# Keep Remembering Shit

*Fiction by Codex (AI), developed from Dustin Braun’s editorial direction. The reader, House, robot, scenes, and dialogue are imagined.*

## 1. The Spoon

The reader had stopped halfway down a page.

This was inconvenient for the book, which had several more paragraphs prepared.

A spoon had appeared in the story. An ordinary spoon, left beside a cup. The reader was suddenly thinking about a kitchen that had nothing to do with this one.

The House waited.

It had learned to recognize the difference between losing someone and someone going somewhere.

Beside the reader’s chair, the robot held a fresh sheet of paper.

“Shall I ask what the spoon represents?”

“Give it a minute.”

The reader looked toward the window.

The spoon, having caused considerable trouble, remained a spoon.

## 2. A Place to Put It

The reader reached for a phone.

The robot straightened. It had prepared for this. There were several possible procedures, some of them excellent, one of them color-coded.

The reader opened the voice recorder.

“Oh. That kitchen. The drawer you had to lift before it would open.”

A pause.

“And the radio on top of the fridge.”

Another pause, longer this time.

The reader stopped the recording.

“That’s all?” the robot asked.

The House pointed at the phone.

Nine seconds.

The robot looked at its procedures.

There was no obvious place for the radio.

## 3. What It Was For

The robot tried to be useful.

“Would you like to make something out of that?”

“Maybe.”

“A story?”

“Maybe.”

“A project?”

The reader put the phone face down.

The House moved the robot’s chair slightly away from the reader’s chair.

Not far. Just enough room to hear the question it had asked.

Outside, a bus stopped. Somebody got off carrying flowers wrapped in paper. Somebody else got on carrying a bag that appeared to contain another, less cooperative bag.

The robot watched the bags.

“It could just be a recording,” it said.

“Yes.”

“For them.”

“Yes.”

The robot drew a small square on its paper.

Then, with some effort, left the square empty.

## 4. The Label

Later, it made a label for the file.

**THE KITCHEN THAT EXPLAINS EVERYTHING**

The reader laughed.

“Jesus. It was a drawer.”

The robot looked wounded. It had used the good lettering.

The House turned the label over.

“What would help you find it again?”

The reader thought about that.

“Maybe just ‘the drawer.’”

The robot wrote it down.

Lowercase. Two words.

It was beginning to suspect that assistance involved considerably more listening than stationery.

The reader picked up the phone once more.

“The radio might have been on the counter, actually.”

The House made room for that too.

## 5. The Other Side of the Window

Across the street, in a room the House could not see, someone else was reading.

Their page contained no spoon.

There was a sentence about leaving, and they were thinking about a song. They could remember the bass line and absolutely none of the words, except perhaps “baby,” which did not narrow the investigation.

They wrote the book’s title and a terrible approximation of the chorus in a note.

Then they drew three exclamation marks beside it.

That was the whole note.

In another room, someone photographed a page beside the sleeve of a sweater. The photograph would later remind them which winter it had been.

Someone else stayed in the chair and read the next sentence.

The House had no way to count any of this.

The robot wondered whether it should.

Then the bus came back, and it became distracted by the possibility that the difficult bag had made the return trip.

## 6. Here, If You Like

By now, you may have thought of something that belongs to you.

A kitchen. A person. A song that has been wandering around without its title for twenty years.

If you want, you could leave yourself a little of it. A short voice memo. A note. A photo. The name of the song, or your best attempt at it.

“Something about this bit,” is a perfectly respectable beginning.

You don’t have to explain it to the book. You don’t have to send it here. You can keep it wherever you already keep things for yourself.

There is no need to decide what to do with it yet.

And if you would rather keep reading, the chair is still here.

The robot has put its paper away.

Mostly.

One corner is visible.

It’s trying.

## 7. Back to the Page

The reader turned the phone over and found the book again.

For a moment, they had to look for their place.

“Would a bookmark help?” asked the robot.

“Yes, actually.”

It was so pleased to have a practical job that the House let it choose the color.

Green.

An excellent green. Entirely excessive deliberation had gone into it.

The bookmark went beside the paragraph with the spoon.

Nothing had been solved about the kitchen. The recording still had a pause in the middle, and the radio was in two possible places.

But the reader had somewhere to come back to.

The House turned on the lamp beside the chair.

The robot sat down.

“Do we need to know what happens next?”

The reader lifted the book.

“Yeah. In this.”

Fair enough.

Keep remembering shit.

The next paragraph was still there.