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“The Arisen”
A new short story about fact, fiction, and libraries from the award-winning
author of Speak and Trinity.

BY LOUISA HALL MARCH 23, 2019 • 7:00 AM

Lisa Larson-Walker

Each month, Future Tense Fiction—a series of short stories from Future Tense and ASU’s
TWEET
Center for Science and the Imagination about how technology and science will change our
lives—publishes a story on a theme. The theme for January–March 2019: identity.
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“Once upon a time,” Jim said, “in a country called Acirema

COMMENT MORE ON FUTURE TENSE
—” FICTION

Welcome to the A.I. Haunted

“Acirema,” I said. “How imaginative, it’s—” House

“Do you want me to tell this story or not?” Jim said. His The Problem With Handing Our
Survival Over to the Tech
tone was suddenly harsh. Billionaires

“Sorry,” I said. I’d just woken up, and my head hurt. I was When Bond Villain Meets Tech
Billionaire
still trying to piece together how he’d ended up here. How
I’d allowed him to stay. I glanced at the windowsill—there Could a Robot Be Your Dog’s
Best Friend?
was the bottle of whiskey someone had given me for my
birthday. Empty. That, then, was why my head hurt.

“Go on,” I said, feeling my stomach sink. “Please.”

Jim stood and began pacing the narrow end of the bedroom. “You have to understand,” he said,
“that in Acirema, everyone had suffered a great deal as a result of an age of emotional
decision-making. Eventually, out of fear for—

“Wait a second,” I said, remembering something from before the whiskey came out. “I’m sorry,
but if this is going to be another attempt to persuade me—”

“It’s not. It’s a story about Acirema, and two women who fell in love despite what might have
seemed like insurmountable obstacles.”

“OK,” I said. I pulled my knees up to my chest. He was so handsome, I thought. With his shirt
off, and that tattoo on his shoulder.

“If you let me talk for a minute,” he said, “I’ll tell you how they met.”

He glanced at me, as if to make sure I wasn’t preparing another interruption. I zipped my lips.

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“They met,” he said, “in the library. Most libraries, of course, had long since been replaced by
facilities supporting the cloud. Some, however, had been preserved as museums of ancient
artifacts. Their public holdings were small, since many reading materials had been banned.
But still, it was possible to check out books on science and technology, biographies, historical
texts.

“The Arisen—those members of society who had passed their computational logic exam and
received their memory chip—valued such historical accounts, as long as they weren’t
fantastically written, and as long as they contained only true facts.

“As you can imagine, however, it was a challenge to determine which were the true facts, and
which were the fictions. It was to address this very issue that the profession of truth-checker
—which could, of course, only be held by an Arisen—eventually developed.

“Pom was a truth-checker. And for this reason, she often visited the library.

“Not all truth-checkers visited physical libraries. But Pom had bad eyes. This is a critical point
in the story. Pom—or so she said—had a type of astigmatism that made it more comfortable to
read a physical book. Computer screens gave her a headache and corrective surgery came
with a risk, however unlikely, of further damaging her vision. Pom thought the inconvenience
did not merit the risk.

“This, at least, was her rationale, confirmed by her ophthalmologist, who had listened to her
and written the requisite note in his shadowy office, with gold lamps and shelves lined with a
surprising number of books.

“And so Pom often found herself in the library, searching the stacks for untruths. And this is
where she met Mathilde, our Unarisen, a lowly librarian charged with the task of organizing
the stacks and removing all counterfactual books.”

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For a moment, Jim paused in front of my bookshelf, which was empty except for a few
decorative objects. I wondered how I could tell him to leave, without offending him too directly.

“At this point,” he was saying, pacing again, “I should explain that our Mathilde was a great
lover of books. It was for this reason that she did not pass her Arisen exam and never received
a memory chip, that gift from the authorities that would process her emotional memories
each night, sifting through and removing those knots of feeling that would inevitably lead to
rash and unhelpful decisions, then saving them elsewhere, on the cloud, so that though they
could not be immediately accessed, they would never be lost.

“Otherwise, Mathilde was an extremely intelligent woman. She would have made a successful
ascendant, but she loved reading too much, and it was for this reason that she had taken the
job of librarian, which involved the destruction of fictional or counterfactual books. Because
she did not want the job to be performed by someone for whom it was easy.

“When Mathilde burned a book, she stroked its cover. She whispered to it. She read its last
lines over and over before she slipped it into the flames.

