Whoooshmph!  Whoooshmph! The stainless steel chute reflected the face of the woman in the baker’s hat as it dropped one perfect cinnamon roll every ten seconds. Addie felt sweaty and filthy. She had no idea how long she had been working since clocks were forbidden at the Octagon Bakery. She looked deep into her reflection in the shiny tube, touching an ugly scar above her right eyebrow. She knew her name was Addie and she knew she had been in an accident. Every step she took reminded her with scorching, shooting pain. 

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     What did she look like before the accident? She didn‘t know. All she knew was that her job, day in and day out, was to decorate perfectly round cinnamon rolls with a perfect layer of white icing. When she had exactly ten rolls iced, she had to dot the icing with exactly three raisins. No more, no less, in a perfect triangle pattern.  

Funny thing, memory. She could remember the lentil soup she had on her afternoon break, but she could not remember much more than that. Funny thing, memory. She could remember that yesterday, and the day before yesterday, she was escorted to her position on the line by a man who looked like a machine, or maybe it was a machine made to look like a man? It didn’t really matter.

 

     At night, they escorted her and the other workers back to the Habitron where she had a lumpy mattress and a single bureau drawer for belongings she didn’t have. Every day was the same. Every roll was the same,  People expected uniformity from the Octagon Bakery. Three raisins it was. No more, no less. Day in and day out, the beautiful cinnamon rolls dotted with three perfect raisins were boxed and bagged by the next worker on the line. Day in, day out. Icing, raisins, box and bag. Icing, raisins, box and bag.

 

      On this day, perhaps because she was tired, or perhaps because some receptor in her brain fired and suddenly released serotonin at exactly the right moment, a synapse connected two neurons. These neurons connected quite serendipitously to the next neurons, and Addie stared at her handful of raisins. She then looked at the white, smooth icing.  She didn’t know what made her do it, but she placed one, then another raisin on the icing as if the icing was a face and the raisins were eyes. Suddenly, without warning, neurons ignited and reflexively fired.  She placed a row of raisins in an upside-down smile. Yes, it was a frown. A frown of raisins on a silly, icing-face roll.

 

     Her eyes opened widely, then closed tightly as she saw him, the dark-haired boy.  He was perched on a stool in a kitchen somewhere far away. He was frowning, eyebrows knitted tightly together. His arms were crossed defensively in front of him.

     “That’s not funny, Mom, not funny at all!” she heard him say, his voice somewhere off in her distant past. Without any intention on her part, she opened her eyes wide as her words tumbled out in a raspy whisper.

     "Oh, com’on!  Seventy-two on the math test?  Com’on, you can do better than that!” 

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     The boy faded to black. She plastered both hands over her mouth, knowing she had no control over the words that had come spilling out. The dark-haired boy was gone, and one tear coursed slowly down her face. Try as she might, her memory could not bring him back.