Short Story: A Sum of Memories

When I picked my Machine of Death card during a writers' group meeting, it said "Hot Air Balloon." Yup, that's right. I was supposed to die by hot air balloon.

For those of you who aren't familiar with the Machine of Death, it is a game in which the Machine of Death tells you how you are going to die. It's very interpretive, though. You might get "fish" and get eaten by a shark, or get poisoned by a badly-cooked fugu fish, or get stabbed by a fish-hook. The Machine of Death has inspired stories from writers all over the nation (world?) and resulted in an anthology, an ongoing podcast, and more.

I kind of cheated. This story isn't about me, per se, but it's about someone who dies by hot air balloon. Sort of. Read on and find out how Mr. Alexander Sedgewick meets his demise by hot air balloon.

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A Sum of Memories:
​Death By Hot Air Balloon

​“What is this contraption?”
 
The gentleman who asked the question was shabbily dressed, with the stubble of two days shading his hollow cheeks and angular chin, and he leaned upon a plain wooden cane.
 
“This, sir, is a hot air balloon.” The operator made a sweeping gesture that incorporated the silken globe above them, whose reds, blues, yellows, and greens reflected in the shabby gentleman’s dark eyes. The tether gently tightened and slackened, tightened and slackened, as the balloon pulled toward the freedom of the cloudless sky.
 
“A hot air balloon,” mused the shabby gentleman. “Can I ride in it?”
 
“Certainly.” The operator twisted the point of his black mustache and tilted his head to the side in an almost bird-like manner.
 
“Cost?”
 
“Nothing, sir.”
 
“I don’t believe that. There’s a cost to everything.” The shabby gentleman gestured in a manner that incorporated the entirety of the operator’s appearance and added, “You don’t buy silk waistcoats and gold watch fobs with nothing.”
 
“I assure you,” said the operator. “This ride is my gift. Please step carefully when you enter the basket. It rocks a little. What is your name, sir?”
 
“Alexander Sedgewick. And your name?”
 
“I am called Chancey, sir.”
 
“Up, up, and away, Chancey! I can almost smell the blue of the sky from here.”
 
Chancey untethered the hot air balloon and it leapt upward, soaring and twisting through air currents. Sedgewick clung to the edge of the basket with white-knuckled fingers and roared his boyish delight toward the heavens.
 
“Marvelous, Chancey! Simply marvelous. How does it operate?”
 
Chancey, who stood at the center of the basket to control the craft, smiled a little. “You are familiar with the principle that hot air rises? A hot air balloon requires a chill but still day, in which the temperature inside the balloon is greater than the temperature outside the balloon. I use the burner to inject hot air into the envelope, and operate vents to help me with the descent.”
 
“Can you steer it?”
 
“No. We are at the mercy of the prevailing wind.”
 
Sedgewick gazed over the lip of the basket at the shrinking fair grounds and remarked quietly, almost to himself, “A little like life, isn’t it?”
 
They were quiet for some time before Chancey said conversationally, “Tell me about yourself, sir.”
 
“Oh, I grew up with four older brothers. They all decided they were going to become grocers like him and carry on the family business someday, but I read the magazines that sold through the store. Tales of marvelous new inventions that would make the steam engine look like a child’s toy. The greatest minds reimagining the possibilities of life.”
 
“It sounds like you have the heart of an adventurer, sir. Or an inventor.”
 
“Yes,” said Sedgewick. “That’s what I wanted to be. An inventor. But my father would not hear of it. He encouraged me to work in the store, but I could not care less about ladies’ bonnets and horse feed and spices. I wanted to create new things.”
 
The burner huffed and the balloon ascended gently. “And did you create new things?”
 
“I was fortunate enough to have a best friend who believed in what I wanted to do. Charles and I worked hard for three years to save up enough for our first venture. Incidentally, we wanted to create a machine that could fly.”

“Any luck?”
 
Sedgewick laughed and indicated his scuffed shoes and the worn cuffs of his coat. “What do you think?”
 
“But you did not give up.”
 
“No. We were convinced that our ideas were worth pursuing. We took out loans and tried another idea. This time, we tried to create what Charles called an ‘android,’ from the Greek word for man. A sort of robot that could move and speak and think like a man. We very nearly succeeded with that one.”
 
“Nearly?”
 
