>> APOLLONIA "NIA" KARAHALIOS: MEMORIES START


Childhood amnesia referred to the tendency of people to forget their earliest memories as they grew older. Supposedly young children could still recall their very earliest memories, from when they were 1 or even younger, but those would slowly fade with age, leaving the "first memory" of most adults somewhere between the ages of three and five. That age could go down to as low as two, though, when traumatic memories were in play, like death or loss or hospitalization. Of course, those early memories are particularly subject to bias, especially when you've heard and repeated the story of what exactly happened over and over again. Leveling and sharpening over time mold your memory into a shape that is only an echo of what truly happened. The illusory truth effect, in a way, changes reality.

All of that ran through Nia's mind. But still, she remembered.

Sometimes she saw herself from a distance, depersonalized, an animatronic toddler waddling toward the inevitable. The bottle was red in her memory (red was danger, but it was also enticing, fast food restaurants used it a lot), though the brand her mother usually used came only in blue. Leveling and sharpening again; she was stuck on red, even though it was meaningless, colored plastic concealing clear poison. The feelings and thoughts of her youth were blunted into vague concepts, and she could hardly understand what in that idiot child's mind had convinced her to do what she had done. Small children were keen on putting things in their mouth, sure, likely an exploratory instinct, but why then? Why that?

It tasted like fire, and she'd started to cry.

She'd heard rapid footsteps, rapid breathing, hands moving into her vision to rip the bottle away. Nia had had at least a dozen babysitters from birth to The Incident, and she could not remember a single one except for her. Liliana, her name had been, but Nia had always called her Lily (except that she, like many children at that age, had trouble with her L's—something about the difficulty in replicating the mouth shape?—and so had always come up with something more like "Wiwwy"). She was blonde, blue-eyed, very pale, and her skin seemed to burn red with every strong emotion, whether embarrassment, frustration or panic. She was as bright as Nia had ever seen her, then, though it was hardly on her mind at the time; any conscious thought had been replaced by pain, the burning sensation seemingly without end in her mouth and down her throat and pooling in her stomach. Lily had wrenched the bottle from tiny hands that were inexplicably still holding on, scooped her tiny form up and carried her to the phone. She had screamed until she couldn't stand it anymore.

Dispassionately, from a distance, Nia's memories recalled Lily's voice, somehow both too soft and too loud, whispering and yelling into the receiver- help, someone, please- it was an accident- I swear I only looked away for a second- I don't know- I don't know!- she's crying- oh no, she stopped- oh god- please, please hurry, god please don't let her die-

Her memories after that were blurry, some combination of trauma, anesthesia and repression. When she woke up, she had tried to speak, and screamed again. Again, and again, and again. Her ears rang with the memory. It was an understandable reaction from a confused and hurting child, she supposed, but she learned years later that it likely caused her throat not to heal properly. Not that she ever would have spoke properly anyway, not that she would have saved herself a lifetime of hospital visits and esophageal dilations, but perhaps it would have done something. Perhaps.

She retold the story dozens of times. Hundreds, maybe. People inevitably wanted to know what happened, what led to her being like this, and it was rote at this point to recall it. Her memory was joined with her present observations, her adult knowledge interrupting her childhood thoughts, her logical whys and hows, and her forgiveness for the babysitter who had probably only lost focus for a moment.

She grew to hate it, in the constant retellings, the inevitable pitying stares, the utter lack of comprehension, the awkward silences. One day, someone would ask, and she would have the wherewithal to refuse.

Nia had asked her father, once, when she was in junior high, about the procedure that had saved her life. While he hadn't participated in her surgery, he was intimately familiar with exactly what had happened. He told her the details, but for once in her life she had no desire to recall them.

Anesthesia awareness—not being properly sedated during surgery and maintaining some level of awareness during the procedure—was an exceptionally rare, if fascinatingly horrifying, phenomenon. She was almost sure that it hadn't actually happened to her, that some phantom un-memory was haunting her nightmares.

But still, when Nia recounted her surgery, her hand moved to the scar on her throat, she could swear she felt the sharp blade of a scalpel.

>> Nia Karahalios continued in Perfect Forward Secrecy