The Persistence of Memory: America Under Attack

Part Twenty-One

Fort Jackson

Doctor Bernard tapped on the keyboard and clicked the mouse a few times, reminding me once more to hold still. When she clicked the next button, I understood why she had strapped me to the dentist chair. A shiver went through my entire body, shaking my vision of the Angel Oak in Charleston. My mother, father, and brother were holding hands, trying to reach our arms around the ancient tree's trunk, but only making it a fraction of the way.

But my eyes were closed, so it couldn't have been my vision that was trembling. It was my mind. My memories. Everything I ever knew and experienced was replaying for the machine. "Wonderland," Dr. Bernard had called it. Early memories that my conscious mind couldn't access were drawn out of their dark corners.

Flash. I'm in a playpen with Oliver.

Flash. I witness my own first steps.

Flash. I'm playing in a shallow pool with Oliver in our back yard.

Flash. Memory after memory relived at impossible speeds. The shaking sensation worsened.

I am at the beach.

I'm fishing in the Ashley River.

I'm flying remote controlled airplanes at the sod farm.

My mother was in some of them, my father in others, and sometimes both were there. But Oliver was the one constant in every memory. Our lives were essentially the same until we were a little bit older. Until the accident.

Flash. Oliver is riding a bike off the cliff. My Fault. He is flying away in the rescue helicopter.

The shaking sensation went away as my memories featured me instead of us. Alone for the first time in my life, the next few years skimmed past in a blur of hurt feelings born in isolation. I didn't allow myself to feel anger towards Oliver. The only thing I could do to help him was accept his anger and resentment in good humor and allow him some joy at my expense.

My summers with Uncle Hank blink past.

Flash. I'm learning to hunt, shooting paintball guns, and meeting his friends from church at the yogurt shop.

More recent days of the Others' arrival, the EMP attack, getting to know the real Susan, the earthquakes and flooding, losing Susan; those memories arrived with undiminished devastation, leaving a film of pain and isolation in their wake. My experiences slowed as they approached the present day.

#

After the battle of Uncle Hank's house, we sought out and recruited other survivors. Hank's tracking device helped us identify and stay a step ahead of the puppets. Our numbers grew. We lost some, too, but we continued our mission to harry and interrupt the Puppets and the invisible hand that pulled their strings.

We captured one of them. She was a twelve year old girl named Tiana who said she was killing us because we were infested. "Teds" for short. She said the Others were inside us, using us as tools to kill off the surviving remnants of mankind.

Tiana gave us a mission. We needed to capture someone who could tell us more. The tracker showed us a cluster of red dots in Columbia. Other dots came and went from that cluster, but there was one that was always alone. It moved around the perimeter of the city and sometimes through the city, but it never touched the other dots. We called it the Watcher. That was our target.