The Atures Parrot

The Reading of the Will for Dr. Elizabeth Nieminen was held in a wealthy but obscure part of Lunastus, at a pink villa prettily situated beside a shallow sea so pale it was almost clear. I’d met Dr. Nieminen only once, when I was nine, though our conversation was peculiar enough that I hadn’t forgotten it in the over thirty intervening years. 

When I’d lie awake at night and ponder the reasons I became an insomniac, sometimes I credited it to her—those few words marked the first time I began to sense an underneath to things. Like a scab ripped off skin.

After I received the notification that I was one of the lucky benefactors of Dr. Nieminen (or “Dr. Liz”, as I knew her), I was surprised. But more than that, uneasy. I’d only met her formally that one time, but there had been encounters since then, nonverbal encounters. 

At least half a dozen times in the intervening years, I’d see Dr. Liz across the plaza, on a street corner, in the market—staring at me, her green eyes unblinking. I would nod in recognition, and sometimes, make my way over to her. She would always turn away at that point and make a hasty departure. I stopped trying to approach her, and in later encounters would allow her to just stare at me for a moment or two. Her eyes were always noticeable on such occasions, for the wanting in them.

* * *

In the crowded reception room of her well-appointed home, surrounded by her friends and family, I found dread at the bottom of every teacup. I pondered the inexplicable inclusion of myself at these proceedings.

After every item of financial value was dispersed with, all that remained was the Inheritance of Memories. At last, the emotionless and mustachioed solicitor reached the final item. The one, by process of elimination, that could only be mine:

“Memory Package #29. The core memory has undergone prior transfer to forty-five recipients, with the requisite forty-five attachments. MP titled ‘Atures Parrot’ is hereby bequeathed to Alexander Berg.”

Someone gasped—it might have been me.

* * *

The memory upload was painless, which surprised me. I recalled my last memory inheritance—at my mother’s Reading of the Will, when I was twelve—as a moment of great pain. I willed myself not to access the MP while all the other attendees stared at me. Instead, I went back to the day I met Dr. Liz.

* * *

“Why were you trying to do that?” Dr. Liz asks. I’d broken my leg that afternoon.

“My mom was playing music, and I just felt like . . . moving, leaping along with it.”

“Have you ever seen someone leap before?”

“I saw someone leap out of the way of a cart.”

“And what happened to them?”

“They broke their legs.”

“So why did you leap today?”

“It felt like the right thing to do.” I feel my cheeks flush at the ridiculousness of it. “Am I crazy?”

She smiles at me, her eyes warm.

“You’re not crazy. You’re just in the wrong world, the wrong timeline for dancing.”

I’m not familiar with that word, dancing. But the rest of what she’s saying is so fantastical that I ignore it.

“Wrong timeline?”

“Sometimes, we feel urges that don’t seem to make any sense. But they trace back.”

“Do all of us feel these urges? Does my mom?”

“Not all of us. In fact, not most of us. Not anymore.”

My heart sinks. I hate feeling alone. “I don’t understand, though. What does ‘trace back’ mean?”

Dr. Liz sighs. “Never mind, you’re only nine. If we ever meet again, I’ll explain further. In the meantime, no more leaping!”

* * *

I finally accessed the memory package that night, as I lay in bed. To receive an MP of such antiquity is a rare and precious gift, and I congratulated myself on waiting until the evening. I felt some apprehension that, given my past encounters with Dr. Liz, the MP was unlikely to hold anything simple or benign. Still, I brushed those thoughts aside and cleared my mind. Though I’d only received one MP previously, I knew that the complete emptying of the mind was desirable before visiting an MP—otherwise, there’s no room for the memory bearer. Or in this case, forty-six memory bearers. 

I prepared to become.

* * *

MEMORY 1A – GAEL FLORES

Record: ABT Studio (890 Broadway, Manhattan, NY, USA); 2234 A.D. 

I’m jumping in a room filled with sunlight and mirrors. I close my eyes and inhabit it fully. I’m dancing, I’m leaping. Leaping, without any consequences, my bones strong and intact. I catch a glimpse of myself in a mirror—I am flying through the air, pure and alive.

