The Faculties (First Draft)

This is a draft of the story I'll be entering for this contest: http://www.sorinsuciu.com/

It's a contest to write a story on the theme of memory in order to raise money for Alzeimer's Research UK in memory of Terry Pratchett.

The Faculties

“Hello sir, would you like a bag?”

“For one packet of mints?” he asked incredulously.

She smiled her plastic customer-service smile.

“No – don’t be daft, girl.”

He handed over the correct change.

“It’s another five pence, sir.”

John stared blankly at ‘Happy to Help: Bethany.’ His brow furrowed – surely he’d worked the change right? He had always had a good head on him for numbers.

“Went up last week – we spoke about it then, sir.”

Another five pence was begrudgingly fumbled out of the leather wallet and handed over.

“S’funny ‘cause I read mints are really good for your brain – memory and that. S’why they suggest chewing gum before exams.”

Johnny shuffled out, releasing a mint from its paper straightjacket. They hadn’t had spearmint, which were his favourite, but these were soft and chewy so would do the trick of accompanying him home back through the park. He had only recently moved into sheltered housing nearby. John grinned – it was shepherd’s pie and bingo tonight. John buttoned up his cardigan against the breeze. It was still only late afternoon and he had time to walk the long way home via the wooded part of the park.

As John tugged his best corduroy trousers free from the bramble bush, he was beginning to regret the longer route which was turning out to be further than he remembered. Further along the path into the woods, John heard astonishing voices:

“No, no – if we’d have wanted to risk corruption like that we would still be backing up by elephant!”

“Sorry Mnemonix, they didn’t actually train us with real trees, let alone archaic tech like this anymore…”

“Archaic!? Tree knots are far more resilient than some of those new-fangled methods they’re teaching at The Faculties now. Besides, you gotta know the history – learn the old ways so as you can run before you can walk, Datum.”

Peering into the dappled light, John failed to spot the owners of the voices. He took his glasses off to clean them and then returned them again.

“Oh bugger – sir? I think a biggun has found us.”

An angry, apple-sized face appeared from behind a holly bush.

“Ah, it’s an oldie – their senses aren’t that great; I bet the poor ol’ sod can’t even hear us let alone see us”.

“Excuse me!” John had blurted before he had realised what he was doing.

“Bugger – Datum, give me a hand would you?” the one called Mnemonix called to his unseen assistant. He was wearing a faded green pair of overalls and a dark cap on his head.

John goggled and gasped and performed various other verbs beginning with g suited to an elderly gent upon discovering insulting gnomes.

“We will have to use that flashy neural-thingy stick?” Datum asked hopefully, packing away a tangled spaghetti of wires into a backpack.

“Goodness no lad; they’ve decided they are far too dangerous for us field workers to use and for once I think the bureaucrats have made a good move there.”

“Hey, I don’t like the sound of…” John started but the gnomes carried on their discussion as if he weren’t there – which was odd given that he was the chief topic of their discussion.

“So what do we do, hit him over the head or summin?”

“I should think not,” John blustered.

“No no lad, they’ve still got the sticks but back at head office. There’s nothing for it – we’ll ‘ave to take the ol’ codger in.”

“Less of that, thank you!” As John spoke, the arguing pair seemed to remember his existence.

“Sorry sir,” Mnemonix bowed, “please excuse our humble ways – we are not used to bigguns stumbling in on our work.”

“And I’m not used to rude little gnomes!” came the indignant reply.

“Common misconception, that – we’re pixies not gnomes,” retorted young Datum. “From the same root as pixels.”

“Right,” John said, crossing his arms, clearly unimpressed by the explanation.

Taking his cap off and running a hand through his sparse greying hair, Mnemonix looked up at John with sympathy.

“Look – you’re going to have to come with us, sir, but I promise there’ll be no flashy-memory-wiping from us.”

John raised an eyebrow, “From you?”

“Well, hopefully not from the bigguns back at base either but I can’t promise.”

“Wait, there’s normal – big – people like me back at your base?” John corrected himself seeing Datum’s face fall.

“Yup – they’ll need you to do some paperwork obviously but then you can go of course.”

John sighed. He didn’t trust these two at all – Mnemonix had been using his plastic customer-service voice and Datum had been busy picking a large dollop of wax from ear – but he was curious and this sounded much better than bingo and shepherd’s pie.

“This way, sir,” Datum pipped, gesturing towards a barely perceivable track that headed into ivy territory.

