Pixelated Kisses

PART 1: SUNSETS

The orange hue of the setting Sun cascaded through the slits of thin, wispy clouds and drooped onto the verdant hills behind them, glimmering on the red-clad, rusty bridge. June sees the woman first in this Memory. Her hair was a series of gold deadlocks tied neatly into a bun, poised like a ball of yarn on top of her head, with two free strands gently swaying down her face. Her hands covered her wide smile; the blue on her nails complemented the green in her eyes. 

Then, June sees him, and she runs her fingers past his name in the file. She adjusts her glasses and squints to read the small print in the dimly lit room. His name is Orion P. She looks back at Orion inside the chamber, a glass pane separating them. Orion’s hands are strapped to a rickety chair that he rests on with his eyes closed. A bowl-shaped helmet bubbling with blue vials is affixed on top of his head, and a gamut of wires writhe out of it, scrawl into the ground beneath him, and seethe directly into June’s whirring machine on the other side of the pane. The Erasure Room feels like it was built to be forgotten, as if the very memories it erases sprawl like stained cobwebs on the damp walls and the grouted floors. Behind Orion is a giant screen tuned to the frequency of his brain. It flickers with his Memory, riveting June’s attention back to it. In the Memory, Orion’s hair is dark, dry, and messy. He wears a loose black T-shirt with a brown undershirt beneath so that it blends with his complexion and adds bulk to his otherwise scrawny figure. She notices his smile. It feels wrinkly. It seems genuine, but June knows that it is not. None of them ever are. Why else would the Department warrant erasing Orion’s memories?

“It is a poetic memory to end on,” June admits, though her voice is too quiet for anyone to hear. Poetic memories were precisely the kind of things that led to the creation of the Department. She turns back to her console, watching the Department’s motto flash brightly at her: ‘We Remember So You Forget.’ A reassurance, June reminds herself. 

The Department of Memories was the most successful peacekeeping initiative in human history, established in 2085 after the world almost went to a nuclear war over two heirs from different nations falling in love with the same princess. The Department was created to regulate emotions, specifically affection and love. Love must not be free, the Department’s 3805-page handbook proclaimed, because love deceives humans into believing they are more than humans. It inspires people to climb dangerous towers to fight dragons, defy international treaties to exchange roses, and invent weapons that should never have been invented. Unregulated affection is an act of rebellion, a tool to let morons believe that they have the right to suffer for another. And so, June believes in the Department’s purpose: love and affection must be rationed. Since its inception in 2085, the Department has offered a hundred days to experience affection, before making a bureaucratic decision on whether the affection was safe enough to keep or not. 

Orion’s affection, as it turns out, was highly unsafe. June looks at Orion again and decides that her job as an Auditor is almost like the sunset in his Memory. Sunsets are poetic because they forget the sharpness of the day so elegantly, like mercy. June cracks her knuckles and presses the button. The screen hums like a swarm of bees. Orion’s memories begin to pixelate. 

PART 2: SUNRISES

June does not see Orion for the next three months. Not that it was unusual. People poured out of the Department of Memories with a receipt for their forgotten memories (that could be exchanged for cookies at several Department-sponsored outlets throughout the globe) every single day. What was unusual was someone trying to pour into the Department of Memories. Clients were rarely approved by the Department to meet their Auditors. And yet, here was June waiting for her 264th client to roll back into her life. She hears a knock on the door. June checks her watch, cranes her neck left and right, cracks her knuckles before intertwining them, and puts on a warm smile recommended by the Department to all their Auditors. “Come in,” she says.

         Orion enters. He appears older and more frail under the mask of a faint stubble that patchily covers his face, his posture burdened by a hunch, and the shape of an imprecise geometrical tool, as his right shoulder dangles noticeably higher than his left, like a slope designed for the pecky dust on his furry coat to roll down on joyfully. Strangely, June finds herself feeling warm when he politely smiles at her and closes the door gently, almost as if he’s caressing a baby. “Have a seat, please,” she says, gesturing at the chair in front of her. 

          Orion sits quietly, his eyes darting around the room furtively. He thumps a thick, beige folder on her desk, and for the first time since he’s entered the room, he’s looking directly at June. June stares at the Department seal emboldened on Orion’s folder with the words ‘Approved’ scribbled in green ink under it. Seizing her monocle, June draws the stem of her desk lamp directly over the folder to ensure it is genuine. “The paperwork is real,” Orion says. His voice is deeper than it should be for someone of his height. 

