The Way Back (Champions of the Crystal Book 4)

Chapter 18: Memory

The first step, the scientists said, was to take an inventory of what memories of Scotty's they had managed to capture before his original brain cells degraded into uselessness. Khediva and Tirqwin had been working at this already, but there were large segments of Scotty's life they had insufficient knowledge of. Sabrina immediately volunteered to look at the memories they had identified as being from his childhood.

The setup was like ones she'd read about in advanced virtual reality experiments. Via a helmet that relayed the memories on specific, narrowly focused bioelectric impulses, she could experience the memory from Scotty's point of view, while also recording comments, a sort of narrative to help him place it in context and make sense of it. The goal was to have Scotty experience the memories in rough chronological order, but everyone involved recognized that there were too many memories and parts of his life which would not be easily categorized for that to be completely achieved.

The process gave Sabrina intense headaches, which she did not mention for fear of being forbidden to keep working. She sneaked analgesics from Khediva's infirmary and tried to take breaks between memory sequences. Most of what she did in the first few days was put Scotty's early childhood in order, though there were a few late teen segments she dealt with as best she could. She realized in horror that she had never realized how much he had hated school in London, particularly after she left to go to college back in the States.

She should have expected the bombshell. But somehow she didn't. When she thought about it later, she supposed she had assumed that Tirqwin and Khediva would have handled that memory themselves. Khediva told her afterward that they had not recognized it.

The memory started off innocently enough. Their parents had gone out to dinner, and they were doing homework in front of the television and arguing over what to watch, as usual. Sabrina wondered why Scotty remembered this normal evening so particularly, out of hundreds of similar ones, as she watched herself declare bedtime. Scotty argued, as he always did, but he'd been caught asleep over his homework by their parents just last week, so he saw the wisdom of going to bed before they got home.

The pounding on the door in the middle of the night made Sabrina's heart freeze as she realized in horror what this memory was about. Scotty was out of bed and moving as soon as he heard his sister head for the door, not about to let her open it in the middle of the night by herself. He stopped dead when he saw the badge on the man's chest and the expression on his face.

I can edit this out. I can spare him this, Sabrina thought wildly as she watched herself have that heart-stopping, world-shattering conversation with the highway patrolman. She had never realized before that Scotty hadn't said a word during it.

This is part of who he is, she argued with herself. Part of who you both are. One thing that bound you together closer than blood. You can't spare him this. Any of it.

She had forgotten, too, how they had argued about identifying the bodies. The patrolmen didn't want them to be the ones who did it. In the end, they'd woken up their neighbors, the Mulhearns. Mr. Mulhearn had gone down to the morgue and identified Robert and Anna Devon while Sabrina and Scotty stayed with Mrs. Mulhearn. The elderly couple had done their best to make it bearable; Sabrina was surprised to find that Scotty seemed to remember them better than she did.

Sabrina had insisted that Aunt Euphrasia be told at once. It was mid-morning in London by the time Mr. Mulhearn got back, so she'd called. She hadn't gotten any further than, "Aunt Euphrasia? It's me, Sabrina. I—there's been—" before she'd choked up and then burst into tears. Someone had taken the phone from her hand. She'd never realized it had been Scotty, not Mrs. Mulhearn.

"Sabrina? What is it? What's happened?" Aunt Euphrasia had demanded frantically. "Has something happened to your mother?"

"Yes," Scotty said hoarsely. "Car wreck. Dad too."