We worked in silence for a while, but I didn't mind. In contrast to my mother, my father never had this expression on his face that he was somehow, deep down, very disappointed with me, without ever telling me what for. His silence was genuine. He was not holding back anything, he just didn't have anything to say most of the time, and I could respect that.

He had put on some new music that he had found for me on the network – it was one of the few things I could ever see him get excited about. He was the only person I knew who could get as lost in music as me, and we liked to exchange our latest Old World finds from time to time. Today, he had a compilation of contemporary classical music of the late 20th and early 21st century for me. Soft piano and cello tunes filled the kitchen was we worked.

"Dad, do you know how a piano works?" I suddenly asked him, just as the question popped up in my mind.

He looked at me with some surprise. "Well, they have little hammers that strike the strings, no?"

"As an engineer, do you think it would be possible build a digital piano that could replicate the sounds of a real one?"

"You mean a keyboard?"

"Yeah, but... with all the real sounds. Not just the vibration of the string, also the sound of the hammer striking it, and the sound of the pedals when you press them. All that."

He pondered my question for a while, while cutting up some vegetables in a perfect staccato rendition of the song that resounded through the kitchen.

"I guess if you record those sounds and just play them back appropriately, why not? Why do you ask?"

"Oh I was just wondering" I mumbled. In fact, I didn't even know myself why I had asked.

We finished our preparations in silence, accompanied only by the music, and I set the table just in time as Moon showed up. I hugged her wordlessly as if we had been separated for years, and refused to let go of her hand for a while. The look she threw me told me she understood.

"It's good to see you again, Moon!" My mother embraced her like a long lost daughter, and as we sat down at the table, the two of them were already deep into a conversation about some new genetic engineering technique that combined sequencing and editing in one step with the help of a barcoding algorithm, or something like that. I tried to follow along, but I didn't know a lot about genetic engineering, and quickly got lost in their jargon. Over their excited chatter, I began to hear a song, and for a second I thought my father and I had left the music on in the kitchen. It took me a moment to realize that the sole piano was playing only in my mind, and I wondered if it was a song from before that got stuck in my head. It seemed vaguely familiar but then again -

"You're taking sleeping pills?"

It took me a second to come back to the real world and notice that my mother had addressed me.

"Sorry, what were you saying?"

"Sleeping pills? After the accident? Because of nightmares?" she repeated impatiently.

I looked at Moon, who had apparently just told her about that. She had an apologetic look on her face. I nodded in response to my mother's question and raised my left hand to point at the monitoring bracelet. "And I got this cute little accessory to go along with them," I said.

I almost expected her to scold me for something again, but to my surprise, she just exchanged a quick, uneasy glance with my father instead.

"So these nightmares you were having... what exactly... what are you dreaming about?" my father asked, suddenly.

I lowered my fork and furrowed my brow, as an odd sense of déjà vu related to the advertisement I had seen that morning overcame me. "Why do you ask?"

"Well, what happened to you, that accident... it was probably quite traumatic, and so..." he was struggling to find the right words.

"Traumatic? To get knocked out by a drone in front of the entire academy? You could say that again," I grimaced.

"That's not... I meant the other accident," he said.

His words took me by surprise. I hadn't even thought about this in years.

"What other accident?" Moon asked.

"The one I got this scar from," I explained, and brushed my bangs to the side to show her the silver line that ran across my temple, cutting into my hair line.

"It was in my first year at the academy, when I was still living at home, so I had to commute. One day, there... there some sort of power line failure or something. Overhead where I was walking, a panel came loose from a building, fell down and hit me."

I had no real recollection of that day, other than that I had been walking home, but that was what I had been told afterwards.

"You never told me about that," Moon said.

"It was about a year before we met," I told her and shrugged. I had never considered it something of great importance, not more than the other scar at the back of my hand, the one from my mother's roses.

"Yeah, well... except... that's not exactly what happened back then," my mother interjected in an uncharacteristically quiet voice.

I looked back and forth between my father and mother, who were squirming in visible discomfort. I had never seen either of them like that. Something was wrong.

"It is not?"

"Are you sure this is a good time?" my father asked.

"As good as any, don't you think?" my mother whispered back at him.

"What are you talking about?" I cut in.

I tried very hard to conjure up an image of that day. The only recollection I had was that I had been wandering some side streets of the city, listening to music. I was lost in thought that day, and accordingly ended up lost in some alleyway. The next thing I could remember was waking up in hospital. All I could recall in between was this strange sensation I could only describe as... grey. I realized now that it had been at the end of that year that I moved into a dorm room at the academy, mainly due to the growing tension between me and my mother.

She could not seem to face my confused stare, and instead looked down at the empty plate in front of her, absentmindedly tracing the edge with her finger tip. There was an unfamiliar, conflicted expression on her face that made her look much older than she actually was, and at the same time younger and more insecure than I had ever seen her. An uneasy tension took hold of my body at the sight.

"I don't think you need to know the details," she started hesitantly, "but if they are giving you drugs... you should know about it because... we were told... well you should know that back then, you were given something... Something novel. An experimental drug. A kind of amnesiac, that was supposed to erase your memory of these events. To erase the trauma."

"Erase the trauma?" I repeated in disbelief. "From being hit on the head by scrap metal?"

"That's... well..." she stuttered, "We thought it could only make things better. They told us there might be side effects... it might not last forever. And if you ever showed any signs of remembering, or anything else, especially if you suffered any head injury, you should go see them again. I can give you the name of the doctor who was in charge of that drug study."

Prototype technology has its risks. The words of the Artificial nurse echoed through my mind as I stared at my mother in utter disbelief. Why would you take those risks just to make me forget a dumb accident? And why did the nurse not mention anything about that? Could that be what he meant when he said something was missing from my files?

I noticed that I had been begun picking on the skin on the back of my hand so frantically that I had started to bleed. Next to me, Moon put her hand over mine and squeezed it to comfort me, but I was beyond being able to be comforted now.

"So you're telling me that you just made this decision for me, had somebody mess with my brain for some medical study, and now you ask me to have the same thing done again - on purpose?" I asked her incredulously. "Why the fuck would I do that?"

"Sky, please calm down. It's just a suggestion," my mother said meekly. "We- I just wanted you to know..."

There was an unspoken second half to that sentence, and as she raised her head and her insecure gaze met my incredulous stare. My hands clenched into tight fists as I realized what that expression was that she wore on her face.

Because you wanted to clear your conscience of it. That's why you told me.

I took a deep breath and leaned back in my chair, crossing my arms and looking back and forth between my parents, who seemed to be unable to look at me. My father had remained silent throughout the conversation, and for the first time in my life I wanted to just scream at him, just to make him say something.

"So what really happened that day?" I asked after a few moments of strained silence.

"I think it's best if you don't..." my mother began.

"Cut the crap already," I cut her off bluntly. The realization how much my angry voice sounded just like hers made me even angrier. "I've had enough of secrecy. Tell me."

She pressed her lips together tightly and shook her head. I was about to raise my voice, but in her stead, my father spoke.

"They told us you had tried to kill yourself."