June flips through the pages. “The file says that you want your memories back,” she says faintly, her fingers squeezing her lips and her eyebrows furrowing into a frown. “Why?”

“I’m sorry, I don’t understand. This paperwork has been approved, and I have the necessary authorizations. Is there a problem?” Orion says defensively. 

“No, the paperwork is correct. But why would you want your memories back?” June asks, puzzled. “Do you realize that the memories that have been approved for reinstatement are just of you and this woman having…dinner?” – June turns the pages – “or being at board night? Or at karaoke? You understand that the memories we will reinstate won’t make you remember anything about her, right? It’ll be fragments and acts. We do this to protect our clients, obviously.”

“I understand all of that,” Orion says, corking his head and pursing her lips. 

“Then why would you want them back?” 

“Because they are mine,” Orion shrugs. June sighs in disbelief. Does he not see the risks? Does he not understand why the Department’s mission is crucial? She is honestly surprised that the Department would ever allow this. For a long time, June just stares at Orion, studying him like a crossword clue. She’s convinced that he’s dangerous because his eyes scream of the kind of tired brightness that has had a glimpse of true, celestial beauty and watched it ebb away without a goodbye. He’s exactly the kind of person for whom these laws were put in place, because it is men like him who dangerously idealize affection. “Follow me,” she hesitantly says, walking towards her office door and holding it open for him. They walk down the corridor together, his heavy footsteps echoing against the white marble floor. “Why do you suppose we do it?” Orion says after a while.

          “Because love must not be free-” 

“-no, not that.” Orion cuts her off. “Sure, you and the Department believe that it is necessary to erase memories. And as you can probably guess, I have my own ethical qualms about it. No, why do we go around falling in love with each other if we know that the Department might delete them? Why do we take the risk?”

“This feels like one of those things where you already know the answer,” June sighs. She’s heard arguments against the Department before. 

“I think we love because it feels warm,” Orion says. 

“So does a stove,” June grumbles.

He laughs softly. “You’re good at this.”

“At walking in a corridor?”

“No. Being careful,” he says. “I, on the other hand, do not have to check the Department’s handbook every time before deciding for myself. And I do not think that the Department has the right to take my memories from me. I think people need room for new memories, even the ones that hurt.” June stops next to a door and lifts the keypad, beeping in the code. She turns back to face Orion, her scowl no longer disguised. Orion’s barely an inch taller than her, even in his platforms. “Or maybe people crave room for more emptiness, and the Department stops that from happening.” She enters the Archives and approaches an older, barely used gray console, loudly and disdainfully entering Orion’s name in it.

“Do you think it’s better to be nice or kind?” Orion asks.

“What’s the difference?”

“I could be nice and tell you that you are right. But it would be kinder to tell you the truth. That you are wrong,” Orion says, and June catches her breath. 

“By your own logic, wouldn’t it be kinder to forget emotions that we know will never work out? What the Department does is an act of mercy,” she says at last.

He nods, though she can see that he doesn’t agree. “Do you remember anything from your own Erasures? Do you remember thinking it’s kind to you?”

“I’ve had them done seven times,” June says, and then, even though she knows she shouldn’t, she tries to remember them all for a moment. Nothing comes back to her.  

“And you remember nothing?” Orion asks.

“It’s all pixelated,” June says.

“That’s what they call mercy now, is it?” Orion says, his head slightly tilted, his eyes glinting in the low fluorescent light. There is something in the way that he says it that makes him feel soft and mournful. It makes June turn the other way. “Sit,” she instructs. She grabs the electrodes and places them on his temples, careful not to touch his skin. “What’s it like, then, to remember what we forget?” Orion whispers as her hands accidentally brush his jaw. His warmth startles her. She doesn’t answer; instead, she lets the console hum to life. Unlike the time she deleted Orion’s memories, they are now in the same room. They are so close to each other. 

June composes herself. “Close your eyes,” she says. He does. She clicks the green button and can hear the electrodes whir to life, streaming memories into Orion. She finds herself wondering whether this really is mercy. 

