The Forgetting Curve (Memento Nora) Read Online Free Page A

about Winter yet, either.
    I pulled up the in-flight programming on the console in front of me. Most of it was fluff, so I flicked on the news. There was a Coalition bombing in Atlanta. A Hamilton security firm that was indicted for “unlawful counterterrorist activities” was cleared of all charges. (The firm was, in turn, suing the newscast that accused it of misconduct.) TFC announced a new housing program for the homeless. And TFC was also continuing to give away new ID chips to help less fortunate Hamiltonians comply with the new security requirements.
    The forgetting people are just overflowing with altruosity all of a sudden, aren’t they?
    But the big story was some sex scandal with a congressman and a ’casts star I’d never heard of. Not that I’d heard of many. There goes his reelection and his shot at being president , the news reader said.
    The pilot announced our final approach into Dulles. I flicked off the screen and peered out the window. The plane banked just south of Washington. I could see the white glints of the monuments, the green ribbon of the Potomac, and the flat, ugly Pentagon squatting below it like a mushroom. Beyond all that, the plane flew over houses lined up on grids and circled with fences, fanning out as far as the eye could see.
    Nomura had originally wanted to build its North American headquarters in the DC ’burbs. But my great-grandfather found a more tax-(and incentive-) friendly atmosphere in Hamilton, a satellite city not too far outside the beltway, a city that would be indebted to the Nomuras in a way that the sprawling metropolis of Washington, DC, never could be.
    A half-dozen banks, TFC, and several other corporate players had the same idea. Now they all act like they own the city. They do, really. I mean, if you act like you’re in charge and people go along with it, then you’re in charge. It’s all about the buy-in, the trust.
    And we’re a trusting people here in the US.
    Con artists like that in a mark.

6.0
     

IN THE GARDEN OF THE GUINEA PIGS
     
    WINTER
     
    We were in a cab. The news flickered across the screen between us and the driver. The Action 5 News guy said it was a record: no Coalition bombings in Hamilton since May. The mayor attributed it to the new ID program. Don’t forget , news guy added, there’s only two weeks left to get your new chip. Mayor Mignon said there’ll be zero tolerance for noncompliance. Then there was some Nomura ad, of course.
    I scratched a bump behind my ear.
    Wait. May? I pulled out my mobile. It was a slim, red model that I didn’t recognize. I checked the date.
    June 15. Where the hell had I been?
    The cabbie let us off at the corner of Eighth and Day. My brain felt like pudding. The last thing I remembered, I told Grandfather, was working on the sculpture garden in the backyard.
    Sculpture garden ? he’d asked as if he didn’t have a clue what I was talking about.
    We pressed our way through the secret door in the back fence, through the Sasuke course, and through the bamboo gates into my garden.
    Grandfather didn’t say a word as he took in the Pawing Man, the Flailing Arm Windmill, and the Shopping Bag Crab. Those sculptures, I remembered creating. That masked thing with the monkey wrench and the gears, though, was a complete mystery to me. It was like a stranger had invaded my garden and finished it for me.
    I wanted to be that person.
    How do I put that last sculpture into words? It was as if a mask had been torn away from a face, revealing the clockworks underneath. The disturbing thing was that those gears were connected to something outside of it, like the person’s brain was part of a bigger machine. It captured a feeling I knew I must have felt at one time, but it was like a memory of a memory. Like I’d seen it in a big, coffee-table book somewhere. It made me feel frenetic and serene all at once. Maybe it made me feel uncomfortable, too.
    I’d started this garden to keep busy while my parents were away.