Here is a bunch of frequent writings where the goal is quantity over quality instead of anything like coherance or sensibility or spelling.
With all the monitoring of every simulated floating sky island you'd think there'd be a better way of finding when something goes wrong than pulling up a video feed from the pod. We have alerts for easily measurable issues oxygen concentration or critical distress from any of the subjects (each was implanted with a vitals monitor before they were premitted to enter). But still half of the alerts are a vague "unknown behavior" or "behavior unknown." For some reason, or more aptly for no reason, the unhelpful message is different half the time. I didn't set it up, and I flagged it to may manager two months ago and nothing's changed. I bet they forgot.
At least normally they're easy to dismiss. The last time one of these went off it was because one of the subjects on a sky island started weaving together some grass into a rope. Apparently the automated classifier system has never heard of rope before and thought it might be dangerous. I guess maybe it has a point? But it's not even that, I didn't get a "dangerous behavior" trigger, that's triaged higher, and generally less noisy than the lower triaged alerts. It was "unknown behavior."
Still, that I had time to look at the "lesser" alerts meant none of the islands were facing imminant disaster. This was yet another vague "unknown behavior" (opposed to a "behavior unknown") on island 4f59d223. It's been paritcularly noisy. The subject is a surpisingly determined bearding guy whose been weaving tapesties out the grass on the island. He's been making really impressive sacks and ropes. A few weeks ago he missfired a "jumper imminent" warning when he ran full speed from one side of his island to the other to fly a kite he made. And the kite worked too!
I logged into the video feed to see the guy spinning two sticks together and had been for some time. He was smart about it, making a bow with some grass rope to rotate one faster than he could ever by hand. The tools to be working. I stared for a couple minutes and saw somehow he managed a wiff of smoke. If he kepted up he'd probably start a file... and trigger one of the fire alarms. I was surprised it didn't trigger already.
I don't think I'd ever seen someone doing this before, but neither had anyone flown a kite or made quite as intricate weavings. The closet I'd seen was the Visbon balloons during their new year celebration. Though now, these celebrations have mostly stopped in the city. The man must have been Visbon before becoming a subject on the island.
He kept trying to start his fire, which now I'm pretty sure was so he could make hot air balloons. I didn't want to trigger the fire alarm on him just for that, such and overreaction, and I want to see if he can actually make the balloons. So, I muted the alert on his island.
July 25, 2026: This notebook is because I think I'm forgetting things. I've never been one to journel but it seems like it's going to become a necessity. This afternoon I got a call from Andrew that he was waiting for me at Gloria's. We were going to meet for my birthday. I somehow forgot it was even my birthday. TODO: actually put things in my calendar.
July 28, 2026: I was two stops from Grand Ave. before I realized I'm not working at the laundry business down there anymore. I was layed off. At least I have savings for a few months, but I should check this every day. I don't trust myself to remember how long I've been unemployed.
July 29, 2026: My name is Sydney. It's written down on all of the ids in my wallet and on my phone and it's what my confused roommate said when I asked. Sydney Harth. Somehow I have to force my brain to mark it with don't forget, because I forgot. Something must be wrong with me. Really when I was on the train to the job I'd lost weeks ago I knew something was wrong with me. I scheduled a checkup with a doctor next week and put it in my calendar (August 4th) with the "critical alert" level of notification. At least when I forget things I seem to notice they're gone. When my name was gone, I knew there was something missing, like I knew I had a name and should know it. There was something on the tip of my tounge but nothing came to me. Though, of course I coudln't know if there was something missing so subtly that I didn't even know it was gone. Yesturday I was nearly walking in the door of a laundrymat to a job I didn't have before realizing something was amiss. At least I think it was a laundrymat, my paystub says (and I'm reading it not remembering), Jansen's Laundry. I guess it could have been some management company for a bunch of landrymats and I was simply heading to an office.
July 30, 2026: Called my parents today, well my mom. My dad was out at a concert with a few of his friends from college. She started with a kind of surprised "why are you calling" so it must have been too long since the last time. The shallow excuse, I forgot, is maybe actually apt for the first time. Though, I didn't tell her about the memories I think I'm loosing. It would make her worry and there's nothing she could do. I told her I got layed off and am looking for a job (I'm not right now) and I don't need money because I have enough savings. That last point was like when the family gets together and each of my aunts and grandmother fight to pay the bill. Finally, I won. Mom was doing well, five more years to retirement she always brings up. That and drama about the her kids, she works in a school. There's this one troublemaker going around who they say has been lighting fires in the bathrooms. The fire alarms had gone off five times in the past month and the principle, Lydia, was about to suspend him. And then she would talk about how Lydia was definately "on the spectrum" and all the parents seemed to hate her but she did a good job with the school.
