Garen woke up to a silent apartment. “Honey?” His voice bounced off the bedroom walls. He staggered to the window, knees and ankles cracking like wet branches in a campfire. The auto glass slid just enough to shove his head through.

Rotors whipped cold air in his face. A drone rushed a package to another floor. In the courtyard below, a self-driving weeder plucked a dandelion, but no sign of his wife.

Garen’s chest tightened. He longed for their old house. For mornings in the backyard sitting with Amelia where the only drones were bees visiting the hydrangeas. He’d overlooked her early signs, repeating stories, forgetting names. But when laundry showed up in the dishwasher and unlit burners were left on all night, they had to move. And without kids of their own to help, they couldn’t afford a retirement community staffed by warm-blooded caregivers.

He pulled his head inside. The window shut itself. A half-lit reflection highlighted his sagging jowls and exposed orbital cavities. He didn’t feel anywhere near as old as the man staring back appeared. He breathed deeply. The machines running the place had no idea Amelia was missing or he’d be hearing the elopement alarm. When it opened its doors in ’33, Vista Villa was marketed as cost effective senior care supported by the latest geritech, but Garen hated the constant monitoring almost as much as the 3D-printed meals. He disabled their fall detectors and GPS trackers the minute they arrived. Now he would find Amelia on his own.

Garen wrestled on pants before ordering a car and heading out the door. The corridor smelled vaguely medical, a little bitter, with undertones of artificial fragrance and ammonia. As Garen crossed the lobby, his shoes squeaked on the vinyl Mexican tiles. Higgins, the robot concierge, lit up like a theme park attraction.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Blick!” Higgins greeted with mind-numbing propriety and a bow of its plastic torso. “May I outfit you with a Vagabond?”

Because of his sciatica, Garen had been forced to try one of the upright mobility suits when he first arrived. Wearing an exoskeleton was like being spooned by a squid. “That would be a hard pass.”

Garen stepped through sliding doors and into dense fog. Vista Villa was nestled in the arid foothills of Southern California now blanketed by a late season marine layer. Cool air cut through Garen’s shirt, biting into his seventy-eight-year-old bones. Forgot his coat.

“Mr. Blick.” Higgins rolled after him, its rubber treads drumming the sidewalk. “You are shivering!” Higgins was part butler, part Nurse Ratched. “May I suggest warmer attire?”

“I’m fine.” Garen cupped his palms and breathed into them. “I ordered a duo to pick me up. It’ll be here any minute, so if you’ll excuse me ...” Garen slid on his Total Recall smart glasses. He swiped up, raising a blue filtered holo-map only he could see. The Recalls were required geritech, “invaluable for activity scheduling and pill management,” according to the welcome video. But the lenses blasted so many inane notifications at his eyeballs, Garen thought he’d stroke out. It hadn’t taken him a minute to jailbreak his pair, replacing community bloatware with military-grade apps.

He side-scrolled through glowing contour lines until he found the yellow pin representing Amelia’s location. His shoulders tensed. She was eight miles away. How was that possible? When they’d first applied to Vista Villa, he’d hacked Amelia’s medical eval, removing references to “Moderate Cognitive Impairment” to qualify for independent living. Altering records was trivial for a retired data security specialist, but maintaining the deception proved more complicated. The first time Amelia wandered off a gardening drone reported her. If they caught her again, the AI in charge could deem her unsafe and transfer her to Morning Star.

Garen still had night terrors from visiting Vista Villa’s deceptively named memory care ward. Robotic arms anchored to cafeteria tables spoon-fed applesauce for residents. In the “rec” room, octogenarians watched half-century-old gameshows. Vista Villa residents could choose to leave before transferring to Morning Star but would forfeit a good portion of the entrance fee, which, in Garen and Amelia’s case, would leave them broke.

Garen swiped the map out of view, revealing Higgins still hovering next to him.

“Will Mrs. Blick be joining?” Higgins asked.

“No. She’s resting,” he fibbed. Garen had bypassed all their tracking devices—only he knew Amelia’s real location. But the AI would get suspicious in an hour or two and dispatch a burly security bot to kick in their door. If he wasn’t back with Amelia by then she could lose independent status, and probably Garen too for hacking safety protocols.

