Staff Spotlight: Clifford Royal Johns

Interview

What do you write?

I write what­ev­er I’m inspired to write at the time—science fiction, mystery, fantasy, lit­er­ary main­stream, social com­men­tary, non-fiction—in any­thing from flash to book length.

Is there an author or artist who has most pro­found­ly influ­enced your work?

Almost every book I read affects my writing in some way, some­times showing me what to do, and some­times showing me what not to do. Choos­ing one author? Maybe C. S. Forester, because the Horatio Horn­blow­er series stirred me to write in the first place.

Why did you choose Stonecoast?

Pri­mar­i­ly, it was the instruc­tors, but it was also because of the flex­i­bil­i­ty in the program. I am taking fiction work­shops and popular fiction work­shops, and I could have taken poetry and cre­ative non-fiction work­shops if I’d wanted to. The sem­i­nars given at the res­i­den­cies are avail­able to anyone who wants to go, so a student doesn’t have to stick to their genre.

What is your favorite Stonecoast memory?

The student read­ings. Some of the pieces stu­dents read are funny, some are pro­found, but the best are the soul-baring, true stories or memoir snip­pets, because they are much more pow­er­ful when read by the author, and because these inti­mate stories demon­strate how much we stu­dents trust the Stonecoast environment.

What do you hope to accom­plish in the future?

Assum­ing you mean from a lit­er­ary per­spec­tive, I’d like to have a lot of people enjoy my books. I’d also like to teach more writing work­shops in the future. I find work­shops edu­ca­tion­al for every­one involved, includ­ing the work­shop leader.

If you could have written one book, story, or poem that already exists, which would you choose?

Well, my own pub­lished book I suppose, but if you mean a book by someone else, I can’t imagine. I don’t under­stand the “I wish I’d written that book” concept. It makes no sense to me. If I was forced to choose one book, though, I would choose Several Short Sen­tences About Writing by Verlyn Klinken­borg. It’s a bril­liant, concise book about writing great sen­tences. I figure, if I’d written that book, then I would be able to con­sis­tent­ly incor­po­rate every­thing in it into my fiction writing. On the other hand, if I’d written Harry Potter, I’d be rich right now, so there’s that.

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Featured Work

Walking Shadow

Walking Shadow is a science fiction noir mystery set in a near future Chicago where the sur­gi­cal for­get­ting of bad mem­o­ries is commonplace—and Benny has for­got­ten some­thing dangerous.

The fol­low­ing are the opening chap­ters of Walking Shadow (Grand Mal Press, 2012, avail­able every­where in e‑book, hard­cov­er, paper­back, and audio).

https://www.amazon.com/Walking-Shadow-Clifford-Royal-Johns/dp/1937727254

http://www.audible.com/pd/Mysteries-Thrillers/Walking-Shadow-Audiobook/B00CH4VZ92

Chapter 1

I knew I’d had some mem­o­ries removed. I could tell because the removal company sent me payment-overdue notices every week.

I had just received another such bill, and this one was espe­cial­ly demand­ing, imply­ing some unspec­i­fied action would be taken to recover their funds if I didn’t pay immediately.

I won­dered what mem­o­ries I’d had removed. Had I killed someone? Had I seen some grisly death, or had an astound­ing­ly bad breakup? Had a doctor told me I had only three months left to live? For­get­ting was a drastic response to a dra­mat­ic event. What was my dra­mat­ic event? I lay in bed in my tiny apart­ment, staring at the ceiling and review­ing my history, trying to find the holes. It was sort of like trying to dis­cov­er the hiding place of a needle in a haystack after I’d paid to have the needle removed.

When my PAL said, “Hey, it’s eleven-thirty,” I shook off spec­u­la­tion about my past, rolled out of bed, and dressed to go meet my brother Arno at Socko’s restau­rant. I had lunch with him every Wednes­day at noon.

I didn’t have a car, and the buses just didn’t go that way. My brother did have a car, but refused to drive over to my part of town. He worried that the neigh­bor­hood kids, who would promise to protect his brand-new Moto-400 for a little pocket change, would instead strip it of every­thing and leave just the track­erID chip and the front axle lying in the parking space. I walked.