“Mathilde, of course, knew that this was not

a logical routine. Books have no feelings. It
would be impossible to comfort them before “When Mathilde
death. And yet. And yet, and yet. It seems
burned a book, she
our Mathilde was not a logical person, and
so she and Pom both went to work in the
stroked its cover. She
one library still open in the city where both whispered to it. She
of them lived.” read its last lines over
It was late morning now, and light had and over before she
begun to come in through the window, slipped it into
crossing the bed in narrow bands. Later, the flames.”
they’d start to widen, and by early afternoon
they’d be golden and fat, rhomboids of light
on the bedspread.

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“Notsob,” I said.

I wished, again, that I hadn’t drunk so much. I was beginning to feel that awful dusty ache in
my throat, something between thirst and loneliness: that empty feeling when you’ve just
woken up, and haven’t yet remembered what you knew you’d lost the evening before.

Jim pulled up short. “What?”

“Notsob,” I said, looking at those bands of light. “The city where they both lived.”

Jim paused for a moment, his head tilted to the right. Then he understood, and laughed that
quiet, unhappy scrape of a laugh.

“Right,” he said, pacing again. “Right. Notsob. As head memoir inspector in the city of Notsob,
Pom was responsible for dividing the library’s memoirs into two stacks: factual, and
counterfactual.

“In order to determine this, she arrived promptly each morning, reported to the same carrel in
the reading room, and applied to a stack of memoirs that she had selected a complex
algorithm involving computations of subjectivity, sentimentality, use of metaphor, and
reverse-historical impulse.

“The doomed books piled up, and Pom’s head throbbed from reading so many memoirs. After a
long morning of work, Pom’s shoulders ached, and she suffered from headaches. She was
often forced to take breaks, laying her head down on the desk, resting her eyes for a moment.

“It was after one of these breaks that Pom opened her eyes and saw a new book—a book she
didn’t remember having selected—sitting on the desk in front of her. It was called The Diaries
of Mary Bradford. Pom frowned. As you can imagine, she liked to proceed through her stacks
in a very particular order. She considered returning the book to its place. but something about
its tired presence there on the desk—its green cover was faded and worn, its corners softened
—compelled Pom to open it.

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“As if, out of politeness, she were opening the door for an old person.

“After skimming through the opening pages—including an introduction by a nephew of the

book’s author, who seemed to have felt compelled to make numerous apologies for the
author’s gender, her flights of fancy, her inferior intellect—Pom read the first entry, in which
Mary Bradford—a girl of 13, born, it seems, in England in the 17th century—prepared for a
journey to America.

“For a few pages, Pom was engrossed. Then, remembering herself, she sighed in resignation.
Before she’d even started to run her calculations, it was clear that this memoir was not going
to pass state standards for historical rigor.

“The diarist’s voice was stilted and false, striving after the tone of a male adventurer she
called ‘Sir William Leslie,’ otherwise lost to history. She was nostalgic and sentimental. Her
raging against her parents’ choice of a man for her to marry was understandable, but
expressed in a melodramatic and ungrammatical fashion. And worse, on every page, she
employed excessive metaphor.

“Any one of these factors alone should have doomed The Diaries of Mary Bradford, but for
some inexplicable reason, Pom did not immediately toss it into the stack of banned books.
This, of course, was her first error: an inexplicable lapse. Even Pom could never quite say what
it was that caused her to read the next entry. Whether it was the spunk in young Mary’s voice,
preparing to embark on a journey away from the only world she’d ever known. Or whether it
was simply the desire to know whether she did indeed marry the man her parents had chosen
for her. And whether, despite her parents’ injunctions, she was able to bring her beloved dog,
Ralph, on their journey.

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“Regardless, Pom read on, and checked the next entry in case. That entry, of course, also failed
the algorithm. And yet perhaps because Pom was tired, and it was the end of a long day, she
still didn’t feel certain. When it was time for the library to close, Pom looked around to be sure
that no one was watching, then placed the diary at the very bottom of the pile of books she
was inspecting.

“On her way out of the library, as she did every evening, Pom waved goodbye to Mathilde. Pom
could feel Mathilde’s eyes follow her toward the door, and for some reason she slowed as she
checked for her umbrella, turned up the collar of her coat, and pulled a scarf out of her bag. She
wondered, idly, how that diary had appeared while she was sleeping. The thought of Mathilde
watching her as she slept caused a quick flush to creep up around her temples.

“Annoyed at herself, she removed her glasses, cleaned them, then blinked at the clearer foyer
of the library. Then she shouldered her workbag, pushed through the revolving doors, and
entered the brisk April air. Once more—and only once more, I can assure you—she glanced back
at Mathilde, through the glass doors. Mathilde smiled. Despite herself, Pom smiled as well.
Then she hurried off down the sidewalk.”

