Encapsulated Memory

After reading a newspaper article about how Neanderthal DNA had been extracted by processing a fossilised finger, I once again began to occupy myself with the idea of travelling through time.

To some extent I was already engaged in this pursuit; a what-if loop had been running through my mind for many turns. A few times I had played along and built futures based on shifting decisions: how I said no instead of yes, yes instead of no, stayed instead of leaving.

It was all merely futile daydreaming, I knew that well enough, but at least of an advanced kind. I did not settle for replaying the choices themselves; I painted entire future scenarios from them, years and decades of decisions branching out from the new node.

These were fantasies, however, not time travel. Still, I could not shake the thought of being allowed to start again. As I strolled past the perfumery in Gamla stan and saw their tourist-facing sign about encapsulating memories, I took them at their word, stepped inside the shop and told them about my destination:

I want to go to the day before, when I vacuumed soil and clay pebbles on the balcony. A mild surrealism over the moment. The wind brushed my face. The air was clear and cold. The feeling that everything was still there.

There was something refined about her, my scent creator, as if through all her senses she had progressed to finding yet another one, unreachable to the rest of us. She took my request seriously, because this was precisely how the industry always worked, starting from a feeling that needed to be circled in. Whether it was spring sunlight, Ariana Grande or sin.

You need to give me a little more, she said, in an unexpectedly light and velvety voice that made me think of mango. I do not know why I made that association; it must have come from the mood of the situation itself.

I told her:

The olive tree had just put out new buds after a winter indoors. The geranium was past flowering. The clockvine had nearly wandered up towards the balcony above. The sun lay at an angle between the courtyard buildings and created a slit of light over me, so I had to squint. My palate was marked by Ethiopian coffee with an aftertaste of strawberry Cornetto. My thoughts were marinated overnight by a dream in which I was hyperpolyglot and all languages were therefore comprehensible, but only during the night.

She took no notes, which made me anxious, much as when a waiter memorises an excessively long order. To prove something, but to whom?

I went on talking:

So this was the day before I said no. But perhaps that is beside the point.

Not at all, she said, because you did not know that then. If you want to cause a correct temporal displacement you need to be completely truthful to the actual event. How full was the vacuum cleaner bag, by the way? I assume it was an Electrolux?

I had really wandered into the shop almost as a joke, but now a seriousness settled over the situation and I began to feel a hope growing in my chest. I gave her further instructions.

At last she was satisfied enough to proceed, so she led me a few metres behind the counter into the lab. Before my eyes a process began with bowls and tubes, as she threw out various names of fragrance materials pulled from refrigerators: cis-3-hexenol, myrcene, lavender EO, and a little sabine since the balcony mat was plastic.

More questions followed as the potion was being assembled: from which direction had the wind come? Had I watered the plants recently? Were there any cigarette butts nearby?

The glass rod spun in the tube. She sniffed a little and muttered to herself:

All the notes have to land exactly. But a little more lactonic, yes, wouldn’t you say. Yes, wouldn’t you.

A brief artistic pause before she said, with restrained triumph:

And there we have our accord.

The liquids in the tube tumbled together into a single entity. She let it all run down into a glass cube, screwed on the lid, affixed a label on which she wrote 4 June-15, then sprayed the scent over her neck with a precise press, moved her hair aside, closed her eyes and whispered to me:

Bon voyage.