Chapter I

The city walls changed from night to daylight at six, and I greeted the first morning of January with raw, puffy eyes. The walls of my room were peach colored and warm around me. Usually by now I'd be at the touch-screen desk by my window, sleepily opening the files I'd need that day, reviewing the material, inwardly memorizing for the next month's Assessments. Usually my mother would knock softly on my door and come inside, run her hand over my hair and kiss the crown of my head good morning, her hair wet and smelling of lavender after her shower. Usually my father would come in at seven and tell me to put away my schoolwork, then lead me downstairs for breakfast. Usually.

That morning I lay in bed and stared at the ceiling. Last night was painful, a smarting wound. I remembered my mother's hasty retreat, my father following her to their room, leaving me on the floor in my ripped dress, tracks of tears sticky on my face.

"You promised me!" my mother had hissed. Then the sound of my father's voice.

"How can we protect her?" my mother sobbed, "She'll be sixteen, and then they'll take her!"

Too tired to listen, too angry to care, I stood and pulled my dress off roughly, throwing it on the ground to wrinkle, pulling my light blue nightgown on over my head, my hairstyle falling apart with the motion. I crawled into my bed to sleep, escaping the headache brought on by the truth. Sometimes, the truth hurts, and I felt it like a pulsing concussion.


A soft knock at my door, and then it opened to reveal my mother, dressed for the day, my silk dress draped over one arm. She averted her eyes and moved to my desk, setting it on my chair. She smoothed her fingertips over her neat stitches —she'd stayed awake to mend the dress herself instead of using the automated service that repaired everything from ripped paper to minor cuts and burns. All there, a button away. Her work was as neat as the machine's.

"It's almost time for breakfast," she said quietly, her voice scratchy from lack of sleep, or crying. I didn't move, just watched her leave and pull the door closed behind her. Wishing for the first time I didn't have to go to school, I roused myself and dressed in the uniform I'd worn since the age of five; a white shirt with U-147 embroidered on the breast pocket tucked into a dark blue skirt. I pulled on the navy socks and slipped on my grey shoes. Most days I fidgeted with my hair in the morning, more often than not braiding it back, or asking my mother to. Today I had no desire to see myself in the mirror. I bunched my hair together and secured it with an elastic, the sloppiness a sharp contrast to the elegance of the night before.

I felt my father's eyes on me as I came into the kitchen. A bowl of oatmeal was waiting for me at the table like always. All of my friends ordered from the Menu, their food arriving seconds later, plates with fragrant French toast, waffles, sugary cereals, eggs and bacon. My mother didn't let us eat food from the Menu —it was 'fake', she said with distaste. She didn't want to be controlled by a machine. My mother cooked, and that was that. The times I'd stayed at friends' houses we'd ordered waffles in the morning, ice cream on top.

That morning I eyed the oatmeal with annoyance, hating the carefully washed and cut apples and strawberries she'd put on the side, the hot chocolate my father had prepared like every other morning. He sat at the table, waiting, while my mother leaned on the kitchen counter, seeming to exclude herself. I moved past her and went to the Menu on the wall, punching in my code. The wall tablet lit up.

"What can I serve you this morning?" the robotic voice chirped.

My father set down his cup. "Sylvia, come eat your oatmeal. You know our rules." I ignored him and ordered a waffle. It arrived seconds later on the kitchen counter, smelling delicious, with a pad of butter melting on top and a small single-serving of syrup on the plate next to it. I took my breakfast and went to the table, sitting across from my father and stubbornly refusing to look at him as I viciously cut into the meal I wasn't even hungry for. Awkward vestiges of last night's events hung in the morning air, thick like oil.

