Round 2, NYC Midnight Flash Fiction Competition, 2020

 

Criteria: Genre - Sci-Fi; Location - An antiques shop; Object - Breast milk

Down Memory Lane

Synopsis: An officer of the Triumvirate discovers that repressing memories is not as easy as he thought.

Expediter First Class, Enron Carbide, checked the building’s alphanumeric code with his ScanSpecs. This was the place - Cyvex Antiques, Purveyors of Galactic Mementos since 2187.

He stepped inside. A droid approached. “Good day, Officer. How may I assist you?” asked Pandox.

Carbide pulled up a hologram and began to recite the text: “By order of the Triumvirate, Proclamation 74Xa21, I am hereby authorised to expedite the closure of this establishment, pursuant to regulation HgF567-b prohibiting the perpetuation of collective and individual memory. Memory impedes productivity. Productivity is all.”

Pandox considered the recital. “My shop is a viable business.”

“Your inventory will be repurposed. You will be reassigned.”

“This shop is one of the top revenue earners in this sector, which equates to more taxes for the Triumvirate. Also, people like to remember. Memory is what makes us hu-”

“You’re not human,” Carbide interrupted.

“I remember my human creator. Surely you remember yours?”

A sliver of memory flashed across Carbide’s ScanSpecs: a woman. Young, red hair, a kind smile. He increased the threshold on his Specs. He was here on business. He’d volunteered to be part of an elite squad closing each sector’s antiques shops, lest the populace waste time in the past, time that could be used to produce for the future. Productivity was all.

Despite the adjustment, the memory lingered, like shrapnel buried deep. Carbide hadn’t thought of his mother in 30 years. He didn’t even know where she was living now. He’d devoted himself to the Triumvirate and its unrelenting focus on the future. The past was a grate of ashes. Soon, these shrines to the past would be ashes too.

Pandox stood silently.

Carbide continued. “You’ve seen The Bulletins. All antiques shops will close. It’s not like we’re singling out your shop.”

“And yet here you are. In my shop.” Carbide found Pandox’s attitude unsettling. Droids were usually obedient and predictable. It was like Pandox was goading him.

“You won’t be able to take any of these items with you. They’ll be repurposed. For future production. Productivity is-”

“All. So you’ve said.”

Carbide was anxious to get this over with. Again he increased the threshold on his Specs; the memory of his mother was proving difficult to erase. “With respect to the inventory, do you want to-”

“Take a trip down Memory Lane? Why not?”

Carbide was sure that if droids could smile wryly, Pandox would have done so.

“Well, be quick about it and don’t touch anything,” huffed Carbide.

With Carbide following, Pandox walked around the shop, pausing here and there. The droid stopped in front of a Cyber Horse. Suddenly, Carbide recalled sitting astride Starburst, his own Cyber Horse, Carbide wearing his brand new Captain Stellar spacesuit, toy ray gun held aloft, while his mother indulgently played the invading alien.

“Come on, I haven’t got all day, “ said Carbide brusquely.

In the next room Pandox stepped behind a screen. Carbide shouldered the droid aside and came face to face with an Electropod. His family used to own one. There was no time to adjust his Specs. Too many memories were crowding in, jostling for space: trips to the beach, his mother podding him to his first day of school, the freedom of getting his licence and taking Thisbe out (how could he have forgotten his first love?), the crash that killed his father and brother. He spun around and almost collided with Pandox.

“This won’t be repurposed!” Carbide snarled. “Straight to scrap. Right, you’ve had enough time.”

“One more stop if I may, Officer.” Pandox opened a concealed panel to reveal a safe. A probe scanned the droid’s processor and the safe swung open. Pandox registered Carbide’s gasp without turning around. “Is everything alright, Officer?”

Carbide gazed raptly at the opalescent blocks. Mammary Bars! He hadn’t seen, much less tasted, one since the Triumvirate had outlawed the use of breast milk for confectionery production. Even the black market had run dry.

“Would you like one?” Pandox extended a bar. “Officer, memories are the antiques of the mind, more valuable the older they are. Except you cannot repurpose them.”

Carbide glared at Pandox. He had long ago surrendered to the tenets of the Triumvirate: that production for the future was sacrosanct, and that memory was its chief adversary. To consume a Mammary Bar would put him at odds with those tenets.

The first bite was transcendent. Carbide was seven again, sitting with his brother on the porch of the family home, their arms over each other’s shoulders, eating their Mammary Bars in complete contentment. 

By the time Carbide had finished the bar, his memories had catapulted him through adolescence and young adulthood, right up until the day he’d pledged allegiance to the Triumvirate. There the memories stopped.

Pandox watched him. For a device incapable of human expression, Carbide thought the droid seemed pleased with itself.

Carbide indicated the remaining bars. “That contraband comes with me. As for the rest of this stuff, you’ll have to dispose of it quietly. My report will state that I found the curios in your shop unsuitable for repurposing.”

“Very good, Officer. What will you do now?”

Carbide looked at Pandox, unsure why he was confiding in a droid. “I’m going to search for my mother.”