Persistence of Memory

Part 1-2

I stumble to a stop somewhere miles from the facility—I don’t know how long I’ve been running but it’s almost dawn now, the air around me starting to lighten with a rosy hue that I used to see from the window of my cell. A pinkish, bluish tinge that will burn off as the sun rises, but right now it’s cottony and clings to the trees with a low fog that’s hard to navigate. At least in the darkness I could sense the trees around me, I could dodge out of their way, I could open my mind and feel the forest and know where the guards were, how much distance I’d managed to put between them and me. But in this fog, time is blurred, trees jump out from odd angles, startling me into another direction, until I’m sure I’m running in circles around the same patch of wood and the sun will rise to find me frantic. The guards will catch up then—I feel them breathing down on me like hell hounds, and the thought of returning terrifies me.

No one has ever escaped before.

I don’t know what they’ll do to me when they find me. If they find me. I have to keep that in mind, that if, because if I can help it, I’m never going back. For five years I lived in their prison, I ate their food and wore their regulation clothes—the one-piece gray jumpsuit covers me now, even though there’s a gaping hole torn at my hip, edged black with my own blood. Five years I trained to become one of them, one of the elite, one of the soldiers who kept the world in check, and I hated it. I hated every minute of it. I tried to fight back and they wouldn’t let me, they stuck the voice into my head and erased everything I used to be, everything I used to know, and made me anew. Or rather, tried to make me over in their image, but they didn’t know how stubborn I am. I didn’t want to be created from their god. I clung to who I was, who I was meant to be.

That’s how I managed to escape. Because I held onto just one thing from the time before, the time when I was free, the time I lost and don’t remember and don’t know if I can ever get back. I held onto my name.

I’m not this series of bars tattooed into my wrist, this universal personnel code they gave me to identify who I was to the system, these binary digits they know me as. I’m not that. I’m much more than that, than 23-854. That’s nothing, just a number, just a soldier in their army they can now cross off the books because he’s never coming back. He’s not one of them anymore.

Because I remember my name. It’s Joah.

I don’t remember anything else—who I was before the culling, who I knew, what I did, where I lived. But someone, somewhere should remember that for me. They should recognize my face and recall that we were once friends before the soldiers came through to replenish their stock and picked me. I just have to find that person, ask them to remind me, to tell me who I am.

I’m Joah. I’m free. And right now that’s all I’ve got going for me. I just hope it’s enough.