The Memory Keepers (2 page)

1

It was the room at the back of the flat. Past the living room and kitchen, the three small bedrooms and the grimy bathroom (the flat
was
being rented by three grimy teenage boys, after all), and behind a door Seven always kept locked.

There was no sign on the door. Not one suggestion of what lay behind the peeling paint. Still, Seven liked to think you could feel the power of what the door hid, like a pulse, a heartbeat, a soft touch behind your eyeballs that made you pause as you walked past. He imagined his flatmates Sid and Kola wondering,
What the eff is in there?
whenever
they went by. Then they’d probably forget all about it as soon as they looked away.

But Seven didn’t need to wonder, and he never, ever forgot what he kept hidden inside the blue filing cabinets behind the door.

Sometimes, before he even went into the room, Seven knew exactly what he wanted from it. A few of the cabinet handles were smeared with his mucky fingerprints from being opened frequently over the years. And, though he wouldn’t admit it, even if anyone did know about the room, on top of one of the cabinets was a broken mug in which he kept his favourite pieces of the collection. Those pieces were like friends to him; were his
only
friends, really. He knew them entirely, and they were always there whenever he needed them.

Other times – like today – Seven would simply walk into the room and ask it, ‘Surprise me.’

The room was small and windowless. Blue metal filing cabinets lined each wall. Tucked into one corner was a strange-looking machine, tall and skinny, just like Seven. The place was nothing like the grand memoriums of the rich people’s houses he stole from, all dark, polished wood and marbled floors, but it was his, and there weren’t a lot of things he could say that about.

After locking the door with the key he wore on a thin chain round his neck, Seven stepped into the centre of the room. He swiped sweat off his forehead with the back of one hand. It was just as hot here as the rest of the flat. South was stifling in October, with its cramped streets and tall tower blocks and smoggy air choked with smoke from the factories. Thankfully, in just a few minutes, he’d be far away from here.

Closing his eyes, Seven flung open his arms and launched into a tight spin on the spot. Seven turns later (that was his little joke, though it always saddened him there was no one who knew about the room to appreciate it) he stopped, stumbling slightly with dizziness. He savoured the moment, eyes still shut, a deep, rushing excitement spiralling through him as he wondered what the room had to offer him today. Then he opened his eyes.

His outstretched arm was pointed at a cabinet labelled:
Fear, Desperation and General Wetting-your-pants Kind of Stuff
. Not the world’s most sophisticated labelling system – the banks and memoriums went by date – but it worked for Seven. He knew instantly what he was going to get.

‘Good choice,’ he told the room, grinning. ‘You want to give me a little adrenalin shot, huh? Or maybe I’m getting fat and you’re trying to tell me to do some exercise?’

Seven looked down at himself. Through his faded grey shirt, he pinched the flesh that ringed his belly. It was barely enough to hold between his thumb and finger.

Nope. That definitely wasn’t it.

Not that he minded being so scrawny. Thieving would be pretty hard with a great big belly getting stuck in every window he sneaked through. So Seven told himself that he was glad of his size, that he had to keep himself that way. He pushed away the thought that always hovered at the edge of his mind:
Still not eating enough.

Besides, he’d learnt to feed himself with something other than food.

Opening a drawer of the filing cabinet at random, Seven rifled through the small square DSCs – Digital Storage Clips – inside. They rattled and clinked, their metal cool against his skin.

‘Today’s dish
du jour
’, he announced to no one in particular, in a French accent he’d picked up from the fish-houses by the river, ‘is a
petit
helping of heart-stopping terror, followed by a mouthful of
très
tasty pant-pooping.’

He pulled out a random DSC. Marked in red ink across its label were the words:

10.04.2143, R.L.S., 27 Radcliffe Court

Seven labelled his collection by the piece’s date, owner’s initials, and where he had stolen it, but he never said what its actual contents were. Apart from the DSCs in the mug, whose contents he knew by heart, he liked rediscovering pieces in his collection. That way he could almost believe they were his
own
memories, made so long ago he’d forgotten about them, and each time he came across one he’d surfed before it was like finding his way back to a home he never knew he had.

Clutching the DSC in his palm, Seven went over to the machine tucked in the corner of the room. Twists of cables curled round it like the ivy clinging to the concrete walls of his block of flats. At its top was a rounded cap of metal. This was Seven’s pride and joy: a Memory Butler 3S. He had borrowed (well, stolen) the machine from a run-down skid-surfing emporium by the river years ago. It was an old model, not nearly as sophisticated as the ones in the banks and memoriums, but it did the job.

He powered up the machine and dragged it into the centre of the room. Sitting on a stool beside it, he strapped the wristbands dangling on cables to each arm – these controlled your heart-rate with electropulse technology to achieve the best conditions for skid-surfing – and placed a cap, also attached to the machine by cables, onto his head. It clipped itself in place with the blunt-ended pincers round its rim.

