Child of my father

Memory informs identity, purpose and origin story. What if that is stripped away?

Kikanga was awake before he opened his eyes.

Sound arrived first. The low electrical hum of machines. The soft rubber squeak of shoes against polished floors. The murmur of nurses who believed the unconscious could not hear. Beneath it all, the steady rhythm of his own breathing, controlled, measured.

His mind still clung to the dream. He lay motionless, wrapped in the silky warmth of the sheets, suspended between worlds. He knew that when he opened his eyes the day would begin, and with it something irreversible. He was not ready.

In the dream, he stood before a hut filled with light. It sat impossibly within a vast cavern, an immeasurable darkness stretching in every direction. No walls. No ceiling. Just an abyss that swallowed shape and distance. Yet in its center glowed the hut, simple and bright. He stepped inside.

A priest sat there, old with a long gray beard. Kikanga somehow knew this was a recollection from his seminary years. The man’s face was patient, lined not with fear but with contemplation. A wooden crucifix hung behind him, catching the lamplight.

“You are troubled, Kikanga,” the priest said gently.

“You speak in riddles,” Kikanga replied. “You say we are made in the image of God. But I see no image.”

The priest folded his hands. “Saint Augustine described the Trinity as a reflection within the human soul. The Father, memory. The Son, understanding, the pattern of an obedient life. And the Spirit, the will in motion. Three, yet one.”

Kikanga frowned. “Memory is unreliable. Understanding fails. And will, ” he hesitated, “will bends.”

“Not when rightly ordered,” the priest answered. “The Father gives you origin, identity, purpose. The Son shows wisdom and the pattern of an obedient life. The Spirit directs your will to activity in the Father's name.”

“And what if a man does not know his father?” Kikanga pressed. “What if his origin is… empty?”

The priest studied him. “There is no empty origin. Only forgotten ones.”

But in the dream, Kikanga tried to speak of his earthly father and found he had no words. His mouth moved; no sound formed. Instead there was only that cavern, vast, unmapped, without contour.

He turned to the window of the hut and looked out. “Why does the darkness have no shape?” he asked.

The priest’s voice came softly behind him. “Darkness does not survive the light, let the light shine.”

Irritated, Kikanga opened his eyes. Fluorescent brightness stabbed into them. The hut vanished. The cavern dissolved. In its place, white ceiling panels and sterile light. He blinked rapidly, breath steady, pulse calm.

Where am I?

The room was small, clinical. A bed. A monitor. A reinforced door. He searched his mind for context and found nothing. Not fog. Not fragments. Nothing.

His thoughts were sharp, but they had no past attached to them. He felt like a blade freshly unsheathed, clean, polished, unused. Yet heavy with implication. He sat up.

His body moved with coiled precision. Muscles engaged automatically, efficiently. His eyes scanned corners, vents, door hinges. He counted exits. He noted objects, metal tray, IV pole, detachable monitor cord. Potential weapons.

The assessment happened without deliberation. Why did I do that?

A voice interrupted his analysis.

“How do you feel?”

A nurse stood near the foot of his bed. She was young, her expression carefully rehearsed compassion. She held a tablet close to her chest as if it were a shield.

He examined her the way he had examined the room.

Neutral stance. Soft hands. No threat.

Yet something about her tone irritated him.

“I don’t know who I am,” Kikanga said.

The words surprised him. They felt less like confession and more like indictment.

The nurse offered a small smile. “That’s expected. The procedure was extensive. Disorientation is normal.”

“Procedure,” he repeated.

“You requested it,” she added quickly. “You wanted a new beginning. You asked us to remove… everything.”

Everything. The word echoed in the hollow chamber of his mind.

“And my name?” he asked.

“Kikanga,” she replied. “That hasn’t changed.”

The name struck something, not a memory, but resonance. It fit.

“You’re starting over,” she continued. “You said you wanted to forget who you were.”

He swung his legs over the bed.

“Did I?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

Her smile faltered. “You were… unhappy.”

That was insufficient. He stood and walked to the mirror mounted beside the sink. The man who stared back was composed. Strong jaw, large muscular frame. Steady eyes. No tremor. There was no history in that face. No shame. No regret. No affection.