I watched the bedspread while Jim paced. The bands of light had indeed widened into
rhombuses, and I knew that soon they would begin to contract.

I looked around at the white walls, the brown shelves, the gray bedspread. With the exception
of those few trinkets on the bookshelf and the empty bottle on the windowsill, everything was
so bare. I knew I should tell Jim to leave. But then there was something so sad about lying
there in that empty room, waiting for the light to contract. Knowing that soon I’d be alone, in a
room that might as well have been in a hotel, or someone else’s house: a house that bore no
evidence of my life.

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“As Pom walked home,” Jim was saying, gathering steam, obviously determined to get to the
end of the story, “along the same twisting streets she always walked along, she could not help
but reminisce about Mary Bradford, who—at the time Pom stopped reading—was still at home
in England. Still adventuring along the carriage road with her sheepdog, Ralph. Still running
after him into the fields, though now she did so with the awareness that very soon she would
lose him.

“For some reason, on that particular day, Pom felt intensely aware that it was also springtime
in Notsob. The last stubborn ice formations on the cornices of houses had melted, and Pom
could smell water trickling along the stone gutters. Then she realized that the trees—which
had been bare all winter—were in fact covered in tiny green buds, furled like little lettuces.

“This line of thought—‘like little lettuces’—gave Pom a terrible start. It had been a long time
since Pom had formed a simile. That kind of language was poorly regarded in arisen Acirema:
an obfuscation of truth.

“Realizing what she’d done, Pom felt a stab of anxiety. Stories of other fallen inspectors had
trickled down through the ranks of Pom’s graduate program. Book inspectors had the highest
rate of descendance, and Pom did not want to descend. For all the practical reasons—financial,
social, etc.—she was pleased with her ascendance. She liked to think that her emotional
memories had been saved somewhere safe, to be accessed, perhaps, by future generations.

“Pom, furthermore, shared the majority view that it was raw, unreasoned emotion that,
historically, had led to the cruelest disasters. For the sake of her country, therefore, and for the
unborn children she sometimes allowed herself to dream about, she did not want to descend.
That night, however, when she lay down to sleep, she could still smell water trickling along
stone. She could see the new leaf buds like tiny lettuces, and the lilac blossoms, and the moss
between each cobblestone. She could hear the ringing clip of her heels on the stone, which had
been somehow muted all winter.

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“Lying there, waiting to sleep, Pom felt invaded by sensation: memory, scent, the unburied
voice of that pilgrim girl, preparing for her ocean voyage. The next morning, however, Pom
woke with a feeling of crispness. Her mind had been cleaned overnight. The memories of
yesterday had been processed. She no longer smelled lilac or heard the sounds of her heels on
cobblestone. Her lapse into sentimentality had been removed from her memory, stored in the
cloud, accessible only under suitably controlled clinical conditions, if the proper paperwork had
been filed.

“That morning, she made her bed especially neatly. She pulled her sheets taut and tucked
them in with hospital corners. Afterward, she dressed for work, made herself a cup of coffee,
and set out for the library full of a sense of new purpose. As she passed through the library
doors, she nodded once at Mathilde, offered a polite smile of professional recognition, then
settled down again with her stack of dubitable memoirs.

“She read all morning until her head started to throb. When her headache threatened the
accuracy of her algorithmic calculations, she took a break, closing her eyes and placing her
forehead on the desk of the carrel while electric blue signs filed across the black space of her
skull.

“When the throbbing in her temples had died down, Pom opened her eyes and opened the
book in front of her. Perhaps she shouldn’t have been surprised to find that, once again, she
was reading Mary Bradford’s diary. She knew that she should have stopped immediately, but
by now the book had begun to seem like an old acquaintance: one she couldn’t, out of decency,
simply ignore.

“Instead, she read on for a few pages, experiencing once again Mary’s anticipation of the
journey to come: her love of that dog, Ralph, with his brown eyes and his white blaze; the smell
of grass in the meadows; the stone walls cracked with soft moss.

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“When she got to the place where she’d stopped the previous day—when Mary learns that her
dog is not to come on the journey, though her fiancé, unloved, undesired, will be on the ship—
Pom shut the book. How, she thought, had she come again to the same diary? Yesterday, she’d
placed it at the bottom of a towering stack. Had she already moved through so many
memoirs? Was she destroying books at such a pace?

“These were questions, of course, that she was asking to distract herself from what she
already knew: that the book should be condemned, and that she was the person to do it.
Clenching her jaw, she willed herself to open Mary’s memoir again. Once again, the results of
the algorithm revealed that the book would have to be sent for destruction.

