wrapped around my shoulders, resting his chin on my head with a content expression on his face.
He ripped the photograph free from the frame and clenched my fingers around it.
“Don’t ever let go,” he cried. “Don’t forget me, Julian!”
Who is this man? I thought.
What’s happening?The floor groaned and buckled. The walls cracked, pouring plaster dust and peeling paint. With a jarring sound, the roof ripped free and spiraled away. I screamed as I was hurled upwards.
He caught my hands and pulled me back to him, leaning in to kiss me. Delirious with panic and confusion, I fought to free my hands, clawing at his face. I pushed him to the floor and let the wind carry me away, towards a blinding light. I watched him as he fell away with the floor.
His eyes were so hurt, but I didn’t understand why.
~~~~~~~~~~
“Dr. Crowe, the subject is stable,” said a woman’s voice. “She fought the medication, but she’s awake now. The experiment is complete.”
I blinked against the brightness of the lights over my bed. The woman, a nurse of some kind, made a note on a clipboard and placed it at the foot of the bed. She pressed a button on a remote control, and the mattress lifted into a sitting position. she began removing a myriad of tubes and wires from my arms.
A tall man with graying sideburns and a heavy brow stood before me. “Mrs. Blaire, you’ve just been awakened from an induced coma. You voluntarily agreed to take part in our experiment. Do you remember this?”
He held up a sheet of paper covered in minuscule text. At the end was a line with my signature scrawled in blue ink. I could remember signing the waiver, but I couldn’t remember what the “experiment” had entailed. “I don’t…” I tried, “I don’t know what I‘m doing here.”
He smiled warmly and folded his hands in front of him. “It was a simple test of the power of love, for lack of a better term. You were put into a controlled comatose state, and once immersed into a world exactly identical to the one you remember as a young adult, we programmed someone from your own memories as a variable.”
Still, I was confused. “What do you mean, you programmed someone? Who? Why?”
He shrugged. “You didn’t really know him, but twenty years ago, you saw him once. Only once. You never knew his name, how old he was…In fact, you barely remembered what he looked like. We used a virtual simulator to build on what he could have looked like, based on the one time you saw him.
“We did a simple change of your thought patterns, and programmed him to approach you. The two of you built a relationship over the three months you’ve been under. We monitored each and every thought, every change of your emotions. We were able to see how simulated love could change a person emotionally and mentally.”
The nurse returned to my side with a glass of water, but I felt too sick to accept it.
“Why would I have agreed to such a thing? I…I never loved anyone. I never married, or had children. How could I possibly know anything of love?”
“That is precisely why you were one of only six perfect candidates, Mrs. Blaire. Your life was void of the kind of love associated with a romantic partner, therefore, the test results were free from what we call ‘clouding’, a condition where, during an experiment of this nature, memories from previous experiences can muddle the results and effect the subject’s relationship with the simulation.”
He said all of this as in a very matter-of-fact tone, but his smile never faltered.
I tried to remember what had happened. All I could recall was being late for the appointment, being intimidated by the machines as the nurse gave me a tour, and then signing the waiver.
“The money has already been deposited into your account, Mrs. Blaire,” Dr. Crowe continued. At the mention of money, it suddenly dawned on me why I had agreed. The ad had offered $25,000 to anyone willing to undergo the study, but only six candidates were to be chosen. I placed my hands at my temples and willed my mind to remember something, even the tiniest shred of the “simulated” lover, but I couldn’t.
Dr. Crowe rested his hand on my knee. “It’s normal to be a little confused when you awaken from something this drastic. Three months have passed, so you’ll have a little trouble falling into a normal routine, but we have a great counseling program here in the lab, free of charge.”
I shook my head, becoming more agitated by the lack of memory. “I don’t need… I don’t want to it. I just want to go home.”
Dr. Crowe looked pained. “I’m afraid the counseling sessions were part of the agreement. You have to attend at least four sessions over the next week in order for us to document the changes in your behavior. It’s vital to the experiment, Mrs. Blaire.”
“Fine,” I said, throwing up my hands, “whatever you want, but can I please just go home for tonight? I’m so confused.”
He nodded. “Absolutely. In fact, it would help if you went home and spent some time in a familiar place. After all, your journey was quite interesting.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Interesting? How so? I can’t seem to recall anything from the experience.”
He motioned to the nurse, who brought a stack of pages printed from one of the monitors beside the bed. Dr. Crowe let them unfold, accordion-style, to the floor. He indicated the multicolored waves in alternating patterns. “I know this doesn’t look like much to you, but we were able to print out brain-wave readings and compare them to what you truly remember of your time as a young adult.
“This blue line here,” he said, pointing to the calm, rolling hills of blue ink, “indicate what your life was like in reality, while this red line is a reading of how your mind reacted to the simulation.”