My mother came to sit as well, my untouched bowl of oatmeal between us all like a witness. She was dressed for work, the dark blue of her Health Center uniform —U-147 printed on the breast pocket. Her hair was pulled back in a simple twisted chignon, perfect without a mirror. Her white coat designating her as a Healer hung in the hall next to my blue school jacket and my father's dark grey one, the color worn by academics who worked at the Research Center. As a Healer, my mother had what was considered one of the most highly honored occupations, but I saw her walking up to the house after work while I did my revisions. She looked weary and unhappy. I had thought it was maybe an act, the smile she put on when she saw me walking down the stairs to greet her, the strength of her hug, the ritual of sitting down on the sofa together while she listened to me recount what I'd done that day, but now I knew what it meant to her. How her daughter lit up her life. I just didn't understand it, not then, the fierceness with which a mother could love her child.

"I'll pick you up from Independent Study this afternoon," my father said. I rolled my eyes, feigning indifference. In truth I was nervous. Independent Study ended at four, two hours before he normally came home from work. Realistically I knew that we couldn't let the events of last night slip away into nothingness, but some part of me thought I could somehow escape a debriefing. I nodded, then darted a look at my mother.

"What about you, Scully?" I asked.

I don't know what I expected then. Backlash, chastisement perhaps, anything but the gentle look between my parents, then her calm voice.

"I'll be there as soon as I can," she said, then took the bowl of oatmeal, stood up, and went to the trash can. My father looked at his watch and stood, put his mug in the sink beside my empty bowl. I threw away my mangled waffle, embarrassed.

In the entryway I moved away from them as quickly as possible, picking up the school bag from the bottom of the staircase where I'd carelessly tossed it on my way down. I rushed out the door and was halfway to the sidewalk when I heard my mother calling after me. She wordlessly handed me my jacket. When I took it from her she took my hand quickly, squeezed.

A wrench into memory.

(i crouch down and hold my arms out to the little girl rushing toward me, clutching a rolled Certificate of Completion in her chubby hand,

"Mama!" my four-year old voice calls, and in my mother's body i feel her heart swell with love)

I stepped back from my mother, surprised. It wasn't often that she showed memories from her own Past. She looked at me, uncertain of my reaction. I moved forward then and pulled her in for a quick embrace, all anger gone.

"I love you, Mom," I whispered. She nodded as we parted.


It had happened for as long as I could remember. The dreams. The visions. When I was little they were pleasant things -running through a field of poppies, jumping off a dock and into a lake in summer, stroking the smooth flank of a dappled pony, falling asleep on a warm day outside, lavender in the air. My mind showed me things that were unfamiliar but not frightening. It was before I knew I could show my mother what I'd seen, around the age of three. But I think she knew, even before.

I remember being four years old and waking up from a strange dream in the middle of the night. It hadn't scared me, but I was puzzled, and I wanted answers. I scooted out of my little bed and stumbled toward my parents' room, moving silently in my footed pajamas. The soft shape they made together, him curled around her. I stood as tall as I could and tapped my father's arm, wrapped around my mother. He made a sound, like clearing his throat, and my mother opened her eyes sleepily, took me in standing there, my hair mussed around my face.

"Hi, honey," she said, sitting up. My father rubbed his eyes, waking up. He turned the light on beside the bed. "Did you have another dream?"

I nodded, and she reached down to pick me up. I draped myself over her. She smoothed hair away from my face. I hummed something and focused on her hand smoothing circles on my back.

I showed her what I'd seen.

(a man's hands moving over the black and white keys, the steady counter-rhythm he kept with one foot on the damper pedal, an inexplicable emotion, a mixture of peace and anticipation)

My father was looking at her, waiting for a response. I was sleepy, and melted into the small space between them, beyond a need for an answer, but comforted that I could share the dream with her. She showed me the sign, both hands moving palms down to the left, then to the right. I copied her clumsily.

"Good girl," she said. I curled against her. My father leaned to turn off the light. We slept.


My family used a secret language. Later I would learn that it belonged to many others, it wasn't just something my mother had invented to bring some sense to those dreams. She showed me a memory when I was old enough to understand.

(stamping on the floor of a kitchen, a loud sound, and a child, freckled and redheaded like us, turns around, what?, my mother's light voice speaks as her hands move, a young girl's hands, "you forgot to wash your hands". the little boy sticks out his tongue, i don't care!)

