-NARRATOR: Who are you
if you can't remember who you are?
♪♪ (theme)
(gulls squawking)
(surf crashing)
-MAN (on speaker): Crashing Hills Memory Center.
-Yeah. I'm here to see a patient in the Alzheimer's ward.
-You're a visitor? -Yes.
-I'm sorry, but our Solos aren't allowed visitors.
-Yeah, I know. I just...
I traveled a long way.
-They're meant to stay as Solos.
-Yeah, I know the rules.
Can you make an exception?
Just this once?
Are you Stuart Waldo Thompson?
-Yes.
-(sighs)
(chuckles)
Are you Clark Kent?
-Yes.
-Are you Mickey Mouse?
-Yes.
-(chuckles)
Hello, Stuart.
(beeping)
"Install stem cells directly into the blood stream.
Memory regeneration should occur within four to five minutes."
This is gonna hurt.
Rightfully so.
(device hissing)
(beeping)
Okay.
Phase one... base memory.
Okay.
Do you hear me, Stuart?
Fuck.
Okay.
Look at that light.
What color is that?
-Green. It's green, isn't it?
(chuckles) Green.
(laughing)
Yeah. Not blue, not yellow,
not red, not white.
That's green.
-That's right. -Green.
Green like grass.
Green like trees, leaves...
salamanders.
-Keep going. -(chuckles)
Green beans, alligators...
Oh, green beans, I love green beans.
Yeah.
-And what else is green?
-Green like peas and pickles
and... and parakeets.
The Incredible Hulk.
The Grinch... the Grinch who stole Christmas.
-(chuckles)
-Yeah.
Four-leaf clovers,
praying mantis,
the Emerald City,
Kermit the fuckin' frog.
-(chuckles)
-It's not easy being green.
-That's good, Stuart, really good.
Now, tell me, where are we, huh?
What's this place called?
-This is a, uh...
-I know you can remember. -Um...
Beach. This is a beach!
-That's right. -Yeah, we're on a beach.
All this shit here is sand,
just sand.
And that?
That's the sea, huh?
-That's right. -Not a river, not a pond,
not a lake, not a puddle...
the sea.
-Don't stop now. -Hmm.
The waves.
The waves crashing.
Crashing like timpani drums in Beethoven's Sixth,
like... like... like fireworks on the Fourth of July.
-Twenty percent. You're doing so well, Stuart.
-Whoa, whoa, whoa. -Look at me. Look at me, man.
I can amble. (laughing)
I can... My muscles remember.
My bones reacquaint.
(laughing)
Look. I can dance.
Soft shoe, tap, jazz,
Macarena, Electric Slide.
Hey, watch.
Watch me, quick. (chuckles)
Oh, yeah. Watch me Nae Nae.
Whoop! Whoo!
(chuckles)
I can sing.
Oh, I love to sing, always have.
♪ Wise men say ♪
♪ Only fools rush in ♪
♪ For once in my life I have someone who needs me ♪
(chuckles)
♪ I miss the old Kanye ♪
♪ Straight from the go Kanye ♪
♪ Chop up the soul Kanye ♪
♪ Set on his goals Kanye ♪
(laughing)
Ah, yeah.
Yeah.
The dope jams...
the lit bangers.
I know again.
And I know that I know.
But I don't know you.
-No?
-Why are you doing this?
Why are you doing this for me? Hmm?
-Um, I'm from the National Health Service.
NHS? Well, if you think you're going to pay for this
with my pension, you gotta another thing coming.
-It's covered, Stuart. Memory regeneration is universal.
Take stem cells, inject them into you,
and regenerates total brain function,
and soon after recovers all of your memories.
-My memories?
And it's free?
-It's free.
-As it should be.
I know at first that they were, that they were selling
this cure for Alzheimer's.
Yeah.
But I always said, ought to be a human right.
It's awful in there...
that demented fog of dementia.
In there it's like being buried alive
or cast in amber,
but still puttering inside.
You want to roar. You wish to scream,
but screams and roars are all banned in that land.
No crying, no mercy.
No wishes or prayers.
You cry out for your mother or your father
or your God.
But they're all gone too.
They've all left in the fog.
And the terror and the fury arises in you.
(scoffs) I exist!
You wanna shout, "I exist!"
I exist!
But you surely do not.
Not in this land.
But then you came.
You burned off all the fog.
And I can remember again.
I'm alive, my son.
And you're to blame.
