River remembers things she's never seen, and sometimes she forgets the things she has.

She tells Simon that, sometimes, but he so rarely understands. "I see the gray and am blind to the black and white. Lost in the lack of color and the conglomeration of all color. Do you remember before you were born?" He smiles vaguely – pandering to the genius – and says something about brilliant children who carry vague memories of in-utero existence.

It's not what she meant, but she doesn't tell him. She's tired of telling him. River remembers that, too, floating in water while limbs flailed and tried to breath.

No. That wasn't birth. That was the other. The death-without-dying. Hands of blue. Tubes and needles and under-water places made of plastic. River could go a long time without breathing. She remembered that they'd noted that on her chart. Her chart was long.

She remembers that. Remembers too much. She remembers things the others forget. Remembers the smell of dirt on brown coats and what a bullet feels like between the muscles of your thigh. She remembers learning to make a dead machine live, and a live machine better. She remembers the end of Revelations. She remembers the Psalms. She remembers the endings of thirteen Three Stooges movies (relics from Earth that Was). She remembers a trembling, frightened boy crying between her legs because he couldn't make himself want her and his father would be so angry with a sly son. She remembers being in love. She remembers mourning. She remembers medical texts. She remembers horses and dogs and sunlight and outdoors. She remembers lives that aren't hers.

Yesterday she heard someone screaming, and couldn't find how to make it stop. It wasn't until the needle, and Simon, and the slow fuzzing of imminent sleep that it stopped, and she realized it was her.