I opened my eyes and looked at my mother, puzzled. She held my hand again.

(a gathering of children, outside, "i'm not taking charles on my team," a teenage boy says, my young mother is frustrated, she puts her hands on her hips, "he's deaf, bill, not blind!" the same young boy from before, slightly older, runs up to join the other children. i sense their discomfort, my mother sighs, "charlie, can you catch a football?" she asks, and charlie nods, better than you, Dictionary! my mother grins, "never")

I smile when she lets go of my hand. "Dictionary?"

She nodded, spelling D-A-N-A. She then held a D, signed the word for 'dictionary', and pointed at herself. She then signed C-H-A-R-L-I-E, held a C, then signed 'silly'. N-A-M-E S-I-G-N.

My father learned along with me, and soon we could have short conversations using only our hands. I didn't understand the need for it, not when I was little, but as I grew older I began to grasp the necessity. The words I learned in my dreams couldn't be said aloud, even if I heard them in my mind. Another rule my mother made was that our secret language could only be used at home, just between the three of us. It was invaluable to explaining things to me, and I don't know how I could have made sense of the world without it.


I was eight, another dream. I woke up covered in sweat, and I'd wet the bed. I stood on shaky legs, tears sticky on my face, and moved blindly through the room, crying, breathing too quickly for my sobs to be heard. My parents weren't in their room, but I heard soft talking from downstairs. My fear was all-consuming. I stumbled downstairs, tripping down the last two, then saw my mother sitting on the couch. Her expression changed when she saw me rushing toward her. My father had gotten to his feet at the sound of my fall, but I had eyes only for her. I crashed into her and pushed the dream into her body.

(skeletons, their clothing blue and white vertical stripes, cold, so cold, feet numb -we stood in mud and snow, brusque shouting, the hollowness of hunger, the exhaustion, fear like a bath in ice water we couldn't escape, and as we looked up at the bleak sky the sight of dark snow the shape of wood shavings, a nauseating smell)

My mother pushed me away from her and ran to the kitchen, then vomited into the sink. Once, twice, her eyes streaming. She looked at me in horror. My face was now buried into my father's chest, and I was crying. She shook her head.

"Stop it!" she cried. "You have to stop it!"

I cried harder, and my father's hands tightened around me.

"Dana, you're scaring her," he said, then kissed the crown of my head.

She signed something, going slower for him, although her hands trembled. I saw the word, but it held no meaning for me.

H-O-L-O-C-A-U-S-T

It took him a moment, but then he gasped, looking down at me, his hold on me loosened. Their reactions terrified me, and I started sobbing, they were on top of each other, I couldn't breathe.

My mother rushed forward and pulled me sharply toward her. I closed my eyes.

(a warm day, the trickle of a creek nearby, we were lying belly down on soft green grass, our hair blowing in a gentle breeze, a doe and her fawn grazed across the field)

I shook my head, and she squeezed me again.

(cupped in our palms a small sleeping kitten, she wakes up and struggles free, jumping to our lap and kneading curiously, we smooth a palm across her striped back, she ignores us, then turns and butts her little head against our hand, her nose warm and soft)

I nodded, my eyes opening wearily.

"It was the Past, honey," my mother said, "It's over, now. It can't hurt you. You're safe." My father stroked my back, over my damp nightgown.

I shook my head. "I don't understand -" I was hiccuping now.

My father turned me around, although I kept a hand on my mother's shirt.

"You're safe," he said, his voice warm, a calmness there that I needed desperately. "Come on, let's find some new pajamas. I'll tell you a story."

"Can I sleep with you tonight?" I asked as he picked me up, wrapping my legs around him.

"Of course," he said, and I snuggled my face into his throat. As we walked to the stairs I saw my mother wipe her eyes, leaning against the armchair for support, as exhausted as I was. "How about two stories?"

I nodded quietly. "Is Mama coming, too?" We were at the top of the stairs and I couldn't see her anymore.

