How It Was When the Past Went Away

Thursday, May 9, promised to be as beautiful as the previous day had been. The sun once again beamed on San Francisco; the sky was clear, the air warm and tender. Commander Braskett awoke early as always, punched for his usual spartan breakfast, studied the morning xerofax news, spent an hour dictating his memoirs, and, about nine, went out for a walk. The streets were strangely crowded, he found, when he got down to the shopping district along Haight Street. People were wandering about aimlessly, dazedly, as though they were sleepwalkers. Were they drunk? Drugged? Three times in five minutes Commander Braskett was stopped by young men who wanted to know the date. Not the time, the date. He told them, crisply, disdainfully; he tried to be tolerant, but it was difficult for him not to despise people who were so weak that they were unable to refrain from poisoning their minds with stimulants and narcotics and psychedelics and similar trash. At the corner of Haight and Masonic a forlorn-looking pretty girl of about seventeen, with wide blank blue eyes, halted him and said, “Sir, this city is San Francisco, isn’t it? I mean, I was supposed to move here from Pittsburgh in May, and if this is May, this is San Francisco, right?” Commander Braskett nodded brusquely and turned away, pained. He was relieved to see an old friend, Lou Sandier, the manager of the Bank of America office across the way. Sandier was standing outside the bank door. Commander Braskett crossed to him and said, “Isn’t it a disgrace, Lou, the way this whole street is filled with addicts this morning? “What is it, some historical pageant of the 1960’s?” And Sandier gave him an empty smile and said, “Is that my name? Lou? You wouldn’t happen to know the last name too, would you? Somehow it’s slipped my mind.” In that moment Commander Braskett realized that something terrible had happened to his city and perhaps to his country, and that the leftist takeover he had long dreaded must now be at hand, and that it was time for him to don his old uniform again and do what he could to strike back at the enemy.

In joy and in confusion, Nate Haldersen awoke that morning realizing that he had been transformed in some strange and wonderful way. His head was throbbing, but not painfully. It seemed to him that a terrible weight had been lifted from his shoulders, that the fierce dead hand about his throat had at last relinquished its grip.

He sprang from bed, full of questions.

Where am I? What kind of place is this? Why am I not at home? Where are my books? Why do I feel so happy?

This seemed to be a hospital room.

There was a veil across his mind. He pierced its filmy folds and realized that he had committed himself to— to Fletcher Memorial —last—August—no, the August before last—suffering with a severe emotional disturbance brought on by—brought on by— He had never felt happier than at this moment.

He saw a mirror. In it was the reflected upper half of Nathaniel Haldersen, Ph.D. Nate Haldersen smiled at himself. Tall, stringy, long-nosed man, absurdly straw-colored hair, absurd blue eyes, thin lips, smiling. Bony body. He undid his pajama top. Pale, hairless chest; bump of bone like an epaulet on each shoulder. I have been sick a long time, Haldersen thought. Now I must get out of here, back to my classroom. End of leave of absence. Where are my clothes?

“Nurse? Doctor?” He pressed his call button three times. “Hello? Anyone here?”

No one came. Odd; they always came. Shrugging, Haldersen moved out into the hall. He saw three orderlies, heads together, buzzing at the far end. They ignored him. A robot servitor carrying breakfast trays glided past. A moment later one of the younger doctors came running through the hall, and would not stop when Haldersen called to him. Annoyed, he went back into his room and looked about for clothing. He found none, only a little stack of magazines on the closet floor. He thumbed the call button three more times. Finally one of the robots entered the room.

“I am sorry,” it said, “but the human hospital personnel is busy at present. May I serve you, Dr. Haldersen?”

“I want a suit of clothing. I’m leaving the hospital.”

“I am sorry, but there is no record of your discharge. Without authorization from Dr. Bryce, Dr. Reynolds, or Dr. Kamakura, I am not permitted to allow your departure.”

Haldersen sighed. He knew better than to argue with a robot. “Where are those three gentlemen right now?”

“They are occupied, sir. As you may know, there is a medical emergency in the city this morning, and Dr. Bryce and Dr. Kamakura are helping to organize the committee of public safety. Dr. Reynolds did not report for duty today and we are unable to trace him. It is believed that he is a victim of the current difficulty.”

“What current difficulty?”

“Mass loss of memory on the part of the human population,” the robot said.

“An epidemic of amnesia?”

“That is one interpretation of the problem.”

“How can such a thing—” Haldersen stopped. He understood now the source of his own joy this morning. Only yesterday afternoon he had discussed with Tim Bryce the application of memory-destroying drugs to his own trauma, and Bryce had said— Haldersen no longer knew the nature of his own trauma. “Wait,” he said, as the robot began to leave the room. “I need information. Why have I been under treatment here?”

“You have been suffering from social displacements and dysfunctions whose origin, Dr. Bryce feels, lies in a situation of traumatic personal loss.”

“Loss of what?”

“Your family, Dr. Haldersen.”

“Yes. That’s right. I recall, now—I had a wife and two children. Emily. And a little girl—Margaret, Elizabeth, something like that. And a boy named John. What happened to them?”

“They were passengers aboard Intercontinental Airways Flight 103, Copenhagen to San Francisco, September 5, 1991. The plane underwent explosive decompression over the Arctic Ocean and there were no survivors.”

Haldersen absorbed the information as calmly as though he were hearing of the assassination of Julius Caesar.

“Where was I when the accident occurred?”

“In Copenhagen,” the robot replied. “You had intended to return to San Francisco with your family on Flight 1o3; however, according to your data file here, you became invovled in an emotional relationship with a woman named Marie Rasmussen, whom you had met in Copenhagen, and failed to return to your hotel in time to go to the airport. Your wife, evidently aware of the situation, chose not to wait for you. Her subsequent death, and that of your children, produced a traumatic guilt reaction in which you came to regard yourself as responsible for their terminations.”

“I would take that attitude, wouldn’t I?” Haldersen said. “Sin and retribution. Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. I always had a harsh view of sin, even while I was sinning. I should have been an Old Testament prophet.”

“Shall I provide more information, sir?”

“Is there more?”

“We have in the files Dr. Bryce’s report headed, The Job Complex: A Study in the Paralysis of Guilt.”

“Spare me that,” Haldersen said. “All right, go.”

He was alone. The Job Complex, he thought. Not really appropriate, was it? Job was a man without sin, and yet he was punished grievously to satisfy a whim of the Almighty. A little presumptuous, I’d say, to identify myself with him. Cain would have been a better choice. Cain said unto the Lord, My punishment is greater than I can bear. But Cain was a sinner. I was a sinner. I sinned and Emily died for it. When, eleven, eleven-and-a-half years ago? And now I know nothing at all about it except what the machine just told me. Redemption through oblivion, I’d call it. I have expiated my sin and now I’m free. I have no business staying in this hospital any longer. Strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it. I’ve got to get out of here. Maybe I can be of some help to others.

He belted his bathrobe, took a drink of water, and went out of the room. No one stopped him. The elevator did not seem to be running, but he found the stairs, and walked down, a little creakily. He had not been this far from his room in more than a year. The lower floors of the hospital were in chaos—doctors, orderlies, robots, patients, all milling around excitedly. The robots were trying to calm people and get them back to their proper