The Hôtel du Mémoire
Coming Soon. Full Release on 6th October
‘What do you remember about the 17th of March 2238?’
Her name is Anastasia Bryant: director of the world’s third-largest corporation. At least she used to be. Now she spends her retirement in the most respectable hotel in all of United Britannia. The Hôtel du Mémoire.
Except something’s not right.
The food is cold and bland, the other guests ignore her all day, and the staff keep telling her she has dementia and is in a home for the elderly.
She doesn’t believe a word of it.
Until two men arrive, dressed in fine corporate suits, willing to kill her to find what her mind has locked away.
The memory of the operation that ended her career.
A standalone Crooked Atlas story.
Read a taste below…
Every single day, without fail, they brought her the wrong fucking drink.
How hard was it for their evidently slow processing chips to understand? ‘A glass of your most splendid champagne,’ was all she asked for, yet all she ever got was a lukewarm cup of coffee that smelt as though it had been brewed from the sewage-infused River Dido.
‘We don’t serve champagne here, Anastasia,’ they would tell her, saying it didn’t mix well with her medication, but that was the finest load of bullshit she’d ever heard. This was The Hôtel du Mémoire, the best corporate hotel in New Manchester, and, for that matter, the whole of United Britannia. She’d stayed a thousand times and been served ten times as many glasses of champagne. Woke bullshit, she figured. The hotel must’ve gone all hippy and decided anything bad for you couldn’t be part of the ultimate experience, but at ninety-three years old, Anastasia couldn’t care less what she put into her body.
That wasn’t their worst crime either. Once, the walls of the Hôtel du Mémoire were laden with beautiful golden artistry that rose from the lobby’s marbled flooring all the way up to the penthouse suite. And, in every corner, hand-carved sculptures were surrounded by bejewelled lampshades so stunning that Anastasia would stare at them for hours. Now, the hotel had cream walls, stained with this morning’s breakfast, and the only statues around her were the other guests in the lobby, who sat, drooling into their laps all day. What a fall from grace.
Even the staff, once ready to put their lives on the line to give their customers the ultimate experience, had been replaced by bots. As a businesswoman herself, she understood the desire to cut costs, but these robots fell far below the standard she expected. Back in her day, only the most beautiful men and women were chosen to be the faces of the hotel, and even then, they were enhanced with gold plate, embedded in their skin in beautiful patterns, drawing attention to their perfect features. Some even had implants specially designed for certain tasks, like a corkscrew for a finger or a serving tray as a hand. The inconvenience of having such features outside work must have been great, but she admired their unwavering commitment to customer service. But these robots were just a bunch of useless, thick-skulled half-wits. They didn’t dress properly, they didn’t leap to her aid when she dropped a pea, and they didn’t bring her the champagne she’d asked for a hundred fucking times.
She’d all but had enough of that sorry excuse for a hotel when another customer, Dorothy, shuffled up to a chair beside her. Dorothy wasn’t terrible company in the mornings. She was old like Anastasia and had lost more than a few marbles, but talking to her was better than watching the same cricket match on the HoloTV over and over. That was Derek’s fault: a guest who screamed like a petulant child every time the staff turned it over, so it stayed on. Absolutely ridiculous, but Anastasia preferred human conversation anyway.
‘Alright, Ana?’ Dorothy said, slumping into the armchair beside her, sending up a plume of dust. Anastasia wasn’t sure whether it was simply that the chairs hadn’t been vacuumed or that her friend was slowly turning to dust—the layers of wrinkles on her flabby skin certainly made her look old enough for that to be the case.
‘Fine, fine.’ She wasn’t fine, but that was the polite thing to say. ‘Been up to much?’
‘Just the usual.’ Dorothy shifted slightly in her chair, and the distinctive sound of a wet fart rippled from beneath her. Must’ve been the leather. ‘I went into Derek’s room last night, you know, took a wrong turn, and he screamed me right out the door.’
‘Third door on the left, Dorothy, what’s so fucking hard about that?’
‘You try doing it in the middle of the night with half a bottle of tequila down you.’
Grumbling and curling her upper lip, Anastasia muttered something like, ‘I wish I bloody could,’ before lifting her head and shouting into the other room, ‘But those moronic wire-wankers still haven’t brought me my champagne!’
‘Still? My god…’ Dorothy seemed as appropriately disgusted as she was, shaking her head in bewilderment. ‘They’ve got something against you, Ana. Did you upset the manager?’
‘She wondered for a moment, thinking hard about her last few interactions with the man who could hardly walk three feet without sneezing. She reckoned it was that new nose he’d had implanted, attached at the wrong angle. ‘I called him a frosted-tipped cunt the other day. Do you think that would do it?’
‘Don’t see why it should. I did the same just this morning, and my cocktail is on its way now.’ Just then, a waiter came round the corner with a plain plastic cup in his hand. ‘Ah! Speak of the devil.’
The poorly dressed waiter, with a yellow stain down his left shoulder, handed Dorothy the cocktail, though the liquid inside seemed completely clear, not at all as colourful or laden with fruit as Anastasia had expected. ‘Don’t forget this, Dorothy,’ the waiter added, holding out a small pill between his gloved fingers.
‘I always get an extra snack with this one,’ the old lady grinned as she let the man place the pill on her tongue and took a swig of her cocktail. ‘Delightful. Just delightful. This is the life, Ana. What a way to spend our retirement. I honestly don’t know why you complain so much.’
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