"Of course she is," my father said, setting me down in my room. "She's going to get in her pajamas, too, and then we'll all be ready."

I looked at him. "You, too?"

He looked down at himself, still in his work clothes as he looked for a new nightgown. "I thought I'd just sleep in this." His deadpan voice made me giggle.

"That's silly, Daddy," I smiled.

"What? You don't sleep in your school clothes sometimes?"

I shook my head and giggled. "No!"

He raised an eyebrow. "Then I'd say you're pretty silly, too. It's great!"

He set the new nightgown and underwear next to me on the floor and went to change the sheets as I got dressed. I heard my mother come up the stairs, her steps slow and measured. As my head came through the top of the nightgown I saw her wipe another hand over her eyes, and the familiar guilt crept up my spine. I couldn't stop the dreams from coming, but I couldn't bear to see her suffering just as much as I was, every single time. I began to keep some dreams from her, and in this way I was just like the Creators, keeping secrets to protect their people. Ignorance was familiar as air, and now I knew it was possible to know too much. At least if you were ignorant, you could do what you wanted, you had no idea what had been achieved in the Past. You were free.

I tried to keep the visions from her, telling myself they weren't really so hard to handle on my own. I watched a great ship sink from the safety of a lifeboat as thousands of souls cried for help in a cold ocean, a child begging for water when I had none to give her. I was burned at the stake, the flames licking up my legs, the smell of my roasting flesh as men who thought they were right looked on, proud of their actions, scorching evil. I was a Bolshevik, firing bullets at innocent girls, dropping them to the ground like doves shot for the table.

At the breakfast table my parents would ask me how I'd slept, if I'd had any dreams, and I'd tell them No; no dreams, no nightmares. Even lies could be true, if you knew how to listen.

As I grew older the visions didn't contain themselves to dreams, but I was good at concealing them when they struck unexpectedly. One day, Year Twelve, I was stopped mid-step on my way home from the library by the sudden onset of being pulled into the Past. Powerless against it, I quickly bent to tie my shoe, and closed my eyes.

(brightness beneath me, its surface craggy unfamiliar, darkness all around, my body felt strange, and i wondered if perhaps i was underwater. a bounce as my feet connected with the grey-white ground, my entire being filled with disbelief, with wonder, traces of fear that i couldn't understand, tears of joy begging to escape)

I stood up from my shoe, seeing a man walk from the sidewalk up to the front door of his house and punch his code into the electronic pad by the door. He hadn't noticed me. I wiped a tear from my eye before it could fall and hurried home, feeling weak but overjoyed. I burst into the house and looked for my mother, although it was too early for her to be home. I saw my father in the kitchen getting a snack and went to him, wordlessly taking his hand and closing my eyes. I opened them, remembering, frustrated, not for the first time, that I couldn't share the vision with him.

"What did you see?" he asked curiously, taking in the strange expression on my face.

I smiled and recounted the vision in as much detail as I could, seeing his expression change from curiosity to wonder. I nodded enthusiastically.

"It was like something incredible had happened for the first time, Dad."

The sound of the door opening drew me out of my thoughts. My mother walked in, and once again I saw her carefully contained weariness blossom into happiness at the sight of us.

She looked puzzled. "What's wrong?"

My father was almost speechless. He cleared his throat and tapped my arm. "Show her."

I went to her, and after she hung her Healer coat in the hall I took her hand, showed her the memory. When I let go, she was staring at my father, open-mouthed.

"What was it?" I asked them, turning to my father as he began to sign.

M-O-O-N L-A-N-D-I-N-G

I raised an eyebrow. M-O-O-N?

My mother explained, a quick sequence of signs. Later I would see the images, my father would tell me it glowed. I wished I could see it, but the Creators had taken that away, too. Day and night were programmed events and began at the same time every day. No wishing on stars, no enchantment brought by a full moon.


