Mind Sweep by JJ de Melo

Dad’s house reeks. Of bad coffee and cheap wine. My uncle talks at me through the odor. I barely hear him over the other mourners, rambling about how I look just like dad did at this age.

“If only you hadn’t got all these tattoos,” he says. He points at one in particular—a barcode from my favorite cereal brand over the left eyebrow.

I shrug at the comment. Stare at my wine glass. If I focus my consciousness on the swirling merlot, I’ll keep this bullshit conversation from recording onto my slate. That’s the trick these days—If you don’t want something damned into a forever memory, look away.

It’s been five years now since MindR released the slates. Five years since anyone who could afford the install has forgotten anything at all. ‘Perfect memory. Stored eternally,’ is how the jingle goes. That only changed this week, when the company announced the launch of MindsweepR. I was one of the first to schedule the procedure.

I’m starting to stress about making it to my appointment on time when I hear a whisper in my head. More accurately, the back of my neck. That’s where my slate—everyone’s slate—is installed. Surgically implanted right in the nape, where it taps into the brain stem.

Sorry I’m late. I just pulled up, the whisper says. You’re here, right?

I leave my uncle without excusing myself and find Midori letting herself into the house. Walking androgynous elegance, she’s as thin as ever. Her narrow frame is exaggerated by the slim black dress she’s selected for the occasion. She could’ve modeled when heroin chic was in. She probably still could.

“Hey,” I say.

“Hi, Sim.” She wraps me in a delicate hug. “Sorry I couldn’t make it to the funeral.”

“You didn’t miss anything.”

I don’t say it, but I’m glad she’s here. I take her hand, open the door again.

“Wait. Where are we going?” she asks.

“I need some air.”

I close the door before Theresa can see who’s slipped out from her little tear show. Dad married her after I moved out. She’s nice enough. Kind of dumb. I don’t owe her a goodbye.

“You drove, right?” I ask Midori.

“Mhm.” She gestures at her newest car, shakes her stylish, dark hair when she does. “You want to bail already? Are you sure?”

I ignore her patronizing tone and head for the vehicle. I catch my reflection in the passenger window. I’ll look ridiculous waltzing into the clinic with this suit, but I’m not going back inside. Didn’t pack anything else anyway. I rip my tie off, undo the top button. Breathe.

“I’m all done here. Let’s head into the city, yeah?”

On the way out of the suburbs, we pass Saint Barbara’s, the Catholic school that screwed us both up good. Theresa still goes to mass there every Sunday, takes in all that anti-slate propaganda the Pope is on lately. I pull a pre-roll from my jacket pocket in rebellion.

“Mind if I light this in here?” I ask.

Midori typically declines. Her cars are too nice. Unlike me, she scored that lucky combo of incredibly wealthy but socially progressive parents. They paid for all the surgeries, the hormones. This car.

“Yes, I do.” She hands me her vape instead. “Here. It’s a blend.”

I take a long inhale from it, watch its little light change from violet to red as it overheats. The high chills me out. A little.

“So… where am I taking us right now?” She pulls onto the highway. The car roars as we accelerate.

“The MindR clinic on 7th.” I tap the back of my neck, feel the hardware embedded in my flesh. “I need a little maintenance.” 

She flips on the car’s self-driving AI so she can stare me down properly. Her dark eyes pierce me through the lychee flavored vapor swirling between us. She knows exactly what I intend to do. The ads are everywhere these days.

“Your dad just died, Sim. Don’t you think you should wait on something like this?”

“No. That’s exactly why I don’t have to wait. I can actually get rid of him now.”

“It’s not that easy.” She shakes her head. “You can’t simply erase someone from your past. They’re part of you, whether you like it or not.”

“That’s the thing. MindR made it so you can.” I pull out my phone, confirm my appointment really is there on the calendar. “I know life would’ve been better without him. Forgetting him is the next best thing I can do.”

“I’m not sure about that.”

“Well, you sure seem to be.”

“I know some girls—other trans friends—who did it. They wanted to drop their past, forget their time living as someone they’re not.”

“Good for them.”

“No, like… it really messed some of them up.”

“How do you mean?”

“They’re like zombies now. No emotion to them. Wilted flowers of these previously vibrant people.”

“You’re quite the poet.”

“Shut up.”

“Hold on. MindsweepR only came out this week. How do you know people like this?”

“They were in the clinical trials.”

“Well it got cleared, didn’t it? I’ll be fine. I’m not erasing my whole past.”

“Like I said, he’s a huge part of that.”

“Don’t remind me.”

