The Wrong Version

The instruction not to come became an address in Elias's mind despite containing none. For the next three days he obsessed over every phrase Mara sent through the relay. She replied infrequently and refused voice calls. She confirmed almost nothing about her present life. She asked questions instead.

Do you still hate almonds? Do you remember Mum singing the wrong words to songs?

Did Dad ever fix the hallway light? Elias answered carefully, then found himself auditing each answer against records. When Mara asked what color their mother's dressing gown had been, he did not respond for twelve minutes.

Finally he wrote:

I remember red. I have a photo of blue. I no longer know.

Mara replied:

It was green. You both lose. Elias laughed so suddenly that he nearly dropped the phone.

Then suspicion followed.

How did he know the person messaging him was Mara? The relay concealed identity. Tess could be sending the messages. Lena could. Morrow could have built a conversational model from Mara's archives.

He hated the thought as soon as it appeared, but it did not leave. He wrote a verification question only Mara should know.

What did you put in my cigarette hiding place at Mum's grave?

The answer came:

Two notes. One said YOU'RE BAD AT CRIME. The other said I SOLD THE CIGARETTES TO OWEN FOR £3.

Elias stared.

He remembered only the first note.

Owen.

The nonexistent friend.

He typed:

There was no Owen.

A long pause.

Then:

There was an Owen. Just not Owen March.

Elias's pulse accelerated.

Who?

No answer.

He sent another message.

Mara?

Nothing.

That evening he tore every notebook from the wall arrangement and stacked them in boxes. He was tired of clues that behaved like commands. Tired of handwriting that outranked his own present judgment because it was older. Tired of dead versions of himself controlling the living one.

He carried the boxes to the rubbish chute. His hand rested on the first lid.

Throwing them away would feel good. That alone made him suspicious.

He carried them back.

At midnight the relay finally answered. Owen March was a name you gave Simon and Ollie together after one of the early continuity tests. It stuck. I told you because you were terrified you'd invented a whole person. You hadn't. You combined two.

Elias sat on the floor. Simon Kells. Oliver Dane. Broken tooth, airport father, garage, sweets, Havers Park. Traits blended until a stable child emerged.

Mara continued:

The cigarette note was for Oliver. You called him Owen later because the reconstruction used the wrong label. I thought it was funny until you didn't.

Elias typed:

Why were you involved in my childhood-memory tests?

No reply.

Then:

Because you asked me to tell them when the machine made you nicer than you were.

Another:

It did that a lot.

Elias smiled despite himself.

He slept on the sofa with the phone beside him. At 2:38 a.m. he woke standing in the kitchen.

The refrigerator door was open. His bare feet were cold against the floor.

He held a black marker in his right hand. Across the white refrigerator door, in his handwriting, were six words.

DO NOT LET MARA BECOME PROOF.

Elias stepped backward.

He had no memory of getting out of bed. The marker cap lay on the table. Beside it was the relay phone, open to a message he had sent at 2:31.

I remember what I did after Pember.

Mara had replied immediately.

No you don't.

Elias looked at the refrigerator. A new memory pressed forward.

Pember Station. Train gone. Lena touching his shoulder. Elias turning away.

Then a car.

Morrow.

A room.

He heard his own voice saying, Delete the location model.

The memory felt complete.

It felt terrible.

It felt true.

Mara's message remained on the phone.

No you don't.

For the first time Elias understood that a recovered memory could be just as dangerous as a false one if he loved the explanation it offered.