Memory Part 3
12/20/2012, 7:45am CST
By Michael Jacqmein
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A Short Story
Everyone in the room sat at desks that were now arranged in a circle. The memory of
speech had shot from person to person as soon as it was discovered, and the newly-enlightened
children sat in frightful curiosity. The one stand-out in the room was the man in the group; the
rest appeared to be around the same, teenage age. No one remembered their actual age, all except
for the girl who learned to speak first. Emily, she told the group, that was her name.
They had gone around the group, each person telling anything they remembered or
theorized about their current situation. Lett sat next to Emily, and now he aimlessly twirled the
strings of his sweatshirt, lost in thought. ‘How did we get here?’ he thought, ‘Why has Emily
remembered so much?’ Finally, he couldn’t take the silence and spoke up again.
“What if we are being judged?” he said. The room looked at him with frozen silence. The
room had been buzzing with possible theories for the predicament; a boy five seats to Lett’s right
had suggested they were all dead, the man had told them he thought they were prisoners of war.
None had mentioned this idea, but nobody questioned it now. The silence once again provoked
Lett to speak further.
“I mean it, regardless of how we got here, or even where we are, what if this is a test; a
trial?” A small pause, and then,
“Do you mean, like, by the government?” a small voice asked.
“No, not like that. I mean to say, even if this is some experiment, I think this whole thing
could be a judge of character; a furnace to refine us like a bar of silver.”
“What?” asked the man, “What are you talking about? Who would be ‘testing’ us if not
the government?” The others in the room all turned and looked at him. He looked around at them
like a traitor being turned on, and he frantically replied, “You people do not really mean to say
some ‘god’ is using this to test us, to grow us, do you?”
Emily lightly cleared her throat of the fog that hung around them, “Sir, we are sitting in a
small room, in the dark, not remembering anything about who we are or where we are, and you
still think everything is rational?”
The man sat in bitter silence, and Emily relaxed back in her seat. The kids sat in their
desks, still as they had before, but now deep in thought. Lett sat and observed all this, thinking
about the consequences of his actions in this room where no one seemed accountable. Just as his
mind wandered to the possibility of escape, the man spoke his mind again.
“Well, if you children have forgotten, we still want to escape, don’t we? I will not sit here
and discuss fairytales while we could be minutes away from Chinese execution, or the like!”
“Well what do you propose, sir?” asked Lett; now the undeclared voice of the others.
“What do you expect me to say?” he spat condescendingly, “We have already tried the
door; the thing is solid metal. There are no windows. I propose we try the walls, maybe dig a
tunnel if we must.”
Everyone sat for a moment, and one of the girls opposite from Lett spoke up.
“What would we use to dig a tunnel?” she asked in a small voice. The man sat straighter in
his chair, thinking, and soon blushed with slight embarrassment at all the eyes on him (although
no one could really see in the dim twilight that was the room).
“Wait, is it really not obvious?” cried the boy to Lett’s right, “The escape plan is clear!”
They all stared at him in their now familiar silent gaze. Lett still was not comfortable with this
quiet, and quickly replied,
“Please, enlighten us.”
The boy looked around at the others with his mouth half open, examining them all as if to
see if it was really only him who knew. “The vents, you guys; the vents!” A slight commotion as
Lett and others turned to look at the metal air vents that stood along the top corner of the wall.
The space they made was narrow, maybe a foot in height at most, but to the eye it looked like a
body could just barely squeeze through.
The boy continued to talk over the sound of turning heads and the murmur of thought.
“That metal can’t be that strong on the grill, we could smash it in with one of the chairs or
desks, and we could lift people up to try to fit through. “
“This is silly,” responded the man in his condescended tone of voice, “why can we not just
go through the walls? If you have not observed, I am larger than the average one in this room,
and the vents would be quite unpleasant.”
Emily chimed in now, “You said yourself that we could be prisoners of war. Do you really
think breaking through the walls will not draw the attention of our possible captors?”
The man sat silent once again, he face somewhere between absolute anger and tears. Lett
took this small window of silence to focus the room back on task.
“I think you; uh,” Lett struggled for the name of the boy to his right, immediately realizing
he had no name, “you, Blue Shirt, you have a point.” A little thrown by his verbal blunder, Lett
had named the boy after his lack-luster navy blue shirt. “We have to work, guys. Regardless of
why or how we got here, we should try this vent idea. We can’t stay here forever; remember
food?”
This thought ricocheted around the circle, and kid’s faces contorted at newly-remembered
hunger. Even Lett felt his stomach suddenly throb with the memory of food. The room still sat
silent, as they commonly were, but Lett feared to speak again; did anyone even trust him? After
a moment of passive tension, Emily put her hand on his shoulder, making him jump slightly.
“Let’s get to it!” she said, smiling at Lett and then to the group. Everyone but the man,
Blue Shirt, Lett and Emily burst into excited chatter and stood up. Lett looked at Emily, giving
her a look of quiet thanks. They both stood and started trying to direct the unorganized clutter of
kids awkwardly picking up desks. Soon after, Blue Shirt got up too, adopting his name as people
called him by it around the room.
Still seated against the wall of the old circle of seats, the man watched them as they
organized their escape. A bead of sweat ran down his face and made him blink. Why me? he
whined inside his head.