Chapter 32 - The Corridor of Echoes
The newly opened passage stretched into darkness.
Unlike every hallway in Section Thirteen, this corridor reflected sound strangely.
Each footstep returned several seconds later.
Each breath seemed to linger.
Daniel led the way with a flashlight.
Halfway down the passage they began hearing voices.
At first they sounded distant.
Then unmistakably familiar.
Margaret stopped.
"I know that voice."
It was her late husband.
Laughing.
Arthur turned off the flashlight.
The voices continued anyway.
Rebecca heard herself reading bedtime stories to her daughter.
Helen heard a conversation with her own father from decades earlier.
Daniel whispered,
"These aren't recordings."
Arthur answered quietly.
"No."
"They're reconstructed memories."
The corridor widened into a circular room lined with hundreds of crystal panels.
Each panel shimmered with moving images.
Not videos.
Moments.
Margaret watched herself teaching Daniel to knit when he was six.
Daniel watched his first fishing trip with his father.
Rebecca saw the day she first met Daniel in college.
Helen stared silently at an image of Eleanor.
The two women embraced before walking into the lighthouse together.
Neither noticed someone secretly photographing them from across the road.
Arthur studied the farthest panel.
Unlike the others, it remained completely black.
A small plaque beneath it read:
UNRECOVERED MEMORY
Margaret reached toward the dark crystal.
The instant her fingertips touched it, every image in the room disappeared simultaneously.
Only one sentence remained glowing in the darkness.
May you like
SOMEONE REMOVED THIS MEMORY ON PURPOSE.
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