Anamnesis

four

800

I followed the road where it lead me, traveling along the trash-laden alleyways and distant side roads till I reached the center of the city. I weighed my options, deciding to stop for gas and something to eat before my journey outside the city. I filled a separate gas can, the sharp stench from the gasoline burning my nose.

"Long journey, son?" A man asked, noting the yellow nozzle just visible through my back window. I nodded, avoiding his gaze. My 17-year-old-self was an unseen sight on the streets of Anamnesis.

"Just visiting family," I coughed, lowering my voice.

"They live outside the city limits." I averted my eyes, mentally punching myself. Nobody is supposed to leave the city.

"You're leaving the city." He scoffed, his upper lip curling in disgust. I nodded, once, heading inside.
As I paid, I could feel his eyes on me.

I cracked the window, lighting another cigarette as I pulled out of the parking lot. I held it between my pointer and middle finger as I drove, taking drags at every stop light.

The sun rose higher into the sky, and eventually, I left behind the boutiques and diners. I left behind the skyscrapers and office buildings, so high they seemed to pierce through the clouds.
I kept driving, past the calm suburbs, trampolines and tricycles in every yard. Past the backyard gardens and in-ground swimming pools.
The land around me seemed to expand for miles in every direction, the road back long and leading to my past. The past I so desperately wanted to leave behind. Over the horizon, it was the open road. The open road, and a sign.

Chipped and faded print read 'Anamnesis': a single line of text underneath reading 'Take without forgetting, and give without remembering'.

I almost laughed at the irony, that's all this hell-hole did. It took. It took lives, it took happiness, it took memories and all conscious decisions. It never needed to remember, for nothing was ever given.

I got back into my car, the gas tank half empty. I would need to refuel before I headed home. I put my car into drive, leaving Anamnesis.

The road I was traveling was overgrown with weeds, potholes littering the way. Where I had ended up was nothing short of a ghost town. The houses once built there now broken down and without reconstruction. They sported thick, sagging roofs and water dredged patios.
The stained glass windows of the churches were spiderwebbed with cracks, the bricks covered in ivy. The latter creeped up from the earth, turning miles of construction into a green, overgrown wasteland.

I drove further into the city, many of the edifices nothing more than ash, blackened streaks smeared across the buildings next door. Graffiti was sprayed along the walls, discriminating slurs and hate speech colored in faded reds and blues.

I passed in front of another sign, and beneath the smoke stained layer of musk, I assumed another quotation was painted. This branch of writing, however, was less legible, the once inspiring words now unable to inspire. I scrubbed at the charred wood with my sweatshirt sleeve, unable to even smudge the years of neglect.

And yet, even with the ghost town being nearly unrecognizable. I knew exactly where I was. I had read about this place only once in my life. It was the Enshrine.

The Enshrine worked similar to how Anamnesis does now, except those who lived here were like me. They remembered.
They had lives and memories; they felt happiness, sadness, anger, and pain. The vivid colors and vitality a stark contrast to the dull greys of oblivion.

What had happened to them? No one had known.

Families were killed off or sent away decades ago. Technology had advanced and as less and less of us were accepted, more and more of us were portrayed as monsters. We were discriminated against, pushed around, and ridiculed beyond belief.

The governor of The Enshrine was overthrown, and it was dubbed 'inhumane' to allow humans to experience their old memories through means of text, photograph, or recording. These experiences were proven to cause feelings of nostalgia and longing. Such emotions were then deemed unacceptable. Children as young as 7 grew up on the horror stories of public executions and city wide purge fires. The photos and tapes of loved ones confiscated and burned in the center of the city.

Our entire lives we were taught that The Enshrine was a place for misfits and thugs, for those forgotten by society, but not forgotten by the system.
The Enshrine, in its heyday, was a paradise. And I, standing in the center of it, surrounded by decades of history, decades of rubble; I had never felt more at home.