Rememberance

Marlo’s arms and legs thrashed about madly, as all around him the world span. He didn’t want to die, not again!

“Oh God please no!” he yelled. He may have escaped whatever plans Hermes had for him, but this was no better. The absolute certainty of falling to his second death was just as bad, or worse than the uncertainty of his fate had he handed himself over to them.

“Not much use praying to God.” Nessa said, somewhere to his left. “As far as I can tell, He is not real, or at least not interested in us.” Marlo managed to force his eyes open against the mighty winds which were currently trying to pluck them out and stared. Nessa was reclined on nothing and looked deep in thought.

“What?” He spluttered, his incredulity briefly overcoming his mortal, biting terror.

“Yeah, imagine how I felt. From what I’ve heard, religion is a lot less of a thing in your modern world, but for me? That was a real shock. Raised my whole life to believe in Him, and then… nope!” She waved her hands “No heaven, no Hell. Just this. Hardly the afterlife I expected. I had never even imagined all the things I would see here. I would never even think to. That is how far they were removed. But no God. Still, maybe I just have not found Him yet. So I am not ruling it out as a possibility, especially since the boss has so much faith in that kind of thing. Though, if he is in hiding, he probably would not show himself to help us. So nonetheless-”

“Do something!” Marlo yelled, looking at the ground get wider and wider, closer and closer.

“I am trying.” Nessa said. “But I fell too far from the swords, and now they will not listen to me.” She reached her hands up, and clicked, the sound inaudible over the rushing air. Marlo looked up, and saw, above them, falling towards them, were hundreds of separated swords, all spinning as they fell towards them. “My magnetism only works to about twenty metres. Maybe I should have done that training exercise yesterday to try and increase it, rather than skipping to sketch my Armpak project. Oh well. It was more fun to do that.”

Marlo felt his face go slack and wondered if his body was resigning itself to dying because this woman had wanted to doodle rather than learn how to save them both. His mind, however, refused to give in so easily. It, however, couldn’t come up with much.

“Can’t you just…” He made swimming motions with his arms “Get back up there?”

Nessa tried. It had about as much effect as Marlo should have expected, which was a lot less than what he wanted. Similar results were yielded when he did the same.

“Throw me your jacket!” He yelled. Nessa blushed.

“Best friend, I am flattered, but I think we are moving a bit too quickly. We hardly-”

“I’m going to try using it as a parachute!” Marlo cut her off. Her confusion cleared and her purity protected, Nessa took it off and threw it. Marlo reached out, and his finger managed to just brush the fabric before it started to float up. His eyes widened, and he snatched at it, but in his panic, it slipped through his sweaty fingers and drifted up. Of course, it wasn’t really going up. It was just the fact that, spread out as it was, it was falling slower than them, and thus created the illusion of going up. It was also going slower than the swords. Swords which Benkei had put a lot of care into and were more than sharp enough to cut through a flimsy jacket. Marlo watched in dull horror as the shreds of jacket swirled in the wake of the thousand blades.

“Aw…” Nessa pouted. Marlo rubbed his eyes. Surely the effects of having untold amounts of air gush past his eyes was affecting his vision. But no. When he looked again, she was still pouting and had – yes, she really had crossed her arms. “Best friend, why did you not catch it? It was really hard to steal a jacket that fit me. I trusted that you would do as you said, and now it is gone…”

“It was because,” Marlo said through grit teeth. “You threw it open. So it went up. Do you know why parachutes aren’t open all the time?”

“No. Nor do I know what one is. But I trusted my friend. Clearly,” Nessa threw him a sulky look. “That was a mistake.”

“You’re right. You did make a mistake. And now we’re going to be obliterated.”

“You do not know that.” Nessa said. Marlo stared at her and weighed up his chances. She could break him in half with one arm, but God it was tempting.

“From this height? You’re joking.”

“Well yes, we will die. But you can’t be so negative to believe we will be destroyed.”

