Free The Curiosity Killers by K W Taylor Page A

course it isn’t you.” He cleared his throat and drew a pair of half-moon spectacles from his shirtfront pocket. “It seems there’s an old legend amongst the Iroquois of a sorceress who served as a kind of portent of the Roanoke disappearance.” He lowered the paper. “And of course, that would have been centuries ago. So it couldn’t be you.”
    Fallon’s eyes darted to the corners of the room.
    Exit, exit, where the hell is the exit?
    Just as she spotted the door, a hand clamped down on her wrist. She shrieked. “Let go of me!”
    “I think not.”
    Fallon struggled, but then a piece of hard plastic pressed to her temple.
    “What is that thing?” Fallon asked.
    Vere turned his hand over and studied the device now resting in his weathered palm. “This?” He scanned the dark plastic and small white buttons. “This is for our memory erasure, which you’re already aware of as a stipulation of our services.” He turned his hand around so that Fallon could see the buttons. “Can you read that?”
    Fallon squinted. One of the buttons said “Restore.” Another said “Revert.” In a row beneath the other buttons, a third said “Delete All.”
    “This is what I use to erase the memory of your adventure. You know we do this with all our clients, though perhaps in a slightly nicer manner. Because it’s the gaining of the knowledge that’s important, isn’t it? Not so much the keeping? The keeping, well…that’s too dangerous. That’s what our whole business model is run on. Knowledge gain for its own sake, the retention of which is immaterial.”
    “I wanted to know what happened,” Fallon said, “and I knew I wouldn’t get to keep the memory, but… delete all ?”
    A wicked grin split Vere’s face, and he let his thumb move to the “Delete All” button. “Yes. Activating this command…”
    “Deletes all ?” Fallon whimpered.
    “As in every memory, not only your trip, but everything.” He stared at her. “The sentimental falling of leaves on your first day of kindergarten, your first kiss, your graduation, your parents’ funerals.” He leaned even farther over the table, his face inches from Fallon’s, so close she could feel the heat of his breath. It held a whiff of peppermint tea, stale enough to be unpleasant at this distance. “I mean the memory of how to walk, talk, read…dare I say function. You would be a baby in an old woman’s body.”
    Tears fell from Fallon’s eyes. “Please, no.”
    Vere squinted hard. His eyebrows knit into a long, steel-gray caterpillar. “You won’t try this again.” It was as much a statement of fact as a command.
    ~
    The woman who left Jonson’s Exotic Travel that evening seemed serene. In a freshly pressed pair of jodhpurs and a gauzy white blouse that buttoned down the front, she looked pristine and put together, if a bit confused.
    Fallon could swear she’d been on her way to the library, but this building…this wasn’t it, was it? She glanced back up at the unmarked townhouse, gave a shrug, and sauntered down the sidewalk.
    The front windows, they’d looked like eyes in a way, and Fallon felt them boring into the back of her neck.
    A slender man approached her. “Ms. Fallon, I’m sure you don’t remember me,” he said, “but we met once, long ago.”
    Fallon stopped walking and studied him. He wore a dark gray suit, Victorian in style though not like the retro fashions that were popular today. No, these clothes looked vintage, looked dusty and worn and battle-scarred.
    “I suspect we share similar political leanings,” the man went on. “May I buy you a drink?”

    Thursday, August 5, 2100, Avon, Vermont, NBE
    The lobby looked like a nineteenth-century drawing room, though this was not a private residence. A stack of parchment-printed brochures sat on a table near the entry. “Jonson’s Exotic Travel,” the front of the brochure proclaimed. “Services available by referral only.” The room was silent and smelled of