I awake to the distant drone of the city's night-watchers outside my window. A faint red glow from the emergency streetlights seeps in through the cracked plaster of my ceiling. Rain is falling again, drumming on the roof above our vertical block. Even at 6 AM, the humid warmth of the monsoon night is clinging to my skin. I lie still a moment, listening to the slick slide of water somewhere far below. Our building, Block Singh-12, sways slightly as if arguing with the storm. It has been standing since I was a child, a corroded aluminum tower in the Lower Lakes Ward of Bengaluru, part of the city's neglected Belt of Forgotten Water.
A shiver runs down my spine, unrelated to the damp cold: I dreamt of voices last night. Whispering, calling my name. "Anaya…" I thought I heard it clearly. But now all I have is this morning silence, punctuated only by the distant sigh of the government's Holo-guard drones above. They buzz like mechanical mosquitoes, scanning rooftops for unauthorized life. I force myself to shake off the fog of sleep.
The flashlight from the street gives the room a pale green cast. In the corner, a small shrine to Ganesh has a single blinking votive candle powered by the apartment's emergency battery. Ganesh's elephantine face is painted on a cheap metal plate, flaking. I make the tiny sign of the oil lamp and murmur Ganapati Bappa Morya under my breath, the old good-luck chant Mum used to teach me. "Bless me today," I whisper to myself. It is a habit now, more for comfort than faith. Every night I pray to be able to remember tomorrow without forgetting today.
I sit up and the mattress groans. The sheet is sticky with last night's sweat. I rub my arms, damp and goosebumped, then flick on the small oil-bladder heater by my bedside. The flame licks yellow and the heater hums. It glows warm against the peeling green wallpaper. In a corner stands a battered holo-PC with a cracked screen, filled with my mother's childhood photos that I refused to part with. In one image, younger her poses by a pond full of lotus flowers. I am always drawn to that photo in the morning. The real pond is long gone, of course, replaced by this concrete labyrinth and sludge canals. I stand and pour fresh water – filtered, from a government piped supply – into a tin mug. Even filtered, it smells like rust and wet stone. I drink carefully.
Without sugar or milk, my instant coffee powder tastes tangy and cheap. I pretend it's masala chai, imagining the ghost of cinnamon and ginger in the vapor. "Kaapi hot!" I whisper to my reflection, which floats in the dim lamp light. It's hard to recall real flavors now, everything is synthetic. I close my eyes, thinking of the farm markets that once lined old MG Road. Now they sell memory modules and dried algae chips instead of okra and coriander.
The distant sound of a door opening downstairs reminds me it's time to go. I scrub my face with cool water – more filtered, still brown – and dry it on a threadbare towel. My uniform is a simple gray tunic and trousers, the Office of Public Memory logo stamped in silver on the sleeve. We keep it plain now, to stay unnoticed. The caste barcodes embedded in the thread feel itchy against my skin. I pull on my synthetic cotton shirt, tucking it in, then clip my ID chip onto the breast pocket. The implant in my wrist glows briefly as it pings the chip. Kane-A-305-D. Class: Scheduled Caste.
I hold my breath for a moment, hoping it doesn't mis-fire; the new biometric scanners in the corridors are temperamental. Then I hear the reassuring chime of acceptance. Another morning begun without a memory wipe. I step out barefoot, leaving the shrine's candle flickering.
The corridor smells of damp concrete and something I can't identify: is that rot, or ozone? One difference here, even at dawn, is the haze of pungent incense. Upstairs from us is the small shrine our neighbors keep. Frankincense smoke curls under the door. I inhale it, even a little turns my head — maybe it's a good scent to remember today by.
I descend the dim stairwell. The stairwell light flickers and fails at the second floor. It's a dance of darkness and greenish emergency light, just enough to make out the peeling paint and the woman lying propped up against the wall, coughing wetly. She is old, from the Domara caste, squatting here in the morning to catch the small daylight. A ragged sari and an illness kill slowly. "Namaskara, Akka," I say softly. She nods, not making a sound. She lives here too, maybe praying for our rescue.
