She awoke. Birds chirped joyously outside the hospital window. She cleared her throat, dry after surgery, blinked to focus on white walls with pleasant art. Her doctor was right. She felt peaceful, content and happy after the memory implant was adjusted. Celeste was overwhelmed with feelings of happiness. She was in awe. Her eyes welled with tears. She found herself smiling.
“You ready to go home?” she heard her husband ask, feeling his hand cup hers. “Home?” she asked.
“Remember? Our house in the woods. We call it Glendale,” Marc said, trying to coax her memory.
Yes, she remembered home. She recalled her work as an American history teacher and research into race relations. But then … Nothing.
“I need to get home and continue my research,” she said as Marc waved a hand to cut her off. “No, there will be none of that for a while. That’s what ignited the implant.
“Remember? The chip prevents certain recall,” he warned. “Shhhh,” he lipped with a kiss on her head.
“What’s wrong with me?” Celeste asked. “Why was I in the hospital?”
“The chip was malfunctioning,” Marc said. “Made you have bad headaches.
“You don’t remember blacking out, all the nausea and severe pain? Right here,” he said touching her forehead.
She then felt serene. She was aware of her feelings. In a few weeks after summer break, she would be ready to return to teaching. Research into American history would have to wait. It wasn’t worth the suffering and the day surgery to correct her memory implant.
They drove across the bridge into a bucolic landscape that greets arrivals to Glendale. Celeste gazed into the vista, inhaling fresh earth, feeling the breeze of an unusually cool summer day, listening to birds and the dogs happy to greet them, searching the familiar terrain of blue sky and hills on the horizon. Her senses were restored fully. Vividly. She would always want to remember this.
Bettie and Luna, rescue dogs of unknown lineage, jumped on her before she could get out of the SUV. “Now get down,” Marc ordered the pets. “It’s all right,” Celeste said, hugging each one. “They love me. Dogs always forgive and forget.”
Inside the house, Celeste walked to the study. Papers and books were strewn across the rug. The desk chair was toppled to the ground. She straightened up the mess. “What happened?” she asked Marc. “I found you unconscious and called 9-1-1. The paramedics took you to the hospital. Knew just what to do, what was wrong.”
The memory implant was a high-tech solution to end human hatred that once had gripped the nation into war-like dissent. Celeste understood that much. But as she pursued research of American history and racism, reading and watching news accounts about social upheaval during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, her mind was interrupted, short circuited. It was the chip. She could not force herself to study to memory the angry divisive era:
Statues toppled as racist relics, originally erected by the Daughters of the Confederacy to honor Southern war heroes in the American Civil War. Police officers roughly apprehending African Americans, a few of the arrested even dying during the process. Months of fiery protests against police brutality. The names of deceased black people, most unarmed and more than one in their own home or on their property, chanted, printed on T-shirts and signs. Graffiti. The f word. The looting from city to city. Police cars ablaze. Police and rioters assaulting each other. The president nowhere to be seen, only heard, his monotone blaming states and cities where riots were bad and dozens of businesses destroyed. He called on the military to take control, but military leaders refused, citing the Constitution does not allow them to fight their own people on their own land.
Such violent protests would never occur again. The chip was a brilliant solution. The ultimate.
If Celeste continued with the research, her memory chip would malfunction again. Citizens have the chip in order to remove animosity, bigotry and hatred toward others. This was proven long ago by anthropologists and brain science. The chips embedded in the brain brought about a longstanding era of peace and tranquility along with productivity surpassing all previous economic times. The chips simply made everyone live happily ever after. But a history teacher needs to study the past, and people need to know.
The headache came on strong. She held onto the desk and saw a bouquet of flowers Marc had waiting for her. She smiled and for a few lingering seconds inhaled every bloom, each with a unique fragrance, together a fresh heavenly scent that filled the room.
************************************************************
Celeste and Marc ate protein bars and fruit in the breakfast nook. Through open windows they watched backyard foliage and critters roam along with their playful dogs. “Let’s go outside,” she said cheerily. “No, it’s a little too cool. I think you should stay indoors another day just to be on the safe side,” Marc advised.
“I know,” she thought aloud. “Let’s invite the Clarks and Molinas to our house for a cook- out.”