“And once again, something kept Pom from throwing it into that pile. Perhaps it was the
silvery paths of snails on the pale undersides of the cow parsnip leaves, as Mary described
them. Perhaps it was the wind wrinkling the surface of the recently unfrozen trout pond.
Regardless, reading those pages, something like a memory of her walk home yesterday
evening flashed through Pom’s body—leaves, running water, and stone—and with a quick
jerking reflex, Pom again shoved Mary Bradford’s diary to the bottom of her unread pile of
books.

“That night, when the library closed, Pom gathered her possessions and moved out to the
entryway. Again, she waved goodbye to Mathilde; again Mathilde smiled in such a way that
caused Pom to pause, her hand helplessly suspended midflight. Blinking shyly, Pom reminded
herself that Mathilde was not an Arisen. She was a creature of reflex and unrefined feeling.
Then Pom completed her wave. She checked for her umbrella. She turned up her collar, pulled
her scarf from her bag, pushed her way into the revolving doors.

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“Once she was safely inside the sealed glass of the doors, however, Pom paused. Somehow the
exit into a world of brisk air, lilac bloom, and cobblestone made her feel anxious, and rather
than exiting through the door she continued to push until she was deposited again in the
library lobby.

“As soon as she stepped back into the lobby, however, she felt her face growing hot. What
must the librarian think of this strange Arisen woman, going in circles? Still, she was nervous
about leaving the library. About the rush of sensation she might feel if she did. So there she
stood, facing the doors, until from behind her she heard Mathilde.

“ ‘Good night,’ Mathilde called, and Pom shivered. Her voice sounded like water, running over
cold stone.

“The next morning, Pom returned to the library. Again, her memories of the previous day had
been processed, so nothing of the shiver that ran through remained when she walked through
the revolving glass doors. She was only aware that twice, in the presence of this woman, she
had succumbed to sentimentality. As a result, she was resolute, even a little annoyed at both
herself and Mathilde when she strode past Mathilde without saying hello.

“At her desk, there was a new mountain of memoirs. She unshouldered her bag, cleared a
space on her desk. Crisp routine, the neat repetitions of logic. And yet, despite all her noble
intentions, Pom could not control the weakness of her optical nerves. After lunch, her temples
started throbbing again. Again, she put her head down on the desk. When she woke, the diary
of Mary Bradford was before her once more, but this time her page had been kept by a pressed
flower.

“It must have been a large flower, Pom thought: the size of a peony. But instead of thick petals,
its bud was composed of hundreds of tiny green branches. A green map of a flower, Pom
thought. Like the complicated arteries of a city. Like the exposed veins of a pale, upturned
wrist.

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“At the end of each branchlet, there was a white flower the size of a comma. Pom picked it up
and twisted it between her thumb and her forefinger. It was cow parsnip, she realized. The
flowers that brushed Mary Bradford’s shoulders when she walked along the carriage road.

“Pom felt off-kilter and breathless. For a moment, she wished that this feeling could be
immediately processed so that she could regain her sure footing. And yet she knew that the
sensation would not be processed until nighttime, and for now the flower remained in her
hand, and Mary Bradford’s diary remained on her desk: solid and real, with its creased corners,
the dirt accumulated from every reader who’d taken it home and turned its yellowing pages.

“Suddenly, Pom was possessed by the desire to touch every one of those people. To run her
hands along the cow parsley that Mary Bradford had touched. To plunge her hands up to the
wrists in that cold stream she’d heard the previous evening.

“Then Pom continued to read. She read about Mary Bradford’s departure from England, about
her parents, about the man to whom she was to be married. Pom’s heart sank when he was
introduced: too old, too stern, entirely unexciting. It sank further when, in a storm, the dog,
Ralph, was lost at sea. But then her heart warmed when, still far from the land they hoped to
reach, the stern fiancé held a funeral for the dog Mary had lost. Understanding her irrational
grief, and indeed even feeling it with her.

“Reading the poetry that the stern fiancé brought to the funeral, Pom felt a pang of guilt:
Poetry, of course, had been the first banned fictional form. But she read it, nevertheless, and
could not help but feel washed by a wave of sensation.
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“Pom felt those lines, married together by rhyme. ‘Look homeward angel now,’ the fiancé said,
on the prow of the shop. ‘And, O ye dolphins, waft the hapless youth.’ Pom had spent her life
looking forward, shedding her memories every night. But now, reading those lines, she felt
herself turning, pulled back by an unassailable force.

