Is It Worth Remembering?

“Please take your pill,” said a tinny voice.

Mneme took out a small bottle from her pant pocket and twisted off the top. Shaking one medium, pale blue, gelatinous capsule from the bottle she swallowed it without hesitation.

She looked to her left, sharing the couch was a man. He had just taken a pill as well. Did she know him? She wasn't sure. He was looking at her, and she was looking back at him. She sat, feeling a stretching of self, as if her consciousness was attached to her brain with a rubber band. It was stretching, almost to the limit and then, inexorably, it would be snapped back into her body.

As she formulated the simile, she recognized her husband Manasses. She knew the room, with its French windows overlooking the local park, and its inconspicuous metal speaker. Ugh, the ugly device and its pills. She despised the pre-aftereffect of the drug as one knew they were undergoing a terrible ordeal, though she couldn't recall the last ten minutes. She groaned as the stretching reached a tipping point, and its journey back, condensed, began. I must remember. I must re...

“I think we should go out to dinner tonight,” she said to her husband. Manasses looked dimly at her, as if he were a tensed ball of suffering, and then he relaxed. He seemed excited to see her, which always energized her in return.

“I'm sorry what did you say?”

“I was wondering if you want to eat out.”

He smiled, “I would love to, but I've already agreed to go out with the guys tonight.”

“That's right,” she said, smiling back.

“Why are we grinning like idiots?”

“I love it when you smile. But you better go.”

….

Manasses entered the restaurant and peered through the gloom of atmospheric lighting, until he saw his friends clustered around a table. He walked unhurriedly over, thinking about Mneme. They had been having such a great time, he felt bad about going out for the night. He wished he had gone to dinner with her instead.

He sat down heavily, and in spite of his reservations, tried to join the conversation.

Yet, after a few minutes it became clear his friends wanted to sarcastically skewer a social idea he held dear. Silently fuming, he bore the indignity as long as he could, but not unproductively. In his mind, he planned and flowcharted a series of arguments and refutations. Then he bumblingly entered the argument, more upset than persuasive.  Initially he remained calm, but as his friends destroyed his argument unthinkingly, he became frantic, lashing out like a man left with no reasonable choice on who to elect for president.

“You better stop, before it happens,” Alexander hissed, glancing surreptitiously over his shoulder.

Manasses could see Alexander was uncomfortable, that he was looking for the ubiquitous speaker, but he didn't care any more.

“I want you to know that your concept of humanity is infantile and unproductive. And worse, you don't have the courage to admit it to yourself. You keep toeing the party line, but the party line is your own social clique!” Manasses screamed.

“Please take your pill,” said a tinny voice from down the far end of the bar.

He watched as every person in the restaurant immediately reached into their pocket, pulled out a little bottle, opened it, and removed a pill. He realized he was holding the oblong pill in his left hand.

“Alexander, look, I'm sorry, it doesn't matter...”

“Don't talk, just take the pill,” Alexander said in a hushed whisper as if Manasses was a child who had committed a terrible breach of social etiquette.

Everyone, including Alexander, swallowed the pill, but as Manasses lifted it to his mouth he tried to remember all the times before, and he couldn't. Palming the tablet without quite knowing why, he thought about his choice. It was the right one. Now he would feel how he ought. He wondered why he had never thought of this before, but then concluded he might have, but had erased the memories with the pill. He was free of the mind altering haze of its effects, and he wasn't going back.

As his friends experienced the disorientation that followed the erasing of memory he sat silently, and when they suffered the second memory erasure he chuckled silently.

Then the conversation began again, and he found to his shock and displeasure it was back at the topic they had started on. Frustrated he stood. He said with a fake smile that he had to go, and they offered true condolences on an early night. Then with a mingling of genuine and fake handshakes they parted.

Pausing, outside in the cool air, he played with the bottle in his pocket. He considered taking a pill. He was concerned that he might be building an infrastructure of undesirable memories. They would exist his entire life, insidiously subverting his friendships. There was relief in his pocket. But if he waited...

….

“You're home early,” Mneme said to him.

“We finished quickly and decided not to go to the movie,” Manasses said, not focusing on the conversation, still considering the events of the night.

“You're lying to me,” she said.

“Of course I'm not.”

“Why must you lie?”

“Because you boxed me into it!” he half-lied, frustration gripping his body from brain to bowels.

“Please take your pill,” said a tinny voice.

Sitting on the couch together, they both took out their bottles. Mneme looked sadly at Manasses as she saw his eager face. With one hand clasping the pill in a fist she threw her around arms his neck as tears flowed down her cheeks.

“Please take your pill,” said a tinny voice.

In that moment she was reminded not of any argument, but of a hamster she had owned when she was small. It had been her constant comfort through preschool. And then one day it wasn't there anymore. She knew now that she had forgotten it. All argument, all suffering, gone in an instant with a single movement of the throat. She wouldn't do it.

But Manasses squeezed her back, and with a smile said, “I love you.”

Then, as they gazed upon one another, they reached up, each placed the pill upon tongue, and swallowed simultaneously.