That piece of paper that Hlau held in his hand…
He wrote things down so he could remember, a rough analog backup for the things that were being wiped from his memory. Hlau tried to remember names, places, people he knew at the Agency of Investigation, cases, but more information vanished quickly than he could conjure it and scribble the characters. At the moment, he wasn’t even sure if he knew how to write in Universal.
He looked at the paper and hardly recognized what he scrawled. He was sure there was more he needed to put down, but he also knew he had to get out. He folded the paper, put it inside the inner breast pocket of his jacket, and ran out to the Agency’s lobby. Someone would be after him soon. That was not memory, but instinct cultivated by decades of practice as an agent. He wasn’t even sure someone would come after him, but he had to get to somewhere safe. He stopped, quickly wrote down SEEK SANCTUARY, SCHOOL OF WISDOM, and ran out to downtown street to catch a taxi. If he had arrived at the Agency’s parking structure in a car, he now couldn’t remember what color, shape, and manufacturer. A taxi moved past the Tchon embassy across the street. Hlau frantically waved it down, ran across the street, and was nearly ran over before he crossed the street. He opened the back door on the driver’s side, got in, and pulled the paper from his pocket. “The National House of Wisdom,” he shouted at the driver before he would forget.
The taxi left downtown and up Embassy Row towards the National House of Wisdom. He considered if he should seek asylum in any of those houses, but he couldn’t remember if he was guilty of any state crimes. No ambassadors’ names came to mind, nor the nations they represented, nor which ones were the superpowers and which ones were minor powers. It occurred to him that he should have had the driver stop by the Chancery of the Ndanthan Confederation, but the role of Ndanthans in international affairs or even what one looked like escaped him at the moment. Sanctuary was still the best option.
On the top of the hill was the National House of Wisdom. At the highest point of Shusa, the enormous temple was visible from nearly anywhere in the city. Hlau took an indefinite amount of currency notes from his wallet and threw them at the driver. He didn’t know how much he gave, whether or not it covered the fare, or even if a tip was included. He only knew this was the custom when it came to closing transactions. After paying the driver, he threw the door open and ran towards the entrance of the temple, saw a priest strolling about the grounds, and ran towards him. He grabbed the priest by the lapel of his jacket and said he needed sanctuary. The priest was shocked by Hlau’s abrupt accosting of him, but quickly assessed what was happening. Somehow, with Hlau desperately holding on to him, the priest got his mobile phone out of his pocket and called for someone to come up. Hlau heard the taxi driver ask if he should be taken to the hospital, and the priest answered that this no longer concerned him. No doctor would know what to do with Hlau, someone who was gradually losing his memory as if his mind was a computer hard drive losing its files through the commands of a computer virus.
The Evek soon came with a healer. Then darkness…