Only hunger.

Behind him, through the partially opened door, he saw two doctors observing. Writing notes. Whispering.

“He’s stable.”

“Response time is excellent.”

“Procedure integrity intact.”

So they knew. They knew who he had been.

“Kikanga,” the nurse said, recovering her professional tone, “you need nourishment. The process lasted days.”

She gestured toward the hallway. “Follow me.”

The command ignited something hot and immediate inside him. A flash of violent impulse, strike her, assert dominance, eliminate constraint. The impulse shocked him. He did not act on it.

Hunger, practical and immediate, overruled pride. He followed.

As they walked, he heard the staff murmuring.

“He’ll integrate.”

“He has no recall.”

“Clean slate.”

Clean slate.

The phrase irritated him more than the command had.

In the cafeteria, he sat with mechanical stillness while others pretended not to watch. He ate efficiently. Yet the hunger remained.

Who is my father? The question surfaced unbidden. And with it, faintly, the priest’s voice: The Father, memory. A whisper pressed against his conscience: Regard God as your Father.

Was he a child of God?

He tried to summon the seminary lessons, love, mercy, forgiveness. He remembered arguing. He remembered resisting. He could not remember why.

The life described by the priest had seemed noble. Obedient. Ordered. It did not hold him. His gaze shifted.

Across the cafeteria was a secured office entrance. Key card access. Restricted personnel. The staff moved differently around it, protective, proprietary. Answers are there. He did not hesitate.

When a man exited the office area, Kikanga rose in one fluid motion, seized the knife from his tray, and closed the distance in seconds. A precise sweep took the man’s legs from beneath him. A single calculated strike to the jaw rendered him unconscious.

Screams erupted.

In the confusion, Kikanga removed the key card and slipped through the secured door. Cubicles. Files. Eyes widening in terror.

A middle-aged administrator stood abruptly. “Kikanga! Stop!”

Kikanga closed the space between them with rapid steps.

“You ordered this,” the man said, hands raised. “You demanded we erase it all. You said you couldn’t live with what you’d done.”

“What did I do?” Kikanga asked.

The man swallowed. “You don’t want to know.”

“Why should I trust you?”

The administrator faltered.

Kikanga lifted him by the throat, strength effortless, terrifying. The man’s feet left the ground. Power. It felt… correct. I am powerful, Kikanga thought. They fear me.

On the desk beside them lay an open file. His face stared up from the photograph. He released the man, who collapsed gasping, and took the file.

Footsteps thundered behind him. Security. Three guards. The first rushed him recklessly. Kikanga moved before the man completed his stride. The blade flashed once. Silence followed.

The second froze half a second too long. It was enough.

The third fled.

Blood warmed Kikanga’s hands. The sensation was not new. It was intimate. He did not linger. Car keys and key card from a nearby desk. Stairwell. Underground parking. A car responded to the remote’s click. He drove with instinctive competence. At the barrier, he used the key card he'd taken and passed through. Traffic. Cityscape. Signs to the interstate. He followed them.

Ten minutes later, the clinic was behind him. At a roadside parking area, he stopped. He purchased coffee with loose change from the vehicle and sat beneath a pale sky, reading. The file described a contract operative. Multiple nations. Untraceable eliminations. A mass murderer. Ten million dollars had been paid for the procedure. The benefactor: the ruler of an African state. His biological father. The man in the office had lied. His father had ordered the procedure on him.

Kikanga lowered the papers. His own father had erased him. Not forgiven. Not corrected. Erased!

Augustine’s categories surfaced again unbidden.
The Father, memory. But what is a father who destroys memory?
The Son, understanding, obedience to the Father. Who was worthy of obedience? Was this his way?
The Spirit, will. His own will felt intact. Sharp. Unbroken. Why should he follow the will of another?

The procedure had stripped him of recollection but not of capacity. Not of instinct. Not of whatever spirit animated his violence. He finished the coffee, folded the file into the jacket he'd found in the boot, and left the car behind. It would be tracked.

The forest beyond the rest area welcomed him with shadow. He moved through it silently.

