Daniel Schreber would be allowed few memories by the strangers, the parasites of human corpses; a more religious man would not have described them so clinically. A less religious man would not have thanked god the night his older brother returned from the dead.
"Andrew," Daniel had whispered. It would be the last time he ever spoke his brother's name.
Of the very many memories Daniel was grateful to sacrifice was the spasmodic way Andrew had tried to smile back at him, thin lips that had forgotten how to move. Flat eyes that had forgotten how to blink.
There was to be no happy reunion. No joyful celebration as one-by-one, so came the others. The soldiers. The children. The mothers. Victims and casualties of the second great war.
The disfigured and the lame were quickly discarded for fresher bodies. Daniel did not care to think about how few marks their new vessels had on them, or how unexpected their deaths might have been.
They, all of them knew of Daniel Schreber through the memories of his brother's rotting brain. As he came to learn of these things, and what they planned to do, sanity became-a quickly fading dream.
For the strangers, this was an inconvenience. Given a chance to fix this problem and salvage the brilliance of his fractured mind, Daniel declined their offer. They could, however, be quite persuasive. Upon reconsideration, blinking back the blood in his eyes, he agreed some measure of his remaining sanity may be worth sacrificing his memories.
"This might not be so bad, Doctor," the monster with the face of his brother rasped. He had gotten better at smiling. "You will no longer be burdened by your dreams of shell beach. What a nuisance they have been."
"Yes, of course-" Daniel gasped through the pain of his cracked rib, thinking with some joy tinged with a hint of bitterness of the dreams he had sealed in a vial, and the notes he had left to himself, should those dreams someday be his salvation, "-of course, Mr. Hand."