The center aisle of St. Joseph's Cathedral caught sunlight. It followed the sun, east to west. During winter in the temperate mid-latitudes of the northern hemisphere, the sun traced a holy arch at forty five degrees from the southern horizon. It poked through the windows, and streaks of pure full spectrum light hit the burgundy carpet.

A tiny shuddering shadow of a bird in flight caught Simon's attention. Distracted, he lost his place. He glanced at his notepad. You are in Church at your father's funeral, it read. Emotion failed to register. He knew what a father was and what a church was. He understood the concept of funerals. Father? Further up the page ir read, you have lost your memory. I wrote this to remind you. There was further explanation. Whenever you stop concentrating, you forget most of what just happened.

The woman next to him put a hand on his arm, leaned in a whispered, "I'm your wife. I wrote that. Concentrate for as long as you can."

"How long does this usually last?" He asked.

"Your record is five straight minutes of remembering," she said, pursed her lips, continued, "The memory thing is permanent. But, you've come a long way. Concentrate on the funeral."

"But," he said.

"Not now," she said. He relaxed and fell into concentration. Something about the way she said it was so convincing, it challenged him.

"I'm going to concentrate this whole damn funeral," he said, "You'll see."

"No damn in church, hon," she said. "We'll see. Get to it."

Concentration meant Simon needed to catalogue details. Always start with the weather, he told himself. A strategy formed in his mind. The whether established the setting and lead to descriptive detail and mood. The sun shone, but they cried for a dead man. His father. His unknown father. My father is dead.

He lost his place.

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"Seven minutes," he said. "I have a life after all."

"It's taken you two years to break your old record," she said, "Congratulations. Now concentrate." His mind relaxed and continued cateloguing details. The sun shone. His father died. Green, the colour of nature in spring, did not exist in winter. People cried a lot at funerals.

"What's your name?" He asked her.

"Emily," she said. He liked Emily. Maybe they would have sex later. He couldn't remmber if they ever had. "Concentrate," she whispered, but he knew with certainty that this train of thought would distract him.

He lost his place. Thirty seconds into his next recall, he lost his place again. Emily replaced the note pad with another notepad. He looked at it, bemused at the daring of this stranger passing him notes in church. You've lost your memory. I am your wife. Relax and accept it for now. He sighed relief.

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"I want to write a novel," he said at brunch.

"You were a writer," she humored him, "Do you think you could without remmbering? How?"

"I don't know," he frowned. "At least let me keep a diary. One decent notebook."

She thought about it and waited for him to lose his place and forget the idea. He stared at her a long time. I want to write, he thought over and over. "Fine," she said. "I'll get a notebook and I'll come up with a plan."

"One thing," he said, "Never look in it."

"How would you know?" She smiled.

"Just promise," he pleaded.

"You got it. I promise," she said. It was good enough.

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This is not your diary. It's a secret novel. Turn the page to the outline and look for the checkmark where you left off. Find the next blank page and continue from there. She doesn't know, but you can concentrate up to an hour while doing this. Try not to get distracted by aimless thoughts. If you do, come back to this page, if you haven't already.

Satisfied that his plan would work, he tucked the notebook under his mattress. There would be all sorts of tibits in the novel. Anecdotes that explained the current world, and why he needed to accept it. Secrets thoughts and insights. Her habits and sexual deviencies. It would be...


:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
He read a passage:

"You tore the damn thing up and this is a sort of part 2. Some of it's edits and rewrites, someoriginal pages. Somedays we leave you a note to tidy up and closely bind in. We have yet to come to a decisions for when to prerest it for publicathin, but you'll have a long stretch of days doing the rewrite. Some of us are more on the ball than others. Hopefully, you're the initiative taking type that will begin to call a vote on when we should consider the whole thing done.

One of us wrote recently after sex with the woman. I hesitate to mention the location of that passage. Many of us disappear shorty after with a quick note, like "My turn" or "Hope it wasn't two minutes ago." You, being the endeaverring sort who's still reading, ablbeit at the mere drop of the work fuck I probably have kept only one of the three of you I can talk seriously too."

He'd never encountered this bebore. They all had secret friends within the book and subtle memories of them. This vice was new. Maybe he was one of the reknown Old Leaders from when the book was founded. He could be that louse, the Savoir or one of his followers.

They all relied on unverified reports of when his memory had been injured. Some felt he was 100 years old or more. These were immature assumtions. Best estimates had him between 20 and 50. Emily has 33 or 34, depending on who you asked and what they remembered. Why waste the good years writing a novel?

"Emily?" he called.

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