On the way out of my apart­ment build­ing, I said hello to the doorman, a crusty, gray bum wearing two over­coats and three hats piled on top of each other. That day, the hat on top was a once-white knit with a pompom dan­gling from one thread. He sat huddled against the entry way, out of the wind. It was his real estate. No one else ever sat there. He looked back at me, but didn’t move. I wasn’t one of his patrons.

It was a cold, gritty day in Chicago, much like the day before. Dark-bellied clouds lum­bered past over­head, threat­en­ing a numbing fall rain. I shuf­fled south on LeSally Street, my jacket collar turned up to the wind, my thoughts turned inward to my memories.

As I walked along Diver­si­ty, dodging the land traffic, and closing my eyes against the dirt storm when­ev­er a buzzcar lurched by over­head, I thought again about the bill I’d received the evening before. Forget What had sent me bills every week for the last month. Accord­ing to them, I’d paid two thou­sand in bad money to “remove a memory or series of related mem­o­ries.” But I couldn’t remember.

Of course, I hadn’t seen money like that in years, and if I had, I sure wouldn’t have wasted it on a forget. I would have spent it on some­thing tangible—something that would have been repos­sessed if I left a bad money trail. Forget What couldn’t rein­stall a for­got­ten memory. Service had already been rendered.

The letters referred to me as Sir, but the com­put­er that gen­er­at­ed the imper­son­al mail really meant deadbeat—I could tell. I could feel the smirk embed­ded in each one.

Okay, so I blinked them. I blinked lots of people. Most didn’t bother to com­plain, because they didn’t want to admit they’d been taken, or because their account­ing was so bad, they didn’t even realize they were out any money. Forget What didn’t seem to be willing to forgive or forget. They actu­al­ly wanted their money. But if I’d paid in real money, they wouldn’t have both­ered me, and I would never have known I’d had any mem­o­ries removed.

I crossed Hacker Drive and ducked into the Sliver Build­ing. The real name of the build­ing was The Silver Exchange, but no one called any­thing by its right name anymore. The Sliver looked like a Bowie knife stick­ing up out of the ground, as though someone inside the earth was trying to cut his way out. I went in through the 4G deliv­ery entrance in the hilt, where the couri­ers deliv­ered pack­ages. Going imme­di­ate­ly through a door to the left into the dock area avoided the secu­ri­ty guard. I said, “Hey,” to a flat-faced blonde girl, as though I knew her, and strode through the piles of pallets and boxes, scan­ning for a small box I could take with me. I didn’t see any­thing suf­fi­cient­ly portable, so I slipped through into the cater­ing area, then into the atrium and out onto Crack­son. It was a useful short­cut, and the more I used it, the less likely anyone was to notice I wasn’t sup­posed to be there. I also avoided the over­head transit stop where police tended to loiter.

People pay to forget stuff that trau­ma­tizes them—memories that haunt them, that pull at their lives and bend the flow, mem­o­ries they don’t want to deal with in an honest way. Like Wilde said, “No man is rich enough to buy back his past,” but now, at least, people who had the money could pay to forget what they had done. Walk in an emo­tion­al wreck. Walk out a new person. Con­sciences cleaned while you wait. If you were rich, you could be happy. You could steal, cheat, and bribe your way to wealth, then forget every­thing you did to get your money, forget every­one you ruined, forget every­one you took advan­tage of. For­get­ting is better than a priest giving you some penance and telling you every­thing is for­giv­en. For­get­ting is true abso­lu­tion; the guilt is sur­gi­cal­ly removed.

Socko’s was one of those small, steamy, mostly takeout places that has aston­ish­ing­ly good food served on flimsy plastic. The padded vinyl seats were as old as the build­ing and just as hard. The people there treated you like they were doing you a favor by allow­ing you to eat there. I ate there a lot.

