The Escapement Mechanism, Part 14
The fundamental problem with her course of action was that she had previously worn the device and had no insights to show for it.
On her drive home, she considered the possibility that she may have already accumulated her own hidden memories. It happened as she was driving through the strip mall intersection, where the billows of smoke from the food truck intentionally distracted hungry commuters.
It was the strongest sense of déjà vu she had ever experienced, and it wasn’t pleasant. She tapped on the brakes, though the panic coursing through her told her to slam them. It elicited angry honks, and she squeezed the steering wheel, certain she was about to be in an accident.
Although that wasn’t quite right; Wemly was reliving a previous collision. She was sure of it. At this very intersection. She closed her eyes, trusting the car would continue in a straight line as she tried to force down a wave of nausea through sheer force of will. Imperfectly copied moments of another timeline flashed behind her eyes: the hotdog sign flickering and distorted through a cracked web of a windshield; the smell of vomit and fried onions.
Another horn blare and she was clear of both intersection and memory. And with a clear hypothesis: the mice had retained memories from an alternate timeline. She rolled around the problem of designing a test. Some parallel version of herself had stitched into her reality long enough for a glimpse of tragedy to be passed between them. The evidence was pointing to the escapement mechanism as a conduit between possible worlds. She needed access to the other worlds provided by the device.
The mice recalled an association between the tone and pain.
Pain. The glimpse of an accident scene.
Both encounters beyond the mundane—-a shock to the system that could carve deep furrows of connectivity in the brain. Valleys for future thought to fall into unbidden, and across multiverse boundaries. It was time to remember. If the intensity of an experience modulated its retention, she would turn the dial of experience to its maximum setting.
At home, Wemly chose her couch as a reference point. She laid down, activated the escapement mechanism, and strode into the kitchen before the adrenaline rush of what she planned to do wore off.
Wemly cranked the stove to its highest setting, as if she was going to boil water. Instead, she left it free of a pot and watched the black coil on the cheap stove brighten.
She waited until it glowed blacksmith orange, then told herself it would be like jumping into cold water; or pulling off a bandaid; or stabbing herself for no reason. Her intuition was usually correct, but she could not shake the fear she would end up in the emergency room instead of back on her couch.
Starting from “ten”, Wemly began a countdown, one huge breath per number. On “four”, she said, “fuck it,” and slammed her hand down on the burner like she was swatting a fly.
Pain was faster than regret, but it was not far behind. At first, the electric intensity of a cut power cable lodged itself in the center of her brain, then radiated with ferocious abandon to her palm.
She pulled her hand away out of instinct, but strips of skin adhered to the burner and tore painfully as she did. Wemly had not turned on the exhaust fan, but desperately wished she had. The smell was sickening—-worse than the most overcooked hair from any styling mishap.
Though she tried not to, Wemly succumbed to the pain and doubled over, which ripped the last strip of plastic looking skin free from her palm. With her good hand, she dug her nails under the escapement mechanism and pried it free in such haste that she drew blood.
She took a deep breath. The couch was a comfortable touchstone, but she needed to take the plunge. Just like summer at her grandparents’, running down the dock for a cannonball into the lake. She activated the escapement mechanism, strode into the kitchen, and cranked the largest burner on the stove to maximum heat.
As she did, her hand recoiled like the knob was on fire. She looked at her palm, expecting to see spiral burn marks even though it hadn’t been in contact with the element. The stove was still heating up, the burner barely out of deep cool black of its thermogenic journey.
From the moment she activated the escapement mechanism, she had been trying to commit what she was doing to her deep memory; to force the experience into her unconscious. But realizing the attempt wasn’t her first stopped her cold. It wasn’t a vague remembrance or indistinct notion floating away with a chance whiff of perfume on a crowded street. A specific pain from a specific memory: she had, on purpose, slammed her hand down on the hot stove.
The element was still on the cool side of orange, but she expected to see remnant and curling strips of flesh. Holy shit, had she really done that? The person with that type of courage was someone she aspired to; it heartened her that a version of herself had mustered it.
Not only could she, but she already had. The individual moments were lost, but she could make out the shape of what had transpired. She needed to write it all down, the memory already slipping away like a dream between waking and breakfast.
Despite the present clarity, Wemly caught herself before she committed anything to paper. The escapement mechanism was active; she had turned it on when leaving the couch. If her seared flesh had not remained, then neither would her words.
But would the memories persist across an additional reset? Could she force them to remain? They were receding even as she tried to formulate a permanent capture, becoming the lingering perfume on her cheek, not the kiss goodbye itself.
Had her grandmother been forever grasping at something out of reach? More tests needed to be run, but she would figure it out. She always did. And with herself as the subject, there was no ethics board to placate before experimentation.
Moments of intense pain made it across the threshold; now it was time to test the the opposite conjecture. She headed into her bedroom, anticipating the exact moment she would rip the mechanism off of her neck.