PART 3: PIXELS

“You need to keep talking about the things you love, so life keeps feeling like life,” Orion says, and June knows that if she thinks a bit harder about it, the sentence and its meaning will begin to fall apart. But there is something about the way Orion says things, or the way he smiles, that makes her not want to think at all. That makes her just want to listen and feel the weight of his words. 

After the first memory was reinstated, she’d kept seeing Orion for the last seventy-seven days, aware that she could have ended his reinstatement early. She knew she wasn’t being bureaucratic in delaying Orion’s reinstatement, but she loved their discussions about whether what she did really mattered. She loved the way he would squat and tilt his head down when he had something exciting to say. Or the way his voice would stress upon words at sporadic, unpredictable moments, making everything he said sound like poetry. Or the way that every time he laughed, it felt like he was laughing for the very first time.

He pulls out his fingers from his coat’s pocket and waves them at her, a small bird-shaped figurine resting between them, as he proceeds to imitate a bird while June tries to get the Archive’s console to load Orion’s memories. “What is it about the Archives that you love? I remember you blaming it for stealing your memories from you?” June says, handing him the electrodes. 

“I said I hate the Department for stealing my memories,” Orion corrects her. “The Archives, on the other hand, are beautiful. Look at the technology! You can visualize your own memories and see them on a screen. Imagine what you could do with a technology like this when applying it to something like your dreams,” Orion continues. And then he says something that makes June momentarily question everything about the Department. “And then there’s you. You are special.”

Something inside June shifts. She can feel it. She can feel her knees wobble, her hands jitter, and her mind totter. She watches Orion lean closer to the monitor, his faint scent lingering in the air. He’s speaking again, like he always does, but his voice feels closer than usual. She’s floating. She’s falling. She’s running. She’s halting. It’s all happening at the same time, and then the epiphany hits her: she cannot imagine ever wanting to forget him. That’s when the terror grips her: of the Archives malfunctioning, of a fire breaking out, of the ceiling collapsing. She’s scared of her own death, because she cannot imagine ever missing moments with Orion in it. She’s trembling because it feels like a sin to preserve these fleeting moments with Orion. Every squat, every word, every laugh is already on a countdown. She can almost hear the ticks and the tocks. Is it worth fighting for these fleeting moments? Is it worth fighting for something she knows she might lose? She hates that she knows the answer.

No, she tries to remind herself. She tries to remember the Department’s teachings and recites what she knows she should say, “Love and affection are dangerous because they make humans think they are special. That they are beyond being humans.”

“How is that bad?” Orion asks.

“It takes away our rationality,” June says. She’s practiced this a million times, but not a word of it feels true. Orion turns back to the console and sticks the electrodes on his forehead. “Love is just a form of grief, and once you are acting under grief, you are irrational, self-destructive. Why would you bother with so much grief?"

“Did your parents ever make you read that really old book?” Orion ponders, coyfully ruffling his fingers around the electrodes.

“Orion-”

“Frankenstein! Mary Shelley!” Orion exclaims, snapping his fingers.

“Are you changing the subject?” June asks.

“No, I am not. Stick with me for a moment,” Orion says, his legs swinging impatiently. “Mary Shelley wrote that book after losing her baby. In the book, the Creature hunts his so-called Maker, Victor Frankenstein. The Creature is upset at Frankenstein for bringing him into a world brimming with grief. But really, the Creature is just a reflection of Shelley's anger with her Maker. At the end of the book, the Creature (and hence Shelley) forgives Frankenstein. The Creature acknowledges that grief follows us wherever we go. The Department and humanity can learn something from it. We can realize that it is our human right to grieve. And to grieve someone, we must first love. How can we ever love if the Department never allows us to remember it?”

“What does it feel like to remember her?” June asks. It dawns upon June that this woman may be to Orion what he is to June. 

“It feels like a crime to be the only one who remembers,” Orion smiles weakly.

“Her name’s Becky,” June whispers. What is she doing? This is against the rules. “I know,” Orion says, reaching for her hands, calming her down. “The Department may have been thorough with Becky and my memories, but somehow the news did not reach her brother. Three weeks after the Erasure, he called me. Because even after the Erasure, I was Becky’s emergency contact. She’d forgotten who I was. She never changed my number. I was her emergency contact…and I did not know her.” 