The room’s filled with other such beings—beings somewhat like us, but much taller and more angular. Like us but stretched out. They move with a speed and carelessness I cannot imagine.

I want to live in this moment forever.

* * *

MEMORY 1B – GAEL FLORES

Record: The ARTEMIS II (JFK Extrasolar Airport, NY, USA); 2248 A.D.

I’m a slightly older version of this creature now, entering a shiny long-haul centrifugal ship, The ARTEMIS II. Another ship named after a Greek god, how trite. A woman-like being—my wife—clutches my hand. She’s afraid.

I’m devastated.

* * *

MEMORY 1C – GAEL FLORES

Record: The ARTEMIS II (Kuiper Belt approaching Pluto); 2260 A.D.

I work as a surveyor in the food production and storage units. The gravity is stronger on board, and I work slowly. They’re preparing us for where we’re going, I know. It will take many generations to achieve the desired bone density and thickness, but we have time for that.

At first, my coworkers muttered that there wouldn’t be enough food for 1,000 passengers to live out their natural lifespans, let alone the untold generations to be born during our journey to Lunastus. But no one asks that question anymore.

The answer arrived the third time they increased the gravity.

* * *

MEMORY 1D – GAEL FLORES

Record: The ARTEMIS II (Oort Cloud); 2265 A.D.

I always feel nauseous. After they make the upcoming G-increase announcement, I make my decision. I want to dance one more time.

I wait until my wife leaves for work—I’d promised her not to dance anymore. I stretch carefully.

I take off running down a corridor and launch into a grand jeté.

I can hear my bones breaking.

* * *

No further memories of the dancer play: the core MP is clearly over. The supplemental memories are little more than short clips, accompanied almost universally by a soundtrack of racing thoughts. Many are corrupted or not rendered appropriately. Others are only the briefest snatches of a whispered conversation, faces obscured, before ending abruptly, the memory cutting off mid-word. No more than a dozen were still pristine, complete memory attachments—hardly surprising.

* * *

MEMORY 14 – MOLLI MARTIN

Record: The ARTEMIS II (Zeta Lyrae system); 3824 A.D.

I’m a young girl eating breakfast alone. I can’t stop thinking about the G-force increase two days ago. It’s hard to eat—because of the Gs, but also because through a small round window to the central hallway, I can still see them loading the broken bodies onto carts.

* * *

MEMORY 17 – DENYS KOZAR

Record: The ARTEMIS II (Epsilon Lyrae system); 3884 A.D.

I’m a middle-aged man sitting next to my shattered father, lying in an infirmary bed.

“I’ve been reading natural history,” he murmurs.

I sigh.

“Why are you doing that again, pops? It’s no good for you.”

“Our ancestors lived there. I want to understand.”

“Fine, fine. If it makes you happy.”

“Not particularly. But look—there’s something I wanted to tell you. You won’t have heard of the Atures Parrot.”

“No . . .”

“I read about this parrot in a poem buried in a footnote. Essays from an explorer who lived over two thousand years ago. The poem is about a parrot—the Atures Parrot. He lived by a river called the Orinoco, with a tribe of people called the Atures—parrots were birds that could talk, by the way; they copied the sounds of their human owners. It sounds rather fantastic, I know.” He chuckled, then winced. “This parrot lived with people he loved, in a land like paradise. But enemies came and took their lands and killed them all. And the parrot was left alone.

After that, he made everyone who came across him uneasy, for he spoke a language that was dead—dead with his humans. The parrot reminded them of something they wanted to forget—never a welcome guest at the feast.” 

He sits up to look at me, balancing unsteadily on an elbow as he tries to recapture something like dignity.

“Does that mean anything to you?”

“I need to think about it . . .” I hear myself saying.

“Do you?” he whispers. “Do you really?”

* * *

MEMORY 23 – AVERY HILL

Record: The ARTEMIS II (Beta Lyrae system); 8725 A.D.