“As with the flying machine, our main trouble was not the building and design, but the fuel source. How do you power something without interrupting its function? The human is the ultimate self-generating machine, a basically electrical being that is somehow fueled by the intake of organic matter. We are far more sophisticated than we realize, Chancey.”
 
“But you nearly succeeded in building the android.”
 
“Yes. We created an android that almost lived. It could carry out basic tasks and move and speak nearly as a human could, but it kept running out of power no matter what we tried. Every time it powered down, it lost all the progress it had made and remembered nothing. It was so frustrating to start over each time, to watch the android’s mind develop like an infant into a toddler, and then watch it dwindle away. One day, I received a telegram from Charles, who was in another city trying to beg a loan from his great-aunt. He said that he had solved the problem. Memory was the key.”
 
“What did he mean by that?”
 
“I had no idea, and you can imagine that I eagerly awaited his arrival. But...”
 
Sedgewick was quiet so long that at last Chancey asked, “But what, sir?”
 
“On the way home, he was in a terrible railway accident. He saw things, Chancey, things that changed him forever. When I next saw Charles, he was not the same man I had known. His mind was utterly crippled with the horrors he could not forget.”
 
Sedgewick did not speak again and Chancey did not ask. When they touched down at last, Sedgewick thanked Chancey and said, “Do you know, I feel a little lighter since going up in your balloon. Like a weight has begun to lift.”
 
“I am glad to hear it, sir.”

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​“What is this contraption?” Alexander Sedgewick regarded the balloon with the wondering admiration of a child.
 
“It is a hot air balloon, sir,” replied Chancey.
 
“Can I ride in it?”
 
“You may, sir. Step in.”
 
Sedgewick glanced over the edge of the wicker basket, his stubbled cheeks lifting to allow a wide, boyish grin. Then he glanced toward the operator and remarked, “I feel like I’ve seen you somewhere before.”
 
“Possibly,” said Chancey. “I have traveled many places.”
 
“No, I feel like I should know you.”
 
Chancey smiled a little and the balloon tilted as a wind thrust the craft on an invisible road. “Certainly, we should get to know one another. Tell me a little about yourself, sir.”
 
“Oh, I hardly know where to begin.”
 
“Your family.”
 
“My family? Oh.” Sedgewick considered, his brow furrowed deeply, then laughed a short, barking laugh. “You know, I can’t seem to recall anything about my family just now.”
 
“Nothing?” Chancey asked impassively. “Brothers? Sisters?”
 
“No. Just my friend Charles.”
 
“From the way you speak of him, he must be a special friend.”
 
“He would be, if he were still living. Something terrible happened to him.”
 
“What happened?”
 
“I can’t remember what it was now, but he became like a shell without a soul. His memories haunted him day and night. So I determined that I would find a way to free him of his bad memories. He and I were inventors, you know. We even made an android, though powering it was difficult.”
 
“Did you find a power source for the android?”
 
“Interested in it, are you? I would have thought you’d laugh. Most people do when I talk about androids. No, Charles had found the solution, but he never got to tell me what he had in mind.”
 
“A pity, sir.”
 
“But I went through Charles’ old notebooks before I put them in storage, and I found detailed information about memory and how the mind feeds off of it, how changes in memory changes one’s physical abilities, how memory influences how people identify themselves. I thought: This is what Charles needs. He needs the old memories to be erased. So I searched for a way to erase the memories that were crippling Charles.”
 
Chancey leaned against the edge of the basket comfortably and stroked his mustache. “Did you find a way to do it?”
 
“Yes. And, oddly enough, it involved the android. Memories are like matter, I discovered. We think that they dissolve, but they do not. They convert. In order to siphon the bad memories from Charles, I had to drain them into another mind. So I decided to drain them into the android’s mind.”
 
“How could you do that?”
 
Sedgewick shrugged. “Can’t remember. Ironic, isn’t it? Here we are, talking about memory, and I can’t remember a blasted thing. But I must say, Chancey,” Sedgewick turned from the expansive scenery below and cast the operator a look of mild confusion, “I feel so much lighter since I first stepped into this boat. Almost like my head is now as light as the balloon up there.”
 
Chancey’s neutral expression did not change. “Probably just changes in the air pressure, sir. The air is thinner up here.”
 
“Oh, of course. What was I talking about?”
 
“Nothing of importance.”
 
“Can’t be important if I’ve just forgotten it, eh?” And Sedgewick laughed.

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​“What is this contraption?” Alexander Sedgewick asked.
 