Out the door, the morning air is thick with new rain. The city smells like rust and gas and wet soil—another jug-lugged down monsoon dawn. I shrug the uniform jacket closer and step into the foyer. A half-lit screen above announces BBMP weather forecasts now only in the form of 3D graphs: Extreme Flood Warning. Tropical heat. Dried-lake water brine. Our translator subtitle, All residents of the Lower Belt, keep safe and carry identification.
I flash my apartment ID at the panel by the door. There are no human guards here; everything is automated. My face is scanned and matched. If I were not Anaya Kane, I'd be turned away. The door opens on sighing chains, and I step into the drizzle. The street beyond is submerged under a shallow murk of flooded sewage and monsoon runoff, glowing green from the algae blooms. A faint humming indicates the city's purifier grid is trying to pump it out, but none of the tanks have worked since the cyclone.
Bare feet wet, I pick my way across slick water. Cars that didn't have the high clearance for these floods are half-sunken, rusted tombs. I walk between them, feeling something brush my ankle. Rats, I decide after jumping. Big, blind rats wade through the water, whiskers wet. Humans are scarce this early. The overhead anemometer fans are whirring, trying to clear the air. The sky is cotton-gray. No sun yet.
One of the government drones buzzes down beside me, like a curious wasp. Its tiny rotors chop the fog. A blue light glows on its undercarriage. "State surveillance unit," it squeaks in clipped Kannada, "Please present me a valid reason for your presence in public zone. Good morning, citizen Anaya Kane." The same voice plays in my head through my implant. I nod. "Traveling to work, sir."
"That is acceptable. Have a productive day. Smell pleasant." The drone chuckles mechanically (I have come to think of this laugh as smug). "Caution: floodwater contains biohazards. Please take leveled streetways." It floats away with a surge of static. Even in the middle of flooded streets, the city's voice follows me.
I walk on. The houses here are multi-storied tenements, built of grey polymer bricks that bubble with age and mold. Clothes hang from lines—bright saris and ragged shirts — clinging to wires above. At one corner is the New India Spice Shop, its door open, though the incense wafting out is from a charcoal stick outside. A young boy sells what must be bland bread-sundal from a cart: "Morning andapam! Pohe! Chickpeas!" My stomach growls. I can't afford any snack, but I nod politely at the vendor, whose caste is even lower than mine. We share a silent namaskar.
A group of middle-aged women jostle under one awning, speaking rapid Kannada to each other. One woman grumbles, loud enough for me to hear as I pass: "Govt says memory extraction is for our benefit… many people faint. The tech's not ready." I glance at them, eyes down, pretending I didn't. Even among the poorest, rumors swirl of pain and ghosts in the machines. Another whispers, "Not ghosts, sab, churel!" I stiffen. They laugh uneasily. The name of the demon, churel, hangs in the humid air. It means nothing good.
I shrug it off, willing it away. The day will come. I keep my eyes forward: ahead lies the bridge over Sankey Tank Nullah, leading out of our ward. The water here floods the single arched footbridge, so we have a floating raft arranged by neighbors. It's tied to the railings with yellow twine. Every morning I grab it. The rafts are patched plastic barrels and pipes—same design our ancestors used on the Ganges.
I push the raft out, feeling it rock under my feet. A mopankir-tree branch has fallen and blocked half the entrance to our lane, uprooted by the rain. Hard. I dislodge it and dunk hands into the seep. The sludge smells of something rotten. Charred everything drowned. I gag. Against the city's rules, I pinch my nostrils. But the smell stays. A hint of something I used to know: maybe remember is fear itself.
A woman behind me on the raft says, "Anaya, come quick!" I hurry, holding the rope for balance. We clatter through the water across a 50-foot channel, together. The opposite bank is higher and drier. Streetlights bathe it in a sickly yellow. Here the surveillance cameras hang like ghosts over every rooftop. The district line is near—today I carry my Work Pass.
We all know the rules: only lower caste laborers like me get this flooded route. Across the protected neighborhood's fences, the wealthy never wake to this water. Their air trams and supten vehicles now stay indoors, waiting for the canals to clear. On this side, we walk through muck. I wipe water off my shoes. Lined on the opposite curb is a mosaic of broken canal tiles and cracks, a sign someone tried to fix the levee.