“John will do fine.”

They trundled through the undergrowth, John having to stop and untangle his beige cardigan from the plants on several occasions.

Mnemonix glanced back over his shoulder, “You bigguns aren’t so good with the forests any more, are you?”

John didn’t know what to say to this.

Trying to make conversation, Datum asked, “Did ya climb trees a lot as a young’un, sir?”

“Well, I…,”John started but trailed off.

Mnemonix set down his tool box. “You okay, John?”

John’s lip quivered.

“Does he need a difib-thingy? That’s what them ol’ bigguns need when they stop working, innit? It’s just about the only thing I don’t have in this pack.”

“No, I’m fine.” John’s voice was faint and far away. “It’s just that when you asked about my boyhood – I went blank. I can’t remember!” He was becoming agitated.

“Is he alright?” Datum twisted the strap on his backpack.

“You know they have fairly low res memories on these ol’ bigguns…,” Mnmonix reassured quietly.

John knew he had a good memory

He was good at numbers.

He had been born in…no, nothing. Start with something easier.

He had bought his mints and come through the park.

He had met the pixies.

“Oh crap – I’m delusional, aren’t I? Having some sort of mental break down,” John grumpily announced. “Which pills did I forget this morning? I know those girls try to remind me but I never pay attention”

Mnemonix gave John a friendly pat on the calf. “No, just fairly normal brain function for your age, sir. Trust us, we should know – we’re memory specialists after all!”

There was quite a large amount of annoyed bemusement in John’s face.

He sighed, “You’re what?”

“Memory specialists! Specialising in memory transference and reversing corruption, particularly in deciduous memory stores,” Datum chirped, his eyes glittering.

“Excuse, his enthusiasm – he’s still an apprentice, newly appointed by The Faculty,” apologised Mnemonix.

“Slow down a bit there,” John pleaded, “I’m having an odd day but if I’m going to be hanging around with pixies I would at least like to know what you’re on about.”

“Well, The Faculties appoint…”

Shoving Datum. Mnemonix warned, “I’m not sure we’re meant to tell bigguns.”

“They’re going to wipe his memory anyway though aren’t they? And it’ll be a good chance for me to do a bit of revision,” Datum said, hands clasped pleadingly at his mentor.

Mnemonix rolled his eyes. “Fine but you’re doing the yellow forms if this backfires.”

John tried to hide his alarm at the mention of the brain-wiping again. He didn’t do a very good job because Datum commented upon it.

“Don’t worry – they’ll only wipe meeting us – I’m sure we can put in a good word and get ‘em to do some sort of restore so your childhood’ll come back,” Datum chirruped.

John nodded his thanks thoughtfully.

While they had been talking, Mnemonic had been prodding at a mouldering log with his toe.

“We’re up, lad!” he called to datum.

“Watch us at work!” the youngster cheeped, waving at John as he bounded over to the woodlouse infested hulk of tree trunk.

Mechanically, the pixies began to unpack their equipment – Mnemonix from his battered tool box and Datum from his new academy backpack. John watched curiously, half tempted to crouch down to their level to watch but fearing that he’d be unable to get back up easily – he wanted to keep some sort of dignity in front of these strange folk. Various lengths of wire and boxes with illuminated LEDs emerged from the kits.

“This is your basic tree-knot we’re backing up,” Mnemonix explained under his breath, more for Datum’s benefit than John’s. There were various bits of kit purring and flashing under the pixies’ fingertips. “Tree knots, like all knots as you know, are a way of storing reminders and links to memories. If we don’t back them up, the tree’s memories will be lost to these little blighters,” Mnemonix said, gesturing at the centipedes and wood lice that were eagerly trying to get back to their lunch. “Most of this has been chewed to bits but we may be able to gain some valuable bytes of historical weather data.”

John didn’t ask for any further explanation – it all seemed perfectly plausible – why hadn’t it occurred to him before that trees had a memory too? And now he did know he wasn’t shocked or confused: the pieces of the mystery settled comfortably back into place. It was almost as if he had seen this process before.

“Getting a bit of déjà vu watching you fellas working,” John said dreamily.

Mnemonix’s eyes darted up to scrutinize John’s face. “Déjà vu? How so – a familiar feeling or seeing this exact scene before?” All the humour had been stripped from his voice.

“Er, both I guess,” John bumbled, startled by Mneonix’s sudden seriousness.

