Dr. Schreber:
I call them the Strangers. They abducted us and brought us here. This city, everyone in it... is their experiment. They mix and match our memories as they see fit, trying to divine what makes us unique. One day, a man might be an inspector. The next, someone entirely different. When they want to study a murderer, for instance, they simply imprint one of their citizens with a new personality. Arrange a family for him, friends, an entire history... even a lost wallet. Then they observe the results. Will a man, given the history of a killer, continue in that vein? Or are we, in fact, more than the sum of our memories?
Jenkins:
[Voiceover] The Supermarket in Ellington, Connecticut was always a constant in my life. Unchanged from my first memories of the place as a little kid, from the front end to the back room, aisle seven to seafood, it was timeless, like the town it was built in. Lying below the Johnny Appleseed Orchards, and just across the street from the Kelly family's cornfields, the place always felt like it was simply a natural part of Ellington. The Supermarket was an important link in the town: it was where all the families got their food, where all the local kids worked, where all the farmers would come to cool off. But most of all it was a community, for the customers, for the long time employees, and especially for all of us. This was where we worked, where we hung out. It was like a smaller version of our town. And I guess I should tell you about the town, 'cause Ellington is pretty important to this story as well. Ellington, Connecticut was a town everyone always said had more cows than people, and even if they wouldn't admit it, it was somethin' they were proud of. It was one of the last of its kind, an old fashioned family farm town. I've lived in Ellington my whole life, and it seemed as though the town and the Supermarket always stayed the same. They stood the test of time, almost immortal. Or at least, that's what I had thought. Bus as usually happens in these stories unfortunately, that was all about to change...
CAPTION:
And with the holidays came memories of childhood. [Speaking to the camera.]
Dejected husband:
And... and when I was a kid I always, always, always, always, always, always, always, always, always, always, always, always, always, always, always, always, always, always, always, always, always, always, always, always, always, always, always, always, always, always, always, always, always, always, always, always, always, always, always, always, always, always, always, always, always, always, always, always, always, always, always, always, always, always, always, always, alweez, alweezelweasel, weasel, weasel... When I was a kid I was such a fucking weasel and I nnhhh... [Bangs his head into the camera.]
XVII
The days aren't discarded or collected, they are bees
that burned with sweetness or maddened
the sting: the struggle continues,
the journeys go and come between honey and pain.
No, the net of years doesn't unweave: there is no net.
They don't fall drop by drop from a river: there is no river.
Sleep doesn't divide life into halves,
or action, or silence, or honor:
life is like a stone, a single motion,
a lonesome bonfire reflected on the leaves,
an arrow, only one, slow or swift, a metal
that climbs or descends burning in your bones.
Like all of my important memories, it has a potency that has influenced the pocket of time that holds it, so I can remember that particular Saturday afternoon, even though in many ways it was no different from any other. I can remember, for example, what van der Glick was wearing as she stepped out of the elevator, which was a dress covered with clownish polka dots. Rainie would make these heartbreaking stabs at femininity; indeed, she still does. It's not that she doesn't possess a woman's body now, and didn't posses a girl's body then. But clothes never seemed to fit her correctly, and the more girlish they were, the worse they would hang.
It is...difficult to describe someone, since memories are by their nature fragmented, isolated, and arbitrary as glimpses one has at night through lighted windows.
[E]very memory is turned over and over again, every word, however chance, written in the heart in the hope that memory will fulfill itself, and become flesh, and that the wanderers will find a way home, and the perished, whose lack we always feel, will step through the door finally and stroke our hair with dreaming, habitual fondness, not having meant to keep us waiting long.