At the end of the lane I turn off my implant's hibernation mode. My device pings with government alerts: a scroll of morning directives. "Full Stag Memory Synchronization Drill, Period Decipher, Mandate 1172." A second alert flickers: "Monsoon Hardship Relief: ration coupon credit applied." I close it quickly – worst to read reports on an empty stomach.
My watch says 7:45 AM. One more portage then I'll be at the Metro Hub. The Hub is a hive of the remaining public transit: a squat tower of patched metal where auto-commuter coaches dock like migrating flies. Today, people stand under tattered awnings by the wall. A sign flaps: "TO OFFICE OF PUBLIC MEMORY – LINE CLOSED. NO DIRECT ENTRY FOR INFERIOR CLASS."
I bite my lip at the sign. It wasn't always here, but checks started three years ago. The Office of Public Memory is just a block away, but not for us. I have to use this public route and take the old monorail meander through the factory district, then a shuttle back. My hands are already shaking from the extra travel.
A guardwoman shouts at us: "Move along! No standing!" She is sturdy, in heavy gear. Often I've caught the memory of her shattering myco-gloves at a training center—she's high caste. Anyway, I push through. Today I'll be late, but late on my first day is worse than never.
I pay the fare on the wall reader. The gate clicks. Inside the Hub, the air is stale and ammonia mixed with oil. A few old service-buses wait. I climb into a reserved section labeled "Observer Class Only." It's crowded, damp. All around, people like me press against each other's thoughts and skin. No sign of friendly faces.
I remember a bigger city map – once green parks here, now memory gardens. The bus lurches and rattles, taking the flooded road up the hill. Outside the dirty window, I see flickering neon advertising the corporate hand: "CognitionAid AI – Your Mind, Safer in Our Hands." The neon blues and pinks reflect in the puddles, like broken dreams. A row of vultures in the distance picks at something shiny in the darkness.
We glide past the ruined factories, asbestos shutters pulled down, graffiti in Kannada and English reading Naale Baa scrawled on a cracked wall. I stiffen at the letters. "Come tomorrow" – it doesn't mean much here. But the words bring up an old childhood memory: the garden city weeping at night with the churel's prank.
I blink it away. Focus: I glance at my rolled-up sleeves to smooth out visible brahminically-coded veins. Nothing for it. The bus stops at an empty elevated platform. "Office of Public Memory." The sign behind is shiny, azure-blue, corporate logo floating on it: a stylized neuron. I step down trembling, tailbone against steel. A second guard, male, paces like a caged tiger. He's from one of those elite anti-riot units. His uniform even cleaner. He sniffs at my clothes as I pass.
Inside, the building is all white-walls and glass. Glass but tinted dark so no one inside can see out. I enter through a small security vestibule. My ID is scanned by the smart lock – retina scan, fingerprint, voice pattern. Green light. "Good morning, Ms. Kane," an AI voice greets pleasantly, though I'm late. "Please proceed."
The lobby is freezing. I shiver despite my jacket. It smells of antiseptic and ozone. Even here, in this haven of technocrats, the smell of bleach makes me remember hospital corridors. Papers rustle behind the front desk. A receptionist in uniform nods, not noticing me. I turn left and head to my wing. The sound of fluorescent lights humming is a dull, unsettling drone.
Hallways are cavernous and sterile, illuminated by rectangles of too-bright bulbs. Every corridor is marked by a sign: Section 5B – Memory Intake and Archival. Section 6C – Neural Encoding. I have a panel stuck on my left shoulder with: Archive Technician – Beta Division. The corridor curves, and I keep walking.
In my section, the air seems warmer, stuffy. I reach my desk, which is not really a desk but a glass cubicle on the open-plan floor. There's a thin man already sat there, pressing a disc into his ocular implant. His name tag says Ravi. A fellow archivist, one of only three assigned to this shift. He looks up, tired.
"Anaya, you okay?" he whispers, noticing my late entrance. His accent is Kannada, dipped in City slang. Ravi, Dalit also, but looks healthier. He has a short beard and a quiet confidence. Only people like us share this windowless world. The rest of the floor is nearly empty at this hour.
"Late," I mutter. "Transit… cut off." We exchange a glance of tired humor. We know the story for every rural messenger and city clerk who's not part of the privileged Memory Caste.
