Find Me a Cure

Chapter 37: A Wardrobe of Memories

When I went to sleep that night, I dreamt that same dream I dreamt the night of the launch evening and in the plane. The hallways Everest and I ran down, my mother's appearance at the end of it, the flowers of Amsterdam.

My mother was one of the senior biochemists at the cancer department of the Front. The Front had a wide variety of senior chemists. Anyway my mother occupied the prestigious position. It may have had a lot to do with the fact that her best mates, Chadwick and Holland, owned the company. Or not. Director always banged on about smart she was. My father was a bioinformatician. He analysed mutated DNA in tumours.

They fit perfectly together like complimentary bases, my parents. He analysed mutations in DNA of cancer cells, and she researched chemical drugs to prevent this mutation. But, of course, it wasn't just the two of them. That's not how cancer research worked. About a hundred other people worked alongside them, all these people with all these degrees, ranging from mathematics to chemical engineering. Among these was Director. All of them working towards the same goal. My parents' other two friends, Chadwick and Holland Front also worked in the cancer department, although they had to balance it with their CEO positions. However, I heard Holland Front also specialised in cardiology. The woman lived seven lifetimes, I swear.

In the end, it didn't matter whether two people were working in the cancer department or two thousand, because, ultimately, all boasting aside, it was Marshall and Elizabeth Reese who discovered the Original Cure.

But to the world, they, along with Chadwick, Holland and Director discovered 202. A failed drug. That's why I didn't want to say the testimony so much. I'd be lying. I'd be betraying the people who actually gave a damn about curing the disease, and did it. The people were my parents.

The following day after my first hypnosis session, I connected the 202 hard drive to the TV in Amanda's living room. Amanda was away dealing with Director's trial. She asked me if I wanted to come along but I refused in case it meant meeting the deceitful bastard. I didn't want to mention this to her so I fabricated some story about a headache.

Amanda offered Everest, too. He declined without even bothering with an explanation. I was supposed to have gone for today's hypnosis session, but I skipped it because frankly I felt embarrassed around him after what happened the last I was with him.

Whilst my eyes were skimming the contents of the hard drive, Everest was taking a shower upstairs in his ensuite. I noticed, he took lots of showers, as if it was a hobby or something. You'd probably guess what Arya was doing without too much trouble.

The 202 hard drive seemed to be sectioned into two parts. One half consisted of information solely on the 202 drug. The formulation of it, the science behind it, and all of that jazz.

The other half – the interesting half – was on me. It was as though my memories were a wardrobe and I'd just opened the doors of that wardrobe. All of my clothes in there, my favourite ones, my not so favourite ones, the ones I'd been given as a gift or as a curse, all carefully folded up in there. The ones right at the back, the ones I'd forgotten about, or been made to forget, they were there too. They were all there. Whether in tapes, pictures, videos, writing, they were there. Of course, not every single shred of my memories habituated the hard drive, but I got something better. I'd just gained access into the memories which Director made me forget after discovering the failure of 202.

Like a well organised wardrobe, each aspect of my life was sectioned into different compartments, different files on the hard drive. I was looking through one stupidly titled 'Parental kinship'. It was juice on my parents.