Seven winced. ‘A pleasure as always, Butler.’

Next, he plugged the machine’s feed cable into the DSC. He watched as the bar on the control screen filled, loading the contents of the clip.
As soon as it was full he jabbed the
ACTIVATE
option. He held his breath as, for one moment of delicious excitement, he wondered just what it was he was about to experience, what new world he was about to discover.

What new person he was about to become.

At first, there was nothing. Just the continued hum of the machine’s vibrations and its arrhythmic clicks. The muffled cooing and wing-beats of pigeons in the courtyard on the other side of the wall. Distant city sounds as London went about its afternoon. Then the machine’s humming grew louder, joined by a sharp, high-pitched keening sound, and there was a sudden flash of light that made Seven screw his eyelids together and bite down on his lip –

‘
MEMORY ACTIVATED
,’ came a flat, robotic voice, echoing up from somewhere deep within his skull. ‘
EXPIRATION IN EIGHT MINUTES, THIRTY-ONE SECONDS.
’

Seven opened his eyes.

The world had turned black. Silent. Still. It was like floating in nothingness. He reached out a hand and felt the ripple of memory-air, its honeyed warmth tickling his skin.

‘OK,’ Seven muttered, rolling back his shoulders and looking round at the darkness, searching for a sign as to why this memory was filed under
Fear, Desperation and General Wetting-your-pants Kind of Stuff
. He grinned. ‘Do your best, R.L.S., or I’m coming for a refund.’

2

Afternoon lessons were the worst. Especially around four p.m. It was the hottest, stuffiest, muggiest time of day, when Alba’s ears felt like they were blocked with cotton wool and it was physically painful to keep her eyes open. Four p.m. was a time for daydreaming and naps. Lazy walks around the grounds in Hyde Park Estate. Reading a novel in the overgrown meadowland that stretched along the northern curve of the Serpentine.

It was most certainly not a time for Modern History lessons with Professor Nightingale, which were to lessons what four p.m. was to afternoons –

The worst.

‘Then, late in the twenty-first century, of course, was the Big Dip, where stock prices crashed and international relations were at their most tenuous. And of course, the EU’s dissolution and the subsequent riots and mini-wars. And of course, the Warming had taken full effect on the world, with the British Isles’ climate mutating and the instability of the seasons. Temperatures were rising by an average of three degrees each decade. And of course  … ’

Alba propped her head in her hands as though listening intently, her face dutifully cast towards the front of the classroom even though her eyes (not to mention her brain) were half-closed.

Professor Nightingale was really not helping the situation, she thought. Practically everything about him was designed to make staying awake in his lessons even harder. His flat, droning voice and the way his face was shrivelled with wrinkles, as deep as the creases in his plaid suit. What was left of his hair clung to the top of his head in a wispy cloud.

Alba’s eyes fluttered shut. Professor Nightingale was going on about something boring – no change there – and she felt herself drifting off on the current of his voice, a soft wave pulling her towards sleep. She sunk lower into her chair. The silk of her school-dress clung tightly to her skin, feeling as warm and cosy as her duvet back home, and she was just slipping away into dreams, when –

‘Mistress White? Could you tell us the exact date of the Independence Governance Treaty signed by all eight of the proposed city-states here in the British Isles?’

Alba jerked awake. Professor Nightingale was staring right at her from the front of the classroom. His bug-like eyes wobbled behind round-framed spectacles. The room was silent, every student holding their breath (the mere mention of Alba’s family name was enough to do that to a class).

Hurriedly, Alba straightened. ‘The sixteenth of January, 2101, Professor,’ she answered promptly.

That was an easy one. The date was a Bank Holiday for Londoners, set to commemorate the event. All North children were taught how the British Isles had dissolved into eight city-states at the start of the twenty-second century to be ruled independently by separate Lord Ministers. It was the result of decades of conflict, competition for overseas business, and social tensions, which had grown too much for the national government. The cities were still bound to national laws observed by a representative board of delegates from each city, but for the most part they functioned individually. London’s current Lord Minister was a French-born man named Christian Burton-Lyon, elected mainly because of his connections with European traders.

Professor Nightingale nodded. ‘Correct, Mistress White. Five-thirty p.m. to be exact. And could you also tell us the date of the subsequent Memory-Surfing and Trading Practices Summit, where the International Memory Laws were created?’

This was a tougher one. Alba glanced down at her schoolbook; its pages were empty.

‘Oh, er  … ’ she murmured, trying to look busy by fussing with her notebook, her mind scrambling for the answer.

They had not yet learnt the detailed history of memory-surfing. Alba knew roughly what had happened from Net programmes and articles, and brief overviews in their school textbooks. After neuroscientific breakthroughs in the late twenty-first century, the first memory-machines were created, right here in London. Though they had initially been used for medical research – diseases such as Alzheimer’s and dementia were on the rise – after the collapse of the national government the reduction in state funding meant the research companies turned to private investors. New consumer uses for memory-machines were developed, and with growing numbers of investors from overseas becoming involved, the technology was soon taken up by a number of other countries.