“Shall I check on her while you are out?” Higgins really was a nosy prick.

“No! She asked not to be disturbed,” Garen said, hoping to be left alone.

The tops of the eucalyptus trees lining the driveway disappeared in the mist. Garen breathed in the piney mint scent, trying not to worry that his wife of fifty years was alone in this gloom. But it was his fault. They’d fought two hours earlier, after her first Deep Dive session. He cringed remembering his wife, pumped full of the mind-altering drugs he’d given her, slamming the bathroom door in his face. She must have slipped out after he’d fallen asleep. Now she was lost and probably terrified.

“Are you feeling quite all right?” Higgins rotated, fixing its black lenses on Garen.

“Yeah, yeah,” he said, although he could hear the upward inflection in his voice.

“Are you sundowning?” Higgins referred to a condition apparently common among folks Garen’s age. “End-of-day blues,” Amelia called it when her dementia wasn’t as acute. “Residents retired from demanding careers are most at risk,” Higgins continued. “But there are treatments.”

“I am not taking drugs from a computer!”

“Still, I’d like to schedule a mental fitness evaluation,” Higgins suggested.

“For me?” No one ever challenged his competence before. Garen was the kid other students cheated off. The fixer clients turned to when hackers froze their accounts and the FBI was out of ideas. “Stay away from me and my wife!”

Higgins was silent for a moment. “It can wait. Now if you will excuse me, I must attend to other residents back from their shopping trip.” The plastic twit scuttled off.

A bubble-shaped robo-van, the community shuttle, materialized out of the mist. Higgins waited as the shuttle door slid open, revealing a silver-haired resident in a Vagabond. “Watch your step,” Higgins told the resident, although this seemed performative. She was well protected inside the matte gray carbon fiber exosuit. She grinned while the suit’s powered legs and motion assist effortlessly carried her plus shopping bags from the shuttle to the front door.

Garen’s private rideshare arrived moments later. The duo’s clamshell door lifted, exposing two seats and an interior devoid of steering wheel. As Garen bent down, fire shot through his sciatic nerve, aggravated by decades of pour deskwork posture. “Step on it,” he told the dash display through clenched teeth. As the car pulled away from Vista Villa, he used his Recalls to check the first responder feeds for signs of Amelia. Nothing so far, thank God.

The duo passed a mobile fulfillment hub parked in front of an apartment tower. The hub’s rooftop cargo doors opened wide, releasing a swarm of delivery bots ferrying packages from its hold to the residential units. It was like watching giant pollinating insects. If Amelia had been there, she’d doubtless tell Garen about the summer she spent in the Caribbean studying Synalpheus regalis, the only eusocial species found in the ocean.

“They’re shrimp that live in hives!” Garen could imagine Amelia’s brown eyes lighting up and the corners of her lips curling. “Like termites and bees!”

This was one of a handful of stories Amelia repeated multiple times a day. Always the same opening: “Gare, did I ever tell you about …” And every detail delivered with identical phrasing and emphasis. He programmed her Recalls to flash alerts when she was caught in a narrative loop, but she never wore them. He loved her but couldn’t take it anymore. “Yes, Mel, you’ve told me MANY times.” It didn’t matter if his tone angered her. She’d forget that too.

If Garen hadn’t taken on so much pro bono work in his career, maybe they’d be in a different financial situation, but at least he’d banked a valuable favor. A nurse in Oakland, whose clinic Garen had defended from a state-sponsored Denial-of-Service attack, told Garen about experimental therapy called Deep Dive that could help restore his wife’s memory.

*     *     *
Earlier that morning, Garen had sat at his desk in the bedroom, using his Recalls to monitor Amelia, who was down the hall in the living room. All around Amelia, the Deep Dive projection mapping system threw spectral light onto every surface, transforming the space into a customized simulation with nearly the same resolution as the human eye. She stood inside a seamless replica of a new wave dance club circa 1987 as decoded by a brain scan which indicated this was a core memory for Amelia. Through heavy use of Deep Dive’s scenario engine and of photos and images he uncovered in his own research, Garen recreated every curly bang and oversized blazer to make the club authentic to Amelia’s memory as a teen.