I’m an OB-GYN cutting a baby out of a woman—seventeen pounds, nearly as wide as she is long. Already we are beginning to change. I watch one of the nurses sneak a memory inheritance tech under a bloody towel. We aren’t supposed to have them aboard, but there are at least six that I’m aware of. Maybe this MP will cross the chasm of space and time between us and a Lunastus still six thousand years away. Maybe you’ll receive it and know how we once were. I worry they’ll never tell you.

* * *

MEMORY 29 – JOON SEO

Record: The ARTEMIS II (Delta Lyrae system); 11984 A.D.

I’m a boy running down the hall to the recreation center with my friend, Rupert. We’re laughing and not paying attention when we careen into a cart of medical supplies coming around the corner. We crash hard to the floor, and I hear my arm breaking. Beside me, Rupert moans softly. Rupert isn’t as big as me, and as I turn to face him, I’m already imagining what his parents will say when they hear we’ve been running again. When I have to look into their eyes and tell them—

Rupert’s neck is broken.

* * *

MEMORY 36 – RENE VALK 

Record: The ARTEMIS II (Interstellar Space); 13002 A.D.

I’m a navigational specialist—maybe captain, one day. I eat dinner with my family and eye the mutants at the next table. At every meal, they’re given larger servings. When they’re injured, extra care is taken. And we all know why. Targeted genetic drift, the anthrobiologists call it. The mutants are the ones who’ll survive the next G-increase, and the next. Their lines are the ones we need, the ones who’ll settle Lunastus. I remain tall, my bones stubbornly slender and fragile. My line won’t survive, not without a mutant of its own, which hasn’t occurred yet. The G-increase in twelve years’ time will likely be the end of me and mine. They’re all so satisfied, I think, as I watch them with a mixture of contempt and jealousy. Freaks, I call out. I can’t help myself. Dead man walking, one of them calls back.

* * *

MEMORY 39 – SANDER UNT

Record: The ARTEMIS II (Lunastan orbit); 14647 A.D.

I’m a sanitation engineer. One of the final generation of voyagers, they tell me. I’m scrubbing a lavatory floor when I see something large and pale out the porthole window—Lunastus. I press my face against the window and stare and stare. Soon, I will know what it feels like to walk on soil. To have our very own star. The earthborn called theirs Sun, nothing more specific than that. We call that one Mor, which means mother. Sometimes they point Mor out to the children in their lessons—I hear it from the hallways as I sweep. It’s just another white dot in a sea full of them, no mother to me. I am ready to be Lunastan.

* * *

MEMORY 43 – TIA HANNINEN

Record: 64 Andra Lane (Meadowlands, Lunastus); 15293 A.D.

I’m a young mother inheriting this MP from my father. Our family has lived on Lunastus for untold generations; before that, all I know is a ship carried the colonists over the great black sea. 

I see the voyage of our ancestors play out, the long, fragile journey of targeted genetic drift, the mutants that emerged and were cherished and nurtured, bred and multiplied. But before all of that, I see what it was to dance, to leap, to move without fear, to move with true abandon. 

I cry at this unbidden knowledge, and something in me believes the only comfort is to share it. I tell my friends about these strange beings and their long metamorphoses. They smirk at me, eyes darting. When I turn my back, whispers tail me.

It’s too late to share the secret. We have all forgotten; we don’t want to be reminded.

* * *

MEMORY 45 – ELIZABETH NIEMINEN

Record: Lunastan Central Hospital (300 Park Avenue, Silversea, Lunastus); 15471 A.D.

I am Elizabeth Nieminen, nine years old. I hold my dying grandmother’s hand.

“You’re the Atures Parrot now, Lizzie,” she murmurs.

“What does that mean, Na?”

“It means, the one who speaks a language that is gone. The one who remembers.”

* * *

I open my eyes.

I’m lying on my bed again, a Lunastan once more—short, compact, and careful. I sit up and walk slowly to the darkened kitchen for a drink of water. So slowly. And I recall the great We, who used to leap unchecked by gravity. The glass slips through my fingers and shatters on the floor.

“Why did you give me this?” I cry out.

Elizabeth answers across a chasm of time and space so impossibly vast I can barely hear her, and I know in my dense and heavy bones where her spirit has departed to.

Because you were a little boy who tried to dance.