While the blue line was smooth and generally unchanged throughout the three-month period, the red line was choppy, with ups and downs, zigs and zags… Clearly, my simulated love life had been more exciting than my real life.
He continued by indicating a place where the blue line was perfectly still, and the red line climbed higher and higher. “Here was your first date with the simulated partner. You can see your heart rate and brain activity were more active than your typical evenings you spent as a teenager.
“And here,” he pointed to a mess of red peaks that reached to the top of the chart before plunging to the bottom, and then back up again, “was your first time experiencing an intimate moment with the variable. Clearly, your mind and body reacted in an interesting way.”
I blinked back tears, feeling utterly vulnerable. These people had literally “seen” everything I’d imagined, safe in their lab coats while the machines printed out my dreams. I felt so exposed in a way I didn’t think possible. My head began to swim from the embarrassment, a red flush creeping up my neck.
Dr. Crowe noticed my distress and collected the pages into a neat stack. “You really shouldn’t feel so embarrassed, Mrs. Blaire. All six of our subjects were programmed to experience five specific events: the first meeting, the first date, the first kiss, the ‘first time’, and the first fight.”
“The first fight?”
“It is common in every relationship to experience disagreements that sometimes escalate into full-blown arguments. What I found interesting was that, in your case, we had to program the simulation to really push your buttons. You had a very hard time accepting the challenges he presented you. It’s as if you were reluctant to drive him away.”
I frowned. “Wouldn’t most people want to avoid conflict in their relationships?”
“Yes,” he confirmed, “but most people wouldn’t have brushed off many of the insults your simulation threw your way. It’s nothing to be ashamed of, it’s simply interesting.”
The more he said “interesting”, the more my skin crawled. He kept glancing at the stack of readings in his hands, a hungry expression on his face. He was almost giddy with anticipation.
He didn’t really care that the reason I was so upset in that moment was because- I realized quite suddenly- I was heartbroken. I had loved someone, finally. I couldn’t remember who, or why, or even when, but I had experienced love, and he had taken it from me.
I racked my brain, trying again to conjure up some proof, some fleeting memory of him… His name, his face, the smell of his hair; all gone in a blinding flash of light. The spectacular fright of being pulled away from his hands in those final moments was all I could remember, but already the feeling of his hands grasping mine had faded. I wish they had left an impression on my skin, some tiny bit of evidence.
My body felt strange, as if it longed for the weight of his embrace, though I could not remember what it had felt like.
Sickened, I threw the blankets back over my legs and swung my feet over the bed. The cold linoleum floor was uncomfortable, and I stumbled forward awkwardly before Dr. Crowe caught my elbow. “You haven’t walked in three months,” he explained, “you may need a bit of physical therapy to-”
“Let me go!” I screamed. “I’m going home. I want nothing more to do with you and your sick little test. You told me I wouldn’t remember him. You told me I wouldn’t feel as if I’d lost someone close to me, but I have. You took him from me, and I can never have him back.”
I wrenched my arm from his grasp and stumbled towards the door, glaring viciously at the nurse who tried to take my hand. She shrank away as if I’d slapped her. I pushed my way out the door and stormed, wobbly and uncoordinated, towards the elevator. My memory of the hospital layout was coming back as I turned the corner.
Just as I neared the elevator, I heard a man arguing with a nurse in another room.
“Her name was Julian, and she’s real! She’s out there somewhere, and I have to find her.”
I stopped abruptly and staggered to the door. Peering through the window, I watched a man tearing at the tubes in his arms as the nurse scrambled to call a doctor. The man looked vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t quite place him… Was it just a coincidence that his simulation had shared my name?
I shook my head. “Had to be,” I muttered, “They were just programs.”
I turned away uneasily and continued to the elevator. It wasn’t until I tried to press the down-arrow that I realized something was clutched in my fist. I unfolded my stiff fingers to find a photograph, yellowed with age and marred with creases. In the sepia-toned impression, I recognized myself in my late teens, and a young man with his arms crossed around my chest. My temples throbbed as something began to resurface, something I needed to know…Something I had longed for since my awakening.
“B…Brian. Brian!”
Dr. Crowe came careening around the corner. He spared me a glance before thrusting open the door of the room where the man was screaming at the top of his lungs. Something crashed into the hall; the remains of one of the machines. The screen went black and the metal probes ceased their ecstatic dance across the page. The blue and red lines remained halted in the throes of the chaos of the man’s experience.
“Tell me where she is!” he begged. “I know she’s real. I saw her once, I know she’s somewhere in this world. Tell me where to find her!”
“Mr. Greene!” shouted Dr. Crowe. “Please calm down at once and let me explain!”
Something else crashed into the hallway, partially closing the door behind itself as the cord caught beneath it. I crouched down and crawled to the opening on shaking hands and knees.