“Once again, at the end of the day, Pom placed Mary Bradford’s diary at the bottom of her
stack, and when she left the library, Mathilde’s voice shivered through her. Once again, her
walk home was alive. Her heels striking the cobblestones, Pom felt saddened and joyous at
once. Certainly her life had been sharpened; only now she was aware of everything she had
lost, everything she would lose again when her memories had been properly processed.

“When she got home, she dusted off a shelf over her bed and placed the pressed cow parsley
there. Then, exhausted after a long day at work, she lay down in her bed, closed her eyes, and
waited for her memories to process.

“This pattern—neck pain, sleep, waking to that familiar diary—continued for several weeks. At
night she fell asleep and lost touch with all the sensations that had quickened her walk home
from the library. In the morning, she awoke feeling empty.”

I watched him, my knees pulled up to my chest. The room had grown cold. The back of my head
was throbbing. As I’d known they would, the rhomboids of light had narrowed and slipped
away, and now Jim was pacing in shadow.

“This emptiness,” Jim said. “It was a thing Pom had never felt upon waking. It was as if her chip
wasn’t functioning properly. For the first time in her adult life, she registered the loss of what
she’d felt the evening before. It was as if she were homesick for a place she couldn’t remember.

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“Pom began to make a habit of turning for reassurance to the shelf over her bed each morning.
By then, it was full of artifacts carried home from the library. During the weeks in which this
pattern continued, Pom found a new artifact every day, keeping her page in Mary Bradford’s
diary. After the cow parsnip, there was a handful of cut grass, a piece of white lace, a chunk of
salt-encrusted wood, a seashell that still smelled like the ocean.

“It was this seashell that Pom most often picked up in the morning, when she was feeling
empty and far from a home she couldn’t remember. Though she didn’t, of course, recall any of
the sensations she had felt when she picked up the shell for the first time, her thumb did fit
perfectly into its cool, smooth underbelly. Sometimes she pressed its pleated back to her
cheek. Sometimes she ran her tongue over its grooves. Then she dressed for work, and when
she walked through the large glass library doors, she saw Mathilde.

“In the following weeks, Pom’s output slowed to an embarrassing trickle. When she should
have been looking for books to destroy, she instead continued reading Mary Bradford’s diary.
At the end of the day, she made a habit of lingering for a long time in the foyer of the library, all
just to feel Mathilde watching her movements. She fiddled with her coat collar, zipped and
unzipped her bag, checked for the presence of her unnecessary umbrella, and after three
weeks of repeating this pattern, Pom walked out of the library and ran directly into the
Statewide Supervisor of Text Elimination.

“He asked if he could accompany her on her walk back home from the library. Pom agreed, and
as he talked, Pom listened with an odd sense of detachment. His words seemed to pass just
over her head, a steady current that she watched from below, like a trout in that unfrozen
pond. It had been noticed, the supervisor was saying, that Pom was no longer performing at
her usual rate. An investigation had opened; in the end it had been decided that she was not
fulfilling her duty; perhaps the position of book inspector was not the most logical post for
Pom’s particular talents.

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“Now the book inspector was attempting to be kind: Of course, he was saying, we all
understand the sacrifices involved with ascension. The absence of felt memory from
childhood, the loss of closeness with family, the resulting feelings of unbelonging.

“And yet succumbing to such sentiment, he was saying, has deleterious effects not only on the
individual but …

“Pom found her attention wandering. She kept noticing the leaves on the trees overhead. She
kept listening for the sounds of her heels on the cobblestones.

“Algorithms had been consulted. Their recommendation was that Pom should be moved to the
position of Office Coordinator, effective immediately. Tomorrow morning, she would report to
the State Center for Book Inspection, where she would be given further instructions.

“Pom agreed, crisply, that this was for the best. But that night, alone in her apartment, Pom
cried. It was a strange experience: She hadn’t cried since early childhood, and she could no
longer remember what had caused her to do so. Now, the experience of crying was
uncomfortable and embarrassing, but also something of a relief. This time, at least, she knew
precisely why she was crying.

“In the library, it had been as though she had discovered a closet she could move through into a
world that was her own: unmonitored, unprocessed, entirely private. A world where the sound
of her heels on the cobblestones was heightened. Where the scent of dirt after a rain was so
strong that it could fill a whole breath. Where the sound of Mathilde’s voice was like water
running down stone. For three weeks, she and Mathilde had lived on the other side of the
closet. And now she was crying because from today on, she would live alone on this side, and
by morning she would forget even why she had cared enough to cry these tears in the first
place.

