Branch
Nothing can be seen through the opaque glass of that narrow window, but you know exactly what's on the other side: a cramped, dirty bathroom, no curtain between the shower and sink area in the old Portofiran style.
Wait, but I've never been inside that building...
Not inside the building as such, but years ago you stood in this exact spot and helped Ramses plant a cricket inside that bathroom.
"You hold the mirror and guide me, H, I'll handle the cricket." He rips off a piece of double-sided tape and wraps it around the tip of a metal wire.
"Alright." (Side the mirror through the window.)
You're already in it, poking a little mirror on a stick, like the one tuk-tuk mechanics use, through the open slit at the bottom of the window.
Upside down, the planes of the bathroom wall and floor form alien geometries. It's hard at first to tell what exactly you're looking at.
Ramses' wire follows after the mirror, a tiny metal device stuck precariously to the tape at the tip.
"Alright, Hersh. Direct me. Back of the toilet bowl or under the sink, whatever is easier to reach."
"The toilet is directly below the window. If you can get it low enough..."
"Fuck yeah." He starts to feed the wire through the window, making little bends in the metal in accordance with your instructions.
"A little to the left... keep going... there..."
The cricket is almost in place, the tip of the wire hovering just centimetres from the dirty ceramic, when suddenly it falters. The tip of the wire swings out of control and out of the mirror's sightline.
"Ramses, what the fuck!"
"Fuck, sorry H. Just... Fucking...." You turn your head to see Ramses' left hand clutching the right like a vice, fingers dug into the skin under his forearm.
Throttling it. As though it had betrayed him.
An abrupt loss in hand-eye coordination -- in Ramses, who had the hands of a surgeon.
The epilepsy... I didn't realise it at the time, but it was there...
Always, since long before you knew him. This was maybe the only time you saw it peek out from behind the curtain of medication, that's why the memory stuck.
"Take it easy, Ram, we can try again."
"I know, I know, just, this stupid fucking hand..." He looks down at it with a kind of desperation.
The horror of bodily disobedience. The self turned other.
"Let me just smoke, to calm the nerves..."
You wait for him, and on the second try he pulls it off without a hitch. But you that slightest of tremors, running through his hands as he raised the lighter to his lips...
Branch
End of this branch
"Focus, man, come on!"
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, it's just this fucking hand..."
"All good?"
"The sink is pressed up against the left wall, Ramses, about a metre and an half away."
I don't want to get into this memory right now. (Dismiss.)
Why would I know that?
Years ago you stood in this exact spot and helped Ramses plant a cricket inside that bathroom.