The concept of memory-surfing and trading was understandably popular. At the time, oil reserves were almost depleted, international relations had been strenuous for decades, and technology had become increasingly insular, people more used to screens than nature. The ability to explore the world from the comfort of a memory-machine fitted into that backdrop perfectly. It wasn’t a cheap exercise, however. In London, with the divide between North and South, a culture of memory-surfing was cultivated in the North, while for Southers it was a luxury; often one they never got to experience.

But those were just the basics of what had happened. Alba knew little of the details, such as when the Memory-Surfing and Trading Practices Summit had been held.

She snuck a hopeful glance at Rosemary Dalton’s book on the table next to hers, which (what a surprise) was positively smothered in notes, but Rosemary – a big blonde girl with a piggy face constantly trapped in a sneer – caught her looking and stamped her arm across the pages. Alba sighed. Twirling a loose curl of her thick red hair round one finger, she tried to look thoughtful.

‘I – I think it was something like the twenty-third of March, 2138, Professor? Or was it 2137  … ’ She drifted off, cheeks reddening.

Professor Nightingale’s sigh was so long and slow it almost sent Alba nodding off again. ‘No, Mistress White,’ he said, breaths whistling through his nose, ‘it was neither of those dates. It was, of course, the second of May, 2138.’

‘Of course it was,’ muttered Alba beneath her breath.

Dolly was waiting for her outside the school gates when classes finished. Even though Knightsbridge Academy was only twenty minutes from her house, Alba wasn’t allowed to walk home alone. Before Dolly had persuaded them to let Alba walk – with Dolly as a chaperone, of course – Alba’s parents used to send her to school in one of their chauffeur-driven Bentleys with the family crest rising up in silver metal from the end of its hood. She had hated it, because it meant that every single person they passed on the street knew exactly who was inside.

Well, not that it was
Alba
, but that it was her family, and that was the problem.

Dolly was squinting in the late-afternoon sunshine, half-turned towards the road. She wore her servant’s uniform of white silk pinafore, blouse and stockings, the White family’s crest embroidered in black thread on her apron pocket. Her long purple hair was tied sleekly in two buns on top of her head.

Alba hurried across the schoolyard. In the playground, young children were shouting and laughing, their cries cutting through the thick, heat-choked air. The street beyond the gates was busy with traffic. The vibration of cars skimming down the road, smooth from their electric engines, rolled against Alba’s skin like rippling waves in the air.

Dolly turned before Alba could sneak up on her and tickle her waist.

‘Not this time,’ she said in her bright, warm voice. Her youthful face crinkled into a smile. She brushed a loose hair back from Alba’s face and they started down the street. ‘How was your day? I hope you learnt a lot.’

Alba snorted. ‘Oh,
tons
,’ she said, lacing an arm round Dolly’s waist.

Alba loved how slim Dolly was. Dolly had the sort of body her mother called boyish but Alba thought was beautiful; tall and slender, soft muscles sliding over sharp bones. Alba wished she looked like Dolly. Instead, she was plump and short for her sixteen years. She was glad they at least had some similarities in their faces. Both of them had strong cheekbones, curved chins, and large, wide-set eyes, though Dolly’s were blue and Alba’s green.

Alba liked to imagine sometimes that Dolly was her sister. She didn’t know any other of the Knightsbridge Academy girls who were as close to their handmaids (though she didn’t really
know
any of the other Knightsbridge Academy girls in the first place. It was hard to make friends when she was only known for being Alastair White’s daughter, and her parents never let her spend much time away from the house outside of school). Handmaids were traditionally paired with their charges at a young age to create a sisterly bond. Dolly had only been around nine when Alba was born, and she learnt her role by shadowing and aiding Alba’s mother’s handmaid, who looked after Alba until Dolly was old enough to take on the role fully. She was still young, in her mid-twenties now.

Alba had heard some of the other girls at school talking down about their handmaids. Even though a lot of servants were from the lesser families in North, many were from South, and there was always that divide running between families and their help. An invisible wall, a barrier slicing the two worlds neatly in half.

North.

South.

Light, and its shadow.

But there was none of that between Alba and Dolly. If anything, Alba felt as though Dolly were the only one with her on her side of the wall. Everything else in North was on the other side; detached, a façade of glittering glass and jewels and fake smiles. A world she never quite felt part of.

‘Did you have Professor Nightingale again today, by any chance?’ Dolly asked, grinning down at Alba.

She rolled her eyes. ‘Why else do you think I’ve turned into a zombie?’

Dolly laughed, and it was a sound like bells, bright peals that drifted down around them, as soft and light as summer rain, and for the millionth time Alba wished that it was Dolly who could be her mother, her sister, her family, and take her far, far away from here.