Arno was at a corner table facing the entrance. He waved as I pushed through the revolv­ing door, but then went back to reading the paper he had tucked above his plate. I stood in line behind a woman with no hair and two kids, then ordered a beandog, aspara­gus sticks, and a citrus from a thin man with no eye­brows who wore a magenta plastic hat. I hadn’t seen him there before. He had a tattoo of a beard on his chin and wore a Socko’s shirt. “Say,” I said, “do you have hair tat­tooed under that hat?”

He tipped his hat to me. There was another hat tat­tooed on his head. It looked like a bowler. It was blue. “One for every occa­sion,” he said. His blue tattoo turned orange, then violet, as he turned to get my order.

When his head turned blue again, I took my beandog and joined Arno.

“You’re late.”

“Hello, Arno.”

“What were you doing this morning?”

Arno was like that. He seemed to think that just because I was late, I must have had some­thing better to do, but the walk was twenty-five minutes, and it usually varied by five or so. I ignored his question.

“I got a bill from a forget company,” I said, think­ing to change the subject as quickly as I could. “They say I owe them for a forget.”

“And you blinked them, right?”

“I guess so. I hon­est­ly don’t remem­ber. Do you know what I forgot? I must have talked to you about it before I had the mem­o­ries removed. What was my pain?”

“I dunno,” he said. “You don’t talk to me about that stuff.” He quickly went back to reading his paper, but I had the feeling he knew, and wouldn’t tell me.

My brother was tall, with thick black hair, and he worked out, though at his house, I’d only ever seen him sitting on the machines, not pushing or pulling or lifting, but that’s enough for guys like him. He looked fit and healthy, well fed, but not loose. His hands were steady and mus­cu­lar. We didn’t look at all alike. I was just a little shorter, but had sandy hair and a thin wiry build. The only reason I was phys­i­cal­ly fit was that I had to walk everywhere.

“But didn’t I talk to you about it at all?”

“Don’t think so.”

“Would you remem­ber if I had?”

He stopped eating and stared at me for a moment. Doubt­less this was the very look he gave his employ­ees that would make them work over­time without pay. “Prob­a­bly not,” he said. “You so seldom say any­thing of interest.”

That’s all I could get out of him. He folded his paper and started talking about what kind of job I should be looking for, and how I should think about my future and not my past. While he talked, I con­sid­ered Forget What, and decided I should go to the removal place and talk them into telling me what I’d for­got­ten. I think I said, “Uh huh,” a few times, and I kept my eyes trained on his right eye, so he’d think I was taking him seri­ous­ly. Mean­while, I chewed on my aspara­gus sticks and my thoughts.

The forget com­pa­nies were secre­tive about how they did forgets. It wasn’t some­thing that had been exposed by the press, but there were a lot of rumors about it. I’d heard that to remove a memory, they evoke the memory, which is usually so ter­ri­ble that it gets you all worked up, then they scan your brain looking for spots of high activ­i­ty other than the places that were active in similar memory recalls. When they find the spots that are unique to this memory, they insert a long, thin wire with a small loop on the end, then they spin it, scram­bling up your brain at those spots, and you forget. That’s how they used to do lobot­o­mies. They would insert the wire up under your eyelid and mush your frontal lobe. The more expen­sive forget com­pa­nies used lasers or cross­ing sonic beams or some­thing, but I have to admit, I was too cheap for that, even when I used fake accounts.

When Arno fin­ished eating he said, “I’ve never under­stood why you would pay to forget a part of your life. It’s like paying to become someone else. It’s pretty close to death, if you ask me. It’s not as though you get to go back and try the for­got­ten event over again. Part of you is just gone. You just come out a dif­fer­ent person.” He looked at me hard, like he expect­ed me to say something.

I swal­lowed the last bit of beandog and leaned back. “I really don’t remem­ber doing it, Arno.”

“Benny, maybe this is your chance to change your­self. Obvi­ous­ly, you did some­thing so abhor­rent you couldn’t stand your­self, and you had to change your past to reflect your own self-image, but you’re really not that nice a person. You’ve got no job, no woman, no friends. You live by the dole, Benny. Bums live by the dole. Idiots and nuts. You’re not stupid, and you’re not fun­da­men­tal­ly lazy. I know jobs are hard to get, but you could at least try.” He sat back, appar­ent­ly exas­per­at­ed, yet I sensed an inside joke. I had a feeling he’d given this exact speech to me before, but I wasn’t sure of it. Somehow, he found me amusing, and that irri­tat­ed me more than his boring lectures.