I didn't have nearly as much to say; I'm mostly by myself at home. Sometimes I talk to my flatmate. I told her about going out with Andrew on my birthday and that I started running every day (I did start) She seemed happy about that, probably because I was also happy about that and she's really good at picking up on what I'm feeling, somehow even over the phone. I also told her I was going to to doctor the next week. Maybe I shouldn't have because Mom immediatly sounded worried and asked "are you all right." I just said it was a regular checkup and I think she took that well. I've never been good at booking these, so she was probably happy I was going at all. We said, goodbye, "I'll try to come back home over the labor day weekend," and hung up. I don't think she noticed anything wrong, which hopefully means most of my memories are still there. And I don't want her to worry.
August 1, 2026: Something about my last entry kept bothering me. Would Mom have noticed if I'd been slowly loosing my memories? It's not like there's much I have to remember when talking to her. I just talk. Like a reflex. Every day when I leave the house for my run I close and lock the door to my apartment but I don't have a single memory locking the door. Maybe whatever's happening to me ate that memory too, but I don't think I'd ever remembered locking the door. I always just knew that I would have done it, and so must have. Really a lot of things are like that; the run I did yesturday where I ran around the pond I just know I did, even if I don't really remember the run itself. Well, I have to have been there, I have the dirty laundry to say I did. Is there really that much of a difference from remembering things and simply knowing they happened? If it weren't for me forgetting my own name, maybe I'd think I was just fine. But sometimes I forget the names of other people I've known for years, a gap I know shouldn't be there but is. It's been this way forever, so I'm maybe just overreacting to forgetting a couple things. That's more of an argument to say something's wrong than something's right, isn't it. I'm just happy I booked that doctor's appointment, best case everything is fine.
August 4: The doctor didn’t see anything obviously wrong with me other than typical “high blood pressure because you’re nervous about having high blood pressure.” They tested again and it went away. When I told them about the memory loss they seemed concerned, which I’m not sure if I should find comforting or off-putting. There are rare cases of very early onset dementia, they said, and that they’d refer me to get tested for it if the symptoms didn’t go away. I’ll call back in a week if I remember. I could also get screened for a gene, I wrote it down as APOE, which massively heightens dementia risk for some values. Hope I don’t have one of the bad ones I guess.
I was hoping there’d be something more to actually do, like “here’s a magical pill to make your problem be gone, sorry this has been on the rise due to the crumbling nature of life ✨.” Is that the AI sparkle now? Can I still use it convey irony poisoned cuteness or am I relegated to 🫠 or 😔or 💕 or 💫.
August 5: If there isn’t much to do but wait, I should at least try and figure out what’s going on. Do I remember letters… I should write them out. I can’t trust I’ll remember what I remember just saying them alous. abcdefgijklmnopqrtuv. Missing H and S.
August 6: Forgot I’m unemployed, almost went into work again.
August 7: Went to the store and managed to get everything I needed. Bread, ham, tomatoes, shredded lettuce, a dozen eggs. It’s not that impressive, I just made a list.
I got dinner with Andrew after. We used to go to bars sometimes on Fridays but I didn’t feel like drinking. Andrew bought a beer from the corner store across the street brought it in. The restaurant didn’t notice or didn’t care. We went to one of those run down American diners with the peeling red seats and burnt coffee. I got the special that day, meatloaf, and Andrew got a burger. He always got a burger.
I apologized again for forgetting about him on my birthday and he told me not to worry. I don’t think he was mad, he’s really nice about these things and it’s really easy to tell when he’s mad. He said something like, “it’s fine, don’t mention it.” His nonchalant attitude about it started to get to me: this wasn’t normal and he shouldn’t be treating me like it is. So, I told him about my memory loss. I’m don’t think Andrew took me seriously at first. It sounded like a convenient excuse to start loosing memories right before I was going to meet him. He laughed. But I wasn’t joking, so I told him again more seriously and he got it. “Did you go to the doctor, what did they say,” he asked. I told him they didn’t help at all. “What else did you forget,” he asked. I told him, my name, that I didn’t have a job, the letters H and S in the alphabet. That really alarmed him. I said I was going to call back in a couple days if my memory kept getting worse and he insisted I call back right then. I called and it went to my doctor’s voicemail. It was a Friday evening, of course it would, but Andrew insisted I try anyway.
