Brian Stableford - Coming to Terms with the Great Plague

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COMING TO TERMS WITH THE GREAT PLAGUE

by BRIAN STABLEFORD

[published in Omni Online December 1997]

It didn't help that the doctor's waiting-room was plastered with posters exhorting all and

sundry to CHECK YOUR MEMORIES REGULARLY. Others paraded dozens of mug-shots beneath the accusing

legend: DO YOU "REMEMBER" ANY OF THESE PEOPLE? Marilyn was there, of course, third from the left

on the second bottom row. I've always thought of myself as a hard-headed sort of person, but I

couldn't help feeling that they were trying to steal her away from me. Nor could I help hoping,

even though I knew full well that the hope was absurd, that in this one instance -- and only this

one instance -- they were quite mistaken about the fact of her non-existence.

It could be worse, I told myself, sternly, as my name was called. It would be worse if they

actually did exist -- especially for them. The problems that arise for all the people who remember

Marilyn are trivial compared with the problems a real Marilyn would face as a result of being

remembered.

Dr. Vernon took one look at me and said, in world-weary fashion: "What's the trouble, Mr.

Hayling? FMS?"

I blushed. I knew that the tabloids had taken to calling the FMS plague a pandemic, but he

surely had to play host to the usual crop of throat infections, arthritic joints and suspicious

lumps as well. I gave him the benefit of the doubt and assumed that I must look too robustly

healthy for it to be anything else.

"Which one?" he asked, in response to the tiniest of nods. I'd been hoping to lead up to it a

little more gently than that. I couldn't produce her name in the blunt and businesslike fashion

which seemed to be required of me; even though I knew full well what she was, it would have been a

kind of betrayal. False or not, the memories were good. We'd been so happy together, and it really

hadn't been her fault that we'd broken up. To dismiss her, utterly without ceremony, as the

product of a mysterious rogue infection might be necessary, but it still seemed rather a shabby

thing to do.

"It's all right," he said, impatiently. "I'm a doctor. I'm not going to tell anyone else, and

I'm certainly not going to attack you in a fit of unreasoning jealousy. Believe me, Mr. Hayling,

I've had a lot of experience dealing with FMS. By now, every doctor in the developed world is an

old hand."

I managed to stutter an M sound three or four times.

"Marilyn," he said. I didn't dare ask whether it was a fifty-fifty guess, or whether Marilyn

was significantly more common in the Thames Valley than Melanie, or whether there was some

particular quirk that marked me as a Marilyn type. The tabloids were quick to pounce on the least

rumor about patterns in the data, but they'd cried wolf so often that the man in the street

wouldn't stand a chance of identifying an authentic discovery in the chaos of speculation. There

had to be some real patterns in the data -- if there weren't, what was the point in people

reporting the details to their doctors? -- although there hadn't been the slightest whisper about

any effective treatment or possible cure.

Dr. Vernon called up a data-sheet that was already marked up with questions and boxes, so that

he could map my condition with a few deft clicks of his mouse. He was able to fill in a lot of the

boxes at one fell swoop, simply by transferring information from my file. "To what time-period do

the memories relate?" he asked, wincing at his own clumsy phraseology.

"Thirteen to fifteen years ago," I said. "I might never have figured out that they weren't the

real thing if her face hadn't kept coming up on the TV and posters like the one in your waiting-

room. I met her . . . that is, I remember meeting her . . . shortly after starting work with

VirtIconics in July 1993. She moved in with me after three months, and moved out again a year

after that. I heard from her . . . I remember hearing from her . . . half a dozen times more,

although I only saw her in the flesh once." Oh, the delicious pain of that meeting! The regrets,

the tears, the sense of tragedy! I coughed to cover my sudden discomfiture and hastened on.

"There's nothing at all after I first met Jill in '96 . . . that's my wife. She's real enough. She

has to be -- she works for a solicitor."

He didn't bother to contrive a polite grin to acknowledge the attempted witticism.

"Do you have any objective record of your movements between 1993 and 1996?" he asked.

"No. Who does? Who knew we were going to need them, way back then?"

"Not even a business diary with a record of appointments? A Sasco -- something like that?"

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