June feels as if her chest has been split open. The Department had assured her that there were no leftovers. That the Erasure was clean, and the end of disruption. But then why did she still feel grief for an unknown woman? And beyond all, why did she grieve for Orion? “I don’t think forgetting is a mercy, June. I think it’s envy. The Department cannot stand what it cannot control. And so, it makes us believe that love and affection should be rationed. The Department doesn’t protect us from being more than humans. It reduces us to something less than humans," Orion says.

“Stop. You know I’ll have to present this record to the Department. They could flag you.” June bites her lip. Orion smiles and flaps the bird-shaped figurine at her. It’s almost as if he knows that she will not do it. It’s almost as if he knows that when she inputs today’s log, she’ll only write this: “Subject’s 7th evaluation was successful. Pending 3 evaluations.” It’s almost as if he knows she won’t write about the times she wished she were human enough to break the rules

PART 4: ERASURES

The Erasure is a highly misunderstood process, for it does not begin on the day that one erases their memories. It begins on the day when a letter arrives addressed to two individuals deemed ‘emotionally unsafe for each other’ with the mandate to voluntarily erase their memories before the deadline or risk Erasure by force. It is tuned precisely to what the bureaucratic rhythm calls mercy. 

When the letter arrives at June’s doorstep on a Wednesday morning, a hundred days after she met Orion in her office, buried in an envelope colored like a faded bruise, it feels like anything but mercy. When June sees Orion for his final reinstatement session at the Archives, the world feels sterile to her. She doesn’t want to put the electrodes in his hands. “Will you try remembering me? Like you are trying to remember Becky?” June finally asks, gulping.

Orion’s expression is unreadable. Then he smiles – the kind of small, helpless smile that feels like he’s surrendering. “How could you ever think otherwise?” he says.

          “Maybe,” June begins, “If we do not go through with it-”

        He cuts her off. “You know better than anyone else that they will find us. You are an Auditor. You’ll lose your job. You know, there are trackers; there are patterns being matched. It’ll be worse if we don’t go through with it.” 

She hates that he’s right. She hates that he’s said this so calmly. “I am being cautious,” Orion adds softly. “And who knows? Maybe it’ll be better to forget.”

June gawks at him. “I can’t believe you said that.”

“It’s the only way. It hurts. All of this!” Orion points at the electrodes, the machines, his own head.

“You were the one who said that the Department was horseshit!” June snaps. “And yet you are somehow now perfectly okay with forgetting me. You…you’ve tried so hard for Becky, but you won’t consider trying it for me?” Orion stands there, his eyes moist. 

         “You don’t know how it feels for me to be the only one who remembers. It hurts in places you wouldn’t believe existed. And do you know what I remember about Becky? I remember the acts. Sure! I remember her touch. I remember her sound. But I do not remember her warmth! I don't remember how it felt, only that it happened once and I was happy. The Department took it from me! The Department made me hollow. Even with the Archives, I barely remember who Becky was anymore. So, I’m sorry if I believe that maybe you are right. Maybe it is better to forget.”

“Why can’t we run away? Why can’t we just forget the Department?” June groans.

“Because the Department will always remember us. That is your motto, isn’t it?” Orion cries. “They remember what we forget. I promise that I will fight for you, but we need to start by forgetting first. We must. There is no other way.” Orion’s words are bouncing off the walls in a room full of rusting memories. June leans forward and kisses Orion. It is quiet. It is desperate.

           They decide to go through the Erasure separately. June goes first because June cannot imagine being in a world where Orion looks at her like she’s a stranger. When her Auditor secures her to the chair and disappears behind the glass pane, she can feel the light fracturing into pixels. She can feel the world fold inwards. And for a moment, she sees all of it together. She sees her hundred days with Orion, the silences, the warmth, the laughter. She sees it all. She sees it all. She sees it all. And then it’s gone.   

Outside the room, Orion awaits his turn. He watches the lights to the Erasure room blink green. Only when he knows that June is safe and that the Department cannot hurt her does he run the other way. There is something he must do first. Something the Department would never understand.