“What?” Marlo’s heart soared, so suddenly that he almost went back up. “Hermes told me that a second death meant being reduced to nothing. Was he lying? Please tell me he was lying.”

“Well… maybe.”

“Maybe.” Marlo’s heart returned to its plummeting path.

“Possibly.”

“Possibly.” Marlo repeated glumly.

“We know they don’t come back here, and the official statement is that they are all destroyed, and that is from DVIN, the organisation that knows most about this but…” Nessa shrugged “We never know.”

Marlo’s eye twitched. “Yes. We don’t.”

“I mean… did you expect your first death to be like this?”

Marlo took a deep breath, made all the deeper by the wind pushing the air into his lungs. “No. When I chose to help that woman, I never thought I would actually be hit by a train. I really thought I’d get out of the way in time. Not really sure why, I never thought of myself as a particularly athletic guy, let alone a heroic one, but I guess that’s just human nature. I also didn’t expect the greeting to be a sociopathic man who looked like a vampire’s lampshade and ran so fast he was talking to a dozen people at once. I didn’t expect him to stick a needle in my eye, and then creepily hang onto me. I never expected him to call in a literal goliath to trap me. I never expected terrorists in the afterlife, fucking ghost terrorists, to attack as I was going through, and almost kill me in an explosion. I never expected to be caught in a box of swords, and have to lie my way out to get a person who very clearly could free me, but just… didn’t want to unless I lied to her-”

“-You lied to me? -”

“-Don’t interrupt me!” Marlo screamed. He panted for a beat, then continued. “And I certainly didn’t expect this same person, the same lovely lady who’s company, let me assure you, I’m finding positively intoxicating at this point in time, to doom us both to fall to our deaths in the middle of our escape because she wasn’t paying attention!”

Nessa’s face was stony. “Alright. Well. If that is how you feel, then I will not invite you to join me on Monticello’s flying support when it shows up to catch us in a few seconds.”

Marlo grinned weakly “Got you! Just kidding, best friend!”

Something flitted below them, and the pair landed, hard, on a long, pure black shape. The same long, thin, wingless dragon that Marlo had seen early now stretched out below them, snaking its way through the sky. The two escapees landed on either side of a man who must have been piloting it.

He was tall, in the human sense rather than the ludicrous way that Nessa and Benkei were, giving him a few inches over Marlo. His skin was a deep black, and his eyes a mellow green. He wore a leather jacket, ripped jeans, and a fishnet shirt, over a chest threaded with hair and veins of metal. He wasn’t particularly muscular, especially in comparison to the behemoth that was Nessa, but his body was lean and looked plenty strong. From the elbows down, his arms were wholly metallic, light grey and segmented like a centipede. Bulbs were set in the centre of the palms, and the fingers flowed strangely, far from how a human’s should as if they lacked rigidity.

“Monticello?” Marlo asked, weakly.

“How’d you know my name kid?” His voice was deep, and each word was ejected forcefully, like he found talking an unpleasant occurrence, and was trying to push his surroundings away with his words. He turned to Nessa. “Who the hell is this?”

“Someone I thought was my friend. Clearly, I am too much of a stupid, selfish person to know the truth.” She raised her nose at Marlo’s weak gesticulation and snapped her fingers. The blades stopped, just a metre or so above them. She swirled her hands around until the swords remade the disc. She stood up, stepped onto it, sat down cross-legged, met eyes with Marlo, and turned her back to the pair. Marlo sighed, then looked at Monticello.

“I know that sounds bad. But just give me a second to explain.”

“I see.” Monticello sighed “That sounds like something Nessa would do.”

“I just wanted the swords.” Nessa moped “If I had known they were not his, I would not have brought him with me.”

“So you lied to her to escape. Seems like the logical thing to do. I’d likely have done the same.”