In any case, I couldn’t figure out why my lack of a job both­ered him so much. I never asked to stay with him and his wife. I didn’t ask him for money. I wasn’t a mooch. I thought he viewed me as a tar­nished spot on his shiny public image, a pit in his chrome, but I couldn’t see how I was holding him back. And, anyway, I con­sid­ered myself retired. I really didn’t want to work. I’d just waste the money on a few gadgets, or some real food.

“Maybe I could be a car thief,” I said.

“Maybe you could be a little more serious.” Arno was a real brass pipe.

“All right, maybe I could be a buzzcar thief.”

Arno was annoyed, but he smiled anyway.

“OK,” I said, “who would give me a job, Arno? Like you say, I don’t know anyone impor­tant, and cer­tain­ly not anyone impor­tant enough to have control over hiring. I know a few people who could get me a job steal­ing stuff, or selling stolen stuff, but real busi­ness types? Suits? If I came to you and you were a hiring manager, would you hire me?”

“I’ve hired you before, Benny,” Arno said, looking at his watch. “I’ve got to meet some­body in ten minutes, but think about what I said and try to remem­ber what you’re good at. When you do, come see me.”

I couldn’t remem­ber being espe­cial­ly good at any­thing in par­tic­u­lar, and I couldn’t remem­ber working for Arno. It seemed like a bad idea to work for family. They would think they were doing you a favor, and they would expect some­thing in return—something more than just a day’s work. And you couldn’t quit, because they had spent this effort on you, and they would think you had quit them, not the work. I didn’t think Arno would take kindly to me quit­ting on him.

When Arno stood, I noticed he had a bit of green chili sauce on his white shirt. I didn’t mention it. I ate my last stick and left.

When I returned home, I looked at the bill again. The removal company had includ­ed a net­de­posit address, but no street address, and, of course, I couldn’t remem­ber which Forget What clinic I’d gone to. There were over a hundred facil­i­ties in Chicago, seven or eight within easy walking dis­tance. I prob­a­bly went to one of the closer ones, but there was no way to know, and none of the people at the clinics would be willing to admit to being the source of my problem.

I sat down at my table and won­dered if I’d actu­al­ly had any mem­o­ries removed at all. How would I know? I didn’t remem­ber having any mem­o­ries removed, but the letter that came with the bill said I wasn’t sup­posed to remem­ber any­thing about the removal session, that’s why they could guar­an­tee it. They give you careful instruc­tions on how to pay them, so you don’t notice the debit later. They short-circuit your short-term memory and put you out on the street. You don’t even remem­ber having the pro­ce­dure, so you don’t go looking to find out what it was you forgot. But, appar­ent­ly, I’d given them a false net­de­posit path, and the money was later removed from their account. You’re sup­posed to pay in advance for obvious reasons, but they claimed I’d cheated them.

Which I could believe. I could see myself doing that. I’d figure, hey, what could they do? It’s not like I actu­al­ly had that much money, or even the like­li­hood of getting that much money. I was on the dole and likely to stay that way. I was retired at thirty-one. I was a free man.

The forget still nagged at me, though, and I real­ized I just couldn’t stand it. It was a tickle, and I knew it would soon be a fero­cious itch.

So, why be so stupid as to go looking to remem­ber some­thing I’d worked so hard to forget? Because I’d felt empty of late, pas­sion­less and list­less. I went to the dole every week, had lunch with my brother, bought gro­ceries, slept, pil­fered when I needed to, worked odd jobs once in a while. I was walking along through my life without really think­ing about it because I’d thought my life had always been that dull.

But Forget What kept remind­ing me that before Sep­tem­ber there had been some­thing more, and I’d pur­pose­ful­ly removed it. What­ev­er I’d for­got­ten had left a bigger hole than I must have expect­ed it to. I stared at the wall, trying to remem­ber, though I knew I wouldn’t be able to.

