LONTAR issue #2 (6 page)

We were allowed to leave the Tower one afternoon every month, but my visits, I believe, became less frequent with the passing of time and with Father's death which, shamefully, I can no longer remember anything about. I infer these two facts from a particularly painful scene that has not yet disappeared from my memory. And as if to compensate for my inability to remember all the events surrounding it, its details have become as pointed and uncomfortable as fish bones. Mother must have been asking something about my brothers and me: why we didn't get along or something like that. I must have tried to explain to her something about how people grow apart when they're living in different worlds.

"What different worlds?" Mother had asked, puzzled. "Same world, what. Same island. Not so far lorh
.
"

We were sitting in the kitchen in Terrence's flat, where Mother was living. (In the scene, I do not remember any trace of Father's presence, and since Mother had apparently moved out of our old flat, I conclude that he must have passed away at some point prior.) My sister-in-law and the children had gone out for some reason or another, and Terrence was still at work, so we were left to ourselves. I remember looking out the window at the flats across the way, at the damp clothes hanging out to dry on long poles, absorbing the last of the setting sun's warmth.
 

"That's not what I mean, Ma," I explained. "My life is a Scholar's life: reading, writing, thinking. They do...other things. Practical things. We don't have anything to talk about."

She sighed. "They are still your brothers." Then more decisively: "You must come visit more. Family is family."

Then Terrence burst in. "Wah,
mei mei
, you're here! See? My
in-tu-i-tion
so good, I brought a fish home for dinner!" With a ceremonious heave, a blue plastic bag landed on the table between Ma and me. The ice inside made a crunching sound as it landed. I peered into the bag: an enormous orb—cloudy and stiff and blackish grey—returned my gaze. "You join us,
meh
?"

"Oh," I replied. "I don't want to impose. I wasn't planning on staying for dinner." I put on my blazer and began to gather up my things, hoping he'd take the hint.

"No, no, you must stay! We never see you, what! Clarence and Winton are coming for dinner too! And see?" He gestured at the corpse on the table. "It's fate! Must feed your brain!"

I was on the verge of saying that dinner with them would certainly
not
feed my brain, when he bounded over, gathered me up in a sweaty, smelly embrace (he must have done some sort of manual labour for a living) and ruffled my hair. I almost vomited into his armpit, though I knew he meant well. I really did.
 

 
There are no more visits. That much I know. What exactly put an end to them is more difficult to say. Perhaps a quarrel between me and my brothers. Perhaps my mother died and I didn't see the point of it anymore. In any case, the holes in my memory have become too gaping, too embarrassing. Calling on my brothers would be like calling on people I barely knew, whom I apparently grew to not like very much anyway. I don't think I even know where they live now.

It's impossible to tell when the gaps first started. When you really think about it, there are so many small things one forgets just as a matter of course. The name of your maths teacher in Primary Four. What your parents gave you for your fifteenth birthday. The exact name of the TV show that you and your brothers would watch every afternoon as children. What the weather was like the day you received the news of your grandmother's death. It would never occur to you to attribute these to the impartations. Impartation technology has a perfect safety record. There have been no mishaps. There are absolutely no side-effects. It is impossible for your entire memory to be accidentally erased. The only information extracted is the knowledge that will be transferred to the client, nothing more. In school, every child learns the facts and myths about knowledge impartation. It makes as much sense to be afraid of undergoing impartation as it would to be afraid of getting a haircut. On the contrary, you learn it is a privilege—a procedure that only the best and the brightest will ever be permitted to experience.
   

And yet, when the day finally comes for your first one, you are inevitably nervous. All young Scholars are. But you find out that impartation is a surprisingly pleasant experience—much more so than you would had anticipated. They ensure that you are as relaxed as possible. One hour beforehand, you have a light meal with the client to whom you'll be imparting knowledge: a cup of tea and perhaps a warm slice of toast spread with butter and jam, or a small slice of cake. A satisfied stomach, not too full, helps ensure optimal results. As our clients are always important—prominent politicians and intellectuals, talented figures in the arts—conversation is always interesting. You often ask why they want to learn about your particular subject area (in my case, nineteenth-century colonial British history), and they ask what about the subject drew you to make it your area of expertise. From there, your banter meanders in other directions: family, career, life aspirations, and sometimes, current events. Before you know it, the hour is up, and both of you are being invited into the next room.
 

The interior of the impartation chamber is a serene beige. You lie down on one cream-coloured divan and your dining companion lies on the other. The necessary apparatuses aren't brought out until after you've fallen asleep, and you appreciate the delay. For all you know, you could be sitting in any comfortable room anywhere having a nap with a newfound friend. The light meal had a sedative in it, and you remember the fact only now as your head slowly falls to one side and your eyelids gently lower themselves and you into emptiness.

When you wake up, a physician comes in to check your vital signs and ask how you are feeling. You feel perfectly normal, and you aren't conscious at having lost anything at all. More often than not, you feel very refreshed; after all, you have just woken up from a deep and pleasant sleep. They feed you another light meal: more toast or a biscuit with some juice. Then they recommend you go back to your rooms and take it easy for the remainder of the day.