“Yeah, I’m really sorry to have caused you trouble. If you could just drop me off… anywhere I’ll…” Marlo trailed off, realising he had no idea what he was going to do now. Dying had thrown his plans off quite badly. He realised quite sadly that these were the two people he knew most in the world. At least, the two that he knew best that didn’t want him dead, or worse.

Monticello sighed. “Listen, kid. What did a big shot like Benkei want with you?”

“I have no clue. Hermes was after me too.”

“Hermes?” Monticello perked up “They both wanted you? Wait… What was your Remembrance?”

“My what?”

“The needle that he stuck in your eye. Did you see the number?”

“Oh. It was…” Marlo thought for a second. “A hundred? I think?”

A sudden gale shook him, and he clung to the dragon’s back. He supposed should have been shocked to see a dragon, especially one which was pure black all over, but after the day he’d had this was the least surprising thing. Its face was so dark no features could be seen, and it had no scales, feeling like warm velvet under his hands. It was cold up here, and while they were descending, the heights were still enough to make his head spin when he looked at the ground. He had never thought he had a problem with heights, but then again he’d never ridden a dragon down out of the sky.

He noticed that the others had gone silent. He turned and recoiled when he realised both of them were staring at him.

“What?” He asked, a little shocked and defensive.

“A hundred percent?” Monticello repeated. “You got a hundred percent remembrance?”

“I… yeah, I guess I did. Is that not normal?”

“Kid… I’ve never met anyone who got that. That explains why they want you then. The odds of that are millions to one.”

Marlo’s eyes were wide. “What? I don’t… what even is that?”

“Hold on. What year did you die?”

“Uh, 2019.”

“Chineke, they’ve gotten that far?” Monticello shook his head “Whatever. You look, what, seventeen? Tell me… tell me what happened on October second, 2003. At 11:23 AM”

“What? I can’t-”

“Try.” Nessa leant in and watched him intently. Marlo looked between them, sighed, and closed his eyes. Instantly, images flashed in front of his eyes. He could feel himself, or more accurately himself as a baby, lying in a crib. He could see sunlight filtering through a curtain, the ratty, threadbare curtains not holding it back even remotely. He could see every hole the light was sneaking through; he could count them if he wanted. The room was light blue in colour, with a few chairs, a table in the far corner, a box of toys, a playmat made to look like a city, with roads and cartoon houses seen from a top-down angle, and a door opposite the crib. There were toys splayed across the mat from where they’d been left. Marlo could remember the baby-babble name he gave each one, and everyone he saw opened up new memories.

This felt different from normal memory, memory he’d had when he was alive. That had been all disorganised, trains of thought rushing past each other on tracks, constantly vying for attention. But now, everything felt clean, concise, organised. Everything he saw he could view from any angle he had ever seen it from, and with the slightest mental push, could open a folder of memories associated with that object. He saw dozens of times he’d played with his teddies, his cars, his blocks, everything. It was more than just sights as well. He could pick out scents, sounds tastes, textures anything. It would be overwhelming, but it was presented so cleanly, that it felt right, it felt natural. It felt like something he should have always been able to do. Then, he remembered he had already done this, back with Hermes. He had checked… some day in 2005. He couldn’t remember which day. A memory like this, and he couldn’t remember. Okay, so it only worked for his past life, not his present. Shame, that would have been more useful. Still he should make the most of it.

Marlo spent what felt like hours there, observing things in his room, and beyond. After a lot of work, he managed to get to his parents and stared at them. He had millions, billions of memories with them. He felt a deep urge to go through them all. But no. He had to pace that. It would be a long time before he made any new ones. He surfaced, opened his eyes, and reality hit him again all at once. The fierce cold of the winds, the sudden pressing of the dragon below him, and the two very abnormal people staring at him.

“I remember everything.” He said. Monticello groaned.

“That’s just our luck. The day we go for the checkpoint, a Hyakku shows up. Well, that explains why they want you.”

“What? Why?”

