The Forgetting Machine by Pete Hautman

told me that Ernest Rausch had helped him memorize that entire poem. And just to the left of that were my dad’s initials, R.C. And the number to the left of that looked like a date—September 27! That was the day my dad had memorized “Evangeline”!
    I looked at the other initials and dates. G.B. had to stand for Gilbert Bates, and “Partial restore” probably meant that Rausch had restored some of Gilly’s memories just this morning. His initials appeared in two other spots, followed by “Code, AG-3601.” Hadn’t Gilly said something about Rausch helping him remember code for his antigravity project?
    The initials W.B. would be William Bates, and yesterday Billy had had his head stuffed with American history. Reading down the list, I noticed the initials X.Z. There couldn’t be a lot of people with those initials, but I happened to know one: Xavier Zlotnick was the director of ACPOD’s nanotechnology program. I guessed that the other initials were also ACPOD employees.
    The Latin-looking words on the right looked vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t figure out why.
    â€œLet me go,” said the cat.
    â€œI’ll let you out, but let me finish this, okay?”
    The spaniel growled. The Yorkie snarled.
    â€œI hate you,” said the goat.
    â€œI hate you,” said the cat.
    â€œWhat is wrong with you guys?” I glanced over my shoulder at the cages. But the animals hadn’t been talking to me. Their attention was on the door. I swiveled around in the chair to see what they were looking at and was hit with a clovey, nose-pinching wave of Bay Rum aftershave.
    â€œGinger Crump,” said Mr. Rausch from the doorway. “Whatever are you doing here?”
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    I . The whole sordid tale can be found in—you guessed it— The Flinkwater Factor.

25

Projac
    The first time I met Ernest Rausch he hadn’t seemed scary, just weird. I had almost felt sorry for him, even though he had been rude and dismissive. I figured he was one of those guys who had never got a date in high school, so he avenged himself on the world by acting all snooty and superior. There are a lot of guys like that working at ACPOD.
    But here in his lab, caught red-handed snooping through his computer, I found his gangly, spiderlike body and his pointy goatee plenty scary.
    He closed the door and shot the dead bolt.
    â€œOh!” I said.
    â€œOh?” he replied.
    â€œI mean . . . ” I stood up. “I was just leaving.”
    He closed the door. “But you just got here!”
    â€œThat’s okay. I have to go. Somebody’s waiting for me.” I took a tentative step toward the door. He did not step aside.
    â€œI see you’ve met my friends,” he said.
    â€œI hate you,” the cat said, then followed it up with a hiss.
    â€œNot very friendly friends,” I said.
    Rausch smiled. It was not a nice smile, more of a gotcha smirk.
    â€œMs. Crump, I do not usually accept walk-in clients, but for you I will make an exception.”
    â€œUm . . . I don’t think I’m actually a client.” I did not want to be included in his Client Key file folder. What I wanted was to get OUT. Like, NOW! Where was Billy? Where was the AG-3601? Where was Gertrude ?
    â€œOf course you are,” Rausch said. “Your father is a big fan of my REMEMBER system.”
    â€œI don’t know if ‘fan’ is the right word,” I said.
    â€œEverybody loves REMEMBER! Why, your friend Billy has the entire text of A Comprehensive History of the United States stored in his head. He can name every vice president, the names of their wives and children, and the names of their pets!” He spread his arms triumphantly. “How wonderful is that?”
    â€œI see what you mean,” I said, by which I meant, I see that you are completely insane .
    â€œWhat would you like to know, Ginger?”
    â€œUm . . . I would like to go