I heard the vator doors open and close. The PAL in the next apart­ment played old Russian piano music. A pigeon landed on my win­dowsill high above my bed. I wrote “Dust me” on the wall with my finger.

I decided to let the issue slip for a while, fig­ur­ing that if, back in Sep­tem­ber, I’d wanted to forget, I should trust my own deci­sion. So, I tried to avoid think­ing about it. I tried to imagine the forget never happened—that Forget What was actu­al­ly blink­ing me, that I was the victim.

I watched some avatar fight­ing. The sport wasn’t what it used to be. The teams were allowed to put too much arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence into the avatars, so the people con­trol­ling them were no longer hired for their ability to fight in the virtual world, but more and more as enter­tain­ment for the audi­ence before and after the match. They were sharp, pretty people instead of the tough, real fight­ers who had com­pet­ed before. The whole sport had turned slick.

The forget-the-forget strat­e­gy wasn’t working. While I was in the bath­room trying to review my past and spot the hole in my mem­o­ries, my PAL beeped at me. I yelled to it to read the mail out loud.

The message came from Forget What. They said they had com­plet­ed a review of my account and decided that if I didn’t pay up within three days, they would inform the police about the memory they’d deleted for me.

The police? My heart stopped, while a list of hiding places shot through my mind. What kind of memory had I had removed that would inter­est the police?

Chapter 2

The police are okay if you’re clean and working. But, for the rest of us, the legal system is quick to use the memory lasers based on a psychologist’s rec­om­men­da­tion about which child­hood mem­o­ries caused your current crim­i­nal schtick. They can wipe your whole child­hood, wipe your mem­o­ries of com­mit­ting crimes, and wipe your mem­o­ries of friends and asso­ciates they believe might be harmful to your future. It saved them a lot of money they would have had to spend on jails. Since I couldn’t remem­ber what schtick I forgot, I expect­ed that, if they caught me and con­vict­ed me of some­thing, they might turn all my mem­o­ries into pâté, just to make the public safe.

I hunted down the first bill Forget What had sent me, looked at its date, sub­tract­ed a day, maybe two, for them to figure out I’d blinked them, and decided that what­ev­er I’d done, I prob­a­bly did it before Sep­tem­ber tenth. Think­ing back, I couldn’t remem­ber much from that time, even though it was only a month or so earlier. Late summer, early fall tended to merge into one con­tin­u­ous highway. A few events stuck out—the eight-day rain, the day the fire melted Jummy’s, the day I spent with Jolie. But, for the most part, there weren’t many lumps in the pavement.

I printed a copy of the last bill, put it in my pocket and went to Reborn Street to see Chen. I remem­bered being on Quacker Street with Chen on the eighth. I knew it was the eighth because I’d had to go to a gov clinic and get my finger ban­daged that night.

Chen was the only person I knew who I thought might do some­thing while I was with him that I’d want to forget all about. He’s an ass-thatch­er for fun. He comes up behind a guy and lasers his ass with a pre­pro­grammed laser etcher. He just pops it out of his pocket, focuses the tar­get­ing beam on the middle of the crack of the guy’s ass and ticks it. The laser flashes around the guy’s ass for about a tenth of a second, and then there’s a lot of scream­ing and hopping up and down. I laughed think­ing about it, then real­ized I would never pur­pose­ly forget some­thing as funny as that. I felt a pulse of guilt about the thatch­ing, but Chen was good at picking out the most pre­ten­tious and pompous men from the crowd. Then I imag­ined the hos­pi­tal write up, “Removed intri­cate drawing of Tweezy the Bum­ble­bee from guy’s ass.” Tweezy. Chen was a whirl.

Reborn Street is near the Rocky Roads Express­way, right where it enters the new Chicago Auto­mat­ed Transit switch­ing tunnel, about a fifteen-minute walk. The noise from the CAT trains there was thun­der­ous, but the rents were low. Chen had a flat in the old United Nations World Police build­ing, now called the Una­part­ments. It was all con­crete with high narrow windows, and two large restau­rants flank­ing the entrance like a pair of brown shoes poking out from under a ground-length, con­crete trench coat. They had painted the build­ing blue in hopes of making it look less insti­tu­tion­al and less mil­i­tary. It helped a little. A paint­ing of a twenty-foot, twirling, kick-boxing bear in boxer shorts and sun­glass­es worked better, but the owners had painted over that not long after the artist created it. I still missed the bear. He’d always made me smile.