Really there wasn’t much we could do then. Andrew kept trying to think of something, did I have a headache, did I do anything new in the past few weeks (like I would remember). He offered to let me stay over at his place but I said I was fine. I have a flatmate who would hopefully notice if I woke up an amnesiac. Finally he gave up and we agreed to call each other at 10:00 tomorrow morning. That way I wouldn’t forget to call back my doctor.
It was a bit hard to go back to a normal dinner after that. I asked about the pickles Andrew has been making (and posting online about on) and be said they were great. The beets especially, and he was going to write up a recipe for one of those Russian beet salads he’d made with one. He asked me about the rookie basketball league I’d been playing in. I told him I hadn’t been in a while, was taking the season off. Or maybe I just didn’t remember going. I don’t think Andrew found that funny.
August 8: Andrew called me this morning like he said he would. I said I would call my doctor and then get back to him. I did, and managed to schedule something for the next week, the 11th. It was kind of remarkable how fast it was, but I did mention the new forgetful bouts and that seemed to concern my doctor. When I called back Andrew, he asked me to try writing down the alphabet again to see if I forgot anything new (or remembered the two letters). I would think I’d be able to get them all considering I know I’ve been forgetting H and S but no luck. Somehow my confidence tricked Andrew though. I recited and wrote everything down, Andrew goes “oh, you got them all.” I look down for a few seconds and say “nope, missed H and S again.” He laughed at that. Maybe realizing how easy it is to miss them made him worry a bit less. Andrew said he would call me on the 11th to remind me of my appointment. I was getting an MRI scan. I told him it was in my calendar but he insisted anyway.
August 9: I think I’m getting used to this memory loss. I’ve been putting down signs and writing little notes to myself all the time. I’ve even considered wearing a name tag for myself but I think that might be too odd: everyone would ask about it.
I have a reminder on my phone now to tell me I’m unemployed and it caught me just this morning. It also tells me to reread this notebook, which I do. I actually remember most of it every time so I can just skim it but there are a few things I always need. My name, my birthday, and a couple other details. Maybe those first two sound unreasonably dire, but I really don’t need them much to function in my everyday. And I have them written down when I need them. Things like how to type or spell or read or who I know all seem mostly untouched.
I think it’s the details I’m forgetting which worry me the most. Apparently I used to go on runs. It sounds healthy and like something I should and would do taking a break from basketball, but I just have no memory of them. But I told my Mom and wrote it down in my notebook, so they must have happened. Even if I’d tell a small lie to my Mom, I don’t think I’d lie to myself, at least not about something like that. I guess this is why I’m keeping the notebook… and I should set a reminder on my phone to hopefully start up again. That’ll make enough daily reminders I have to scroll my phone screen to see them all. A lot of reminders.
August 11: Andrew didn’t call me this morning, but I woke up late so I didn’t have time to reach out then before my appointment. The MRI was kind of unsettling. Everyone is professional and nice and then I’m being wheeled headfirst into this giant buzzing tube which feels like it could collapse and squish my head any second. Would not recommend. They said they’d get back go me in a week with the results and if they didn’t to call.
August 12: I just called Andrew after forgetting to yesterday. He said he didn’t know who I was. After begging he agreed to meet me tomorrow. Something is very wrong.
August 13: We met at a bench near that big bronze memorial in Forest Park. It’s this solder standing up top a large stone tablet with a ring of dark green peeling benches around it. It’s not the nicest part of the park, there was one person across from where I walked in smoking weed and another, an old lady, with a run down shopping cart filled with plastic bottles. She must have been taking a break before going back go work. I knew the real reason we met here because Andrew lived a couple blocks down the street. I saw a few others on the bench, at least one couple, and then Andrew sitting by himself on one side of a bench looking at his phone. I recognized him before he did me and waved. He looked up and waved back.
As soon as I got closer he looked right at me and said, “what happened ” He sounded confused. “I don’t know,” I said. “No really, what happened?” He repeated more confidently. It relieved me a little, I was worried there’d be that awkward silence between strangers. I don’t know why. We were friends.