“Why isn’t she dancing?” Garen asked Herminia, the nurse who’d helped him set everything up and now appeared on a separate feed from her clinic in Oakland.

“Patience, Gare,” Herminia gently scolded. Her black hair was pulled straight back and, because she agreed to help between shifts, she still wore maroon scrubs. “Protein-based nanoparticles take a few minutes to replicate.” At the beginning of the session, Herminia coached Garen on removing a vial of the milky liquid from its refrigerated storage case. He drew the specified dosage into a syringe and jabbed it into Amelia’s shoulder. She didn’t flinch or try to stop the procedure as he’d feared she might. The treatment wasn’t covered by insurance and their budget was razor thin, so every injection was indispensable.

Deep Dive worked by temporarily increasing blood flow to the hippocampus, the seahorse-shaped organ on the underside of each temporal lobe responsible for memories. Garen was a coder, not a doctor, but he understood the combination of drugs and immersive sensory stimulation could build neural pathways. It was their best chance at reversing Amelia’s dementia.

“Love Vigilantes” by New Order cleared the seating area in the simulation. The crowd bounced in unison to the synthesized beat. A post-punk teen with a green mohawk bumped Amelia. She stepped back from the impact, which she felt in real life via a haptic suit used for virtual fitness classes. Garen made sure it wouldn’t hurt her. He choreographed everything down to the “Silver Punk” playlist based on Amelia’s old mixed tapes—Depeche Mode, Psychedelic Furs, Yaz. Garen was left-brain, but his wife had real musical chops and even played bass in a band junior year. The more obscure the memory, the more likely to build new pathways.

Amelia surveyed the room. Her white cropped hair and body suit formed a striking silhouette under the strobe lights. Garen got distracted thinking about the first time he kissed her in a smokey dorm in Berkeley. He was her TA for Intro to Computing. She pointed out the joy he experienced “writing programs,” the 80s term for coding, and encouraged him to pursue it as a career. She studied marine biology, passionate about the environment decades before anyone even mentioned global warming. She’d always been the leader in their relationship, not in a domineering way, although she could be forceful. It was more like she had a stronger compass.

But instead of joining the dancers, Amelia wandered to the edge of the virtual dancehall. She stopped in front of posters for The Running Man and a GreenPeace “Save the Whales” ad. What was she staring at? Maybe the music wasn’t resonating. He queued the next track.

Suddenly the sound died. The NPCs kept moving in silence. Garen scrambled to get the audio back. When the sound returned, it was way out of sync with the swaying NPCs. The whole simulation froze, then flew apart, bodies exploding in pixelated chunks like leaves in the wind.

“Hang on,” Garen said, punching virtual keys.

“What are you doing?” Herminia asked. “You’re confusing her.”

“Garen! Where are you?” Amelia shouted from the living room, now pitch black.

He booted up a high school corridor flanked with lockers—another scenario he’d prepped. A school principal in a bow tie walked toward Amelia.

“Where am I?” she asked him.

Instead of responding the principal walked right into her. The haptic suit vibrated from virtual impact and spun her into a locker.

Garen shut everything off and ran to the living room. Amelia had fallen to the carpet. “I’m here,” he said, helping her to her feet. “Are you okay?”

“Obviously not,” she said, although she appeared uninjured.

“I was watching. The whole time.” He patted her hand.

“Get this off!” She struggled to reach the suit’s zipper on her back.

“It’s okay.” He guided her hand. “There was a glitch. Won’t happen again.”

She peeled off the suit down to the t-shirt she wore underneath.

“Did it work?” he asked hopefully.

“A lot came back,” she told him. “Too much.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s like aging fifty years in five minutes. I’d forgotten so much.” She shook her head. “Remembering every detail is not always healthy.”

“We can’t stop now,” he implored.

“I can,” she said. She hadn’t been this lucid in months—no way was Garen giving up.

“Do you know why we’re doing this?” he asked.

“I’m painfully aware of my dementia. You don’t have to constantly remind me.”

“Do you remember Morning Star?” He made it sound like a curse word.

“Garen. You hate this place too much.” Amelia shook her head. “It might not be perfect, but it’s home now and it’s safe.”

“It’s automated purgatory!”

“Lower your voice.”

“Listen to me!” he shouted. “There’s no time!”