I had been in my head all day, barely listening to the morning announcements at school, passively looking at my grades from the last week (18/20, 17/20, 20/20), not hearing Julia's kind congratulations from beside me. Instructors weren't used to me being quiet, and after Mathematics the Instructor took me aside to ask if I was all right, and that I could go to the Infirmary if I was feeling ill. I don't know what I felt. Betrayed, I suppose. I had always known I was different, yet I had followed every rule, passed every Assessment with high marks, shone in all my Completions. The Past invading my mind was like a head cold, only I couldn't just ask my mother for medication, I had to live with it day and night. I thought I had mastered it. The visions had been getting easier to handle. But last night…

I distracted myself by playing music in my head. Occasionally, on the nights where I didn't want to sleep, my mother had given me a piece of music, no memory attached, right into my brain, memorized forever. Schubert's Ständchen, its rises and falls. Chopin's Nocturnes, night music steeped with melancholy. She gave me a Brahms once, and it played like thinking. Slow, hovering, considering, then moving ahead, only to turn back and repeat itself. I played these in my head, and then the song she'd sung when I was a baby, the song she'd gotten in trouble for. She gave it to me the night I dreamt of the concentration camps, but I don't know if she'd meant to. Cuddled against my father in bed, her hand rested on my back unconsciously.

(looking over at a young woman from the passenger seat as she drives, windows half down, fiery hair whipping in the wind, a free spirit, full of life, she looks over at us and smiles as she sings unselfconsciously along to the tape,

talk to me of mendocino

closing my eyes i hear the sea

must i wait, must i follow

won't you say come with me

her voice isn't perfect, but it's full of happiness...melissa)

I woke up in the bed and turned over to see my mother. She was looking at the ceiling, her eyes were wet, they sparkled in the dark. I sleepily patted her hand.

"It's okay, Mama."

She looked down at me and smiled, tucked hair behind my ear. "Is it?"

I nodded knowingly, then lay my head back down to sleep. She pulled my little body close to hers and wrapped her arm around me. There, in the darkness, she held me and showed me the memory again, played the whole song.

Sitting in Independent Study, ignoring my schoolwork and waiting for my father, I remembered that song. I was unable to sing, but I knew the lyrics;

oh, the trees grow high in new york state

they shine like gold in autumn

never had the blues whence i came,

but in new york state i caught 'em

I said the lines in a whisper, head down, to my own chest. Autumn. Caught 'em. How the rhyme snuggled into its partner.

"Sylvia, it's your Dad," Julia said, nudging me. I looked up and saw him standing at the door to the study hall. He lifted his hand in greeting, and I nodded, worry scaling up my vertebrae with its pickaxe. I picked up my school bag, said goodbye to Julia, and went to meet him.

The walk back to U-21st was awkward, conversation limited to recounting my day at school, most of which I couldn't remember. He was persistent, trying to melt my suit of armor.

"Come on, tell me your grades from last week," he said, "that quiz you were worried about in Math?"

"Eighteen over twenty," I murmured, not caring.

"Ha! You owe me 10u. You said you'd get a seventeen," he smiled.

I looked up. "I said seventeen point five."

He wagged a finger. "You said seventeen."

"Fine," I said. I thought of that morning, of how quickly I'd run off to school to get away from them. The tension during breakfast. We walked in silence for a time. He'd taken off his jacket and rolled up his white shirtsleeves, altering his normally long stride to match my reluctant one. I remembered how easily he had skated across that ice yesterday. Year Sixteen, I'd almost forgotten.

"Don't worry," he said, "we just want to talk to you."

I took this in, then slipped off my own school jacket and carried it under one arm. "So, you're not mad at me?" I asked the ground.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw him shake his head. "No, we're not mad at you."

"She's mad at me," I insisted, "I saw how she looked at me when I mentioned that baby."

He shook his head again. "She's not mad at you, not at all," he reassured. "She was upset, but not because of you."

I was immediately relieved, but I couldn't let the subject go unanswered. "I was right, then. She did have another baby."

Our house was coming up on the right, and my father cleared his throat. "Let's talk about this later."