He gestures to a piece of equipment on the desk. "Ready for intake, I trust? We've got to clear sector Theta by noon, remember?" His voice is hollow, as if asleep.
I nod and sit at the machine. A shimmering coil helmet and a rack of wires lie nearby. The device is a NeuraSpectre Mk. IV – a bulky piece of archaic tech by 2091 standards, but still very much beyond me when they first dangled it as an advancement. Two screens sit before me, blank. I push them open, fingers feeling cold.
My first task: sort through the backlog of memories for citizen reallocation. The pile in the queue says 'Caste Swap Experiment – Priority Yellow'. Great. So I'll be processing about thirty lifetimes worth of personal memories today. The thought spins my head.
I run a tap of sanitizer foam on my hands and press them onto a holographic pad next to the machine. It scans my fingerprints. Access granted. The machine boots up with a low hum.
Ravi leans back in his chair, yawning. "Death by coffee, sister?" I grind some of my powder into a boiling chalice beside me. The brew hisses. "Samaa kuu?" He shakes his head.
We begin. I set a memory disk (actually a crystalline stick, each about the size of a thumb) into the slot. The device glows blue. Laser lines trace across. Data flows onto the screen as shimmering shapes. This one is an old man, perhaps Ranjit Singh by the filename, age 68. On the monitor, his memories play: his childhood in a dried-up village, the monsoon fields, his father's death. These memories cascade in grayscale then color.
I navigate the interface by voice and gestures. "Tag value: rural farming. The machine beeps affirmatively. Next scene: A marriage in a temple, his nephew's birth, working the city factory. The memories flicker behind my vision. The colleague screen is mirrored for double-check. I do my job mechanically, separating and categorizing.
But something is wrong with Ranjit's memory. The baby's face – a girl on the floor – is stranger than it should be. There's a shadow behind her, a shape in a sari with a rotten grin. No one said we store nightmares, I think. I pause playback. The memory is corrupted by something unknown, and a faint sulfur smell hits me. Sulfur. Like burnt rubber. I frown; my nose twitches. The chat in the office is silent except for our breaths. My eyes dart around.
"Ravi," I murmur, but he's focusing on his own work. The suctioning fan above me whirs. I lift the helmet slightly off Ranjit's head on the screen. The ghostly woman in the sari is gone. "I swear there was something…" I trail off. Ghosts in memories? This device isn't meant to hallucinate.
Ravi blinks, "You spoke out loud, no? Sector Theta's on break. Night shift's messing with you." He wipes an oily water bottle and takes a sip. "It's the smell," he nods at the faint odor. "Sensor's overheated? We need to call it in."
I stare at the memory screen. It seems normal now. All I hear is the old man's voice from memory, lamenting losing his daughter. For a moment I think the voice on the recording calls my name. It doesn't. Just one more glitchy memory. I swallow hard.
No time to think like this. I force myself to file the memory segment under its rightful tags: 'rural-tribal', 'urban-poor', and flagged-glitch'. Then I eject it. It snaps down. I hope the red light will get me a replacement cartridge soon.
My hands shake as I reach for the next. A new memory disk labeled Kavya, Age 24 – Normal. The neon font on the plastic. It looks very new. I mount it. The device hums.
Kavya. On the screen, I see a young woman, dancing in a narrow alley in broad daylight. She is wearing the bright yellow sari of her region, twirling under a neon sign. A bunch of children laugh around her. Their laughter sounds familiar: like echoes of the street back home. But there's a low buzzing too – a distant voice on a loudspeaker in Kannada, calling out: "Naale Baa naale baa…"
My heart stops. On the screen, the children freeze and stare. Then they scamper away. The tall woman in the yellow sari stares directly out of the memory with surprised eyes. She turns and comes swiftly toward the camera as if she has noticed me. My chair wobbles. The live feed's angle matches mine — I realize suddenly, I am seeing myself standing where the camera is.
A wave of nausea sweeps me away: this is my street, a scene from earlier. My feet on the raft, the branch I jerked from the water. I see myself in the reflection of her eyes. I was here.
"What is this?" I whisper, voice trembling. The letters on the bottom of the memory feed flash: Private Archive – Conditional. No permission tag. She's come for me.