The elder pixie eyed his junior then glared at John’s perplexed face again. “It’s a good thing we found ya – The Faculties will be very interested in meeting you.”

John could feel another mention of brain-wiping coming on again.

“Don’t look like that – they have uses for bigguns with second sight up at Memory Lane.”

John shook his head and guffawed, “Memory Lane!? This is getting ridiculous.”

“It’s jus’ the nickname for The Faculties’ headquarters,” chimed Datum defensively.

“Fine – sorry I laughed. Tell me more about helping the people at Memory Lane?” John felt guilty for hurting the youngster’s feelings. Why, when he himself had been learning to….no, it was gone again – the memory had squirmed out of his grasp and swam off again.

“Second-sighters basically run the joint – all ol’ bigguns, look jus’ like you, but in robes,” said Mnemonix dismissively while twisting two wires together. “They oversee history, the collective racial memory and innovate new memory storage systems. They don’t get about much but get the occasional holiday but I don’t see what fun’s in it as they must remember everything before it happens.”

“Sounds awful,” said John. “What a boring existence.”

“Oh no! That memory storage department is fantastic! I want to help converting all the old file from the archives like my uncle,” twittered Datum taking a piece of electrical tape out of his mouth. “We should have known the pachyderm system would have needed upgrading and started sooner. We’ve already lost too much.” He was crestfallen.

“Pachyderm – wait, doesn’t that mean something to do with elephants!?”

“Well done, John! Not so slow after all!” Mnemonix clapped before returning to inspect Datum’s handiwork with the rotting log.

“Because an elephant never forgets?” John found himself asking sceptically.

“Exactly – but damn do they eat a lot!” Mnemonix replied.

“And poo a lot!” Added Datum, instantly regretting bringing up what had literally been the elephant in the room.

Bleep.

Mnemonix checked his handheld monitor and gave Datum the thumb’s up. “Job done, young’un.”

The pixies packed their equipment carefully away. Then Mnemonix addressed John again as they picked back up the trail through the dense undergrowth.

“So The Faculties have been trying to move us over to a new mixture of long term storage – back to trees but experimenting with salmon schema, cloud storage and computer hard drives since they’ve been premembered too,” Mnemonix droned on – he had cleared had to explain this all to Datum fairly recently but the student was diligently adding to his own notes with a chewed pencil.

“Premembered being like remembering the future?” asked John, already feeling like he’d know the answer.

Mnemonix nodded, scratching his stubble. “Look John, I’ve gotta say you seem very nice for a biggun but we’ll have to leave you with the officials soon as we get into Memory Lane so we can get on.”

“No need – I’ll take him from here.”

The man had only a silver horseshoe of hair and wore a dark habit and laughter lines abundant about his face. He must have been a similar age to John himself.

“Be seeing ya,” yapped Datum, quickening his pace.

Mnemonix nodded respectfully to John then turned to catch up with his charge.

“Are you from Memory Lane?” John apprehensively asked, memory-wiping still very much at the forefront of his mind.

“Yes,” chuckled the monk. “We prefer The Faculties but the pixies do like to joke, the little fellows.”

John tried to cough nonchalantly, “They mentioned brain-erasing?”

The monk laughed.

“Yes, we do sometimes have to resort to that at The Faculties.”

This ominous answer did not reassure John in the slightest. He forlornly looked around but there was not much refuge for a man of his age (with a bit of hip gyp) in the woods – he was nostalgic for the mild inconvenience of the brambles catching his trousers before the day had gotten really strange.

“Oh, I’m sorry – that came out wrong. No, we won’t be erasing your memory as such.”

“Don’t be cruel, Mimir,” came another voice – a second dark robed man with pale skin and what could have been freckles or liver spots.

“Let’s get him back so we can get this all sorted out,” said a third. This one had bushy eyebrows.

“Mnemosyne won’t make me fill out yellow forms, will she?” asked the freckled one anxiously.

John should have been shocked by the crowd of hooded strangers which had emerged out of the woods but didn’t find them threatening. It was uncannily like being among old friends with their jovial bickering.

“This one never could handle his nosnesia, hey?” said Bushy-Brow placing an arm around John.

“I thought we’d agreed ‘amstalgia’ was a more pleasant term for the break from our responsibilities?” Pale-Face retorted.

Mimir sighed. “Just be glad he didn’t ask for that martian holiday again – and at least the pixies found him.”

The four joined arms and led John back to his Faculties.