You never walked straight to Chen’s. He had some odd rules. I took the vator up to seven and over to cross thirty-two. Side-slide vators make me woozy, but it only lasted a minute. I walked slowly back down two flights of stairs to Chen’s door.

Chen wasn’t there, but Paulo let me in. “He’ll be back in a tick,” Paulo said. He winked at me, just like Chen always did, but I didn’t wink back. “How ‘bout you come in and sit? Wait for him. Like a derpal?”

“No, thanks,” I said, and took a chair in the music room.

Paulo was a small, no-fat guy who moved in short stac­ca­to bursts like a helper bot, but without a bot’s focus or clear intent. My name for him was Brown­ian Motion. He wore an apron, pre­sum­ably with some­thing else on under­neath, though that wasn’t obvious. The apron showed two bibbed lob­sters holding skewers and grin­ning. Grin­ning lob­sters. Grin­ning lunch. Might as well have a smiling cow flip­ping real-beef hamburgers.

I sat in the music room and stared at the paint­ing of Lena Horne, which Chen had paid an out-of-work artist to paint on his car­si­cord. He never learned to play the thing, but he liked Lena, so he kept the instru­ment pushed back­ward up against the wall to display the paint­ing. Chen liked to listen to her old record­ings, and I’d acquired a taste for them as well.

Paulo was in the kitchen making dinner and noise. The apart­ment smelled like ginger and tomato sauce.

“Hey Paulo, you got any beer?” I yelled.

“Nah, just derpal.”

I didn’t drink derpal. I hadn’t acquired the taste, and since it’s illegal, I didn’t want to. In any case, I didn’t want that much bliss from a bottle.

Paulo stuck his head around the corner. “What brings you over here?”

“I got this bill from Forget What, and I wanted to talk to Chen about it. They’re getting cranky.”

“Oh!” Paulo ducked back into the kitchen. I heard some frantic stir­ring, metal on metal, then he yelled, “He should be back soon.”

Beside the car­si­cord, I noticed a new dec­o­ra­tion. It appeared to be a regular aquar­i­um at first, but the fish turned out to be engi­neered to look like tiny people swim­ming around in the flow from the water pump. Their little faces looked frantic, as though they needed air, though of course they didn’t. They came up to the glass begging me for some­thing, but I didn’t know what.

Chen came home then. He stopped by the kitchen to kiss Paulo and get a derpal, then walked into the music room. “What are you doing here, Benny?” Chen said warily.

Chen was a little shorter than me, and just as thin, usually. He had straight dark hair that day, and a wide bel­liger­ent nose, which didn’t match his close-set eyes. He must have been wearing padding around his waist, because he looked a bit chunki­er than usual. He walked with a swagger that was so dra­mat­ic it looked a bit silly.

“Yeah, it’s good to see you, too,” I said. “Maybe I should just go.” I stood up, but didn’t start walking.

“Oh relax, Benny. Why are you so touchy? You got so many new friends now, you can afford to walk out on your old ones?”

“What did we do the last time I was with you?” I asked, sitting down again.

“I’d prefer to forget all that. At least, I will if you will. I bought a new gun. Want to see it?” He pulled what looked like a kid’s space-blaster out of his coat pocket, handed it to me, then went to hang up his coat.

The gun was real enough. I’d expect­ed a slap gun, one that shot what amount­ed to a slap­faint, which made the victim faint and stay out for an hour or so. I popped the clip. It had room for fifteen bullets, but con­tained only three.

Chen came back. “What do you think? Doesn’t it look famous? Just like a toy. I could walk down the street with that in my hand and no one would take notice. You want a derpal?”

“No, thanks, and they would notice, Chen. The police know about these, although they’re usually green rather than yellow. Green’s a bit more subtle.”

