012. A world that never moved on

You could do it again, if you wanted. Your first kiss, or the prom or your glory days as a teen pop idol. The Memory Lane recreation studio had it all set up. You slipped into a booth, swiped you payment card and it would take you back there, wherever you needed to be.

To start with, people were happy to relive their pasts. They’d slip back a few decades for an afternoon eating Mum’s pasta bake or a tryst with an old lover. They could revisit favourite Christmases, Woodstock, the birth of their first daughter. Of course, the experience was never as rich as it was the first time, but the detail was extraordinary. It was everything you remembered, and all the minutia you’d forgotten.

But some people wanted more. They weren’t content to watch the good times, and they couldn’t stand to re-witness the bad. The law clearly prohibited memory alteration – after all, rewriting the past threatened everyone’s present – but if you slipped a bit extra to the attendant, you could change things. Which is how Nate became an addict.

Sometimes he fucked it up, just like the first time. Sometimes, he made it right. Usually, he and Annie hovered somewhere between the two extremes. They watched movies or ate or fucked or fought or kept each other warm.

But it always ended the same way. The buzzer would warn him the session was about to expire, and the colour would begin to drain from everything. Just before she disappeared, she’d look at him sadly. Her eyes always faded first, right about the time she tried to smile. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” she’d say. And then she’d be gone.