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“Still, there was nothing she could do to change her situation. She would have to sleep at some
point. In the morning, she would no longer remember, and without memory, there would be no
regret. Resigning herself to the facts of the matter, Pom lay down and waited for sleep to
enfold her.

“In the morning, she did not press the seashell to her face. She wanted to, as soon as the
emptiness began to sink in. But she reminded herself not to cling to something already gone.
Instead, she lay very still for a while, looking up at the ceiling. Then she dressed, and made
herself coffee, and locked up her apartment and reported to her new office.

“She soon found that she was capable at her new duties. Her productivity was high, and by the
end of the week, the feeling of emptiness that had come to haunt her in the mornings had
started to fade, replaced by sensations of purpose.

“In fact, she had progressed so far in the course of a single week that she told herself, as she
walked to the office one morning, that she would dispose of her artifacts that very evening.
They were nothing more than sentimental distraction, those flowers and shells; why she had
allowed herself to collect them was a mystery.

“That evening, Pom walked home full of confidence. She already felt cleaner, simpler, just
knowing those artifacts would be gone. This feeling buoyed her, kept her steps brisk as she
rounded the corner onto her street, as she fumbled in her bag for her keys, as she passed an
alleyway and felt her arm grabbed suddenly by a rough hand that pulled her backward so that
she dropped her bag, tripped on her heel, and stumbled into the side of a dumpster before
falling onto her knees. Panic surged through her body. For a second, the world went black. And
then she heard a familiar voice. ‘I’m sorry,’ it said. ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry.’ ”

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Jim paused and glanced at me, his face darkened by shadow. Suddenly, for no reason at all, I
felt tears prick at my eyes. I blinked them back. It was just this depressing time of day: the light
faded and gone, evening creeping in. There was no need to be crying.

“Now the same hand was helping Pom up,” Jim was saying. “Guiding her to the back wall of a
building so that she could rest. ‘I’m sorry,’ the hand said. ‘Are you all right?’

“Pom couldn’t face her attacker. Something in her refused to match the rough hand to that
voice. Now the hand was returning Pom’s purse. Now her attacker was kneeling, the same
hand brushing gravel from Pom’s knees.

“Leaning against the building, Pom felt very weak. She wanted to reach down and brush the
dark hair of the person kneeling before her, to hold onto her for support. ‘I’m so sorry,’ the voice
said again. ‘I didn’t mean to frighten you, but I’m in trouble. Could we go inside? I’ll only take a
minute of your time.’

“Pom’s head was throbbing. Now there were spots of blue light in her vision, and perhaps it
was those spots and that throbbing that caused her to agree.

“ ‘Fine,’ she said. ‘Just for a minute.’ She told herself it wasn’t a crime to allow an Unarisen into
your house. But even so, before she unlocked her front door, she looked around to be sure no
one had seen them.

“Inside, Pom sat at the kitchen table and watched while Mathilde reached into her bag to pull
out a book. It was, of course, Mary Bradford’s diary.

“ ‘It’s been condemned,’ Mathilde said. ‘So I stole it. I can’t go home. They know where I live.
They’ve already gone there and taken the other books that I saved. If they find me, I’ll be
arrested and the book will be lost. Please don’t let them destroy it.’

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“Pom stared down at the book. If the authorities found this book in her house, her chip would
be removed. She would descend. Having lost her felt memories once in her lifetime, she’d lose
them again, and this time the loss would be permanent. There would be no consolation, even
that of imagining they’d remain in the cloud, to be viewed, perhaps, by posterity, at some point
when such emotions were no longer a threat. No. If she removed that chip, all traces would be
lost. Each tender interaction with her parents, now gone. Each meaningful moment with the
men and women she’d known in her adulthood.

“Gone, all of them. And then she’d be doubly, triply alone. The Arisen would shun her. The
Unarisen—who believed that the Arisen were cold, excessively logical, devoid of any human
emotion—wouldn’t accept her. She’d spend the rest of her life in between.

“ ‘They’ll take my chip,’ she said to Mathilde. ‘I’ll lose everything.’

“ ‘But do you remember reading it?’ Mathilde asked.

Pom put her head in her hands. ‘Factually, yes. I remember that I did read it.’

“ ‘But you don’t remember how you felt when you were reading it? Or after, when you saw me
in the lobby of the library?’