You return to your rooms. You take off your shoes. Maybe you pour yourself a glass of water or make yourself a cup of tea, trying as long as you can not to succumb to what you will inevitably do. But the inevitable cannot be put off for long. You saunter to your study and survey the bookshelves. You sit at your desk and open the files and notebooks you've been keeping from the past few months. And you know that these are books you must have read at least a few dozen times over. And you know that these notes, in your handwriting, are your own thoughts and insights. Some of them are exquisite, even though you aren't familiar with the subject matter. You can't quite believe that you've researched, and pondered, and written on something in that much detail, and that now it's someone else who possesses that knowledge, leaving you with nothing. You feel, briefly, mournful. You mope for a while; you can't help yourself. If it's your first time, you're inconsolable for as long as a week. The grieving process goes more quickly as you gain more experience: a few hours at most. You never bypass the grieving stage entirely. It's a natural and healthy part of a Scholar's life. But whether it goes slowly or quickly, you move past it and are overtaken by a new realisation: that your world has been made new. You have the chance to start your work afresh, to read everything with new eyes, to ruminate on it all as if for the first time. You have been, in a sense, reborn.

Over the years, you become much better at being organised so that you can quickly find your way back into being in a condition to impart. You teach yourself to keep spreadsheets of all the knowledge you need in each area, along with lists of books and articles. You also keep a separate notebook for important intellectual insights that your future selves will find useful. And taking your cue from these practices, you, Grace, began keeping this book as well.

The events that prompted this decision occurred only last week, when, after several months of deliberation, you brought up your concerns about your increasing memory loss with the Tower Health Authority. She asked if you could be more specific about the memories that had gone "missing." You found it difficult to articulate your concerns. How do you tell someone what is missing when you can't even remember what it is? How do you recall what you have forgotten? All you could say was that your recollection of life before coming to the Tower was becoming increasingly worse. You searched for an appropriate metaphor: like an extraordinarily detailed painting partially rubbed out in places, marred here and there with patches of blankness.
 

She took her off her spectacles and smiled before gently reminding you of your age. Fifty this year. It was natural to forget events that happened so long ago. You protested. Fifty wasn't
that
old. And there were still some things you remembered so vividly, so clearly, and the things you didn't...they weren't simply blurry or vague, they were just gone. Or it seemed as if they were gone. You weren't sure what had ever been there in the first place.
 

You leaned closer and lowered your voice, knowing even as you did so, that these very actions, which you intended to indicate discretion and soundness of mind, would only confirm the madness of what you were about to utter: that after some serious thought, you were quite sure, almost positive, that these were related to the impartations. Her response was faultlessly sensible: there are no side effects to impartation. It's perfectly safe. You admitted it was silly, but you asked if she could look into it. Perhaps the person operating the machine had made an error in one of your past impartations. Perhaps there was something faulty with one of the machines. Perhaps you'd developed a medical condition that was reacting badly to the procedure.

Have any of the other Scholars had similar issues? she asked. You blushed, saying you'd been too embarrassed to bring it up with any of your colleagues. They'd think you were crazy. She patted you on the hand, reassured you that there was no need to discuss the matter with anyone else. She would see that the Authorities looked into it and she would contact you within the next week. You thanked her, but even as you did, the faintest of chills scurried up your spine and made you fearful.

Fear. You couldn't remember the last time you had felt it. At the very least, not since you moved into the Tower. You returned to your rooms and tried to settle your nerves. You felt restless. Disturbed. And as you entered the kitchen to prepare the rice for dinner, your eyes came to rest on a rectangular magnet on the fridge that you'd acquired at some point or another. You didn't remember where or why. Frivolous knick-knacks were never your style. In fact, it was the only magnet on the fridge at all. In powder-blue cursive script on a yellow background, it cheerily suggested, "How about a cup of chamomile tea?" Although you didn't usually take advice from refrigerator magnets, and you hardly ever drank chamomile, you thought it wasn't a bad idea.
 

You were about to put on your shoes and head down to the Tower store to buy some, when you thought you'd check if you had any already. Sure enough, there was a tin of it behind the Earl Grey and Oolong. And that was when you found it, sitting amidst the dried petals: the crumpled ball that would change your life, as it probably had countless times already.

You shook the petals off and smoothed it out. It was from Koh Meng and Ismail, informing you that they were doing well and hoped you were well too. Now that the children had grown up and they had some more spare time on their hands, they had decided to pick up their old hobby of gathering information and anecdotes about the Scholar programme in order to write a book. Some digging in the digital archives had unearthed an interesting report and they thought it intriguing enough to print out a short excerpt and send it to you.
 

You skimmed over the dense block of tiny text they had taped to middle of the page, scrapbook style. It spoke of unforeseen significant lapses in subjects' memories growing more pronounced over time. The study recommended that, as subjects' abilities to continue preparing for impartation remained unaffected, and as these symptoms took such a long time to manifest themselves at all, impartations should be allowed to continue pending further investigation.
 

"Peculiar, no?" they had written. "We thought so too, and hope to get more clarity on the matter at an interview we've arranged with the Tower Dean tomorrow morning. We'll keep you updated and we promise to write more. Affectionately yours, KM and Is."

You crumpled the letter up again and returned it to the tin. Your hands shook as they put the tin back in the cupboard, as you thought about how many times you had probably read it, how many meetings you'd had with the Health Authority, how many reassuring pats she had given you on the hand, how many understanding smiles. You wondered how many more times it would all happen again. Lifting your head and running your eyes over the ceiling corners and lights, you looked for hidden cameras. Were they watching you now? You opened the desk drawer, found a new notebook, and began to write.
 

 
Grace, if you are feeling as panicked as I am, please, for the sake of our future selves, remain calm. Anxiety addles the brain, and at this moment, you must be in a state to remember as much as you are possibly able, as much as they have left us. What you will find in the following pages is anything and everything I can remember at the present. More memories from the far and recent past, both trivial and important. Events, people, places, things. Images, sounds, smells. Song lyrics and snatches of poetry. Favourite foods. Least favourite books. The taste of hot broth on a rainy day. The colour of the sky just before the sun breaks over the horizon: peach-lilac.