I crank my seat back to recline, throw my feet up on the dash. Neon blue blinds us as we pass the first security checkpoint into the city. The towering monoliths of the financial district grow as we approach, fading in and out through vapor clouds as I overindulge on the vape.

“He wasn’t all bad you know.”

I sit up quickly. Pissed. “You’re seriously defending him, right now? To me?”

“No.” She sighs. “All I’m saying is, as horrible as he was, you might not want to forget everything about him.”

I scoff at that. She never lived with the guy.

Midori takes my hand. I look down. Her manicured fingers contrast starkly with the chicken scratch inkwork that stains mine.

“Let me show you one memory I have. Of us. And him.”

“What? No way.”

“Sim, please. Live this again, with me. Then I’ll drop it.”

I roll my eyes, give a grunt that’s hardly consent. Midori nods, satisfied. She takes what looks like a lengthy charging cable from her designer bag. She unravels it, ties her hair up, slips one of the ends into the back of her neck. She hands me the other end. Reluctantly, I take it. I feel for one of the input ports in my own slate, plug the cable into my body.

Midori and I tend to keep the comms channels on our slates open for each other—that’s how she messaged me at the wake—but this is a whole different level of intimacy. As close as we used to be, we never do this.

“Ready?” she asks.

“Sure.”

I blink and I’m not in the car anymore.

# # #

We’re on a bench outside the principal’s office at St. Barb’s, only I’m seeing things from Midori’s perspective, not mine. It’s weird, sitting next to my ten year-old self. I see that self has ruffled hair, bruised cheeks, blood on his little knuckles. We’re still young, in matching schoolboy uniforms. No tattoos. No signs of transition. Still blending in but starting to forget how.

We hear a door burst open. Dress shoes slapping linoleum. A scumbag in an ill-fitting suit walks in. Dad.

“Jesus. What happened to you two?” he asks. He talks to us like little adults, like I always remember him doing.

“Some kids were picking on us,” I watch myself say. “I stopped them.”

Dad turns to me, as Midori. “Is that true?”

“Mhm.” I watch the world bob through her eyes as she nods. She can smell the alcohol on his breath. It must have been strong—MindR hasn’t quite perfected olfactory digitization.

Dad gives that easy, cool smile of his. “Come on. Let’s go.”

“We haven’t talked to Sister Margaret yet,” I say.

“I’m not talking to any penguins today.” He reaches out, grabs each of us with a hand. “Now get up before I leave you to the nuns.”

Midori’s slate skips ahead a bit. There are flashes of leaving the school, stopping at an ice cream parlor. It’s all too muddled to make an impression on the slate. Clear memory comes back into frame with us in dad’s car, a used convertible he had back in grade school.

We’re on Highway 1. Along the coast. He’s driving way too fast. The top’s down and wind is whipping our faces. We’re all laughing for some reason, some joke that Midori has forgotten. Everyone has an ice cream cone in hand. Two matching chocolate orbs up front. In the back seat a vibrantly pink strawberry sphere melts down the waffle cone in Midori’s.

Then I hear my laugh fall out of the chorus. It’s replaced by me fussing. That kind of warbling stutter kids make when something upsets them. Through Midori I see myself stare down at my cone, disgusted with it. I stick my arm over the center console so dad can see what’s wrong.

He takes his eyes off the road for way too long, leans over to get a look at it. Midori does too. There’s a huge bumble bee in my cone. Its fuzzy black and yellow butt sticks out, squirming. Its wings are ruined with chocolate milk. Specks of pollen dust the treat.

Dad snatches it from my hand, looks over his shoulder twice, and chucks the ice cream cone, bee and all, overhead and onto the road. It splats cleanly on the center lane marking and is invisibly far away in seconds.

I stare back in shock, eyes wide. Midori shrieks, laughing. Dad starts laughing with her and I join in again. He hands me his cone. “Take it,” he yells over the wind. He makes a big gesture of licking melted ice cream from his hand before he returns it to the wheel. Looking in the rearview mirror, he calls to Midori, “You good back there, Billy?”

I feel her nod again. She looks at me. She sees me with that new ice cream cone from dad. Staring at him. Grinning so big.

I loved him at that age. She remembers it. I can see it.

# # #

I blink again, and as suddenly as before I’m transported from dad’s car to Midori’s. The red brake lights of intercity traffic replace the vivid sunshine of that day on the road. There’s weight in my chest. I’m gasping for air. I realize I’ve been sobbing while I was in Midori’s head. 

“See what I mean?” she prods me, sniffling too.

