Some people preferred to live in their memory-spaces. James was one of them, as he had lost contact with his friends after graduating. Autism made making new friends a challenge he didn’t particularly want to endure at the moment, whereas in memory-space he could relive the experiences of being around people, not only people but people who genuinely liked him, whenever he wanted. He often went back to high school during his morning commute, returning to those early annoying morning hangouts before the bell rang forcing them all to scatter to class, or sometimes reliving the classes himself, although he more often relived his university academic experiences.
He had to return to the present for work, which was mostly long lonely hours in front of a computer screen. Oh, his boss was nice enough, but he was interning at a law firm despite not being a law student, and the divide between himself and the other interns felt unbridgeable. James was unwilling to put much effort into bridging it, though. He mostly kept his head down, did his work,and snuck back out to the past as often as he could get away with.
One of the confines of the legal system was that memory-spaces were considered hearsay and thus impermissible in court by law. Some of his fellow interns ignored company policy, argued that the favorable end results justified the privacy-violating means they used to get there, but James was not a risk-taker. He could not afford to lose this job, so he had to follow company policy in order to keep it. He rarely wanted to violate people’s memory-spaces to begin with, but even when he wanted to, he didn’t.
One day, on the walk from the office to the train station, James ran into a friend from university, Aviva. Aviva had been one of the few people who was both from Boston like James was and attended the same university many miles and states away from home. James hadn’t expected to ever run into her again, not considering the size of the city and how much Aviva had expressed wanting to move away from her family. So the two reunited friends hugged and went out for dinner. Aviva had been unable to afford rent by the university and was convinced by her parents to move back to suburban Massachusetts. James was surprised to learn Aviva actually lived pretty close to where James lived (also with his parents).
James spent less time in his memory-space now. He didn’t need to - he had a friend from the present, one of the friends whose memories had sustained him through the year between university and employment. Aviva was always happy to, as she put it, “have an excuse to leave the house” so often on weekends the pair walked around James’ neighborhood, at least until Aviva had to go home for the night.
His friend’s behavior when she had to return home worried James, in such a way he began to understand why his fellow interns violated company policy to assuage their own curiosity. In the real world, entering someone else's memory-place was a massive social betrayal.
But Aviva had been growing sadder and sadder the longer she lived at home, making jokes about how James might be the only person in Boston who would actually give a damn if she died. James had responded saying he had hoped her parents would care, and Aviva just stared, saying something that only made sense if one had the context she did "they'd care, but not for the right reasons."James' curiosity won out over his respect for Aviva's privacy when he hugged her goodbye and she froze, like honest to God became completely immobile, as though she had expected the hug to end in a physical knife to her back. Instead, as James watched Aviva board the bus most likely leading her to the place that had produced such a response, James prepared to metaphorical backstab her.
The initial connection to enter one's memory-space required physical contact, hence the hug, even though James knew Aviva hated being touched.
Indeed, as James began scouting out the memory-space of Aviva, he heard her thoughts: James knows I hate being touched; why did he do that? Why did he hug me? Will he want - and then James was inside a memory of Aviva's, in a foreign body that was hers, feeling her father's hug around her, James' own thoughts being confusion but Aviva's being resigned dread as the hug continued, growing long enough James became uncomfortable, hands dipping a bit higher and more around Aviva's torso, until James felt the remembered fear and why Aviva was remembering it now of all times, her dad's hands cupping her breasts, his pelvis against hers, and that was before the man leaned in and began kissing Aviva. James didn't know what to do, as Aviva's memory-space was filled with this memories, these memories from not that long ago, week nights and mornings before work.
Aviva was extremely attuned to knowing when eyes were on her, metaphorically or literally, so as James was now realizing why specifically Aviva was so perceptive about these things, Aviva was noticing the reality she wasn't alone in her mind during the bus ride. "Was that why - James?!"
James was a coward. He wanted to just retract, retreat, walk home as though he hadn't learned this horrific, shameful secret about his only friend. Instead, he quickly had the fantastic idea to his panicked mind to pretend the shoe was on the other foot. "Aviva, hey, what are you doing in my memory-space?"