(device beeps)
-Phase one is complete.
Brain regeneration is at 50%.
Now comes the rest. Phase two.
Personal memory and recovery.
(beeping)
Hang on tight.
♪♪
What do you remember?
-My wife's farts at night.
Code Red. Code Blue.
Floating in my best friend Nia's pool.
Looking up at the clouds.
Watching "13 Going on 30."
Seeing Ming Chong in the supermarket.
Flying down that blue slide into Mom's arms.
-Blue slide.
Where was that.
-In the park...
with the big trees and a duck pond.
-The woman... the mother...
What does she look like?
-It's all I can remember.
-It can't be everything.
-Well, yeah, yeah, that's all there is.
-That's all the memories?
-Afraid so.
-Are you sure?
-Of course, I'm sure.
I already said I'm sure.
That's all there is.
That's all I can remember, okay?
-Do you remember me, Stuart?
-I'm afraid we've just met.
What... What is this?
Is this some kind of NHS thing, huh?
Like a shakedown of a poor
Alzheimer's patient's pension fund?
-Were you ever diagnosed?
-Of course.
-Alzheimer's patients exhibit identical symptoms
to aging memory addicts.
If you install too many recollections,
over time, your neurons were destroyed.
So you know what I think, Stuart?
That after years of stealing memories,
your brain was dying, not from Alzheimer's,
but from your addiction.
-Son, you... you must have the wrong man.
-I know who you are.
-Case of mistaken identity.
-I know what you did.
-I didn't do anything.
-I spent the past 11 years...
trying to find the monster who took the memories of my mom,
who started by hacking into company servers,
and graduated to violently assaulting people,
who stuck an extractor
right into their fucking brains
and downloaded the memories.
I've long thought about this day...
about the day I would find the man who took her from me
in that hospital hall by the vending machine
who stripped that little boy
of every memory of the mom he just lost.
-What do you want?
-What do I want?
Do you know what my earliest memory is?
A dark shadow...
reaching out to me.
I can't see her face or her body.
She's a glitch, a blur.
Pixelated, buffering.
A dark fog.
I can't even see her.
My own mother, and I can't even see her.
And I can't hear her.
Not a laugh or a cry...
or a...
"I love you, sweetheart."
I can't even miss her, Stuart.
My own, mother, and I can't even miss her.
And the worst part of all?
Is that the only place she still exists
is in there.
And it's a shitty feeling, you know.
'Cause the fucked up thing is
now I need you.
So what do I want, Stuart?
I want what's mine.
I want you to give me back what you took from me.
I want her.
-I can't.
-You give me her,
and I won't tell the authorities about you.
I won't bring you in.
You can live out your days here.
-How do I know?
How can I know you'll hold up your end?
-What choice do you have?
Oh, well.
-Blue. Blue eyes.
She had blue eyes.
-Blue how?
-Blue like the Mediterranean at twilight.
Blue like a starling's feathers.
Blue like an aster flower just moments after bloom.
-She had blue eyes. -Mmm.
And clumps of mascara.
Always clumps.
And when she looked at you...
when she looked at you, my God,
-her eyes opened wide. -Really?
-Yeah. Right.
And she cooed when she saw you.
(chuckles)
Involuntarily, she cooed when you walked into her room.
She would gasp...
as if she thought how...
how could this boy be so perfect?
How could I have made such a beautiful kid?
How could he be mine?
-She'd gasp when she saw me?
-Yeah.
And she smelled like lavender.
-(chuckles) -It was the detergent she used.
-(chuckles)
-I've always loved the smell of lavender.
-Mm-hmm.
-She would do this thing.
Whenever she saw me... you...
in the morning,
she would hold out her hand as if for a handshake,
like... like we were business partners.
And she would say,
"Nice to make your acquaintance, Mr. Man."
(chuckles)
And she'd take you to the playground every day
to feed the ducks and play.
-And there was this... -Slide.
-Yeah. Big blue slide.
It was like your Everest.
You saw her growing small.
And then you slid down...
-Wrapped her arms?
-And she held you tight.
I don't know what came over her that day...
but her eyes were watery, and her little nose...
-Her nose? What... -Yeah.
Like a button. Small, red...
And she said, "I will always catch you, Otto.
I will never let you fall."
-She sounds lovely.
-She was.
She really was.
-And so were you. -(scoffs)
-A lovely boy.
-Why?
Why'd you take those memories from that little boy
in that hospital hall who just lost his mom?
