## Chapter 1: Amnesiac Here's what I know so far, we all have amnesia. All of us. We all are missing something. More specifically, we are missing some time. You see, on the 16th of September we all woke up to a new day. Literally a new day. A new season. A new year. That is, because for all of us, ‘yesterday’ as we remember it was December 10th of last year. Time. Gone. For example, for me, I vividly remember falling asleep on a red, faux leather couch at my mother's house on a cold December night. I was there visiting and had gotten stuck. Snow was falling. It was at 37 inches before I turned off the lights that night. A real blizzard. They were calling for two more feet. So I stayed. We're talking about 5 actual human feet of awful, cold piles of white. The snow of the century, they had said. Ominous and fear inducing. I had shoveled her driveway seven times that day. Seven! You really have to stay ahead of it. Especially when it's the wet, heavy stuff. This was definitely the wet and the heavy. Stay ahead of it for sure. You'll have a heart attack, collapse and die out there. No lie. You will definitely die. Maybe I did. Come to think of it. Did I die? No, I fell asleep on her couch watching the news. Anyway, my next memory is waking up in my bedroom. Different house. Different county. My home, not my mother's. The sun was shining. It was September. Of course, I didn't know that at first. It took a bit to acclimate. Imagine it this way, have you ever fallen asleep in the middle of the day, only to wake up after the sun has set? You open your eyes and it’s dark. Disoriented, you walk around the house checking clocks, looking at calendars, confused. Malaise. Did you sleep for a few hours or an entire day? Two days? Don't be stupid. That's just stupid. This, however, this was different. A life had been lived. No. Not just A life, MY life. How do I know this? Photos. Photos, in new frames. Photos of me. Photos of a vacation that I knew nothing about. A trip that I was clearly a part of with people I loved. There had been selfies. Leftovers were in the fridge. Still good. A meatloaf that must have been made the day before. September 15th? Impossible. That day never happened. Not to me, at least. How is it that a person can remember, with eidetic perfection, the details of a day that occurred over nine months ago. And yet, all those days in between then and now... All the work. All the conversations. All the love making? I can hope. All the TV shows. I seriously missed several shows. A couple were entire seasons. How do I know? Facebook post. Sunday, June 4. 10:05 P.M. "Spoilers ahead. The finale was just like I expected. RIP Rick." I spoiled the finale of a show, for myself. Frustrating. I had to be more careful re-reading my old posts after that. Text was easy to pass by without reading, of course, but pictures... The pictures were harder to avoid. Like, apparently, I own a cat now? I saw the picture in the feed before the actual fuzzball attacked my foot walking to the fridge later that day. That first day after we all woke was confusing, for sure. So, there was a video I had posted the day before. My new cat versus laser pen. In the background the news was on the television. Rewatching it that day, wondering where this new cat was hiding, I heard the reporter. The deep, trustworthy voice of Daniel Harris. The local, six o'clock news anchor for WDTV. Reports were coming out of China indicate an alarming phenomenon, he was saying. Unclear what was happening exactly but mass amnesia was... The video cut short. Apparently, I had grown tired of teasing the cat with the red glowing dot of the laser. I wasn't alone. Level the field. We were all the same. We were all confused. Those who had documented their lives on some form of social media were able to relive small bits of the dark times. Bite size chunks. Biased, self-congratulatory, self-absorbed drivel. And they would believe it all, because why not? Who would dispute it? We were all equally clueless. If your profile said you enjoyed a nice mocha latte with that cute guy or hot girl, and implied that you later hooked up; as long as his or her profile didn't have a rebuttal or alternative timeline notation. History. Recent, true, history. Written, not by the winners, but simply by those who did, at the time, document their point of view. Sure. It was distorted, often idiotic, mostly slanted, one sided and sadly-pedantic, but frequently the only thing we had to go from when recreating a historic timeline. Our own personal history. But details. Oh, the details. We were a society full of silly details. Like Hugh. Hugh Garrison, the local high school rugby coach. He documented every meal. Every single meal he ate was posted. Rated. A write up. An exposé. For example, Hugh knew that on the morning of July 12th, sometime before fifteen after nine that morning, he had eaten eggs for breakfast. Scrambled and with, what appeared to be, hot sauce covering them. The description that accompanied the photo had given all the juicy details, of course. A side of sausage. Links not patties. Beef not turkey or chicken. You could tell that one by the color. He had orange juice but you could only see the edge of the cup, so it was naturally assumed. Hash-browns. Fried potato shavings all mashed and congealed together, covered with obligatory ketchup. The staging was nice. The lighting, perfect. This photograph shared on several social channels including: Facebook. Instagram. Twitter. Google+. Even LinkedIn, as he saw it as a way to showcase his photography prowess, perhaps hoping it would lead him to teach the photography class next semester. Twelve total likes and/or comments, he had amassed. Impressive for a breakfast selfie. Hugh also believed that, in the afternoon of that same day, he must've caught his wife cheating on him. The incoherent ramblings about mistrust and matrimony weren't overt or obvious on his feed. However, the lack of wife in his home and lots of empty or vandalized picture frames told more than his social channels. Her closet had become his. Her drawers now occupied by random bits, odds and ends. One drawer was all tools. There was also just one plate in the sink from the prior day. Of course, he didn't remember that meal. He had apparently lost his interest in photography after the cheating wife incident. But he missed her. The event wasn’t real to him. A dream or nightmare he was now reliving thru leftovers. That previous day, for Hugh, just like me and for everyone else on the planet was black. Gone. Lost to the wind. And no one, not the pastor of the local brethren church nor the newscasters; not even the President knew why it had happened. Or, I fear, maybe they all did know. And maybe it's all a game to fool me. But that's just crazy talk. Crazy, foolish mind tricks. Right?