"I'm not." Her fury could be heard in her voice, like each word was being forged in flames. "I was just in my own memory-space, preparing to go home, when I felt someone else's presence with me. So what now? Did you like what you saw? Do you want a turn next?"
"No! No, that's sick, what your Dad has been doing to you is - is abusive and wrong. I hated it, I could feel all your emotions, remember?"
"No, I don't remember because the last time I invaded someone's memory-space, I was eight or nine years old, not bordering on a quarter century. Go. Just leave. You're going to start having your own thoughts and feelings about what you witnessed soon enough, give me the dignity of not having that happen in my memory-space, please!" James felt like crying, but he did as he was demanded.
He returned to the present, where he had been staring into the street, looking for all the world like someone waiting for the bus himself, and began doing just that. Crying. Tears ran down his face as he realized just what he had done, just how badly he had betrayed what little trust Aviva had had in him - and James was only now realizing how minimal that trust was, as when she was angrily communicating, asking if he had liked what he seen, memories of other guys Aviva had trusted flashed through space, boyfriends who pretended to rescue her but were secretly turned on by her predicament, and James had ruined those small snippets of trust.
Aviva had no reason to believe James would be any better than any other guy in her life, not when his body admittedly had reacted to the memory in spite of his mind's horror and disgust. But sometimes a pair of pants could have him reacting - that didn't mean he was sexually attracted to clothing. James didn't have those feelings for Aviva. Not like Mr. Fitch, Aviva’s own father, whose body had reacted against Aviva’s, she could feel it, him, and James was afraid what he had experienced was just one of numerous horrid memories, that maybe what Aviva had been remembering wasn’t the worst of what she had been forced to experience but just the most recent.
Right now, James walked, cried, felt guilty for shedding tears over a fate he didn't have to handle, but the memory kept intruding into his mind, and it wasn't even his memory! Maybe that was why the recommendation to stay out of others' memory-places was so ingrained in everyone from childhood on: James knew more than he was ever meant to. He now knew what it physically and mentally felt like to be a woman, to be Aviva, enduring sexual assault at the hands of her own father.
James hadn’t ever been betrayed that way, would have never known such a horrific secret had he not betrayed Aviva, and he feared betraying her even more, but if he returned home having obviously been crying, his parents would be worried and want to know what was wrong. Although... James texted Aviva.
Is what i saw the worst of it?
He's not going to get me pregnant, if that's what you're asking
No, i guess, what I mean is, could I ask my parents if you could move in with us? I wouldn't give specifics, just that you're unsafe at home
But I'm not
James typed back a question mark: ?
Not unsafe. Im not being beaten or starved
Aviva, what i saw was bad enough i don't think you're safe living there. Can you honestly say you're not worried he might rape you?
James waited, wondering if he had overstepped. He almost felt like having typed the r-word broke an invisible boundary. As he thought that, the response came.Don't tell anyone. Please forget you saw anything.James put his phone in his pocket. His eyes were dry enough he could return home without raising suspicions. He felt nauseated and angry at both himself and Aviva's father and Aviva and the universe for making him worried enough to do something like that.
Aviva didn’t contact him for a few days following that. James didn't blame her. He would have cut off anyone he found in his memory-space completely, but Aviva didn't. 24Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡRL4zWq7M5U
Their friendship remained virtual for about a month, Aviva not wanting James to have an opportunity to invade her memory-place again and James felt guilty enough he was just grateful Aviva still communicated with him at all.
Eventually, Aviva showed up at James’ place, and, almost as though James had unearthed a new depth to Aviva, she began actually talking about what was happening. Once she was completely certain James cared for her as a human being and not as an object of sexual desire, Aviva realized just how lonely having kept such a huge secret was, and James was willing to take on the burden of hearing about it. Over time, the pair began seeing James’ invasion of Aviva’s privacy as almost a good thing, as Aviva doubted she would have been brave enough to actually talk about what was happening at home. Due to memory-places, she hadn’t had to.
ns 15.158.61.11da2
