(This is a rush translation. The version may not be in its final form.)
He worked at the university, his job was to read postdocs articles and create abstracts that would go to the general public, feeding publishers and newspapers.
Sometimes he wondered if it was not a political strategy.
But one day, after Sunday lunch, when he sat on the couch with his wife and began to see old photos, he realized.
He did not remember taking the picture, they had met somewhere else, he had another version. Had he forgotten the reality of that day, or was the memory of that day a shadow?
He became obsessed with it, and in the middle of the night, he decided to go up the stairs to the attic and began rummaging through the archives, throwing down whatever was on the shelves, taking all the documents out of their places, all the ancient traces. It seemed that everything around him had been set for him, fabricated as a backdrop. They were actors.
Finally, exhausted, while the morning brought a chilly blue to the room, he saw on a wall, scratched with a penknife: "Freedom Day."
He drove for six hours to the mountainside to find his retired boss.
The light created wonderful effects on the green and the horses ran with the wind.
- I thought about telling you many times, the man said after he had tea and sat down. It works like this ...
From what he told, the other created a plot; understood that on Freedom Day, that day, once a year, the citizen is taken to bed at a government-hired company headquarters to provide complete relaxation - it was found that this had been improved job performance by 41 percent in the period to come - on that day, people had their brains searched for "potentially unstable" ideas, ideas that could "threaten national security."
In that sense, a law had been passed to slightly modify some memories in order to erase the vestiges of revolt and indignation. It started with a very strong feeling, a very deep humiliation, a moment of hysteria, everything was gently wrapped in mist with electric shocks. The danger was the erasure of some important memories. At other times the brain "refurbished" the whole, trying to make sense. But it seems that they had also tested the installation of parallel identities. Even denied by the facts, the artificial belief prevailed. The cost of changing the whole social field, of lying together at work and in the family, however, led to the abandonment of the project.
- I think we even talked about it. You have been tested. The person you think you are no longer matches with the person that others think you are - said the older man, placidly fixing his blue eyes on him.
- Who am I then? - he said as he reached the window.
At that moment, holding the curtain, he fell on the carpet.
Afonso Junior Ferreira de Lima, 2018
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