She glared at him; eyebrows locked.

“I’m sorry.” He reached for her hand, but she brushed it away.

“Leave me alone.” She turned to the bathroom. She slammed the door so hard he thought she’d trigger every sensor in the building.

“Garen,” Herminia said through her feed. “You can’t push her so hard.”

“Dammit! The one time in years we had a real conversation it’s wasted on a fight.” Garen rubbed his eyes. “Do you think it’s working?” “Too early to tell.” Herminia checked her watch. “Takes months to rebuild memory capacity.” She turned back to the camera. “Listen, Mel is not wrong. This process is painful.”

“Tell me about it,” he said.

“Think how it would feel—everything flooding back into your head at once. It’s a lot.”

“She can’t quit.”

“Be patient …” Herminia muted her feed to speak with someone off screen. She abruptly turned back to him. “Somebody’s coding. Gotta go. Keep me posted and get some rest. You look tired.” Herminia’s feed went black.

Garen wandered back to the bedroom and collapsed on the bed. He hadn’t intended to sleep, but when it found him, he didn’t fight. When he awoke an hour later, Amelia was gone. She must have snuck out of their apartment while he’d been asleep.

*     *     *
Back in the duo, Garen struggled to think of what he could say to his wife. Would she accept an apology? What if the drugs had changed her and she wouldn’t come home? The possibility squeezed his chest so tightly he thought his rib cracked.

The holo-map pinged. He was finally closing on her position. Outside, the marine layer had burned off enough to see the ocean. The dark blue Pacific peaked between the white stucco buildings of an old surfer town, buzzing with tourists. He passed a store with a red-tiled roof selling drone-enabled whale watching tours.

Amelia’s pin was close. “Stop,” Garen told the car, pushing the door up. “Wait here.”

As soon as he reached the sidewalk, Garen hobbled to a bus shelter. He recognized her yellow puffer through the glass partition. He’d hidden a tracker in the coat weeks ago. “Amelia!” He stepped into the enclosure.

Staring back was a kid, barely 20, with leathery skin and a face streaked with dirt. He tugged Amelia’s coat tightly around him.

“Where is she?” Garen asked.

The kid stood up, probably high on the synthetic opioid du jour, and grabbed his grimy knapsack. “Let it go, old man,” he said before heading toward a park, leaving the stench of urine in his wake. Amelia must have taken pity and offered her jacket.

Garen let the duo go and swiped up a topo of the area. Highlighted routes originating at his location showed every path Amelia might have taken by foot or transit. “Dammit!” The fractal web of possibilities stretched for miles. It would take days to search. He couldn’t stop thinking of each terrible outcome: a fall, crushed by a robo-truck on PCH, drowning. The Pacific filled half the map, an insatiable abyss. Healthy Amelia would have pointed out Garen was sundowning something fierce. He scrolled through his contacts, stopping on Herminia’s profile.

“Is Mel feeling better?” Herminia answered before Garen could even say hello.

“Not exactly.” Garen explained his wife’s disappearance while Herminia listened, appearing in the center of Garen’s visual overlay.

“You better find her fast,” Herminia said in a tone that did not help Garen’s confidence.

“Any suggestions?”

“Deep Dive can bring up a lot. She got any connections there?”

“Not that I know of,” he said.

“Isn’t the ocean like her whole thing?” Herminia asked.

“She was a marine biologist!” It had always been her passion. Even now the only real mental activity she enjoyed was jigsaw puzzles of whales and dolphins. How could he have overlooked this crucial lead?

“Better get down to the beach ASAP. Meds are gonna wear off soon. Call me when you get there.” Herminia closed her feed.

He stepped to the edge of the bluff overlooking Dana Strand Beach. Garen always hated the shore, the briny smell, and the crowds, but Amelia could be down there.

“Total Recall,” he told his glasses as he headed towards a long flight of stairs down to the Strand. Immediately, text bubbles flashed on the lenses.

He passed a woman walking a king spaniel and the Recalls auto recognized the breed, flashing data and facts. A squadron of pelicans gliding inches above the foam entered his field of vision with formulae and vector maps.

The strand was a cement path snaking through the sand, choked with ebikes and mono-wheels. He panned the glasses, careful to scan every person while not getting run over.