Maybe the dictator had believed memory was the source of his danger, maybe he had feared the son that could replace him as his heir. He was wrong to feel safe now. The absence of memory could motivate as powerfully as its presence.

The thing that drove Kikanga lived deeper than recollection. It animated his being with a fire for revenge, with the thrill of the hunt, with a new and deadly purpose. His earthly father had tried to wipe out the basis of who he was, but this had failed because the folder he held in his hands gave him enough to rediscover the truth.

He would find his father. He would ask him why. And then he would decide whether he was worthy of life. Maybe he would even replace him on his throne. Maybe he would become himself the master of memory, able to wipe out a person's identity with a single command just as his father had done to him.

The priest’s voice flickered once more in his mind. “Three yet one,” the old man had said. “Memory, understanding, will.”

Kikanga smiled faintly in the gathering dark. You served a different god priest. I am a hunter, the ultimate predator, the darkness needs no shape so long as it hides me.

As he disappeared among the trees, he recognized something with chilling clarity: There was some value in forgetting the faces of the dead. The cost of his desire to kill. His father had freed him from this burden but not from the blood lust that had filled his soul with darkness in the first place.

His purpose and his calling was that of the predator born to kill. His own father had denied his nature and tried to change him and a Heavenly Father could not be the origin of the darkness and the hunger inside him. He was the child of another being he could not yet name and in whose darkness he walked.

Let the hunt begin.


Notes ▶︎

W/C: 1828
CONTEST:

FORUM

The Science Fiction Short Story Contest  (13+) A contest inspired by the serious need for more good sci-fi #2140378 by BlackAdder

PROMPT:
They say you can buy happiness now. They never mention the price. It started as a Trauma Center. Hardly anyone remembers that now. First there was Mary, who found her daughter dead, frozen in a lake. She begged cognitive scientists for the chance to cope with the loss, with all the things she never said, all the things they’d never done. And the scientists delivered. They built a memory of a conversation: Mary’s daughter comforted her mother, claiming to be in a better place and promising she’d always known how much she’d been loved. Mary knew it wasn’t real, she said, but - it helped. A few health grants later, and private centers sprung up around the nation. Of course, once the tech proved profitable, the mission drifted. Why stop at trauma when you can sell dreams, vacations, aspirations - and influence? Soon, the memories reflected anything people would pay for, anything people wanted to experience - or have others experience, including propaganda: anti-corporate, anti-work, and anti-government. People ate it up. Then there were a few horror stories, a bit of responsive regulation - and pretty soon, strict legal guardrails. Complete with “wholesome”, government-approved messages selling civic responsibility, support for diversity, and really good reasons to pick up a gun and "fight for freedom" in other nations. Humans being humans, that was always bound to run off the rails. But that’s all public record. So, let me guess - you’re here to ask about Memory Factory 4 and what went wrong. I hope you’ve got time. And a really good beer.

This month’s prompt: The Memory Factory.
Imagine a world where memories can be shaped, altered, or even fabricated. A world where technology can craft new experiences, mend broken hearts, or erase regrets. What would you do with that kind of power? More importantly, what would they do with it? How would people use, and abuse, this gift? That's the world seed. Now, it's your turn to make it grow.

This month, we invite you to explore these and related themes. Any science fiction story centered around memory adjustment, manipulation, or the consequences of fabricated memories will be accepted.

Happy writing, and good luck making new memories of your own!

NOTES:
I wrote two stories this month exploring the personality of a violent and skillful assassin. In the one case the man uses his powers to save lives and in the other to maximise his own advantage. The fundamental question of the tension between the cross and the sword is explored in both. Is force is a mere tool? If so, then when and in what circumstances can it be used and with what motives? A trained hit man has made himself the efficient tool that achieves a result by force, but his identity, purpose and origin story inform and clarify the authority and character of his actions. Memory moderates, memory channels, memory filters. What does a hitman without memory look like? If he was trained and shaped for violence, in the absence of all memory and trust, will he not merely revert to type and invent a new reason to kill.

When the night broke  (18+) A Gothic artist and a soldier in Cologne when terrorists strike... #2354288 by LightinMind