Kavya lifts her foot, pulling at a loose pebble. She tucks something into her palm: a slip of paper. The notebook flying pages angle, revealing on it large red ink words: Naale Baa, tomorrow…
The children retreat far from her now, as if she's a stranger to them. The woman has a mournful look, almost begging. Who is this?
The rooftop above the alley has a broken satellite dish. Down on the street, a street dog does nothing. I realize I'm trembling. The smell of sandalwood is in the air, but it's faint. A wrong scent. Perfume? Fire.
A static beep. The memory flux is unstable. The screen glitch, and my worst fear: the face of the woman morphs. Her sari becomes dark, shadowy, her hair long and loose, her mouth too wide. Her eyes glow red behind partially torn skin – the memory manifesting a churel, a vengeful spirit of folklore. She is reaching out from the past into now.
I yank off the headphone. The office falls silent around me. Ravi leans forward.
"What did you find?" he says softly.
I can't speak. My heart is loud. The buzzing in my ears, is it the old loudspeaker from the memory?
On the screen, the memory has spiraled into static. "Error," it says. The machine whirs trying to realign.
I stand abruptly, chair clattering. "Something's wrong with these memories," I manage to say. The lab smells like ozone now and something old like charred paper. My mouth is dry.
My view catches the corner: above us, one of the intake portals flickers with a faint golden light, as if something passed by, then gone. I blink at the heating vent in the ceiling. It creaks almost like a groan. The hairs on the back of my neck rise.
Ravi is staring. "Anaya, we should report this," he says. Quiet. On the screen, the corrupted memory icon glows red. The automated system is flagging it. In a second, a silent message scrolls at the bottom of the console: "Alert: Unrecognized anomaly. Contact admin."
No one is around to listen. Anaya's voice in my head: "All is normal."
I clear my throat. "Maybe the system glitched," I say. "I'll re-run the scan."
He nods, distractedly checking his own screen. "Right."
My fingers hover. I'm afraid to click Replay. My pulse is loud in my ears. But the work must continue; else the bureaucrats will notice the delay. I steady myself and press Replay.
The screen is black for a split second, then the woman reappears in the yellow sari. But now she's not facing me. She turns away, looking down a narrow lane. Her hair is in the breeze. The wet cobblestones of the street gleam.
One of the children from the first scene, the eldest boy, steps forward. He points at something on the ground. The camera pans to follow: there is a scribbled word drawn in red on the wet stone: ಓಮ್ಮಿ – "Look" in old Kannada.
Suddenly, the woman in yellow turns her head back around. Her eyes are unseeing, milky. She opens her mouth, not moving her lips, and whispers something I cannot hear, but the caption on screen does: "Anaya."
Chilled, I tear the helmet off the headset and yank out the memory disk. It slips from my hand and clatters onto the floor, rolling. Nobody seems to notice. I stare at the rectangle, terrified: it's not mine to hold. I'm not supposed to see this.
Memory extraction is the OPM's business, not ours. I am just supposed to organize, not inhabit them. I scramble to scoop the disk from the ground. Something pricks at my skin – panic or perhaps a memory I can't recall.
I hear footsteps. It's the foot of the guard outside, making his rounds. Panicking, I drop the disk back in the console before he enters. I slide down in my chair.
"Anaya," Ravi says again, alarmed by my shaking. "What's wrong? You're white as paper."
"My temple," I laugh nervously, which sounds insane to my own ears. "It's too much AC. Need chai."
I gather the disks I've processed and carry them to the humidifier cupboard in the corner. The steam rising helps steady my breathing. Soon enough, I pretend to sip the black tar chai from a company mug. In the mirror of the machine I see my reflection: eyes bright with sweat. I force myself to smile.
We return to work silently. The next disk is harmless – a commuter's lost memory, a coffer of childhood. I mark it as secure and file it. Slowly, the hands on the clock turn. All around, the offices grow dimmer as morning yields to day. On the wall panel, time: 10:46.
I concentrate on color coding and sorting. But the image from the headset keeps replaying in my mind: someone knows me in a memory not mine. The image of that woman in yellow, whispering "Anaya…" Like a summons.
At midday, the air went still and stale. The vent above us started rattling, and a whisper seemed to come from it. I froze, certain I'd heard a soft voice calling "Naale…" before it was cut off by the overhead bleeps of someone else's data loading.
