Wolf 3.0

Your Memory Has Been Erased

A (god's?) face rendered in Huichol artwork appears in Joe's memory.

He awakens.

He is in a bullet-shaped no-frills silver vehicle of alien design doing a long silent hurtle through interstellar space. It is in a part of the galaxy devoid of stars, and in the vast window in front of him he can see himself staring back, with slight shudders as the ship vibrates – the thin crackly suit for interstellar travel, his intense face, the basic Google glasses, and bespoke denim peeking out from under his suit. His head still rings from the nonstop tension of the past few days.

"Hmmm, a little Diego Rivera look," he says to himself.

Suddenly, with a bump, and a whoosh the ship skips ahead and then starts to slowdown.

The smooth persuasive voice of the Alien Bot, which had sent him on this journey, is talking in his headset:

We're slowing down, Joe, we'll come in sight in twenty minutes.

Can I do anything? Can you tell me what is going to happen?

It gets more crisp. No, Joe, you don't have to do anything. We'll take care of it all. It's fine. Just go back to sleep.

Sleep? No way.

He has been here before , twenty years ago, but he cannot remember it. The place of his rebirth, the shamanic planet where everything changed. And it's a big blank in his head.

All he sees in his mind is the fantastic face of a god.

Trust us.

His head nods and sleep overpowers him.

He is going back to the shaman planet. He is going back to the --

Twenty years ago, the Franchise Authority at the shaman home planet had stripped away Joe's personal memory going into the project – now as a departure present they have given him back the recovered memory of his life before the startup, and all of it floods into his mind. Reload.

But on the next day, long ago, his personal memory would be wiped and he would be taken to the shaman home-world. He would get the full mind-programming and training to build the company.

The years fall away to July 4 2070...

One last day with Carola... Something happened that he cannot remember. He has called and made the appointment, it would involve travel, cannot take a bag. They would strip away his personal memory prior to onboarding, as part of a plan which he would not know, it would be his last trip to shaman home planet. That journey would begin tomorrow.

So this is the evening of his last day before the program. Carola and he are going to celebrate the 4th of July at the big city park lake. This will be a mutual separation because of big plans for both – she is going for a new job, he is leaving next day on a confidential, very confidential, and very long journey.

There are gaps in the recovered memory, he cannot remember the city or the college they attended.

Outdoors at the picnic at the lake, they bring Indian-buffet takeout.

It's growing dark, and overhead a gigantic holographic host starts the evening's entertainment. The fireworks appear, real and holographic. Overhead there is the star of the show -- the gigantic entertainment, which sets the audience to wild dancing, for three hours. The final number is a sentimental slow-dance—an old favorite—the revived classic "At Last" in triplicate video, with its three historic solo artists video-blended and synchronized holograms. At the end, the other two fade away and Christina Aguilera belts it out alone.

The two kiss and dance and cry.

In the silence, Carola whispers breathily into his ear, singing softly the song, "Don't you forget about me."

It is the next day that his personal memory will be wiped, before the start of the departure.

He doesn't remember anything more.

Now all his memories are flooding back in – his parents with their different Mexican indigenous backgrounds, and life as they are growing up in Tucson– Yaqui and Huichol, other kids, living in poverty in Tucson – his aptitude for science and shamanism. From his parents he is exposed to two kinds of shamanism. He makes a choice: Huichol, and starts his training . He is exposed to peyote at the age of fourteen on the sly and overdoses and almost loses his mind. He is an alienated teen, staying away from the reservation's outdoor parties.

In high school he learns Spanish, there is a trip to both parent's families of origin in Mexico. They have a weekend in Mexico City and see an exhibit of Diego Rivera murals, also stop at the house of Frida Kahlo, but rural Mexico is his Mexico, the true Mexico, his Indigenous people.

When he reads in high school about the defeat of Montezuma, especially the classic trick Cortez pulled, it is like a blow to his stomach.

Then comes the IT scholarship– the four years undergrad and two years graduate, at university, which changes his life. It all starts with the video essay he makes after his holographic conversation with the image of the first Yaqui to go to Cornell. The hologram is part of an AI reconstruction so he is able to have a conversation, although the person died long ago.

It's now 20 years later. The tiny spaceship is starting its final descent, and all this is coming back as his memories are being restored. And the personality that is robbed comes back, and the anger, and the life that he missed. The professors and classes had taught him to slow down, and attend to detail. Carola had taught him to speed up, hustle, follow his instinct. And now he is leaving all that.

And it's all focused on one thing.

His original name was Surem from the Yaqui, and Taiyari from the Huichol.

Starting with his training, he was renamed Joe. Just Joe.

Since the Second Black Plague struck Earth, he is the last of his kind.

And now the faint red shaman home planet stretches before him, unknown and waiting.

His retrieved memory syncs up with the time about ten years later when the Second Black Plague breaks out on Earth, and the massive Hand of Time facility has to harness its staff of research technicians to become an independent space station and quarantine from the home planet – now a hyper-accelerated farms and synthetic food production facility. Months of touch-and-go, and a week when there is food-poisoning in the crops on earth and 75 percent of the population is starving.

Among the last one-way telepathic messages that comes to the satellite from Earth is one for him that at the time he does not understand or recognize, addresses him with a foreign name: Surem. When I go and it will be soon, you will be the last one of our kind.

Now he recognizes that telepathic voice. It is his father.

In the present, his spaceship is blazing into the atmosphere. The chair vibrates, a tone sounds inside his mind, and he sees and recognizes with a shock the shaman home planet stretched out before him.

It is the faint red planet from his dream.

The conditioners in the shoot are finishing loading the memories of his prior visit and training here, twenty years earlier.

Images and memories are still swarming into his head like pieces of a puzzle assembling from his childhood, his father's last message, and a passing reference in his training first time around twenty years ago when the Second Black Plague experiment was needed..

He is about to land.