Episode 2: Why Abhishek Signed a Document He Can’t Remember

 

THE SILENCE BETWEEN YESTERDAYS

Episode 2: Why Abhishek Signed a Document He Can’t Remember

The first thing Abhishek did the next morning was look for proof that yesterday had happened.

Not because he doubted it—but because he trusted it too easily.

That, he had learned long ago, was a dangerous imbalance.

He woke before his alarm, the city still half-asleep beyond the curtains. The calm was still there. Unbroken. Smooth. Like a lake without wind.

He sat up and waited for something—anything—to contradict it.

Nothing did.

In the bathroom mirror, his reflection met him with unsettling familiarity. Same face. Same posture. Same faint crease between the eyebrows that appeared whenever he was thinking too hard.

“You look fine,” he said to himself.

The reflection did not argue.

That worried him.

THE DOCUMENT TRAIL

His apartment was orderly in the way only intentional order could be. Not obsessive. Functional. Every object placed where future-use had clearly been anticipated.

Someone had been thinking ahead.

That someone had been him.

Abhishek went straight to the desk.

The folder from the clinic lay where he had left it. He opened it again, hoping—irrationally—that something new might have appeared overnight.

Blank pages.

The same single intact sheet.

CASE STATUS: RESOLVED

No case. No explanation.

He exhaled slowly.

“All right,” he murmured. “Let’s do this properly.”

He powered up his laptop.

The password came without effort.

That, at least, reassured him.

He navigated through his folders with practiced efficiency, following patterns only he would have designed. Projects grouped not by subject, but by ethical risk profile. Notes meticulously cross-referenced. Version histories preserved down to the hour.

This was not the work of a careless man.

Nor of a desperate one.

Then he found it.

A folder labeled simply:

CONSENT

No date.

No subtitle.

He opened it.

Inside were scans—official, verified, digitally stamped. Legal language dense enough to intimidate even seasoned readers.

He scrolled.

Paragraph after paragraph detailed the scope of the procedure: preservation of factual memory, retention of skills, suppression of emotional and moral context related to a specified event.

The phrasing was careful.

Clinical.

Almost gentle.

Abhishek read it twice.

Then a third time.

“I agreed to this,” he said quietly.

The signature at the bottom confirmed it.

His signature.

Not rushed. Not sloppy.

Deliberate.

He leaned back in his chair.

“If I signed this,” he said, “I knew exactly what I was doing.”

The thought should have comforted him.

Instead, it raised a deeper question.

Why would someone who knew exactly what they were doing choose not to remember why?

WHAT WAS NOT WRITTEN

The document was thorough.

Too thorough.

It anticipated objections, contingencies, restoration protocols. It even contained a section outlining potential psychological side effects—disorientation, emotional flattening, delayed somatic responses.

All risks. No reasons.

There was no explanation of cause.

No narrative.

No “because.”

Abhishek frowned.

This was unlike him.

He believed documentation should not merely protect institutions—it should tell the truth in plain language.

He scrolled faster now, searching for annotations, footnotes, marginalia.

Nothing.

Except—

A single comment embedded deep in the metadata.

Hidden. Deliberate.

Rationale recorded separately. Do not attach to consent file.

Abhishek’s chest tightened.

“Separately where?” he asked the screen.

The system did not answer.

THE CALL

He didn’t remember calling Karthik.

But Karthik remembered him.

“Abhishek?” came the voice on the other end. “You sound… clear.”

“That’s one word for it,” Abhishek said. “Another might be ‘dangerously calm.’”

Karthik laughed uneasily. “So it happened.”

“Yes,” Abhishek replied. “Apparently.”

A pause.

“You don’t remember the night before, do you?”

Abhishek closed his eyes.

“No.”

Another pause. Longer.

“You were precise,” Karthik said finally. “Not emotional. That’s what scared me.”

“Scared you enough to try to stop me?”

“Yes.”

“And did you?”

Karthik sighed. “I tried to slow you down.”

“Did it work?”

“No.”

The answer came too quickly.

Abhishek felt something stir beneath the calm.

Not guilt.

Anticipation.

“What did I say?” he asked.

Karthik hesitated.

“You said,” he began carefully, “that if future-you hesitated, it would mean present-you failed.”

Abhishek opened his eyes.

“That’s… harsh.”

“It was efficient,” Karthik replied. “You weren’t angry. You weren’t defensive. You were convinced.”

“Of what?”

“That the cost of remembering would be higher than the cost of forgetting.”

Abhishek stared at the wall opposite his desk.

“That still sounds like me,” he said.

“Yes,” Karthik replied quietly. “That’s the problem.”

THE NIGHT BEFORE (ABSENT)

Abhishek searched for the memory of the night before the procedure.

There was nothing.

No blur.

No darkness.

Just absence.

As if someone had cleanly lifted a page from a book and sewn the remaining chapters together.

He found a calendar entry.

PRIVATE MEETING – CONFIRMATION

Location redacted.

Time marked.

Attendees listed only as initials.

One initial stood out.

S.

He felt it immediately.

Not recognition.

Significance.

He clicked.

The event details were locked.

But beneath them, someone—him—had added a note.

If you’re reading this and you feel calm, that means it worked.

Abhishek’s hand hovered over the trackpad.

“Worked how?” he whispered.

WHY SIGNING MADE SENSE

He stood and paced the room.

Signing a document like that wasn’t impulsive.

It wasn’t fear-driven.

It was structural.

He knew his own philosophy. He had written about it, lectured on it, argued it endlessly.

That morality could not depend on emotion.

That ethical systems must survive human hesitation.

That responsibility, once assumed, could not be renegotiated every time doubt appeared.

Memory introduced doubt.

Doubt introduced delay.

Delay introduced risk.

This was not madness.

This was consistency taken to its extreme.

And that realization frightened him.

Because it meant the man who signed the document had not been broken.

He had been clear.

THE FIRST CRACK

The smell returned that evening.

Bleach. Metal. Cold air.

Abhishek froze in his kitchen, one hand resting on the counter.

The calm fractured.

Just slightly.

His heart rate increased.

His fingers curled.

Images threatened the edges of his mind—nothing complete, nothing visual enough to name.

But his body reacted as though it knew exactly what they were.

“No,” he said softly. “Not yet.”

The reaction faded.

The calm returned.

But it was no longer clean.

It had edges now.

THE REAL QUESTION

That night, Abhishek sat at his desk and reopened the consent document.

He scrolled to the signature again.

Studied it.

Then he whispered the question that had been circling all day.

“What was I protecting?”

Not himself.

That much was clear.

He had protected something else—something future-facing.

Something that required him to continue functioning.

Continue deciding.

Continue acting.

The answer did not come.

But the silence felt deliberate.

Constructed.

And suddenly, Abhishek understood the most disturbing possibility of all.

He had not signed the document to forget the past.

He had signed it to secure the future.

Whatever he had done—or was about to do—remembering would have stopped him.

For the first time since waking up in the clinic, Abhishek felt fear.

Not of what he had lost.

But of what he had chosen to keep.

END OF EPISODE 2