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details of his life, he seldom remembers the incident or the impact that was the cause of the amnesia. That’s the one blank spot that often remains.”
    “I suspected as much,” she said. “And I’m not really upset about that. But there’s one other thing I can’t recall, and that’s driving me nuts. My job. Dammit, I can’t remember even the most minor thing about it, not even one little detail. I mean, I know I’m a physicist. I remember getting the degrees at UCLA, and all that sophisticated, specialized knowledge is still intact. I could start to work today without having to take a refresher course. But who was I working for? And what was I doing— exactly? Who was my boss? Who were my co-workers? Did I have an office? a laboratory? I must have worked in a lab, don’t you think? But I can’t remember what it looked like, how it was equipped, or where on earth it was!”
    “You’re employed by the Milestone Corporation in Newport Beach, California,” McGee said.
    “That’s what Dr. Viteski told me. But the name doesn’t mean a thing to me.”
    “All the rest of it has come back to you. This will, too. Just give it time.”
    “No,” she said, shaking her head. “This is different somehow. The other blank spots were like mists... like banks of heavy fog. Even when I couldn’t remember something, I could at least sense that there were memories stirring in the mist. And eventually the mist evaporated; everything cleared up. But when I try to recall what my job was, it’s not like those misty blank spots. Instead, it’s dark... very dark... black, just a perfectly black and empty hole that goes down and down and down forever. There’s something... frightening about it.”
    McGee slid forward, sitting on the edge of his chair. His brow was knitted. “You were carrying a Milestone ID card in your wallet when you were brought into the emergency room,” he said. “Maybe that’ll refresh your memory.”
    “Maybe,” she said doubtfully. “I’d sure like to see it.”
    Her wallet was in the bottom drawer of the nightstand. He got it for her.
    She opened the wallet and found the card. It was laminated and bore a small photograph of her. At the top of the card, in blue letters against a white background, were three words: THE MILESTONE CORPORATION. Under that heading, her name was printed in bold black letters, and below her name was a physical description of her, including information about her age, height, weight, hair color, and eye color. At the bottom of the card, an employee identification number was printed in red ink. Nothing else.
    Dr. McGee stood beside the bed, looking down at her as she examined the card. “Does it help?”
    “No,” she said.
    “Not just a little bit?”
    “I can’t remember seeing this before.”
    She turned the card over and over in her hands, straining to make a connection, trying hard to switch on the current of memory. She couldn’t possibly have been more amazed by the card if it had been an artifact from a nonhuman civilization and had just that very minute been brought back from the planet Mars; it could not have been more alien.
    “It’s all so weird,” she said. “I’ve tried to remember back to when I last went to work, the day before I started my vacation. I can recall some of it. Parts of the day are crystal clear. I remember getting up that morning, having breakfast, glancing at the newspaper. That’s all as fresh in my mind as the memory of the lunch I just ate. I recall going into the garage that morning, getting in the car, starting the engine...” She let her voice trail off as she stared down at the card. She fingered that small rectangle as if she were a clairvoyant feeling for some sort of psychic residue on the plastic. “I remember backing the car out of my driveway that morning... and the next thing I remember is ... coming home again at the end of the day. In between, there’s nothing but blackness, emptiness. And that’s the way