Submitted for the May 2025 prompt: Many Minds

Sunset fell across the coastline, reflecting off the metal frames that supported the city.  Afloat in the Atlantic, it drifted along roundabout currents, tugged to and fro. A beach filled with glistening white sand surrounded it.

 

Alicia sat on the beach with her legs dipped into the water and her calves resting on the metal by the water’s edge. She smiled and called back to me, “Come down! The water is singing its evening tune!”

 

The waves lapped against the steel frames, creating a hum that reverberated across the structure, a new melody every night as the waves changed. We’d go out there to listen to it. I can remember her rolling in the sand as I came down and held her. That moment was perfect — she was perfect. That’s why I went through with it.

 

* * *

 

The sterile lights greeted me as I came back out from under the procedure. The operating room was as pristine as it was before, with white walls that glistened with an inlay of white sand. It helped ease the patients, Dr. Caufield had said. The sand allows depth, creating a more homely environment. A steady ringing in the back of my head greeted me as I awoke, a throbbing that seemed to reverberate down my spine.

 

“Please lie back down, there are a couple more boxes to tick,” scratched Dr. Caulfield’s voice, settling me back down onto the cushioned operating table.

My brain crackled as if fried. I could feel currents drawing through my head, pathways being connected and pumped with high voltage. The small chip embedded flared up, radiating heat from my hippocampus.

 

“I think we are good to go,” creaked Dr. Caulfield, clicking their pen one last time and holding out their hand to bring me to my feet. Turning me around and positioning me to stare at an empty chair. “Now, it calls on memories to fabricate your person. Therefore, please hold them in your mind, concentrating on every detail.”

 

I closed my eyes and took a breath, thinking of our times on the beach, the hurricane lockdown days Alicia and I spent on the couch watching old movies; the nights we held each other, imagining the stars that had disappeared years ago. Then I opened…

 

* * *

 

It was like seeing her for the first time, her eyes dusted with the color of autumn leaves and the black-brown hair trailing down along her collarbone. She sat in the chair, smiling with her scrunched-up nose.

 

“I… I see her,” I said through a mess of tears and stifled sobs. She was back, and the world seemed to freeze and make sense again.

 

* * *

 

She spoke for the first time on the second day. We had been staring at the tape of the recorded wedding I had never attended. Thomas understood I couldn’t do it, but I still felt a sense of guilt.

 

“They look happy, just like us now,” she said. Her voice didn’t come from her mouth. It crawled out of my mind, dragging itself to my ears. I shuddered, swallowing the voice like a pill.

 

Her eyes looked at me. “We’re happy like them,” she said, giving me a smile. Her words had been something I’d been thinking of saying for the past day. But coming from her, they felt unnatural. They felt hollow.

 

* * *

 

I had forgotten her laugh; there was no memory to pull on. On the fifth day, we sat on the beach looking out at the sunrise. I chortled as we rolled off the blanket, and I laughed like we did millions of times before.

 

I looked at her, watching her lips move — silent. It mimicked the way Alicia had done it all those years ago, but this time, nothing came out. I pulled away as my heart seemed to beat faster, looking at her.

 

She spoke again, sending a claw worming around my brain, “What’s wrong, did I do something?” Her eyes met mine, but the shimmer was gone — just flat, dull brown.

 

“Nothing,” I spoke as I pulled myself back on the blanket. My arms wrapped around my legs. As the sun set and the waves crashed on the steel beams, I couldn’t hear the evening song. Just the static whir of the chip in my brain.

 

* * *

 

Its face became smudged with each day. I avoided it, working and moving around the house. As I avoided it more, the constant memory of Alicia’s face moved further away. Her lips melted into its face, her eyes sank into her hairline. Its voice seemed more mechanical each day.

 

I was forgetting Alicia. Forgetting the one thing that held me together. I went to the beach at night, hoping to hear her voice, to remember her face as it was on the beach those nights ago. I could only hear static.

 

* * *

 

Days blurred together as her body shifted,   more and more grotesque. I had forgotten so many parts of her that I had nothing left to draw on. Its gasping sighs sent shivers down my spine as it clawed at my brain at night.

 

I stood at the beach for the last time. I had locked it in the house. Alicia was gone, and there was nothing left here. The water enclosed my face as it had around Alicia all those days ago. Hearing the static, I drifted down, eyes closed. Carried down below.

 

An electric snap called me back as the final surge of the chip was emitted, just as I took my final breath. The static faded, replaced by deep, hollow echoes I once held dear. The waves crashing along the beams created one last evening song for me as I drifted down. As the ocean currents bent around me, I saw her — not it, but her, my Alicia. My evening song.