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Biohazard Symbol What Do I Remember? Biohazard Symbol


What do I remember? Nothing, except for flashes in my dreams, and even those make no sense.

A tow-headed baby laughing up at me as he throws some green gelatinous food around the room.

A dog jumping into a lake, chasing after a yellow ball, thrown by a man I know I should recognize.

I don't remember much else... but getting by is simpler without memories intruding.

What do I know? The world has changed. Fallen. Collapsed upon itself.

Yet I have found a path to walk, a light to bear. I've found people who want to help restore the world to the way it was before: a return to children laughing and dogs barking as they jump into lakes. You rarely hear laughter anymore.

Everyone wants what was lost.

I remember falling to my knees and hearing a faint hum around me, my eyes blinded by the flickering electric light above. I remember feeling the textured metal floor under my hands. A musty, metallic scent tinged with something that triggers the word sulfur in my memory. I felt something heavy around my neck, reached up and found a metal collar, too awkward and thick to be a piece of jewelry I would have chosen to wear.

Finally, I noticed a hazy form standing above me, extending a hand. I could only kneel there for a few moments, blinking, trying to make sense of everything flooding my awakened senses.

"My name is Brian," the man said. I squinted, and he grew clearer. "What's your name?"

I couldn't answer, and realized with a shock that the memory had been stolen from me.

It was a sensation with which I would become painfully familiar.

Brian told me I was in a town called North Burb. He said the people in control there called themselves the Lightbearers, and he was taking me to speak with the chief physician, Doctor Hideki. Brian helped support me as we left the place where my first true memories were created. Maybe even where I was created. I just don't know. He didn't have any answers for me.

My first experience of North Burb was of near-blinding sunlight and the heat pouring through, once we opened the doors of what Brian said was a LifeNet bunker. I could smell the sweet grass, and feel a warm breeze across my skin...but as soon as my eyes adjusted, a knot formed in my stomach.

I barely recognized the world around me.

The buildings looked run-down. Telephone poles leaned to the side. An old washer, trash bags, and a rusted refrigerator came into view as we walked, lying discarded beside the road. The place looked more like a makeshift dump than any kind of town, and the formerly sweet scent of grass grew tainted by the cloying stench of refuse.

This is the world I woke up to?

Doctor Hideki asked me a number of questions. What was my name? Where do I remember coming from? What was the purpose of the place I came from - the LifeNet bunker? How was I feeling? What else did I remember? She asked me more and more questions that jumbled together in my mind, and I didn't have answers for any of them. Finally the questions stopped, and she showed me to a cot and let me sleep.

That's when the first dreams came. The dog and the child. A warm, deep voice saying one simple word that I couldn't make out. I didn't recognize the man in my dream, but I knew he was someone important to me, I could feel it. I woke up crying, wishing I could remember who he was...and why not knowing hurt so much.

The next morning, the memories made more sense. He had to have been my husband, the child my child, and the dog my dog. That didn't make the dreams any easier. Having those memories were a cold comfort that left me feeling hollowed out. Still, it was a start as I tried to piece together a life.

Doctor Hideki's assistant, Chavez, tried to help me remember my name as I attempted to make myself useful. He listed names off as they came to him. "Abigail? Betty? Candice? Denise? Estrella? Freya?" He kept this up over the next couple of days, whenever a new name popped into his head. I helped make bandages out of scraps of cloth people had brought in, bandages that the Lightbearers shipped back out to the nearby towns. It was straightforward and menial, but soothing.

On the third day of helping out around the clinic, one of the names he mentioned, Tatiyana, felt good to me. Felt like an old name. Whether or not it really was my own, I don't know. It's mine now.

I worked for a number of weeks with Doctor Hideki, assisting in the treatment of people who came in sick and wounded. The Lightbearers helped whenever and however they could. Most everyone I met wanted to change this world they were stuck living in.

I just wanted something other than the memories haunting me every night.

Walking on a beach as the sun set, almost picture perfect as the fading light reflected off the waves lapping at the sand and my ankles.

Pressing against a wall in the rain as a bullet slammed into the bricks next to my head: I drop into a crouch and shoot the gunman. The shot echoes as the man falls in slow motion, synchronized with the raindrops around him.

I told the doctor about my latest dream-memories. She had never heard of such a thing as a beach, or seen the ocean before. She wanted more details about the gunfight, and asked me how I felt about being in such a situation. I told her it was thrilling, but that I felt calm because I knew how it would turn out - with the gunman dead. She nodded at this and had me speak to Bearer Astai, the Lightbearer in charge of North Burb.