-I had a child once.
A beautiful boy.
During the Stay, I... I began to think him a nuisance.
An annoyance.
An interruption to the screens that I loved,
to the devices I cherished.
I made excuses not to play with him.
Not to help him with his school.
Not to show him the stars or tuck him into bed at night.
And then one day...
(sighs)
One day he got sick.
Virus took him in its arms...
and he ailed and glitched and...
begged for breath...
until he was gone.
And the light left my world.
And when he passed, I roamed the streets for days,
wishing to disappear.
Wishing to die.
Wishing to leave on a rocket ship or...
stay locked in my Stay
or...
travel to the future...
or... or be punished forever.
Wishing I had seen my boy for what he was.
Which was the whole world.
I couldn't bear the memories of him.
So I spiraled and tumbled and...
That's when I started.
Stealing. Thieving.
I needed to stop my heart from this god-awful bleeding.
I stole the other memories to rid myself of my own.
I stole from them.
From hundreds of victims.
From you.
A sweet boy, just like my own.
And I just needed to remember a boy's love for his parent,
so that I could make myself believe
this is what my boy must have felt about me.
So I took your memories...
and I watched every one
over and over again.
Sixty years of 'em.
Of you.
Her.
And together.
But as the dementia progressed
and the fog overtook
and the memories grew dim
and I could see only dark shadows
where people should be,
I realize...
the worst truth of all.
This is what my boy must have felt
when he looked at me.
A glitching father whose face he hardly saw.
Whose embrace he never know.
Whose love...
Whose love he never felt.
I see now that I've committed the same crime twice.
To you and to him.
Robbing a child of his parent.
-Tell me about that last day.
My last day with her.
-Son... -Tell me. I wanna know.
-It was cold.
You had on a sweater...
and you went in to see her.
And she was lying in bed.
Bald, pale.
Her nose was...
-Red and small like a button.
-You crept toward her and...
as soon as she saw you...
-Her blue eyes opened wide.
Her eyelashes caked with mascara
wide like this.
-She reached out her hand to you.
-To shake it as if we were business partners?
Which in a way we were, her and me.
-And she said...
-"Pleasure to make your acquaintance, Mr. Man."
-Exactly so.
Exactly so.
And she held you tight.
Only now it was final.
-She smelled of lavender.
She smelled great.
She pulled you close like that day on the...
-Big blue slide. -Mm-hmm.
-She said she'd always be there to catch me...
even if she was gone.
-That's right.
And her breaths grew fainter.
She pulled you close.
She held you tight.
-And she said...
Tell me what she said.
-She said, "My boy...
it has been the privilege of my life to be your mom.
I'm sorry we've had such a short visit together.
And as the years go on, these moments together may fade.
But it's okay.
It's okay if you forget me."
-No.
-"It's okay if you forget me, Otto.
'Cause you never can.
You are literally made up of me.
(chuckles)
I'm in every fiber, every eyelash
and follicle and cell,
like the stars and the sky and the sand and the sea.
I'll always be with you.
And you don't need to remember for it to be true,
for I will for you."
And as you held her close,
you looked at the respirator beside her bed,
the machine that hummed and glowed with a...
-Green light. -Yeah.
Until her breaths ceased.
And she grew still.
And the green light, too brief, went out.
A memory isn't simply a thing you have.
It's a promise.
It's a vow to the one you love.
Remembering is a search.
And you found her again, son.
She would be so proud.
(sighs)
I am sorry.
I'm so sorry for what I've taken from you.
For what I've done.
(exhales)
-It's time, Stuart.
-For what?
-I have to take it with me.
-The memories?
The green light?
-That's right.
-Oh, you... you said... -I said
I wouldn't tell the authorities about you.
-No. No, no, no, no, no, no.
No, no, please, please.
No, don't take them.
Don't send me back there. Please.
-I have to, Stuart. -Please.
-You know I do.
-Can I ask just one small favor?
-You don't deserve a favor,
however small.
You've hurt so many people.
-I know.
But can't you just leave me one... one memory?
Just one.
Please.
-Which memory?
Of your boy?
-Those memories are all corrupted, I'm afraid.
-So which one?
-I don't know.
I don't...
-Hey, Stuart. -Yeah.
-Would you show me what it felt like?
-What?
-Her hug.
You know, Stuart...
I imagine this is what your boy
must have thought your hugs felt like too.
How about this one, Stuart?
How about this memory?