MNEMONIC - New Face (Short Story)

Here is a short character story featuring a character from MNEMONIC, Julia.
Several characters were created and written during the development of the project and story snippets would be displayed throughout the game to give the player more insight into the client they are currently performing a Mind Dive into.

This story gives insight into Julia Julianson, an athletic woman who aspires to become a physiotherapist, however, she feels as if her own clumsiness is holding her back.
The story takes place shortly before Julia receives her Mind Dive on a normal mountain climbing excursion.

New Face

By

Raven Powless

Julia feels her back beginning to warm, the stone landscape surrounding her is consumed by orange as the sun begins to rise.

“Almost there…”, she says under her breath.

Julia pushes and extends her legs against the smooth and cracked surface she is climbing. Finally, her grasping hands feel nothing, a sign that she has reached the top. As she pulls herself up, small fragments of the massive rock she was just climbing fall to the ground at a distance in which they cannot be heard once reaching the bottom.

Julia lets out a deep breath after straightening her body and looks out at the dry land before her. The expansive and monotone canyon seemingly comes to life as the light of the sun shines upon it. The sounds of birds and various insects fill the previous absence and drown out Julia’s breathing. Julia’s eyes observe the landscape and the way it is imbued with energy, she feels as though she is watching the beginning of a play, looking upon a once empty stage now being filled with its actors.

“Shit!”, she quietly exclaims to herself.

The small metal pieces on Julia’s equipment begin to jingle as they bounce around from her frantic movement, she wrestles the strap to the camera she brought with her in order to take a photo of the sunrise, the reason she is here.

Julia turns the camera on and aims it at the sun as it begins to peek over the massive wall of earth. Click. The mechanical noise of the camera joins the symphony of sounds surrounding Julia, it seems artificial and foreign, but to Julia it is recognizable.

Julia has been working as a photographer for nearly three years now, taking photos of landscapes, portraits, events, and anything she has been offered. It was previously a hobby of hers but is now her primary source of income, due to having difficulty in finding a job she felt confident in being able to do.

Julia is known in her family as “the clumsy one”, “the klutz”, the one person you shouldn’t let check out your newest purchase in fear they might break it. It feels like something she can’t control, something she has no power over, and something she feels is often inevitable at times. She hates it, not just the clumsiness itself, but the ridicule and the bias. When others in her family make small mistakes it’s viewed as an accident, if Julia were to do the same it would be seen as typical.

When Julius, Julia’s younger brother, broke his wrist while skating, it seemed to Julia that he was pampered and nursed back to good health, while when Julia had broken her leg after a climbing accident when she was sixteen, she was given a “silly Julia”, and a pair of crutches. But with this came a silver lining, during the time of her recovery she learned about the duties and role of a physiotherapist. Julia admired her physiotherapist and the way they seemingly helped anyone, regardless of how they got to the situation they were in, from then on Julia began saving money in order to go to school to work in physiotherapy.

Attempting to land, and more importantly keep a job was difficult for Julia however, she would often make mistakes in front of others and cost the workplace more for having hired her alongside her clumsiness, resulting in her being fired. She found that jobs where she could work alone and not potentially bother others worked best for her, combining her previous joy for photography, she slid into the photographer role quite easily. Julia had already been taking landscape photos previously, primarily when she would go climbing, being able to freeze a moment in time to when she completed a climb was a reassuring way to see her mastery of climbing materialized.

Suddenly, the camera Julia is using stops taking photos.

“Of course…”, Julia says to herself, staring at the screen attached to the camera which reads “Battery 0%”.

Thankfully, Julia was able to take the photos she required while the camera was still able to function, meaning Julia could begin her descent along the rocky surface.

As she made her way down she was reminded of what happened nearly a decade ago, when she was climbing and broke her leg after a fall, and how she had learned about physiotherapy not much later. Julia began thinking of how she hoped she would be able to help others in the same way she was helped by her physiotherapist after her injury, she then began to think of her schooling which started in nearly a month, she also had thoughts in the back of her head about the money she had left, which was beginning to run out due to—

In an instant, Julia’s body was no longer making contact with the wall, and before any additional thoughts in Julia’s mind were able to be processed she hit the ground.

“Agh!”, Julia exclaimed, as the solid force dispersed about her body.

The fall was roughly three feet from above the ground, Julia corrected her stance and as she brushed herself off a woman came around the corner along the trail.

“Are you okay?”, the woman asked worriedly.

“Yeah, sorry to worry you, I wasn’t paying attention and lost my footing.”, Julia responded.

Julia eyed the woman, she was someone Julia hadn’t seen on this trail before.

The woman looked up to where Julia had come from and traced her gaze back down to Julia.

“Well, it’s good to hear you weren’t hurt.”, the woman said to Julia as she began to resume her trek along the path.

“Thanks, and again, sorry if I worried you.”, Julia said to the woman, whose back was now facing her.

Julia began to feel a wave of heat travel up her body that rested on her face, flustered and embarrassed, Julia continued making her way back to her car at the start of the trail.

During her walk back to the car, Julia replayed the event in her mind, her making a mistake and having a stranger have to worry about her. It reminded Julia of her physiotherapist helping her when she was hurt, a stranger that offered assistance to her regardless of how she had ended up in the situation she was in.

As Julia began to think of the physiotherapist her previous thoughts came back, thoughts of school, money, relationships with others, and her clumsiness. Julia’s hopes and dreams seemed closer than ever, but what if her clumsiness got in the way?

What if I mess up and hurt someone? What if I do something by accident and can’t fix what I caused? What if my—

Julia’s thoughts are once again interrupted by a lone rock sitting along her path which causes her to briefly stumble.

When Julia finally arrives at her car she closes her eyes and takes in a few deep breaths.

“Everything will be okay,” she says to herself.

Julia was so stressed with life she forgot the entire reason she had come here to begin with, her scheduled appointment with Coretec was quickly approaching and she wanted to get one more climb in before her operation.

It was advertised as being painless, having few temporary side effects, and seemed relatively cheap for something that could improve her quality of living for the rest of her life. This new technology and innovation already saw amazing results on others, Julia had seen it first hand when one of her friend’s parents were able to have a mind Dive in order to retrieve information they thought was otherwise lost. Mind Dives had even been used on famous actors in order to help them get into a role faster, by directly affecting a client’s mind and memories, anything seemed possible.

Now it was Julia’s turn, she met with Coretec and had already outlined what her desired outcomes were, an operation to see if her clumsiness could be resolved, even if it could be reduced Julia would see it as a success.

This operation would mark the start of a new chapter in Julia’s life, one where doors are opened in a multitude of fronts. It would change how she is viewed, how she views the world around her, and how she views herself.

The idea of being in a brighter future where she is able to be a physiotherapist and help others, a future where she is able to destroy the image of clumsiness that shrouds her character, and a future where she feels more confident in herself brings a smile to her face.

Julia opens her eyes, starts her car, and stares at herself in her mirror before speaking.

“I’m finally taking the steps I need to take in order to be happy.”, Julia says confidently.

“I’m going to take control of my life.”