Hundreds of faces, none of them belonging to Amelia. Maybe the beach was a dead-end. The breakers thundered into car-sized boulders, drowning out the crowd. At the far end of the beach, an enormous rock wall rose from the sea more than a hundred feet. “Dana Point Headlands” appeared in Garen’s visual overlay next to a virtual outline of a promontory overlooking the Pacific. There was a nature center and viewing deck at the very top of the cliff. She was there. He knew it. She was in anguish, and what better way to end one’s suffering?

Another much longer set of stairs wound up the hillside. Garen’s sciatica was already screaming, but he headed to the endless cliff stairs.

“Garen?” A woman in her 80s wearing a pink wetsuit and flip-flops waved to him. The Recall’s ID’d her instantly: “Mrs. Park, Vista Villa, Unit 12B. Seeking pickle ball partner.”

“Hey,” he grunted, continuing toward the Headlands.

“We can ride together.” She adjusted her beach towel, which displayed animated koi fish swimming across the folds. “Higgins is pulling up with the shuttle.”

“No,” Garen said, backing away from her.

Watch it!” someone shouted right behind Garen.

He turned too late and tripped over a scooter. His arms came up. Clouds wheeled above before a skull-rattling collision between his forehead and cement. Everything went dark.

“Mr. Blick,” Higgins said. “Are you okay?”

Garen had a metallic taste in his mouth from biting his tongue. He rolled onto his back. Higgins and Mrs. Park leaned over him. “I’m … I’m fine,” he managed, his head shouting pain. He put his hand to his face. The smart glasses were gone.

“Gotta be careful.” Mrs. Park handed him the frames, fatal cracks running through both lenses. “These can be a distraction.” She hooked a hand under each armpit and hauled him to his feet. “Good arms.” She jabbed his bicep. “You a pickler?”

“You are injured!” Higgins said. “We need to get you home.”

“No.” Garen touched the gash on his forehead and winced. “I’m good.”

“You are concussed,” Higgins said.

“Can we go?” Mrs. Park shook the sand from her towel, koi fish bouncing off each other.

“I cannot leave an injured resident.” Higgins wrapped its plastic fingers around Garen.

“Let go!” Garen tried to pull his arm away, but Higgin’s grip was firm. Garen looked at the Headlands, expecting distance and height metrics to appear, then realized his Recalls were useless. What hope did he have of finding his wife without them?

“Do you need assistance to get back to the shuttle, Mr. Blick?”

“Get off!” Garen balled his fist, ready to pound that plastic skull. Then he stopped. “Yes, Higgins. I do need assistance.”

“I thought so,” Higgins said. “I have already summoned a Vagabond from the shuttle.”

The dark gray, spiderlike chassis took long strides along the Strand like an athletic skeleton. A few heads turned when people realized there was no one inside. It stopped in front of Garen and spread its ribcage wide.

Garen turned and stepped backward into the Vagabond, gingerly inserting one leg at a time. Shin restraints clicked in place. He threaded his arms into the upper limbs. Tiny bladders inflated, pressing his body snug against the suit’s frame. He felt like a bug in a carnivorous plant.

“Off you go to the shuttle,” Higgins said. The exosuit had a visor and virtual interface, although it was less sophisticated than Garen’s Recalls. A simplistic map highlighted the route in green. As expected, the suit was on full auto for a course to the shuttle. Its legs walked on their own without any direction or effort from Garen. He could move his hands but was otherwise a passenger. Higgins didn’t trust Garen to operate the suit independently. Higgins was right to be suspicious.

After a few swipes and gestures on the virtual interface, Garen accessed the suit’s source code. He’d gotten a peek at the operating system the first time he’d been in a Vagabond. The security protocols defended against outside hacks similar to firewalls on self-driving cars but were vulnerable to attacks from the passenger. Garen changed his destination, then increased speed to the suit’s max.

“Where are you going?” Higgins called after Garen.

Garen didn’t bother replying and disappeared in the crowd. He was enjoying the sensation of zipping past e-bikes and joggers at a pace he could never achieve on his own with no pressure on his sciatica.

Vista Villa fitted the Vagabonds with emergency call buttons magnetically attached to the wrist. Garen activated the GPS beacon, then reattached it to an autonomous food courier racing the opposite way. Let Higgins spin its treads a few cycles.

