The discovery, at the age of ten, that other kids could not be controlled by remotes and had no idea that such a thing could even be possible had been among the most tormenting experiences of his life—another memory that had carefully been removed before his transfer to San Francisco.

Sarge and Emma had put him to sleep with it, woken him up with it, cycled his mind through its memories with it, listening as his voice spewed out the details of his days.

In his innocence, he had liked his remote. He’d enjoyed listening to his own voice speaking his memories and looked forward to seeing it pointed at him and knowing that sleep would come after.

“It’s lucky Turner didn’t have it,” he said to the figure in the window.

“I had it decalibrated. The schematics are in my safe. All he had was the disk.”

“That was almost enough.”

“But it wasn’t.”

Mark went to the open doorway. “I want it. And the schematics. All trace of it.”

The old man came to him. “I kinda thought you would.” He pulled it out of his pocket.

Mark took it in his hand. Then he crushed it, watching the plastic splinter, watching the electronics spill out. As he did so, it sparked and he felt twitches.

“I prayed for you, Mark.”

“Thank you.”

The general would never know how dangerous it had been out there. There were things soldiers did not say, and one of them was just what their battlefields had been like. Battle is more private than sex because witnessing a man’s torment is more intimate than witnessing his joy.

Then Mark turned to his own place, where he had played on the floor, where he and Gina had made the pledges of childhood, and where he had chastely kissed her on her cheeks of sweet cloud.

“You erased my childhood memories.”

“For your peace of mind,” Doc Emma said.

“For your peace of mind, you mean. You need to face that.”

“He’s absolutely right,” General Walker said.

“In any case, we’ve restored them. All you have to do is access them. Everything is there.”

Here, he had felt loneliness for the first time. Here, he and Gina had planned that, no matter what happened to them, they would be lovers forever. So when they’d met in Washington, it had been the culmination of a years-long love affair that neither of them had at the time remembered.

“It’s just as you left it,” Sarge said.

Mark stood with his hand on the door. Were his books still there? His models that he had made?

“You can go inside, Mark. There’s nothing to fear.”

But he was afraid. He did not want to see his old place—their place. “Mark, go in,” the general said.

“Is that an order?”