“Mr. Greene, yes, Julian is real. But when you signed the waiver, you agreed that you would not seek out the person you were paired with in the experiment. Even if you were to find her, she would have no recollection of you.”
The man, Brian Greene, lowered a small piece of machinery- what appeared to be a scanner of some sort- and gaped at Dr. Crowe. “She’s here? She’s in this hospital now?”
“No, I’m afraid she’s just left. But I assure you, Mr. Greene, even if you were to meet her, she would have no recollection of you. We have already gone over her results with her, and she told me herself, she has no memory of you, nor does she still harbor any feelings towards you. It was just a test, after all.”
At that, his eyes swam with tears. A sharp pain cut through my head, and another memory resurfaced:
grasping his hands, he had tried to kiss me. I had panicked and pushed him away. His eyes, so hurt and full of confusion, had watched me flying away... I clutched the photograph in my hand and backed away from the door. The elevator slid to a halt behind the metal doors and a bell chimed to announce its arrival. I crab-walked into the tiny room and watched Brian let Dr. Crowe pat his shoulder as the doors hissed shut.
I didn’t press the button for the ground floor. I couldn’t have if I had wanted to, because my body simply refused to work. Numb with realization, I shuddered.
He remembered me. He was real, and he remembered me. I held my head in my hands and tried not to think about the dirt on the elevator floor as I cried. I stared at the picture, and indeed, it was him. The high cheekbones and the square jaw, the way his nose slightly wrinkled with his smile… I was sitting literally ten feet from the only person I had ever loved, whether that love had been real or dreamt, and I couldn’t ever go back to him.
Half an hour had passed, maybe more; my perception of time was distorted. I wiped my face on the sleeve of my gown and reached up to hit the first button, when the doors suddenly buzzed and opened. I looked up to see him standing there.
“Oh!” he said. “Are you alright? Here, let me help you up.” He gripped my wrists gently and raised me from the floor of the elevator. He stared at me, but I hid my face behind my hair.
My heart thundered in my chest. “I…I was just picking this up.” I showed him the photograph, but I was careful to quickly hide the image before he could focus on it. Still, he gently took hold of it and I let it slip from my fingers. He studied the two young lovers, and then looked at me in disbelief.
“Julian?”
I nodded. “It’s me, Brian.”
He flinched at the sound of his name. “They said you had forgotten me. Did you lie to them?”
“No,” I whispered. “They lied to you.”
“Mr. Greene?”
We turned our heads towards the hall just as Dr. Crowe appeared around the corner. “Mr. Greene! Mrs. Blaire!” he yelled. “You cannot speak to one another, you’re breaching your contracts!”
He ran towards the door of the elevator, telling a nurse in the hall, “Call security!”
Brian slammed his fist into the ground floor button, and our hearts pounded with adrenaline as Dr. Crowe neared the elevator. To our luck, the doors hissed shut before he could bump them open. The metal box shuddered, and began its slow descent.
Brian held my face in his hands, a feeling that was so familiar and comforting, I fought back tears of relief. I thought I had lost that feeling forever.
“We have to run. As soon as the doors open we have to hail a cab and get out of here.”
“Wh-where will we go?” I stammered. “They know where we live. They know where we’re going, and what we’ll do-”
He leaned down in a movement familiar to me, and instead of instinctively pulling away, I leaned into his lips. When we parted, he whispered, “They gave us a history together, and built us a world of our own. They can have it. We can build our own memories now. They can’t tear us away from each other this time.”
As the elevator shuddered to a halt and the doors swept open, he took my hand. We ran past the shocked nurses and scientists, and past the lazy security guard who barely noted our existence.
We pushed the doors open and stumbled onto the street. The wind seemed to work against us, ushering us back towards the hospital, but we climbed into the back of a cab parked on the curb.
The driver seemed frightened, probably fearing that we had escaped from the psych ward. “You were released, yes?” he asked, fumbling with the keys.
Brian smiled warmly, and in a calm, sane voice said, “Of course. We’re going home today.”
The man was relieved, but still suspicious as he asked, “Where to?”
“Take us to Heritage Park,” said Brian. “Let us off in the parking lot.” He wrapped his arm across my shoulders and held my hands. The photograph that had miraculously made the transition with me between past and present lay unfolded on my lap.
“We have a lot of catching up to do,” he whispered in my ear.
The cab pulled into the heavy traffic as Dr. Crowe and the baffled security guard ran out to the curb, waving our contracts over his head.
“Quick,” Brian said to the driver. “I need a pen!”
The driver handed him one from the console, his wary eyes watching our every move. On the back of the photograph, Brian wrote:
Keep your money. We found what we really needed.He rolled down the window and let it fly free, among the lost autumn leaves. We hoped that Dr. Crowe would retrieve it before it was swept away forever.
But we never looked back to find out.
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