My hands are trembling at the keyboard now. Outside on the desks of the cubicles opposite, the swirling holographic aura lines dance as new memories are prepped. Something on the wall. Maybe a poster of the goddess Saraswati, neural network motifs around her. But it's almost falling off.
The corridor beyond the glass walls is empty. Only a janitor's cart squeaking somewhere far away.
Ravi stands and walks to the drinks dispenser. I lean back wearily, wrapping my spine. I glance at the second screen. It displays an old, decaying memory fragment with no title, just a black slide. I zoom in: it's one of the raw bits from earlier – that same yellow sari woman, swirling edges as if burnt.
My stomach knots. I slide off my earpiece and lean. Perhaps if I stare long enough, it will fade. Outside, the sky outside in the city is turning a deeper gray. Just then, my implant pings: Holt – unauthorized thought detected. I tense, nothing to hide. Urdu phrase from childhood tumbled into thought.
Suddenly, a mild alarm flares on the screen: "Unauthorized memory access risk!"
I leap up. That memory fragment was not mine, not in any case I should have seen. The machine tries to isolate the file, but I'm quicker. "Re-route!"
In a flash I decide to do something drastic. With shaking fingers, I eject my current queue of disks into the intake baskets meant for transfer. Then, opening the file menu, I paste the location of the fragment I just saw, the glitched Kavya memory. Without a second thought, I hit DELETE.
Warning. Format. Grayscale remnants vaporize. The line on the screen blinks—gone. No trace of the yellow sari, of her.
It's irrational. A terrible guilt: I just destroyed state property. But the message in red vanishes and no alarms are raised. In this gray zone where we hardly speak to each other, I breathe out a heavy sigh.
My neck aches as I turn to find Ravi watching me worriedly. "You took the long route," he observes cautiously. He's drinking that vile government tea from a Styrofoam cup. Desire to trust is a flaw, he often says.
"I… I had a headache," I lie, voice weak. "Overload."
He narrows his eyes but drops it. The PA announcement chimes suddenly: "Attention all personnel: Ministry of Remembrance health screening at 2 PM. Mandatory attendance."
An uneasy murmur sweeps the office. The health screening. This procedure is dreaded by all of us: mandatory brain scans to ensure we haven't, say, developed unauthorized thoughts.
I feel my face go hot. The memory disk I saw, it said my name. Why? Is someone calling me tomorrow? That thought is foolish, fear talking.
But the warning is real. The cognitive screeners are near. I wipe sweat from my palms. Even lying awake, my pulse is too loud.
Ravi gives me a quick pat on the shoulder as he stands. "Wanna join? I could use a break."
"No," I say abruptly. It comes out more mean than I intend. He just shrugs and walks toward the screening room, around the corner. I watch his back go into the corridor. I suddenly feel very alone.
I open the drawer beneath my station and take out the laminated, half-torn photo stuck inside – a silly childhood shot of me and Mom, somewhere around a temple pond. The edges are wet from sweat. I trace her face with a damp finger. She died when I was ten. Memory was the only thing I had.
That's why I took this job. To preserve the last intact pieces of people's lives. But lately, memory has started to betray me. Or trying to speak. Or something…
A distant thunder grumbles. Power flickers, and the ceiling lights buzz. The blank alarmed look on my face is caught in the mirrored panel. For a moment, I catch sight of the corridor behind, where an automated cleaner glides by, its single yellow light blinking. But in the reflection, for an instant, it looks like a narrow alley. The flicker is gone and I rub my eyes.
The smell of the lab is still antiseptic, but layered under it is the faintest hint of sandalwood and something rank. I recall the first smell from Ranjit's disk – burnt rubber and old decay – now the scent is a negative image of that: something new burning, a perfume of death. The acrid scent of smoke and offerings. I breathe shallowly.
Time to go home. The sun is westering, creeping over the horizon even while still midday. The health screening can't start early, but I've done enough for the day.
I shut down my station and gather up my logbook. The floorspace is quieter now, only a few supervisors milling. I pass the X-ray corridor for the screening and step outside. The skyline of Bangalore appears through the tinted glass of the exit door – fractured reflection and neon. A skyline of cracked towers bleeding neon against a violet evening.