“If that’s what you’d like, I’ll arrange it,” Marc said then sent texts to the two couples. “How about tonight or tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow’s fine. Gives them a little time. None of us are working this summer session,” Celeste said.
Marc kissed her goodbye, reminding her to take it easy and put away the research project. She smiled obediently, sipping a cup of coffee. After he’d left, she watched the two dogs, how they got along but sometime fought each other for a fresh nut or grub worm uncovered in the yard. The fight broke out, sometimes lasting a minute, usually just a couple of seconds. No harm done. They learned to get along. Celeste wondered why humans needed the memory implant. Then her mind wondered to more pleasant thoughts. She had a menu to plan for the barbecue.
******************************************
She found herself in the office again, not sure how she arrived. Did she go shopping? Yes. Where’s the food? In the fridge. Did she black out? Her head throbbed. This time inhaling flowers didn’t soothe the pain. Her internet device was set to a city protest in the summer of 2020. Signs read “Abolish the police,” “End racism,” “Defund the police,” “Black Lives Matter.” She had typed comments from the protesters expressing the reason for their anger. She reread the research she had prepared …
“Honey! Wake up,” Marc told her, holding his wife on the floor, patting her face.
“Why’d you start researching again? You knew this could happen,” he scolded.
“My head hurts so bad! I’m bleeding!” Celeste said, realizing the blood came from her nose and ears. “What’s happening to me?”
Marc lifted her body and rushed to the doctor.
**************************************
The light was bright in her eyes. “What’s going on?” Celeste asked Dr. Dory. He clicked a small light on and off in her pupils. “Dr. Landon, dear, I wish you would understand the purpose of the chip is to prevent unpleasant memories,” he told her.
She knew. No one is to read or watch or listen to any work about racism in this country.
“They’re not memories,” Celeste told him, “not my memories or none of ours. What I’ve been studying are facts, history. Our nation’s history. It’s important to know.”
“Why would you want to stir up past controversies that tore our nation apart?” he asked. “The implant took away all that pain, ill will and bad feelings we humans possess deep within our reptilian brain and even to the frontal lobe.
“We cannot help but be prejudiced and bigoted against people who do not look like us. This nation tried for close to 300 years. All that was proven was everyone is prejudiced. And because of that, we cannot be fair, just and kind. It would take thousands of years for every human to rise above our inclinations when it comes to racism.”
“No, I don’t think that is true,” Celeste countered.
“What you think does not matter,” the doctor replied. “The chip solved a host of social problems, deadly and abusive encounters that occurred every single day in this country. Crime was reduced by 95 percent thanks to the chip. Now you must stop researching racism. There is no need to dig into a healed wound, miraculously healed by the memory chip.”
Celeste inhaled deeply and stood up, wobbly but determined to say her piece. The doctor warned her chip was still unconnected.
“Listen to me,” she said. “People who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. Remember? First certain books were banned as racist, then movies, music, then free speech and eventually free thought. We are living in a society of … morons.”
She slapped her hand over her mouth, realizing the fear of her words. The doctor grabbed her arm for an injection. “Please,” she cried then begged, “people need to know the truth, our truth, our past. Life is about righting the wrongs of the past. First, we have to know those wrongs and feel for everyone. We have to understand those who lived before us.”
****************************************************
The cell was dark and cold. Celeste hugged her body as her teeth chattered. “Where am I?” she called out.
“Be quiet,” a woman nearby whispered.
“Are we in jail?”
“Detention. Until our chips work right.”
“Why are you here?”
“I was researching my family tree to find plantations where they worked in the 1800s.”
“You’re African American?”
“Sure. You’re white?”
“Yes, does that matter to you?”
“No. Does my race matter to you?”
“Of course not. We’ve got to get out of here while our minds are free and clear.”
A small paper note glided on the floor of Celeste’s cell. She read the plan by her neighbor, Lauren. A hole was already prepared beneath their adjoining wall. Celeste lifted a floor tile. The hole was small and dark. “I’m going now.”
“I’m way ahead of you,” Lauren whispered.
The women scurried through the underground sewer toward the light of a full moon. They crawled out into a creek bed, wiped off their jumpsuits and smiled, running quietly into the woods.
“Where should we go?” Lauren asked.
Feeling pain free from a restored soul, Celeste replied, “I don’t know.”