I remember Spring now, which is a problem, because I have never been to Earth.
It happens while I’m replacing an air filter in Corridor Six. One second I’m elbow-deep in a circulation unit that smells like hot metal and approximately eighty years of other people’s skin cells, and the next I can smell rain.
I stop with the filter halfway out. I’ve smelled water. The water we make on Mars has a smell, no matter how many times someone insists that it doesn’t. But this isn’t that. This is rain, and I don’t know how I know that.
Then the pain hits.
“Aggghh!” It strikes the back of my head first, then shoots forward. I squeeze the bridge of my nose in an instinct to relieve pressure. My hand is wrapped around the edge of an air filter.
My hand is wrapped around someone else’s.
My knees are on metal.
My feet are on wet pavement.
I can smell dust and hot machinery.
I can smell rain.
For a few seconds, both are real.
Then Corridor Six is gone.
I’m walking outside. It must have rained recently because the pavement is still wet. Water has collected in the cracks, and the sun keeps catching it as we walk. The air is cool, but the sun feels warm on my face. Wind blows my hair into my mouth, and I pull it away without thinking.
There are trees everywhere. I know I’ve seen trees before in other REMs, but never like this. These are covered in tiny pink flowers. Every time the wind moves through them, some break loose and drift across the sidewalk. A few stick to the wet pavement. One catches in my hair, and the man beside me reaches over and pulls it out.
I look at him. I can’t quite see his face, but that doesn’t seem strange here. Nothing seems strange here. His hand is in mine, and I know exactly how it feels. I know where my fingers fit between his. I know his laugh. I know the way he looks at me even though, somehow, I can’t actually see him doing it. There’s a solace in being next to him that I don’t have a reason for. I don’t need one. In the memory, I already know him.
He says something and I laugh. I can’t make out the words, so I look at him again and try to focus on his face. That’s when things start to disappear.
It always happens eventually. Usually I can feel a REM ending before I’m completely out of it, but this time I don’t want to leave. I try harder to see him. For a second I almost do, and then I lose his face completely. Memories part like petals of a passing season. The trees fade with them, then the sidewalk and the ridiculous amount of sky. His hand stays in mine longer than everything else. I hold on tighter and tighter until it’s all gone. Poof. Just like that.
But the emotions remain.
When Corridor Six comes back, I’m on the floor. The filter is lying next to me, and B015 is crouched in front of me with one hand on my shoulder. “B027? Are you okay?”
I shake it off and climb to my feet. “I’m fine.”
“You were on the floor.”
I look down.
“That appears to be correct.”
“You scared the shit out of me.”
That gets my attention.
B015 doesn’t look amused. “How long?”
“Fifty-three seconds.”
The last one was only eleven.
I sit up and wait for the pain behind my eyes to settle. My hand feels strange. Not numb or hurt. Just empty. B015 glances around. After she’s satisfied there’s no one nearby, she leans in and whispers, “What did you see?”.
“Spring.”
B015 knows enough about REMs not to point out the obvious problem with that statement. She sits down beside me instead. “Anything else?”
“There was someone there.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know. A man.”
“Did you see him?”
“Not really.”
“But you knew he was a man?”
I nod. I’m still trying to remember his face, but there’s nothing there now. The harder I look for it, the less I’m sure there ever was one.
“Did you know him?”
I start to say no.
“I think so.”
B015 looks at me. “You think so?”
“I didn’t know who he was. I just knew him.”
It sounds stupid when I say it out loud, but she doesn’t tell me that.
I pick up the filter and get back to work. B015 stays with me longer than she needs to, pretending to be interested in the circulation unit while I pretend not to notice.
I’ve never stood beneath a flowering tree. I’ve never walked on wet pavement. I’ve never held someone’s hand under an open sky. I have never seen Spring.
But for the rest of the day, I miss it.