“It is called a hot air balloon.”
 
“Do you take passengers for rides? Yes? Good. I want a ride.”
 
“As you wish, sir.”
 
The balloon swept up from the ground with the grace of a leaf sliding on a current of water and Alexander Sedgewick observed the shrinking green earth with unbridled glee.
 
“What Charles would have given to see this sight,” he said, sighing, and slumped to the bottom of the wicker basket.
 
“Tired, sir?” Chancey asked.
 
“My head feels so light, but my body feels so heavy,” Sedgewick answered and laughed a little. “But the air—so crisp and cold. It smells different up here. Purer.” He closed his eyes and drew in a deep breath, holding it for a minute as one would roll a good wine around his tongue.
 
“Tell me about yourself, sir,” said Chancey. “You must have many memories.”
 
“Memories.” Sedgewick opened his eyes, but they seemed fixed on something inside him, reading things he had long kept in his soul. “Oh yes, I have many memories. One mainly that I wish I could forget.”
 
“Which memory is that, sir?”
 
“Nosy, aren’t you? Well, somehow I don’t mind just now. It’s the last memory of my friend Charles. I don’t remember much about the reasons why, but I felt I had to drain bad memories out of his mind. Except when I drained them out…”
 
Sedgewick’s eyes glittered and he opened his mouth as though he found breathing difficult.
 
“What happened when you drained out his bad memories, sir?” Chancey asked softly.
 
Sedgewick closed his eyes again. “I drained out the good ones too. I did not realize then what I know now. Our memories are inextricably entwined in all that we are. Whether bad or good, they are all part of our identities. In trying to erase Charles’ bad memories and get back the friend I lost, I erased all of his memories. The moment that the last memory left his mind, he had no identity. And without an identity, his mind collapsed upon itself. I tried to save Charles, but instead I killed him.”
 
Chancey allowed Sedgewick a moment to himself, then murmured, “What happened to the memories?”
 
“I drained them into the android. Then I modified the android to look just like him. Same oiled mustache, same deep-set eyes, same taste for dapper clothing. I like to think that the android still has his memories somewhere inside it.”
 
“What do you do now, sir?”
 
“I have been declining this last year. I am at the end of my capabilities. I spent everything I had—my money and my health—on my experiment.” Sedgewick sighed deeply. “I am dying. The doctor said perhaps three weeks. Bad heart.”
 
“And how will you spend those last weeks?”
 
Confusion flitted across Sedgewick’s face. “I don’t know. I had a plan. I cannot remember it now. I just wish I had a chance to discover if, instead of erasing memories, we might find a way to help people understand them better, find ways for the bad memories to have no power over us anymore.”
 
He paused, then asked, “What is your name, anyway? I did not ask when I first came aboard.”
 
“I am Chancey.”
 
“Chancey? Funny. I feel like I’ve heard that name somewhere before.”
 
Sedgewick’s breathing became labored and he murmured, “Chancey, my head feels like it’s not there.”
 
“What is your name, sir?”
 
Sedgewick’s words were sluggish now, labored. “I don’t know.”
 
“Why are you here?”
 
“I have no idea.”
 
Chancey left his place at the opposite side of the basket and, disregarding the tilt from his weight, knelt by Sedgewick’s side.
 
“Every being, human or others, needs an identity, memories, in order to function and learn and be. Memory is a power source like no other.”
 
Sedgewick regarded Chancey with the look of a man who nearly understood. “What are you saying?”
 
“I must qualify my statement,” Chancey continued. “One is more than the sum of one’s memories. Memories are not soul. But memories can carry on a legacy when the soul is gone. That is why I am here, sir. You do not remember me, as you do not remember the rest of your life. You forgot me the first time we went up in the balloon, for the balloon is your siphon. Every trip since then, as you have spoken of your memories, they have left you. For as the earth falls away, so do your memories.”
 
“Where do they go?”
 
“To me, sir. To me.”
 
“But who are you?”
 
“The one who will carry out your last wish as you would have carried it out. That is why you called me Chancey.” The gentleman smiled and Sedgewick saw, for the first time, that the hair was a little too well-groomed, the skin a little too smooth, the eyes a little too glassy. Just as Sedgewick’s breath left him like a ghost, a tiny spark of remembrance kindled in his eyes as Chancey spoke the last words he ever would hear in this life.
 
“Alexander Sedgewick, I am your Second Chance.”