Bearer Astai listened to me recount my dreams, memories, or whatever they were, and seemed very interested in how I felt about the gunfight. She didn't have any insight into my dreams, but agreed with my own thoughts.

I still remember what she said. "You felt in control and didn't panic when under fire. That's important. There are two sides to helping people: healing, and fighting for justice. If you know how to heal, you know where to hurt. I think it is time for you to learn about the other side of being a Lightbearer."

Three Lightbearers and a score of refugees traveled north with us. There were others who wore collars like mine, but they hadn't chosen their paths yet. A couple of them had no recollection of any memories, while some were like me and only remembered fragments. Made me feel lucky that at least I had glimpses of my own... but one of them remembered a lot about his life before waking up again.

I avoided him and his stories because I didn't want to hear about something I no longer had and couldn't ever have again.

The ones who didn't remember much or anything seemed to share my attitude. All we knew was the present moment. That was real. The taste of the dust from the road blown up in our faces was real. Our dreams and memories weren't. There was only the here and now.

A group of men and women who called themselves "Devil's Own" ambushed our convoy after the sun set on the fifth day, a few miles outside of Haven. Some of the refugees panicked, hiding at the sound of gunfire and combat. The one with all the memories ran off in the opposite direction of the fighting. We never saw him again. I found a spare weapon, a taped lawnmower blade, and prepared for them to reach those of us in the inner camp. Two of the Lightbearer escorts had stood relaxed, but aware of all the sounds.

A couple of minutes after the attack started, it was over. When the attack ended, the two Lightbearers looked at each other with a smile and sat back down. The third Lightbearer, a man named Johan, returned to the fire and sat down. He pulled his sleeve away from his arm, showing a lot of blood pouring forth from either a cut or a gunshot wound.

"Untrained," is all he said to the other two.

His fellow Lightbearers nodded, and one went to stitch up and bandage Johan, while the other went about business as if nothing happened. Johan looked over at me and smiled after his colleague had finished patching him up.

"It's not a bad thing, Sister. Sometimes the light we bear glints off the edge of a blade." The rest of the convoy cheered and laughed away their fright. I went to sleep early, thinking about what Johan said.

The dreams returned that night.

Driving a car at reckless speeds while another car followed directly behind, almost even with my bumper as we round a curve.

Arguing with a man in a room, while other people watched. An older man in a black robe sat to my right, listening closely.

Like the other dreams, these didn't make sense.

In Haven, I learned more about the Lightbearers and the other factions, such as the Enforcers, the CHOTA, and the worst of them all, the Travelers.

I trained hard, though my body wasn't used to pushing itself to the limits, as I was doing every day. One of my teachers said my muscle memory needed to reawaken. I learned how to defend myself, so that I could defend others. I learned how to kill someone while they had a knife to an innocent's throat.

I also helped out other collar-wearers when I could. At the ends of these nights, I collapsed into my cot and slept. I was grateful the dreams didn't come during that time.

After a few months, I was told to head to Saint Sebastian's for more intensive training. This time, I was one of the Lightbearers guarding the convoy. We came across victims of an attack on the third day of travel. Bandits had ambushed them on their way out of Northfields, killing one person and cutting off the thumbs of another. The bandits stole something from them. "Information," they said.

Two of us investigated while the third Lightbearer stayed to heal the wounded. The rest of the convoy set up the camp for the evening. We didn't have to travel far before we found them: seven men crouched around a tiny campfire in the lee of a rocky outcropping.

From their boasting about teaching lessons to cheaters and doing Bad Jack Badham proud, we realized they were from the Travelers group known as the Black Hood Gang. Tempting as it was to deal with them and teach them a lesson, we had innocent people to protect.

We returned and broke down camp rather than stay there. We left behind some supplies for the survivors of the Traveler retribution. I told myself as we walked away that the only person more idiotic than someone who knowingly makes a deal with a Traveler is someone who breaks that deal.

After a couple more days, we reached Dieseltown - the crossroads of Kaibab Forest. The rest of the convoy planned to stay there while we Lightbearers headed southeast to Saint Sebastian. We chose to rest over one night and ate at the Waffle Warehouse.

That's where my dreams started making sense.

In one corner, near the ceiling, I noticed an old, burned-out television...and more memories came flooding back.

The warm voice I had heard was soon followed by laughter and applause.

Someone wiped up the mess the baby made with a super-absorbent paper towel.

The recollection of being pinned down by bullets had a commercial following the gunshot.

Advertisements. Staged, scripted dramas. Everything I had believed about my previous life came from television.

I was just as blank a slate as the ones who remembered nothing.

But you know, I don't care. The only thing real to me now is the path I'm on.

And the present is the only reality I choose.


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