The Memory Mend

Lira kept her hands dirty no matter the hour. Oil stained the knuckles of her left hand like a stubborn tattoo; the right still bore the faded number of her concession band, a thin rectangle of ink that had darkened with sweat and sunless rain. She was repairing a watch with a broken face beneath the arc-lamp that sputtered above the alley, and the city hummed in the distance like something that could not remember its own name.

The alley smelled of iron and wet cardboard and the sweet metallic tang that meant someone had been boiling wiring nearby. Above the low roofs, the upper tiers of glass and chrome caught a pale ashlight and threw it down in pale knives. It was an artifice, Lira thought; the Shroud up there pretended to be sun while the gutters of the Gulch below dried in shadow.

A child arrived on bare feet, clutching a paper-wrapped object. He was not of her block but his eyes were the same—too quick, too watchful for someone his age. "Miss Lira?" he said, breath fogging. He offered her the package like it was something dangerous.

She recognized the tape—the thumbprint emblem of their clandestine network. Lira slid a finger under the brown paper and felt the glass inside. A memory seed, small as a bead, warm from a child's palm. You could hold a summer morning in one if you were careful; you could smooth out the edges of a winter afternoon and give someone light they had not permitted themselves.

"For Mara?" she asked.

He nodded, lip trembling. "She says sometimes she remembers what the sea sounded like. She keeps listening to it, Miss. Says she hears gulls in pipe echoes."

Lira looked past his shoulder to the alley entrance. A truck had stopped and two uniformed wardens were arguing with a vendor over a ration ticket. Their visors caught the pale ash and threw it like a glare; their voices were low, practiced. No one looked at the boy. The city taught people to look away when officers came.

"You tell her not to listen too hard," Lira said, and wrapped the bead in a strip of cloth. She closed her hands around it as if she could press the memory into shape, a small ache behind her ribs. "Memories are sharp. Take them slow."

He smiled with half his face. "You ever hear it? A real sea?"

She kept the smile small. "Once."

He turned to go and Lira watched him pass the glow of the wardens. She tightened the band on her wrist where her concession number sat like a second pulse. The watch under her hand ticked on, stubborn and analog, a thing the Archive would not touch. It was useless for most things now: time kept by registers, by the Eye's clocks. But old mechanisms had character, and character was a difficulty the Shroud could not quantify.

A feathered scrap of paper skittered along the pipe and landed on the watch's face. On it had been stamped a new notice from the Registry: ANNOUNCEMENT. NULL DAY SCHEDULED. All unsanctioned mnemonic media will be subject to purge. Essential calibrations will be enforced for citizens under fourteen.

Lira's finger stopped on the gear beneath the face. The metal was not cold; it held a warmth she felt like a threat. From someplace deep in the block a children’s voice began to hum—an old lullaby, contraband and thin. It cut across the alley like a bright note and Lira felt the first stitch of unease pull at the edges of her courage.