He looked around the room thought­ful­ly. “Where should I keep it?”

I told him that if he was worried about intrud­ers, he should hide it in the bedroom some­where. If he was worried about guests, he should put it at hand, next to where he usually sat.

He sat down, then slid the gun into the drawer of his side table. Bright yellow, goofy-looking plastic body wrapped around a busi­nesslike gun. Very Chen.

“So, what did we do the last time I was with you?” I asked again. “I mean other than the fist fight. After that. Did I leave right after that?”

Chen was still looking at the drawer, smiling. He liked his new toy. He sighed and looked at Lena as though for guid­ance. “Yeah. Fist fight. Beating you mean. You were pretty mad about me thatch­ing part of your finger. It wasn’t my fault. You moved.”

“I know, but did we do any­thing togeth­er after that?”

“No. You ran off saying you had to go to the hos­pi­tal. I haven’t seen you since. It was just a nick.” Chen stood, paused for a moment, then walked over and put on some low music—Lena singing “I Gotta Right to Sing the Blues.”

I pulled the Forget What bill out of my pocket and showed it to him. “I’ve been getting these letters from Forget What. They say I had a memory removed, but I don’t remem­ber it. They say if I don’t deposit the money, they’re going to tell the police about the con­tents of the memory I had removed.” I watched him for a reaction.

“I wouldn’t worry,” said Chen, looking a bit worried. “Maybe you never had a memory removed. Maybe they’re just blink­ing you. Could be they always do this when they’re low on trade. Gov isn’t real happy about the com­mer­cial for­get­ters anyway. The Senate is trying to pass a law that would require the police to attend every forget, and have the for­get­ter pay for their time and expens­es. And anyway, the fact that you’ve had some­thing for­got­ten isn’t admis­si­ble evi­dence. There’s no telling what you forgot. Of course, it might be admis­si­ble if the for­get­ters kept records, maybe even video, of the whole thing.”

“Can they do that? I thought it was con­fi­den­tial, like talking to a priest or some­thing.” I watched a little fish person get tem­porar­i­ly sucked down against the gravel bottom of the tank where the pump intake was.

“I don’t remem­ber hearing about the use of forget infor­ma­tion at a trial before, but they prob­a­bly keep that kind of thing quiet. What did the con­tract you signed say?”

“Con­tract?” I couldn’t remem­ber my session, so of course I couldn’t remem­ber a contract.

“I bet they record all the ses­sions.” Chen said, sighing back into his chair. “They replay the removal session in court, then what?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Then what?” I looked at my feet. Chen wasn’t helping at all.

Chen yelled, “Hey, Paulo?”

Paulo danced into the room waving a large spoon.

“Doesn’t Carla work for Forget What?” Chen said, with an odd leer. “She could prob­a­bly get a tran­script of Benny’s last forget session, right?”

Paulo glared at Chen like he had said some­thing tact­less. He lowered his spoon. “Yes, yes she does,” said Paulo stiffly, “but I don’t think she can help with that. She’s a busy person.”

Chen winked at him. “Sure she can.” He turned to me and added, “Paulo will give her a call later.”

Paulo wasn’t happy with the idea, and I can’t say I was over­whelmed either. Chen’s friends gen­er­al­ly weren’t reli­able, but I couldn’t pass up the angle. Espe­cial­ly since friends usually work for free.

Paulo abrupt­ly retreat­ed to the kitchen. Chen smiled at me and took a long swig of his derpal. “Hey, you want to go over to Quacker tonight? Jon Tam built me a new thatch­er. It cuts a picture of a rabbit diving down the victim’s asshole.”

Chen started laugh­ing and couldn’t stop. That started me laugh­ing. I couldn’t even imagine what that hos­pi­tal write-up would say. “Sure,” I said, “just keep that thing pointed away from me.”

Chen laughed hard enough to snort, and started wheez­ing. He had to rip off his fat, fake nose to get more air. He held it in his fist with the tip jutting out between his index finger and his middle finger. “I’ve got your nose,” he said, then rolled onto the floor with tears in his eyes, unable to speak.

What­ev­er Chen did for money, I figured it must be stressful.

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