“If we knew kid, we’d be a much better cell than we are. All we know is it can’t be for a good reason, for us or you. Looks like we can’t just drop you off on your own. You’ll be a wanted man, and I’m sure our bounties will have gone up after today. I’ve also got to explain to the boss why Giuseppe, Harlo and Yoki aren’t here with us now, poor bastards.”

“Sorry…” Marlo was struggling to keep up, having just spent so long submerged. Returning from that clean, crisp mindscape back into this conflicted mess, where his memories were such tumbling gibberish, and nothing made sense was a dire shock. “I still don’t understand. Why is my memory like this? Was it something I did in life? But I lived… pretty ordinarily… I thought…” He trailed off. Monticello, who up until this point, had shown a lot of sympathy, was glaring at him.

“Don’t worry kid.” He practically snarled. “You didn’t do anything to earn it. Remembrances are completely randomly allocated upon rebirth. That’s why you’re so rare. Ninety percent of people can barely remember their own names. They wake up scared, and confused, and are filtered out of that checkpoint by that bastard Hermes, and left to fend for themselves. That means people like you, who do remember how cruel they were in life, can prey on them, roping them in with false promises, and making them work for them. Hundreds of thousands of people who simply had bad luck forced to work jobs you can’t imagine. They die awful deaths and live even worse afterlives. They get beaten by flashes of their past lives, screams of the consciousness that they left behind. Most kill themselves, or go mad, after just a few years.”

“Oh.” Marlo hadn’t considered that people wouldn’t have memories like his. “I didn’t…”

“But, hey at least you get to escape that. You’ll fit right in here. Especially since you’re from the present day. You’ll be able to fool all kinds of poor saps, tell them you have some futuristic invention that can make their afterlives better. You’ve ran into a golden opportunity kid. Some people die lucky, like you, and some are just lucky to die.” He shook his head. “Of course, we’ve got to look after you first. Can’t let DVIN have their way, right?” He turned around. “I’ll get us down to Asgard, then you’re the boss’ problem.”

“No, that’s where Hermes wanted to-” Another glare silenced Marlo.

“Don’t worry.” He growled “People like me are forced to relearn everything when we get here, so I’ve become very good at sneaking in. Give it time, you’ll learn too.”

He turned to Nessa. “Nessa, how much did you tell him?”

“Nothing.” Nessa said. She was looking at Marlo again and looked curious, but still had a degree of anger to her gaze. Perhaps Marlo shouldn’t have been so rude to her, at least not while she could still very easily push him to his death.

“Nothing?” Monticello slapped his forehead “Why did you not-”

“We were running away from Benkei.” Marlo chimed in, trying to rebuild bridges. “She didn’t have-”

“Not a word from you Hyakku.” Monticello jabbed a metal hand back, almost directly into Marlo’s face. “Nessa, tell him now. Just the basics.”

“Why should I?” Nessa crossed her arms. “He is not my friend anymore.”

“I don’t have time for this.” Monticello reached into the disc of blades flying next to him, and took one out, straining for a second to overcome the magazine. It came out with a noise like a fuse shorting.

“Hey!” Nessa yelled and leaned forwards to snatch it. Monticello simply passed it back over his shoulder to Marlo, who just took it in time to see Nessa stare at him. He gingerly offered it and said

“Sorry for what I said. I shouldn’t have blown up at you like that. Could you help me understand… friend?”

Nessa’s face froze, locked solid like stone.

“Give her a second.” Monticello grunted, not looking back. Marlo blinked, and when his eyes opened, Nessa’s face was creased, split with the largest, most earnest smile he’d ever seen. Marlo’s eyes widened, and then he was engulfed in a hug. He gasped for air, being surrounded on all sides by thick squeezing muscle that completely obliterated any chance of resistance. He was shaken back and forth mercilessly. Eventually, his weak taps on her back yielded results and he was allowed air.

“You are forgiven!” Nessa yelled, joyously. Marlo hung limply in her arms, sure every one of his bones had been broken and mustered a faint

“Yay.”