The World Forgot

Amanda was printing the last of the cards that needed to be sent out tomorrow, when Ryan stopped by her desk on his way out. He smiled at her when she looked up, and Amanda couldn’t help but smile back.

“Heading home?” she asked, putting the cards into their corresponding envelopes.

“Yeah,” he said. “Are you ready for tonight?”

“I think so,” Amanda answered. “I just have to stop at the store to pick up my prescription before I go home.”

“Well, good luck,” he said. “See you on Monday?”

“Of course,” she said. “I look forward to meeting you, again. And you better ask me out on a date by the end of the day.”

Ryan just smiled before saying a hasty, “We’ll see.”

He left the building, wishing he could have talked to Amanda a bit longer. But instead, he headed straight home, hoping the weekend would go by quickly.

His relationship with Amanda was definitely strange. They weren’t supposed to have a relationship beyond friendship, to make things easier on each of them… but of course things could never just be that simple.

Amanda had been through a lot in her life, had lost family members and moved far away from anyone she used to know just to get this job in New York City as Lacuna’s secretary and guinea pig. And Ryan had been roped into the whole ordeal.

They wanted Amanda to interact with him as much as possible so that at the end of each month they could erase him from her memories. They were curious what prolonged exposure to the person who was being erased would do to Amanda’s memories. Would being around Ryan constantly trigger her to remember the memories that had been erased?

Most people who went through the procedure didn’t seem to be having any issues, though they didn’t tend to hang around with those who they had erased. Amanda was just a play thing for Lacuna. They just wanted to push the limits of their technology, and Amanda was there and willing. Ryan wished he could talk her out of it, but he knew that would be a fruitless effort.

So Ryan just dealt with it. Each month, he would meet Amanda again and they would start from the beginning. Sometimes things were different, sometimes things were eerily similar. Amanda was asked to keep a journal throughout the month, and each time she had her memories erased she received a new journal. Ryan had read a few of them, but didn’t usually get into it. It was weird to read so many things about him—some things he didn’t mind reading, but then there would be other things that were just too private.

A more recent addition to the experiment was that Amanda would either immediately find out that Ryan was being erased from her memories at the beginning of the month, or closer to the end of the month. It was usually more difficult when she found out towards the end of the month. But she knew it was coming eventually. She knew she was going to get her memory erased, just not always who it was going to be. But it was always Ryan; he, at least, always knew that it would be him.

Ryan had sometimes thought about going through the procedure himself. He had been married once, to what he considered to be the love of his life, but certain circumstances that he didn’t like to think about very often had taken her away from him.

He lived alone in a one-bedroom apartment now. He had thought about having his wife erased from his memories, but he didn’t think he could imagine himself without those memories. They were an important part of his life that he wanted to keep with him no matter how much they hurt.

And though he always had to start over again with her, Amanda was becoming an important part of his life too.