The Vault (5) Tommy's mum's vagina

"There's a Vault," I told the men when I returned from my first visit. An archive. With a woman on reception. She took me to a booth with a hamster in a wheel and a screen. When the hamster spun in its wheel the screen showed a memory. The memory stopped when the hamster stopped running."

"Good. That's a workable memory-access-system. It contains it's own logic, a coherent system for you to access your memories and to return over and over. Hamsters are unreliable of course, the problem will be getting the hamster to run in its wheel, but I'm sure your brain will work a way around that problem."

"But how does it help you? The memory was of me as a young child getting hit with balloons by my brother. Nothing about the Prime Minister."

"Doesn't matter. At this stage you just need to get used to accessing your memory on demand. Teaching you to target individual memories is a later stage in the process. Balloons is very good, it's around the right age."

It was going to take a month. Hence the month I'd taken off work and the sizable sum of money in compensation. The men moved in with me, taking turns to sleep on the couch when I slept, the rest of the time spending their days with me, eating meals together. If I'd had a social life at the time it would have been a shock to the system, as it was it just meant a few books went unread and a few movies unwatched. 

In order to access the Vault I needed to meditate so that I could enter The Zone. I need a private space, away from the men, so I sat cross-legged on the floor of my room and entered a trance-like state using the system the man had shown me. His name was Adrian, at least he answered to that name, I had the feeling that both men used many different names, perhaps never their own. 

I visited the Vault for a fourth time. I was getting better at it, it took me less time to reach the Zone and I needed less time to recover. The woman was back on reception. By now she was used to me, and even seemed to smile at my arrival.

"Your usual booth is free," she said. "If you need anything else let me know."

The hamster was sitting in its wheel, just sitting, not running, as if waiting for me to arrive. "Hello hamster," I said, though I felt silly doing so. Of course, I realised even as I spoke, I knew it's name, it was one of the Hettie's, just a different Hettie from the memory. Everything in the Vault came from my memories, things I'd owned, but also things I'd seen, anything that had made sufficient impression on me to get ticker-taped down into my memories. Who the receptionists were I didn't know, but they must date from my pre-memory, in my baby years, as they were the ones who put my memories into order.

"Hello Hettie," I said, and as if on command she began to run and the screen came to life. 

The image on screen is a new scene, a different house, not the house I grew up in. I am starting to learn how to access the mind of the me-child who is witnessing these scenes, I probe myself for details. I am round Tommy's house. It is the summer holidays. The scene is bright-lit, large wide windows letting in the summer sunshine. 

We are playing on the floor, a game involving action men and toy cars, the exact rules are unclear, even to me-child. A common theme in my childhood memories, I never seem to understand the rules. Perhaps there never were any.

Tommy's mum is in the room with us, drinking a lemonade, although revisiting the scene with adult eyes I'm not at all sure that it is lemonade.  Suddenly I look up from the floor over towards Tommy's mum. The image on the screen changes, it is a view of legs, parted legs, a view of skirt and no knickers. This is my first sighting of a vagina.  

I stare inappropriately at the sight for a long time. I have heard of these things, of course, but my own mother keeps her vagina hidden away out of sight. Tommy's mother doesn't notice my stare (probably due to the 'lemonade') and Tommy is wrapped up in the game. Eventually he gets my attention by waving an action figure in front of me, and the spell is broken.

Shortly afterwards the hamster stopped running in his wheel and the screen went blank.