NEWBORN

S.W.A.K.

by Anya


Soon the implants will take effect and I will have forgotten that this ever happened.

It comes in waves - always does, so I'm told. I wouldn't know if I would know. First the numbness in the extremities, makes it hard to walk and keep balance. Why I keep a hand on a wall whose surface I cannot feel, why my sneakers' nylon webbing has become dense as cement around my ankles. Then the delirium - the speaking to oneself, much in the way that I am now. Mumbling, pseudo-hallucinatory perceptions of what may or may not be there but is perceived as realer than real by the mind, cold sweat on a colder night.

Vague theories that this is my brain's manner of holding on, its attempt to make sense of everything as the implant plays feng shui with my memories. Youth front-loaded straight into the base of my skull. Social skills and everyday fripperies just above my tongue. Knowledge relevant to my career pushed behind my corneas - then it all begins to creep away from me, one step at a time. I know the interior of this mall like the back of my hand. Now I don't even know the back of my hand. Fragments disappear behind the mind's eye. Soon there will be nothing - not even myself. The body remains but the cognition shatters, reforms into something new.

Holding onto what I know - prolonging the process. Delaying the tumble forward into the unknown. One hand on the wall, one hand gripping the bottleneck, asphyxiating as if it owes me answers. I force back a swig; soon I will see the bottle and smell the alcohol and feel the burn and float away in the mental fog. I will assume that everything was a product of poor decisions and convenient absence of impulse control. I will not remember these desperate moments of stumbling, nor the dull buzz of the decorative lights overhead as they cast reflections upon linoleum floor tiles. I will not remember the lifeless thrum of disposable muzak - rendered out of place a century ago but still implacable, cultural and commercial identity having ceased to grow at the same time that chrome overtook blood in importance - pulsing out of a shrill, tin-flavored speaker.

I will not remember the implants. I will not remember the twenty-four-hour clinic that activated them, nor filling out the paperwork signing away chunks of my memory. I will not remember the Net access ports filling the distance between the clinic and the boutique across from it - not the geometric shapes littering the advertisements, not the airbrushed models and their garish hair and overprinted makeup. Most important of all - most important of anything, more important than forcing another step and convincing my lungs to take another breath - I will not remember why I chose to forfeit myself to the implants.

Force my way out of the front doors and onto the concrete. Scuff of denim against concrete against knees, pleather coat demanding more weight. Cough - another swig, though I can't force it down. Tumbles down my stubbled chin and onto my shirt, furthering the illusion that my future unself is a sloppy drunk. My knees break and give way, but as I look down and thrash one leg against dead grass I find that they are fully functional.

Brain shutting down. Eyes on the neon again, the abstractions in the shape and underneath the ledges, all ‘round the escalators and flanked by fake plants, the grand fountain, the ribbons and statuettes upon the ceiling. Shades of brown and beige against bright colors, blocky fonts, great skylights redundant in a city that scarcely knows the sun...

I am not old enough to remember (though I can scarcely remember my own age at this point), but I know with everything I have that these design trends - the mall, the muzak, the clothing that I wear and the prints they used to sell them to me - were born of a time and place that no longer exists. Can never exist any further, perverted pastiche of something close to wide-eyed innocence. Nothing is innocent anymore - I know that better than anybody can hope to attest to, and so I choose to forget. Much like the mall and the muzak, I become a man devoid of context - and the implants take over. Last sight of manufactured beauty, bright red lipstick and pure pink pearls, reflective sheen of copper buttons on her blazer...


When he awoke he found that he could hardly remember anything - but the bottle filled in most of the gaps for him. Pushed himself off the ground. Name would come soon, and everything else along with it. Stumbled back to the place the implants told him was home, ready for another day of what the implants told him was his life.

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