My father helped me with my homework once I brought down the portable tablet from my bedroom. We ate clementines. I asked about his work and, as usual, his answers left much to be desired. I would know soon, at the end of January when I became a Protector. Soon my mother's footsteps sounded outside and, after hearing the code beeped in, she walked in the door, her face brightening at the sight of us sitting together at the table.

"Hi," she said. She was nervous, although she concealed it well. "Everything okay?"

"Yeah," my father said, and I nodded, hoping she saw the peace in my eyes. She hung up her coat and took off her shoes, then came to the table. Like every day, she smoothed a hand over my head in greeting, today my messy hair, then went to the other side of the table to kiss my father.

"I think we're ready to talk," my father said tentatively.

"Oh." Her voice was like the feeling I'd felt that morning, the inevitability of a difficult conversation tinged with hope that it would maybe be swept under the rug. But there was no rug in sight. Here we were. She took a deep breath, then sat down next to my father, looking uncomfortable.

"Sylvia," my father began, "I think you've known for awhile that these dreams you have, the things you see...other people can't see them."

I nodded. I used to wonder if my friends had them, too, and if they, like me, were keeping a secret. But they couldn't be as carefree as they were, as innocent. I'd seen things, I knew that there was no single side to a coin. "I see the Past."

He bit his lip. "Yes, but you see it in a certain way. You know a few years ago, when you told me about the moon landing?" I nodded again. "Well, that exact memory was only experienced by a single person. No one, not even in the Past, could have that memory except for the man who experienced it. And do you remember the coronation, in the cathedral?" I remembered it well, a exhilarating dream. "It wasn't you being crowned. It was a king in the Past."

There was a pause of charged silence. "Do you understand?" my mother asked gently.

I looked at them. "So they're someone else's memories? A specific person?"

They nodded. "We think so," my father continued. "You see the Past, but not your past, you see it through the eyes of the whole world. Through the eyes of a king, or through a prisoner's in a concentration camp."

"I've seen other things," I said, feeling a great release surging up within me. "One time I was tied up and thrown into a well. I jumped off a building once, so high I couldn't see the street. It was like flying, but I was terrified. One time I was holding a gun, I shot a little girl. She was screaming, and I shot her." My father's eyes were wide, and my mother was holding her own hand down to the table. It was a reflex of hers to soothe me after a frightening dream, giving me a happy image, and over the years I'd internalized so much of the pain that no kitten, no sunny day could take it away. She wanted to reach out and give me a memory.

"Why didn't you let us know?" she asked, her voice conveyed the misery of a parent who couldn't comfort their child.

"Nobody can know everything about someone," I said, wishing it weren't quite so true.

My father cleared his throat, bringing us back to the topic. "Sylvia, in a month you'll graduate, you'll be selected as a Protector."

Despite everything, a sense of pride swelled inside me.

"When the ceremony is over, they're going to show you some of the Past. But what they'll show you...it won't be real."

I raised my eyebrows. "What do you mean? How can a memory not be real?"

He was glad I had asked the question. "Memories aren't always honest. We can make them prettier in our heads, especially if we've done something wrong. We can make whatever we've done seem less significant. Like when you scrape your knee falling down, but once the scab heals you can barely remember the instant of pain."

I nodded, following his train of thought. My mother had her eyes on my father, a quiet admiration.

"But what you see, Sylvia...you see undiluted memories. The exact instant something occurred, the emotion behind it. There's no bias in your visions. There isn't time to make the memory prettier, or less true."

I looked at my mother, who nodded at me. It's true, her eyes said.

"You'll see things after the ceremony that you've seen before. But those events have been altered significantly. To highlight the wrong in them. What's wrong in those memories is subjective. When you've had your dreams about the Holocaust, what was wrong?"

I couldn't put it into words, the amount of things that were wrong. I looked to my mother for help. "Everything! All of it. There was shouting, and I knew that whoever was shouting was saying things that made me scared. The people around me, the prisoners, I was one of them. We hadn't done anything wrong."