“Bro!” an e-biker shouted too late. Garen’s clumsily outstretched arm clipped the front tire, causing the bike to flip and sending the rider headfirst over the handlebars. The suit regained its balance instantly and continued forward. Garen couldn’t afford to stop. Besides, there were plenty of people around to help.

The suit carried Garen to the cliff stairs, which it took three at a time.

When he arrived at the top of the Headlands, he brought the suit to a stop before stepping out. The Vagabond closed itself, turned, then sprinted away on autopilot. Before sending it back to Vista Villa, Garen had deleted his hacks to the operating system. By covering his tracks, Garen could claim the suit malfunctioned. But he still needed to find Amelia. Higgins had certainly alerted the cops by now. Police drones would swarm the area any minute.

Garen pressed along a dirt path through knee-high scrub plants heading towards a figure at the edge of the cliff. The sun was close to the horizon, casting a glitter path to the shore. She held up a hand to block the light.

“Amelia?” he asked.

“They pass through here.” She nodded to the Pacific. “On the way to Baja. It’s thousands of miles, but they always remember the way back. Memory is freedom and prison I suppose.”

“I’m just glad …”

“You’re bleeding, honey,” she brushed the hair out of his wound.

“It’s fine,” Garen said, gently pulling her hand away. “I’m an old klutz.”

“I’m sorry I left without saying anything. I was pissed.”

“Are you still mad at me?” he asked.

“Not anymore. I realized you were trying to help,” she told him.

“Why did you come here?” he asked.

“The poster,” she said, smiling.

“The poster!” he said, remembering she’d written her thesis on whale migration.

“This is one of the best spots to see Humpbacks.” She paused. “And to think.”

“About what?” he asked.

“You,” she said, her forehead creased. “I’ve been thinking about you.” She took a long breath before continuing. “Do you know what sundowning is?”

“Yeah, yeah. Depression,” he said. “I’ll be less sad when we’re home.”

“Depression,” she persisted, “indicating early onset dementia. You forgot that part. You’ve been forgetting a lot and being reckless. I know you think Vista Villa overreaches with all of the monitoring, but it’s meant to keep us safe. The more you fight it, the more worried I am that you’re endangering both of us.”

He opened his mouth to argue, then stopped. Was she right? His felonies replayed in his mind like popups. Hacking medical forms, disabling sensors, leaving injured bikers. “I miss our old house,” he finally managed. “The world is getting so small.”

“Sweetie, that’s what happens when you get old. But it’s not entirely a bad thing.” The clouds behind her were burnt orange and pink in the twilight.

“I guess. As long as we’re together,” he said.

Her smile melted, the muscles in her face tensing up.

“What?” he asked.

“I think the drugs are wearing off.” She rubbed her temples. “I can feel it. It’s getting harder to remember what I wanted to tell you.”

“Maybe we should stop the Deep Dive therapy,” he offered. “I can’t stand to see you in pain.”

“No,” she said, surprising him. “I want to continue.”

“Really?” he asked.

“But I have conditions.”

“Let’s hear them.”

“Promise you’ll get evaluated and accept whatever treatment they recommend.”

“Yeah.” He nodded slowly. She was right. “What else?”

“Um.” She frowned. “Forgot what I was going to say.”

“Tell me on the way back …”

“Now I remember.” She snapped her fingers. “You have to dance with me.”

“No. Not that. You know I don’t have rhythm.”

“One dance,” she said, swaying her hips.

“Well,” he conceded. “I could probably use the cardio.”

She hugged him tightly.

“We gotta go,” he said after a few moments. “Cops will be here any minute …” He stopped when he realized his Recalls got pancaked on the strand.

“What is it?” she asked.

“How do we get back?”

“I brought these.” Amelia reached in a pocket and pulled out her Recalls.

“I’m glad I found you,” he told her.

As they walked back through the coastal sagebrush, a ground swarm of bees floated between purple wildflowers. The humming grew deeper as Garen and Amelia approached.

“Hey, Gare!” Amelia was giddy. “Did I ever tell you about Synalpheus regalis?”

“MANY times …” he said before catching himself and smiling. “But please, tell me again.”