“ ‘No,’ Pom said, but even as she said it, she was aware of the shelf over her bed, which she had
failed to clean off, which even now stood as evidence that there had been excessive sentiment
involved with her time in the library. Even that shelf would be enough for the authorities to
examine her chip, and already the memory of the encounter—the book on her kitchen table,
this Unarisen fugitive—would have been recorded. Even this conversation would be enough to
cause her to descend, Pom thought, and a new wave of emotion—fear, anger at Mathilde,
loneliness because very soon she was going to send Mathilde out of her house—washed over
her.

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“It was then that Mathilde knelt before her again and touched her bruised knee with one hand.
‘Do you feel this?’

“Pom didn’t move. She only pressed her palms into her eyes until the blue spots reappeared.
Then Mathilde leaned forward and kissed Pom’s knee. ‘Do you feel this?’

“It was nothing terrible: only the kind of gesture that a mother might have used to comfort a
daughter, and yet Pom could not remember feeling this, and she seemed to be rocking in a sea
of loss. Now Mathilde reached up and touched Pom’s neck with her fingertips. ‘Do you feel
this?’ she asked, and Pom was angry, because she did feel it, and she knew she wouldn’t feel it
tomorrow. But then Mathilde kissed the side of Pom’s neck, and kissed the back of her head,
and kissed the top of her ear, and each time Pom felt washed with new sadness that she would
not remember this feeling. Then Mathilde took Pom’s face in her hands and leaned forward so
that her dark hair brushed Pom’s shoulders. Then she pressed her mouth to Pom’s mouth.

“ ‘Can you feel this? And this, and this?’ ”

It was then that Jim finally stopped pacing, came to the bed, sat beside me, and touched my
knee.

I flinched. “Don’t,” I said.

This time he stopped.

For a moment, he sat there slumped in the darkness. I thought maybe he’d leave, or at least
start pacing again. But he wasn’t moving. He stayed there beside me.

“In the middle of the night,” he said, in a quieter voice, “Pom woke. Mathilde was watching her.
Pom started in fright. Her memories had already started to process. Why had she let the
librarian sleep in her bed? What if she had stolen something? What if the authorities found
out? Pom grasped for the sheets, feeling an urge to cover herself. When Mathilde reached
across the bed and touched her bare arm, Pom pulled it away.

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“ ‘You don’t remember, do you?’ Mathilde asked.

“ ‘I remember what I need to,’ Pom said. ‘Please: I have to ask you to leave.’

“ Mathilde drew her hand away. ‘I understand,’ she said. Then she got out of bed and got
dressed. Pom watched each one of her movements: the long lines of her arms, her dark hair
falling over her shoulder. Once she’d buttoned her shirt and tied back her hair, Mathilde
paused. ‘I couldn’t help noticing the shelf over your bed,’ she began, ‘and—

“ ‘I shouldn’t have kept them,’ Pom said. Her face had grown hot. ‘You can take them with you
when you go.’

“ Mathilde nodded. She opened the knapsack in which she had been carrying Mary Bradford’s
diary, and with one sweep of her arm knocked all of the objects into the bag. ‘Gone,’ she said.
‘Wiped clean. I won’t bother you again.’

“ ‘Where will you go?’ Pom asked.

“ ‘I’m not sure. I can’t escape on my own; I’ve already run out of money. I’ll have to go home
eventually, and the authorities will find me as soon as I do. They’ll arrest me, but before they
do that, they’ll find where I’ve hidden our book.’

“ ‘And destroy it.’

“Mathilde shrugged. ‘That’s how it goes,’ she said. ‘There’s nothing else I can do.’

“She shouldered her bag and headed out toward the door. She walked slowly, one step at a
time. There was the door to the bedroom; there was the hallway out to the front door.
Mathilde approached it. She had one hand on the doorknob, one thumb tucked under her
knapsack, when she heard Pom speak.

“Pom was standing in the hall. ‘Will you read me the last page?’ she said. ‘I never got to the last
page.’

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“Mathilde nodded. She pulled the diary from her bag, opened it, and started to read:

Should never have left home. Ralph, gone. My only love, gone. The person I once was,
slipping away. Fear that, on land, my memories will grow dim. What will become of him
then? Fear that Ralph will be lonely, deep in the sea. Unwatched for, forgotten.

“Pom sat down in the hall. She was sitting with her legs drawn up to her chest. Mathilde
looked at her, then continued to read:

Moved out toward the open sea behind us. Facing away from the land. Nothing but washing
blackness. Remember me, I whispered to him. Remember me. Remember me. Remember
me.

“ ‘You can stay here,’ Pom said. Her eyes were pressed into her knees.

“ ‘The authorities will come after you eventually,’ Mathilde said. ‘For harboring a fugitive.
They’ll bring you in. They’ll scan your chip. They’ll know exactly where I’m hiding. They’ll know
where we’re keeping it.’

