Turned on the small radio on the table next to him. Feral stopped purring for a second. Only one station across the dial: the gray caps’ station. Gone any cacophony of voices and music. Usually just a single signal, filled with cryptic clicks and whistles. Punctuated by propaganda delivered in flat tones by human readers. “… A spy is caught and killed just outside the Zone … Sector 509 has been scheduled for renovation. Anyone living there should relocate immediately.”

But, tonight, nothing. That made thirty-seven days of static. What did it mean? Was it just another slackening of attention? Or something more serious? Finch had noticed a pattern. The new dislodged the old. A puppet government in place for six months dissolved when the gray caps turned to building the camps. Electricity no longer reliable since they’d started in on the two towers. These failings brought a twisted optimism. Maybe they can’t do everything at once. Or maybe there was a purpose to all of it that he just couldn’t see.

He pushed a complaining Feral off his lap. Walked back into the kitchen.

The memory bulbs lay on the counter. Vaguely round. Pitted and whorled. Smelling of both salt and offal. Already rotting?

Finch looked down at the cat, which had followed him expecting a treat. Wondered what would happen if he fed a bulb to Feral.

“You want to eat one of these and I’ll eat the other?” he asked Feral.

The cat walked back into the living room. Finch laughed. “Smart choice.” Picked up the phone receiver, dialed Rathven’s number. A crackling interference. At least it’s working.

Through the static: “I’m taking one now. Give it an hour. If I don’t call back, check on me.”

“I will. Be safe.”

“Thanks.”

Finch put the receiver down. Be safe. Don’t slip on the carpet. Don’t fall out the window.

Which poison first? Finch picked up the orange one. Get the worst over with first.

Each time he ate a memory bulb, he became someone else. Different when he returned.

These would be his fourth and fifth. The first had belonged to a girl of ten and had given him nightmares for a year. Montages of a ragged doll. Soup made with dog bones. A bleak apartment without even wallpaper. Turned out there’d been no foul play. Her parents dead, she’d starved to death. The second had been a young man, the third a young woman. A double suicide unspooled in his head. Left him with longings he didn’t know he had. Regrets that weren’t his. Memories of people he didn’t know. Or want to know.

Finch had never eaten two in one night.

How many would change him by just a little too much?

Fuck it.