After "Memory Games" was first published in Tesseracts 5, it was nominated for an Aurora Award. After I was approached by a young Vancouver filmmaker who wanted to turn it into a short film, I created a screenplay of the story. The story is included in my collection, Psychedelia Gothique. Obsessions with themes of memory and truth have run through my work ever since.
She grabbed Daniel's fingers as he unfastened her jeans. His hands were cool, almost cold. Even though he was little more than a shadow, she could see his eyes glinting in the starlight. Moonlight. More. A glare of headlights swept into the bedroom from the street, catching Daniel in their photographic flash. Something about his visage looked wrong.
Celine said, "We should talk first."
His arm turned to stone, refusing to be moved. "Why're you starting that
again?"
Celine shrugged and began rebuttoning her blouse. "Did you know that Alan Winston was one of them?"
"Don't start again," he said.
"You remember Alan Winston, don't you?"
"No. I don't remember Alan-fucking-Winston!" When she didn't respond, he continued. "This is a crock. Sometimes I wonder what you'd really do if I failed one of these tests."
"Kill you."
"I mean what you'd REALLY do! Know what I think? You wouldn't kill me,
Celine, because you wouldn't trust your own judgement. You'd tell yourself you were being paranoid. You wouldn't kill me."
He undid the buttons she had just fastened.
She didn't stop him. Even if the stories were true about the Morphs
absorbing the short term memories of the bodies they'd sucked the life from, the sorts of things Daniel knew about her were more than superficial. Weren't they?
How could he fake something like that?
He'd known about her paranoia. But then, who wasn't paranoid these days? Daniel's bluster and bravado didn't conceal his fear, they magnified it. If he was a morph, why would he be afraid?
He unfastened her brassiere, cradling her heavy breasts in his hands, rolling her nipples between his fingers. Closing her eyes, Celine tried to not to wince at the sensation of Daniel's hot breath and tongue gliding like a wet eraser down her neck and between her breasts. His fingers didn't feel so cold anymore, as they slid up her back, gripping the base of her skull and holding her like that as he kissed her. His
other hand moved down, over her buttocks, his big hand squeezing the flesh of her ass, pulling her firmly to him.
She felt his erection through his jeans and squirmed away with a surge of terror.
"I may not kill you," she babbled. "But I won't be with you any more. Not until you tell me about Alan Winston."
"We worked with him," Daniel replied sullenly.
"Which department did he work in?"
Celine could see his anger quite clearly, because the headlights had lit up the room again.
Only morphs drove cars anymore. She squinted at the window. "What are
they up to?"
"I called them, when you started freaking out. We're never gonna catch this woman by surprise, I told them. Might as well take her now. "
A joke. Celine cringed at her uncertainty. Truth was impossible to recognize anymore. Celine wasn't sure it had ever existed.
He spoke again. "We should make the most of the short lives we have left." A familiar Daniel sort of sentiment. "If you send me away, you'll never make love to another man. You'd never be sure. You'll be afraid of living."
