The Notes

The first one was in my jacket pocket.

I found it three days after I woke up. I had put the jacket on to go to the shop, and there it was — a small slip of paper folded twice, the way you fold something you want to stay hidden but also want to be found. My own handwriting. Shaky, like it was written in a hurry, or in the dark.

I read it four times standing in the hallway. Then I put it back in my pocket and went to the shop anyway, because I needed milk and because I did not yet understand what I was holding.

I should explain what I mean when I say I woke up.

My name is Daniel Okafor. I am forty-one years old. I work as a software architect for a logistics firm. I live alone in a flat in East London with one bookshelf, one guitar I rarely play, and a kitchen that gets good morning light. I am, by every measure, healthy. Blood pressure normal. Lungs clear. The kind of healthy that feels almost aggressive — like my body is overcompensating for something.

Four months ago I opened my eyes in a private clinic with no memory of checking in. The nurse said I had been a patient. She said the procedure had gone well. She was kind and precise and told me almost nothing. I had a document on my phone — signed, timestamped, legal — that confirmed I had consented to a MediReset procedure performed by Veridian Health Solutions on the 14th of December 2049.

I did not remember signing it. I did not remember being ill. The gap in my memory began somewhere in the middle of last year and ended in that clinic room.

The nurse said this was expected. She said the memory integration sometimes takes time. She gave me a leaflet. It had a sunrise on the cover and the words: Your New Beginning.

I went home. I felt fine. I felt better than fine. I felt like a man who had been carrying something very heavy for a long time and had put it down — except I could not remember the weight.

Two weeks after the jacket, I found the second one.

I was cleaning the bathroom and I moved the mirror slightly to wipe the wall behind it. It fell out from where it had been wedged between the mirror frame and the tiles. Same handwriting. Same fold.

I sat on the bathroom floor for a while.

Then I searched my flat. Methodically, room by room, the way you search for something when you are not sure you want to find it. I did not find anything else that day. But I understood now that I was looking. And that the person who had hidden the notes had understood I would need to look.

He — I — had known me very well.

The third note took a month to find. It was under the liner paper at the bottom of the kitchen drawer. The one I only open when I need scissors.

I put the scissors back. I closed the drawer. I stood at the kitchen counter for a long time looking at the guitar leaning against the wall in the corner.

I did not go to the guitar yet. I don't know why. Something about it felt like a door I was not ready to open.

Instead I called Veridian Health Solutions. I was transferred three times. I spoke to a man who read from a script. He confirmed I had been a patient. He confirmed the procedure had been a success. He confirmed that all documentation was available through my patient portal.

I asked him what they had taken in return.

There was a pause. Then: "Mr. Okafor, the details of your agreement are outlined in full in the consent documentation you signed prior to the procedure. Is there anything else I can help you with today?"

I went to the patient portal that night. Forty-seven pages. The kind of document designed to be agreed to, not read.

The fourth note came three months in, and I found it the way he had always known I would.

I couldn't sleep. I went to the bookshelf and took out the novel I always read when I can't sleep — the one I have read so many times the spine is broken in three places. I opened it. The note was tucked between pages 180 and 181. The scene I always stop at.

I set the book down.

I crossed the room. I picked up the guitar. I turned it over.

There was a note rolled tightly and slipped through the sound hole. I had to tilt the guitar to slide it out. It was longer than the others. Both sides of the paper, small handwriting, filled completely.

I set the note on the floor.

I looked at my left wrist. There was a scar, thin and pale, about two centimetres long. I had noticed it before and assumed it was part of the procedure. I had never questioned it.

I pressed my thumb against it gently. Under the skin, barely perceptible, a faint warmth. Steady. Like a pulse that wasn't mine.

I sat with that for a long time.

I thought about the man who had hidden these notes — in a jacket, behind a mirror, under drawer paper, inside a book, inside a guitar — while he was dying. While he was running out of time and running out of options and trying to leave something behind for a version of himself who would wake up healthy and have no idea why.

He had known me completely. Every hiding place. Every habit. Every 2am.

I picked up the guitar.

I started to play. Something simple. I'm not very good.

Somewhere, in a server farm I would never see, a small piece of my wrist noted the change in my heart rate and filed it under emotional response — music — elevated.

I kept playing anyway.

Twenty years is a long time. But it starts tonight.