PART 5: LOOPS

In the Archives, the rows of servers lining the metal walls sound like breathing. It is as if the entire Department were a sleeping giant about to be awoken. Orion sits at the console; the electrodes coiled around his fingers. He knows that every act of remembering leaves behind a shadow. He’s always known that. Before June. Before Becky. The Archives, he realizes, are not a collection of memories but a museum of shadows. And tonight, millions of shadows are all whispering for him to win. 

Orion wipes beads of perspiration off his forehead and pulls the tip of the electrode apart until he sees a loose wire. He bites the ends of the wire until the raw filaments protected under the copper shells are exposed. Pulling out a small chip, he inserts it into the electrodes. He opens the system panel and inserts the electrode into a port – a failsafe that the engineers who handle the Archives were responsible for designing. For a moment, he thinks it is funny that June never asked Orion about his work. Or how it was so easy for him to get the approval to access the Archives.

The code he has inserted into the Archives is born of desperation, but it has one purpose: to crosswire the Archives with the Erasure system. To make the machine’s forgetting loop fold in on itself. If it works, then Orion’s memories will warp back into his mind. “June,” he says out of reverence in the hollow room of the Archives. He just wants to feel her name on his lips one last time, in case it doesn't work. He never wanted June to defy the Department and risk herself for him, but he knows that he’ll always fight for her. He’s ready to fight even if he knows that he might not win. After all, he’s made a promise.

June is safe, he reminds himself. If his experiment works on his own mind, then he can convince June to safely reinstate her memories with Orion. And if she refuses, then Orion will treasure whatever he can of her. If June forgets, he will remember for both of them. 

PART 6: GHOSTS

June is in her office, holding onto a receipt from her eighth Erasure. She’s been having dreams of someone she cannot name, waking up breathless and restless, doubting everything the Department has taught her about Erasures. And then she remembers that what the Department does is an act of mercy. Love must not be free. Erasures are necessary. But then why can’t she throw away this receipt? Why does this Erasure feel heavy? Why do they all feel so heavy? What is it that she’s craving for? She cups her face into her palms and decides to get some coffee from the breakroom.

           “Look at this,” her colleague Arin rushes to her as June walks into the breakroom. He almost thrusts the news tablet into her face. June eyes him menacingly until he tones down his enthusiasm and explains, “There’s a news article involving this guy who worked as one of the Engineers for the Archives. It’s…peculiar and I thought you might be interested.” 

She reads the article. ‘Archive Engineer Orion P. Found Comatose After Second Erasure’. She remembers that name. He was her 264th Client. She remembers nothing more, even though it feels like she should. Like something inside her is screaming to remember. “Do we know why he’s been found comatose?” June asks. 

“Of course, I can’t tell you who his Auditor was, but there are rumors floating around that the machine must’ve malfunctioned because of a rewiring issue in the Archives. In other words, something went wrong with his Erasure, and Orion only has one singular memory in his entire mind right now. Can you imagine living your whole life with nothing but one single memory?”

“Depends on the memory,” June says, taken aback by her own words.

Arin swipes through the tablet and opens his gallery to show her the image. “It’s a residual memory. I took the picture myself. It’s pixelated. No one knows what it is.”

June feels her throat dry up. “No one?”

Arin leans closer, “You did not hear it from me, but he’s being held in Room 458 in the Erasure wing. They haven’t cleaned his body yet. Don’t tell anyone else that I told you about it.” June doesn’t know what possesses her. Her legs begin moving towards the room before her brain can process why. Before she realizes, she’s running and then flying like the room is pulling her. When she reaches Room 458, a yellow warning tape stretches across the door like a boundary she should not cross. She doesn’t care. She disobeys. She feels human.

The room smells of blood. She watches Orion P’s body from behind the glass pane, the bowl-shaped helmet almost glued to his head like melted wax. On the screen behind him is a single, pixelated image that flashes incessantly.

The Memory is a blurred outline of two figures close together, and somehow, she knows that the figures are in the Archive, so close that they seem to be breathing for one another.  June steps closer to the pane, and the Memory begins to pulse like a heartbeat, like it is clearing up for her. She slams the console, begging herself to remember something she knows that she should. The answer is right on the edge of her memories, but the harder she tries reaching for it, the further it slips away. She falls to her knees, letting out a visceral scream. In the ubiquitous silence that follows, all she can do is feel warm. All she can see is a pixelated kiss.