"And when you shot the little girl?" my mother asked.

My eyes widened. "I wanted her dead. I was thrilled to kill her." I panicked. "But I know it's wrong! I would never hurt a child! You have to believe me!"

She smiled reassuringly. "We know, we know. Of course not. But the point is, you've been the good guys and the bad guys, and in both memories what you were feeling was the truth, their truth. Not yours."

"So the Past they'll show us after the ceremony, it'll be made of memories of things they want me to see."

My father nodded. "Exaggerated versions of horrible events in the Past, but no good ones. Instead of music there'll be screaming, instead of swimming they'll show drowning, instead of a holiday they'll show a war."

"Why?"

"To make you believe that Utopia is the only solution, the logical one. Your friends, kids who haven't seen the things you've seen, they'll believe what they see. Once they see the Creators's version of the Past, they'll be completely won over," my father said, his tone bordering on cold anger. My mother put a hand on his arm to calm him.

I was puzzled. "But isn't Utopia better? No war, no drowning, no hunger, no senseless killing."

"How do we know that war is a bad thing?" my mother asked.

I shrugged. "Because...people die?"

She nodded. "Because we learn from the Past. War probably seemed like a good idea the first time people charged into it, but in the end they learned that decimating the enemy is a dirtier job than it looks. And that it's not always worth it."

I looked at them both. We had reached level ground. "Why are you telling me this?"

"Because you need to know your own Past. Our Past," my father said. "Once the Creators find out you know the truth, you'll be in danger. So we need to prepare you."

"I already know some of my Past, I think," I offered, bothered by his last statement but planning on coming back to it.

"Before Utopia," my mother clarified. "Sylvia, you were born before Utopia."

"I know," I said, unfazed. "I remember the day I was born. I've seen it a couple times."

She blinked, tucking a stray strand of hair behind her ear. "What?"

"It wasn't very clear, Mom. I remember being on your chest and crying. It was dark around us, and I was cold, but you were warm." I looked at my father. "You were there, too, Dad. You had a beard, though."

They looked like two children caught in a game of hide and seek. Found out.

"But -how did you know?" my mother sputtered.

"Because I never see memories of Utopia, not unless you show me one, Mom. I only see the Past."

My father chuckled. "Well, I guess that's one big hurdle out of the way, then."

My mother batted his arm. "Mulder, come on, be serious."

"Sorry," he apologized, smirking.

"So," my mother continued, "I'm going to show you our Past. Not all of it," she reassured, "just what you need to know."

"So, what I saw last night, those things were real? It was your Past?" I clarified.

She nodded. Suddenly I narrowed my eyes. "But what about what you said before...about people making their memories prettier, subjective. Won't yours be the same way?"

She shrugged. "Probably, but not in the same way the Creators will try to use them as a manipulation tactic. We just want you to know our version of how things happened, and why. We want to help you understand, and to show you, even if it hurts sometimes."

"You'll find out how your batshit crazy your mom thought I was back in the day," my father said, making her chuff out a laugh.

"And how right you ended up being," my mother said gently, putting her hand on his on the table.

"Mom, don't show me you and Dad, you know…"

She choked on air. "Sylvia!"

"Yeah, keep it PG, Mom," my father joked.

Flustered, she stood and went to the kitchen, calling out to ask if we wanted water. I shared an amused look with my father and we declined. The mood had lightened over the past hour, and was now clear with the electric pull of hope. I was going to get to see their Past, and learn from it. For once I felt genuinely grateful for my ability to see things others couldn't. In our small and simple dining room my world had changed profoundly with nothing more than words.

It felt like the dream I'd had once, looking into a pool in the shade of a Joshua tree. Stained dark, leaves scattered over the surface and dotting the none-too-clean bottom. The water still and silent. Even in its filthiness there was something forbidden and mysterious about that pool. My mother's memories were those littered leaves, some pressed stubbornly against the walls of the pool. It didn't look pleasant, but I still wanted to jump in just to make the water move.


A/N: Feedback welcomed and appreciated.