While slates only work perfectly on experiences recorded after implantation, your core memories make it on there too. They tend to be less complete, with fuzzy audio and blurry edges to the visuals. For some godforsaken reason, Midori has this rose-colored vignette of the three of us saved on hers. I’d forgotten that day. Never lived it on my own slate. She has no idea how mad I am at her for putting it on there. Because it’s making me doubt.

“It was a beautiful day,” she goes on. “Why would you want to forget that?”

She looks at me and notes my expression. I watch it scare her. I want to scare her more. To make her understand.

“Because he was a bad guy!” I’m yelling, gesturing wildly. “Dammit, Midori!” I yank the cord out, toss it at her. “None of this is worth keeping on here!” I slap the back of my neck. “It all just hurts! The good stuff makes it so much harder to hate him.”

“He’s gone! Why keep hating him?” She’s begging. She doesn’t get it. “I think you need closure, Sim. Not a memory wipe.”

“I don’t want to forgive, dude. I just want to forget!”

“And if it means losing the good parts? Parts about you and me?”

“Oh, screw off, Midori. Don’t make this about you.”

We’re silent the rest of the way into the city. I focus my attention outside. On the haze of pollution. The roadside encampments. In my peripheral vision I watch Midori cross her arms, wipe at tears, mess with the radio. Eventually she switches off the AI and steers manually, looking for something to do.

She finds street parking right outside the MindR clinic. She gets out with me, walks me to the front door of the brutalist structure that houses it. Flashy holograms that advertise the latest slate models buzz in the air over us.

“So you’re doing this?” she says.

“Yeah.”

“Fine. I’m done trying to stop you.”

“Thanks.”

“Promise me you’ll be the same guy when you get out?”

“I’ll be a better guy. I think.”

She bites her lip, looks down. I wonder if she’s going to apologize or something.

“Want to grab dinner after? My treat?” she asks. A roundabout penance. “I can wait for you in the car.”

“Actually… this might take awhile.” I rub my tattoo with the back of my thumb. “I think I’ll head for the station after. Catch the 5 PM express back north.”

Her face drops. “Really, Sim? You used me for a ride.”

“I thought we’d catch up more on the way here. You know I can’t stand being back.”

“Asshole.”

She stomps back to the car, flips me off as she pulls out and speeds away.

Inside, the waiting room is empty, excessively minimalist. Sterile. There’s only a bald guy at a reception desk. He’s in scrubs. As if this profiteering memory clinic were a legitimate health facility. I approach him, tell him I’m here for an appointment. He glances at a monitor.

“Simon?”

“Yeah. That’s me.”

“ID?”

I hand him mine. He notices the suit as he takes it.

“You coming from a wedding?”

“Funeral.”

“Sorry.” He drops the small talk. “Alright. We’re ready for you. Come on back.”

The appointment is straightforward. I lie on an intake form that asks if I’m sober. They ask what I want swept from my slate. I say every memory with my dad.

They don’t even ask why. Just ask me to point to a few memories of him. There’s a bunch of cables jacked into the ports on my neck. They’re heavier than the MindshaR wire Midori used in the car. I feel the weight of them. Pulling. When a technician prompts me, I resurface some previously unsuppressable memories.

Crashing into a mailbox after dad picked me up drunk from the school Christmas pageant. Him twisting back, ordering me not to tell mom before he even asked if I was okay.

The day he sat me down and told me she left. The way he took no responsibility for it.

That fight we got into at my graduation brunch. Him slamming the table, spilling a deep red malbec on my gown before the ceremony.

A couple of our more recent arguments about God, vaccines, sexuality, nationalism. Before I stopped seeing him at all.

The day he beat the absolute crap out of me because he caught me kissing Midori. Back when Midori was still my type. Back when she was still Billy Tanaka.

The last thing I playback is what Midori made me remember. Dad’s better side. The type of memory that makes hating him hurt. The type that makes me feel guilty for purging him.

The technician says that’s enough to work with. Puts me under.

# # #

Midori whispers me when I’m on the train that evening, well on my way out of town. We have a quick check in, all in our heads.

How’d it go? The sweep, I mean. Obviously.

Fine.

How does it feel? Better?

There’s a physical tiredness I feel. The shadow of an emotionally charged day. But in my head, in my heart, there’s no trace left of it.

I feel… nothing really. I feel nothing.

Dang, Sim. Well, is that a good thing?

Yes.

I cut the connection. I’m not so sure.

JJ de Melo

Image: An ice cream cornet with the ice cream melting and dripping from Pixabay.com