Outside in the street, the drizzle has become heavier again. I flip my thin jackets hood up. On the walk home, everyone is heading back through the flooded streets. I'm tired, still hearing that whisper Anaya…. The CCTV drones chase me like shadows in the dusky light.
I reach the flooded alley that leads back to the Bridge of Rafts. The water has turned murky brown tonight; it chugs at the wooden planks. My body is aching – a full day of sitting is unforgiving. A flicker in the corner of my eye: something slipped beneath the water. A shape? Fish? My heart picks up. Probably a ratfish.
On the concrete wall beside the raft, wet charcoal graffiti: ನಾಳೆ ಬಾ: Memory lane.
I freeze, heart clanging in my chest. "The writes again," I mutter under breath. Last time it was only on a memory-screen, now in the real city. Someone knows. Or maybe my own mind is carving this.
A single man is on the opposite side of the bridge, already halfway across on another raft, turning. His face is obscured by shadows, but I see his lips moving. A half-smile, parted lips. "Naale Baa… come tomorrow."
He really said it. The cadence, so soft. I hold my breath. The elevator lifts him away back into darkness before I can see more.
Numbly I cross the raft myself. On the far edge of our district, the wall of the bigger colony rises. Posters in sadik Kannada: "Memory Screening for those who remember nothing!" The images show smiling ageless men and women with transparent heads and glowing brains. Beneath it scribbled in red: "You have our memories. But do you have yours?"
A group of kids in stained school uniforms run by, chasing a holographic butterfly. One of the girls flashes me a crooked grin. "Don't be late!" she calls. Late for what? I wonder.
I hurry home. The flooding water up here reaches only the ankles now. Our block's lights at the far end flick on as I close in. Smoke wisps out of broken walls; cooking fires on balconies. The sweet smell of burning. Distant laughter, a transistor radio playing Hindi lullaby in a neighbor's room. Home.
My apartment's metal door is locked. I tap my implant. Biometric scan: match. It clicks open. The interior smells of stale smoke and ozone: Mom's favorite incense burner still smolders on the windowsill.
On the kitchen counter lies the hot plate with my cup of instant chai, left to go cold while I worked. I smile a bit despite myself. It's awful but homey. For a second, I think I see movement by the small fish tank on the shelf. Then nothing. Just reflection. The fish in it, gray and calm.
I slip off my shoes, wet and muddy. A cool tile floor greets my soles. The little clock on the wall ticks 7:13 PM. Dinner should have been reheated two hours ago. Energy is supposed to be rationed, but I won't get scolded by myself.
I pour the milky liquid (malted grain and algae flavor) into a bowl and stir, trying to zone out. The news feed from the Implant blinks at me: Citizen X-ing to memory containment. I pinch the bridge of my nose, the day's build-up throbbing.
On the wall behind my shrine, I see a new scribble in dried rose petals stuck there: "Naale Baa".
My breath catches. That old graffiti across the building, on the memory. The stranger's whisper. And now this: writing on the wall that I know isn't mine.
I turn slowly. There, on the tinted window glass, someone (or something) is scrawled in steam and ash: "Naale". The last letters nearly smeared, like a hand might have pressed against it and vanished.
The air feels suddenly heavy. I set the bowl down, pulse hammering. In the reflection of the glass, my silhouette moves in sharp relief. I hesitate. Something's wrong. So wrong.
From the street below, a child's familiar song floats up: it's the nursery rhyme about an owl and a witch that Mamiji used to hum. It's distorted, slowed down, out of tune. I realize with dread the entire block is humming it: "Raati ghode putta, Naale baa…"
I step back. The tank's fish blinks out on my reflection. The room stills. The next syllable should come, but then a heavy sound: a knock – three knocks – deep at the main door.
My heart leaps. My apartment door is raw metal. The knocks continue, insistent. Anaya… She finds me at home at last.
The storm outside hasn't let up; the first raindrops of night pelt against the metal shutter. A chill runs down my spine. I know who it is, though I haven't opened the door yet.
"Naale…" I whisper, softly enough so no one can hear but her – I mean it for whoever stands beyond.
And then, I open my mouth to tell tomorrow: "It will come tomorrow."