It promised perfect recall of all events. Humanity would finally be able to move past their biases and perceptions and the failings of an imperfect memory. Recall was a cocktail of chemicals that locked down memories as they were created. People revise memories every time they bring them to mind, reliving the events in their head and creating a new memory based on the relived event as they recalled it. Like a xerox machine copying the copy of something over and over again. Eventually the memories become what we want them to be, or what we fear them to be, rather than what they are.
Recall would put a stop to that. Memories would be accurate permanently. For the first time eyewitness accounts would be as accurate as video tape. Learning would be a breeze, read something once and you can instantly bring to mind whatever fact or passage you want. And never miss a birthday or anniversary again. These were the promises. These were delivered.
Agnes was one of the first people to receive Recall from an early age. It wasn't approved for everyone yet, she would be one of the pioneers of the technology. The first in an age of geniuses. She wasn't alone, almost two hundred children were admitted to the trial. The drug had no harmful biological side effects whatsoever, if anything it improved health. So parents were eager for their children to be the first. Agnes' parents were both educated and relatively brilliant people in their own right, but they had gotten there the hard way. With both of them raising Agnes it was no surprise that by the age of five, while she was still learning how to use her changing and growing body, she could speak in detail about more than a dozen sciences, had the vocabulary of fluent speakers in eight of the world's major languages, and never misplaced her toys.
She was a prodigy outside of being a Recall Baby. And although her identity was meant to remain secret for the trial, her accomplishments by the time she was eight were hard to keep under wraps. She had been published under a pseudenym in a few scientific journals, using different names and home languages for each publication. But savvy people started to notice and put the dots together. Her celebrity accelerated as much as her academic capability. But with fame come detractors, and in her case, there came danger. The idea of superhuman intellect was startling to many. A threat to others. What of the people who could not afford Recall? Were they left to become simpletons in a world of savants? Where economic success had always been a bit unfair and weighted towards the wealthy, the emergence of a real possibility that the rich could BUY being better than the rest of humanity was terrifying.
Although the bullet was meant for her, Agnes, at the age of eleven was spared. Her father however was not. While spending time in their country home, enjoying sitting by the stream that passed through their property a sharp crack rumbled and echoed through the air. Everything was still for a moment. Then a series of deafening blasts filled the silence, and then nothing.
Agnes looked up to see her father, her simple sweet father. A man with only two PhDs to his name who despite his intellectual shortcoming had never once shown anything but love for Agnes. She knew this... she could recall every last interaction he had with her. Even the times, the many times, she corrected him and he was frustrated with being bested by a child. He still only had love for her, and she knew it. The evidence was there for her in every last one of his actions. Including his last action. Falling towards her, wraping his body against her to sheild her. He had seen a flash and splatter of red and dove to protect her. He didn't even realize the red was from his own blood as he leapt to protect Agnes. He collapsed onto her, and although she was an intellectual giant, she was physically an eleven year old girl. She was covered and pinned down by her father as the life drained out of him, crimson soaking his shirt, and then her own. They both cried as he held her. It was less than a minute before her security detail ran over to pull him away and try to revive him. She couldn't forget that. She couldn't forget any of it.
The assassin had been part of a 'Humble Humans' splinter group. After he fired his first shot, somehow having snuck onto the property, the security that came with Agnes' celebrity status had riddled him with bullets. The trial that followed was swift. While eyewitness accounts vary... Agnes' did not. She told the court in exacting detail what had happened. Her voice still tiny and soft, that of a child, even though she spoke with a cadence and certainty that was offputtingly authoritative.
Agnes was told that she was lucky. Many people who suffer a traumatic event will make it worse every time they remember it. It will grow for them like a nightmare. Becoming more and more traumatic after the fact. For her, she would never have that. They told her. What they did not tell her is that it would never be able to leave her mind. That when any little thing reminded her of her father every memory of him would come flooding to her in perfect crisp recall. The annoying moments, the tiresome moments, the loving but imperfect moments. And the details, every detail, of the day out by the creek. It was paralytic to her. She would sit for hours remembering her father. Never letting any part of him fade away, and never distilling down what he meant to her. He was always everything he had been. He was complete. But sometimes its the incomplete that we need. Agnes was one of the first with Recall. But her inability to escape her past was what no one would ever forget.
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