The other man took the blunt with his left hand and made a gun shape with the fingers of his right hand. He pantomimed a shot to the head. His lips made a barely audible “pow.”

“Memories,” Jim said. “I know you’re only playing with half a deck, maybe less. Surprised you remember my mug to be honest.”

Jim took a final drag from the blunt, which was barely the length of a thumbnail now, and passed it off to Roland.

“But science, eh, she’s kept right on lurching forward the last ten years. There’s a neuro team up at MIT, they reckon they’ve made a breakthrough. Alzheimer’s research, initially. But they think they’ve figured out how to straight-up recover memories from damaged brain tissue. Their tech has reversed a lot of injuries the old science said was permanent.”

Roland felt a painful tugging sensation in his chest. He thought back to the woman from his dreams, with the damascene teeth. He saw her every few weeks, trapped in some foggy memory or another. Her name felt like it was always on the tip of his tongue. He didn’t know what she’d meant to him, but the thought of her twisted his heart into knots. It was maddening, not even knowing what she’d been to him, or he to her. Roland frowned, turned his head and locked eyes with Jim.

“You think a bunch of fed-funded school scientists are going to help me?” Roland asked. “I got a strong feeling none of the governments on this continent are fans of me.”

Jim waved a careless hand. “Less the issue,” he said. “Those AmFed motherfuckers are pragmatists. I’ve been in and out of the Northeast a half-dozen times, just this year. You do work they value, and they ignore a little terrorism.”

“Memory’s hazy,” Roland said, “but I know ‘little’ isn’t accurate. I think we killed a skyscraper.”

“Ha! You don’t remember that? The Dimon building, in ’41. A hundred and twenty floors of rich pigs wallowing in shit. We slipped a bomb in during an austerity summit led by the CEOs of the Big Four. Bugged their conference room so we could hear ’em scream when that first blast cut the support beams. It was better than sex.”

There was a peculiar joy in Jim’s eyes. His chest-snakes writhed in orgiastic glee. Roland felt queasy.

“Roland,” Jim added, “the sons of bitches had it coming.”

”Maybe,” Roland said, “but I know we didn’t just kill CEOs. I remember other times, kids…”

“Not kids,” Jim insisted. “Heirs. Young enough to take full advantage of JuvEn. The future undying Lords of Capital. They had to go.”

Roland shivered. “Even if they did, I’m sorta glad I don’t remember it.”