“I just get home from work and all the sudden I revive a call from someone in my contacts I have no memory of” he continued, “I’m of mind to ignore it and delete the contact but apparently we’d called multiple times in the past weeks so I pickup and they claim we’re like best friends.”
“Well, we kind of were,” I said. I didn’t really know what to say. I was as confused as he was. “I guess you forgot,” I just said flatly. For some reason it was all I could think of. I mean, obviously he forgot. “But we were friends,” I said, “we would go out all the time.”
“Yeah,” said Andrew, “I read back through our texts. I think it gave me some idea”. I don’t know why, but when he read our old texts it felt uncomfortable. Like a stranger peering into our conversation. He wasn’t a stranger, especially to me. I sent the texts to him and memories or not he is still the same person. Maybe I just he read them chronologically so he didn’t come on anything strange out of context. I wonder if he felt the same reading his texts to me… it must have been worse, for to him I was truly a stranger.
We then sat for a minute. It was that awkward silence I was dreading. We sat. And then finally Andrew broke it. It was the most obvious question. I knew it was coming, enough I’d been thinking through answers on my way here. “How did we meet,” he said. It felt like answering would start to shape whatever narrative was forming in his head about us. Should I say something dramatic, embellish it with feelings I may or may not have been making up? That’d probably be putting too much importance on it, Andrew already had pages of context and pictures we took together and to go on. But to me what I said felt important the same, like having to redo a first impression with him.
There really wasn’t much to how we met. We had a mutual friend, Alex, in Maspeth and we were both at a board game night he hosted (he used to do those semi-regularly). I thought better of any theater and told Andrew the “story” straight. He thought for a moment and then said, “makes sense, I guess we probably went to a few of those.” “Yeah,” I replied.
Andrew sat for a second thinking again and began to frown. “It’s like there’s a hole in my memory. I remember being at Alex’s and I remember there were people, Meryl, Jack, Anish, and then when I try to think of more it’s like I can’t comprehend what’s and my mind wanders. Like when I’m hearing some argument by someone clearly smarter (or at least more versed) than me an everything goes in one ear and out the other. I guess if I managed to figure out what’s there I’d remember you there. It’s kind of the same thing I had in my mind a couple nights I remember going out. I thought I’d just drank too much, but it maybe I just was out with you. Must have been it. We must have gotten pretty close.”
Andrew was picking back up on who I was pretty quickly. I thought it would take some convincing but just the slightest nudge after seeing me and he began to understand the situation. Seeing him piece the piece an understanding of his experiences together was kind of cool, like putting together a puzzle. I think he’d impressed himself because he was smiling… or maybe just happy to be “remembering.”
Then Andrew frowned. “Last Saturday I called you the morning after I saw you the night before,” he said. “Maybe I’d just left something with you, but I don’t remember that. I don’t remember anything about the call. But I see it happened. What was wrong?”
This was the other question I knew would come up. And if he didn’t ask it I would have told him anyway. That’s what I was expecting to have to do. So, I told him, I was loosing my memory, random things. I told him about forgetting letters and how we called and he’d missed them too. I thought it was funny, but he stopped me. “What were the letters,” he asked. I told him, HS. “Harth, Sydney,” he said. Both of us laughed a second. It had to be a coincidence, but a funny one.
It was strange we’s both lost our memories at a similar time. Both of us felt like they had to be related, but we couldn’t figure out how. We lost our memory in seemingly different ways. For me it felt more random and subtle opposed to a carving out of a person. I guess we’d both forgotten my name. The only thing we could think up for contagious memory loss was Kuru, the disease transmitted through eating brains. I don’t think Andrew ate my brain recently. I think I would remember that. Still, ever conspiratorially minded, we wrote down the things it seemed we’d both forgot. My name, the letters H and S, and my birthday. It wasn’t a very interesting list: just everything I’d forgotten which felt like a direct fact about myself. At least written down, now we wouldn’t forget these things again. Both of us took a copy.
Then we kept talking, catching up, well mostly catching up Andrew. It had to have been more than an hour. The old lady had left to continue collecting bottles long before we finished and even the stoner was gone. Finally, Andrew had to go. He’d started a laundry load at the laundry mat nearby and it was more than done. He was about to leave, but then looked back, looking so much more solemn than just before. “If you don’t hear from me one week, please call,” he said. “Maybe it’s a little much, but I don’t want to forget you… for forever.” With that we waved goodbye and went our separate way.