I have a metal plate where part of my skull used to be. My whole head aches before a rainstorm, and a taste of metal fills my mouth and gives me gooseflesh.
I never tried to reenter my old life. In fact, with each year—fifteen before Timothy went to college—I grew more incredulous that I’d ever lived it. I would gaze up at the glass office buildings in the Loop in a state of wonder. Had I really gone inside one every day? Parked my car in an underground garage? Doled out Christmas checks to security guards? When I passed my former partners on the street, or associates I’d once hounded, I would duck and cower to avoid being recognized. But gradually, I found that, with my longer hair and civilian clothes, the baseball cap I always wore to hide my metal plate, I was invisible to my former colleagues. No one gave me a second look, as if I’d fallen through a trapdoor into a parallel world. There seemed no way to cross back over. It was Trudy who drove to the Loop each day for work and made partner in one of Chicago’s biggest tax firms. Trudy soon remarried, and I took over with our kids. She largely supported me while I slowly paid off my debts; although Janna hadn’t pressed criminal charges against me, she and her husband reunited and sued. I gave them everything, and more, in a negotiated settlement.
I worked as a counselor at a methadone clinic not far from where I used to make my drug buys from Damon. My studio apartment was nearby, and as I walked to work under those same shadowy overpasses where Damon and I used to roll down our windows, I often wondered what had become of him. I didn’t have to wonder, of course—thanks to Own Your UnconsciousTM, we can track down a person we’ve glimpsed just once in our lives. My dad was a big proponent of Own Your Unconscious when it first came out, in 2016; he’d gotten to know Bix Bouton, who invented it. I had no interest in externalizing my consciousness to a Mandala Cube and revisiting my memories, or—worse—filling in what I’d managed to forget. Still, my curiosity about Damon gradually wore away my scruples. Doesn’t it always? If my life has taught me anything, it’s that curiosity and expediency have a sneaky, inexorable power. Resisting them is easy for a minute—a hundred minutes—even a year. But not forever.
In the thirteen years since Own Your Unconscious had been released, one of its ancillary features—the Collective Consciousness—had gradually become central. By uploading all or part of your externalized memory to an online “collective,” you gained proportionate access to the anonymous thoughts and memories of everyone in the world, living or dead, who had done the same. Finally, I caved and bought Mandala’s Hey, What Ever Happened To…？？. The process was frictionless, as promised: thirty minutes with electrodes attached to my head as I closed my eyes and pictured my interactions with Damon （thereby releasing those specific memories to the collective）; then a twenty-minute wait while my “content” churned in the collective gyre, searching for facial matches. As I watched the wheel spin on the desktop computer in my studio apartment, I noticed I was gritting my teeth; I wanted Damon to have achieved something great! What that meant, I wasn’t sure: Stockbroker? Managing partner at my old law firm? Governor? （Illinois joke.）
I had the story soon enough in the form of scattered “gray grabs” from the Collective Consciousness: people’s anonymous memories that included Damon. I watched teenage Damon in prep school slacks, whittling the underside of a desk; then slightly older Damon hyperventilating in a teen group therapy session in deep woods, firelight lapping his anguished face; young-adult Damon gazing out the window of a college classroom at a crisp white steeple, and around the same time （same haircut, sweatshirt）， Damon hawking stolen stereo equipment from the rear of a Toyota hatchback; Damon as I knew him, a young man toiling for a drug dealer to pay off some kind of debt. The last gray grab, dated the previous year, showed Damon in orange, doing push-ups in a penitentiary yard. The smile he sprang at the anonymous viewer was the very same I remembered seeing through our open car windows. I realized that the person Damon had reminded me of was myself: another white male who’d managed to blow through countless advantages and opportunities and fail catastrophically. The knowledge that he’d fared worse than I had was depressing, literally. I became depressed. I hadn’t realized how badly I’d wished for Damon to thrive.