“ ‘I won’t let them,’ Pom said. ‘I’ll eject my chip.’

“ Mathilde paused for a moment. Then she sat beside Pom. ‘Do you know what that means?’
she asked. ‘You’ll lose everything that you’ve stored.’

“ ‘I’ve lost it anyway.’

“ ‘We can’t be sure how you’ll function without it.’

“ ‘I’ll learn.’

“ ‘When you die, the record of your life will be incomplete. Your memories will go with you.’

“ ‘They’re my own memories,’ Pom said.

“ ‘Are you sure?’ Mathilde asked. Pom looked at her, squinting. She was very nearsighted
without her glasses. Remembering this, Mathilde stood, moved past Pom, found where Pom
had placed her glasses on the bedside table. She fit their wire arms over Pom’s ears. Then she
kissed both of Pom’s ears. Then she kissed Pom’s forehead.

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“ ‘Look at me and tell me the truth,’ Mathilde said. ‘Are you sure about this?’

“ ‘Yes,’ Pom said. She stood and went to the cabinet under the sink, and pulled out a bottle of
whiskey. ‘I’m sure about this.’

“They drank a glass together. Then, in short succession, Pom drank another two, and closed
her eyes when Mathilde took out her pocketknife.

“The chip wasn’t buried deep. It only required a shallow cut to remove it, but still Pom gasped
when the blade sank through her skin. The pain was worse when Mathilde probed the cut with
her finger. Then there was an unnatural scraping sound. Pom winced and dug her fingernails
into her thigh, and then, suddenly, Pom’s whole body was a shell for passing memories: a man
standing under the soft snow from cottonwood trees; a hawk circling alone; wind in her hair;
night falling; her mother’s perfume; the loneliness she’d felt, alone in a bedroom.

“And then those glimpses were gone. Pom gasped a second time, this time not as a result of
the pain but because of the emptiness that replaced it. Then she looked up at Mathilde.

“ ‘Put it back,’ she said. ‘Put it back in!’

“ ‘I can’t,’ Mathilde said. ‘No one can put them back in.’

“ ‘What did you do to me?’ Pom asked. She crossed her hands over her stomach. There was
nothing within her. She had become no one. ‘What did I let you do?’ ”

Jim paused. By then I’d touched the bandage at the back of my head, and the crescents my
fingernails had left on my thigh, and then I was really crying.

“What did I let you do?” I asked. “What did I—

“Don’t interrupt,” Jim said, but quietly now, sitting close to me. For a while, he let me cry, and
when I’d quieted he started his story again.

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“Mathilde tried to comfort Pom,” Jim said. “ ‘You’re starting over now,’ Mathilde said. ‘Now
everything that happens is yours to keep—’

“Pom didn’t move.

“ ‘We have to start over again,’ Mathilde said. ‘This is the beginning. I am Mathilde.’

“Pom still didn’t move.

“ ‘You are Pom,’ Mathilde said. ‘I am Mathilde. I’ve watched you a very long time. You can’t see
without your glasses. You always bring an umbrella. You take a deep breath before you push
through the glass doors. Every day you walk home along the same streets. You live on your
own. This is your apartment. These are the cuts on your knees where you fell on the gravel.
This is how I kissed them, one at a time. Do you remember this? Are you starting, now, to
remember?’ ”

Read a response essay from Jim O’Donnell, university librarian at Arizona State University,
about libraries as more than fact factories.

Previously in Future Tense Fiction:

“Mika Model,” by Paolo Bacigalupi
“Mr. Thursday,” by Emily St. John Mandel
“The Minnesota Diet,” by Charlie Jane Anders
“Mother of Invention,” by Nnedi Okorafor
“Domestic Violence,” by Madeline Ashby
“No Me Dejas,” by Mark Oshiro
“Safe Surrender,” by Meg Elison
“A Brief and Fearful Star,” by Carmen Maria Machado
“The Starfish Girl,” by Maureen McHugh
“When We Were Patched,” by Deji Bryce Olukotun
“Lions and Gazelles,” by Hannu Rajaniemi
“Burned-Over Territory,” by Lee Konstantinou
“Overvalued,” by Mark Stasenko
“When Robot and Crow Saved East St. Louis,” by Annalee Newitz
“Thoughts and Prayers,” by Ken Liu
“Mpendulo: The Answer,” by Nosipho Dumisa

Future Tense is a partnership of Slate, New America, and Arizona State University that
examines emerging technologies, public policy, and society.

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