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meeting spot. There’s enough light from outside for Sean to make
out the door to the storeroom. Mendel slides it open.
    Inside, a series of shelves are stacked with boxes and cobwebs.
    ‘That’s it. I can hear it.’
    Sean can’t see any sign of anything that might be the machine. He follows Mendel
into the room.
    ‘You can’t hear it, Charles,’ says Mendel.
    ‘No, you can’t hear it,’ Sean says.
    ‘It’s not so simple. This is incredibly complicated science.’ Mendel squints. ‘Yes
I could leave my wife and start a new life, but I’d never have a moment of peace
knowing I’d abandoned her. She was hurt most by this, but she stuck by me, which
is a burden, but I can’t leave her and have the one person who still has faith in
me disappointed. You’ve had it tough, I appreciate that, but other people’s lives
are usually harder than they look.’
    ‘So that’s why you made the machine?’
    ‘That’s why.’
    ‘To save your wife from remembering, or to save you from leaving her?’
    Mendel shrugs. ‘It’s not that easy,’ he says.
    Mendel makes his way across the tiny room, finding spaces in the clutter to place
his feet. He rearranges brooms and shifts a crate out of his way, and a soft blue
light spreads over the floor of the room. It’s bigger than Sean expected. The machine
extends over three of the cupboard’s shelves, a series of wires and circuitboards and some larger tubes and boxes. He can’t even tell where it finishes.
    ‘How does it work?’
    Mendel leans in and places his hand on a lever.
    ‘Here.’
    Sean looks at Mendel in the dim light. He’s not a large man. Only Sean’s height,
much smaller than Sean’s dad, and he’s dressed in a shirt and beige pants. He looks,
Sean thinks, like someone who couldn’t really belong anywhere else.
    ‘Maybe you should pull the lever,’ Sean says.
    ‘It’s a decision for the group. We agreed on that.’
    ‘But it’s not. You said you can’t start again. Maybe the others can. Maybe they still
have choices. You’re the one who built this, why shouldn’t you be one who decides?’
    ‘I’m not deciding today.’
    ‘I would.’
    ‘Are you so determined for revenge?’
    ‘It’s not just revenge. I already told you; I can’t start over. You want to do this
to save your wife from knowing what a failure you are. I want it because I want this
thing out of the world. It’s not to protect my parents, or me—or even my sister.
It can’t bring her back. I just want a world where this photo never existed.’
    Mendel nods. ‘I want that world too,’ he says. ‘But you’ve looked at it. Your parents.
If I pull that lever, it’s not just the bad guys who suffer.’ He gestures to the
machine. ‘It doesn’t distinguish your intentions, your interpretations, or what is
human from machine. It just identifies specific memory cells and destroys them. It
could destroy communications, much of what we know and remember about the world.
I can’t predict it, Charles, I can’t test it. Even though it’s my machine, it will
be out of my control.’
    ‘Will your wife remember the thing you wrote?’
    ‘No. It will be as if that never existed. And everything that follows from it will
be gone, too.’
    Sean shifts and knocks over a mop. It clatters against the wall and lands with a
thud.
    ‘Sorry.’
    Mendel makes a tight smile. ‘Are you sure about it, Charles?’
    Sean nods. ‘Yes. I’m more sure than not.’
    Mendel pulls the lever and the sound of the machine grows to a warm hum. It’s not
loud, but Sean can feel it in his chest. It builds until it’s too much. ‘Can we get
out of here?’ he says.
    ‘I’ll give you a ride.’
    He follows Mendel up the stairs and out into the night.
    Half an hour later, Sean stands on the front lawn of a small yellow-brick house and
watches as Mendel’s car disappears around a corner, the indicator blinking courteously
despite the absence of traffic. He wonders how Mendel and his wife will spend