Your room is littered with candy bar wrappers, the walls stink of peeling plaster, and there is an ancient computer sitting on your desk that no longer works. Instinctively, you reach into your pocket and pull out the serum that you have been holding. It's dull, a pale brown liquid inside a medical-like needle. And within ten seconds after you jam it into your left hand, you're in a deep serum-induced sleep-trance.

I woke up to a strange bed in a room I had no recollection of ever seeing. "Oh, crap," I muttered to myself. This kind of stuff only happened in movies like "Memento".

Wait a minute...where did I see that movie? I racked my brain hard. This was a real test; was I just in a strange room, or was I in a strange life? I knew I had seen "Memento" somewhere, but I couldn't remember where...or anything else about my life, to be honest. I could remember hating school, but not anything about my school. Ok. So this wasn't just a strange room. I had amnesia.

I got out of bed and stepped down onto the floor. The room was littered with wrappers, some with moldy crumbs still in them. I quickly got out of the room, if not to explore the world I lived in, at least to leave the nauseous stench of the room.

I was in a small, crumbling house. Plaster peeled from the walls and dropped to the floor, and the ceiling was in even worse shape. Was this where I lived? No. I just wouldn't accept it. My past self must have settled for something better than this.

I opened the front door and stepped into a crumbling street. I was in some kind of abandoned city, although I did manage to spot a few other people walking around, looking about as clueless as me.

"Hey!" I shouted to one of the guys. "Do you happen to know where I am?"

"Damned if I know," he said, shrugging.

Ok, so this person had this same form of amnesia too. Did everybody in this city have amnesia? Did everybody on Planet Earth have amnesia? Was I even on Planet Earth? I didn't know how I was going to answer that question. I would have to do a lot more research.

Don't waste your time doing research. Explore a little. Have some fun before it wears off.

I don't know where that thought came from. Was this going to wear off? Was that some small part of my brain that hadn't been affected by...this? It was all so confusing, but I chose to trust my brain. I ran down the street, avoiding bumps in the road. I didn't stop to talk to people. I didn't stop to wonder how this city could be abandoned yet populated at the same time. I just ran.

As I ran, the city turned very quickly to what looked like an old west town. Again, not sure how I knew what a west town looked like, but I did. I saw what looked like an old saloon, and I decided to enter it, see if I could get something to drink there.

You go here every night. You will see this place again. The countryside beyond city limits is much more beautiful.

I let my intuition guide me, not knowing where it would lead me, but beginning to love this whole experience.

I kept running, and as I ran, the buildings became fewer and fewer, and so did the people. Many had the same confused zombie-like expression on their faces that I had, but a few seemed as if they totally knew what was going on. It was kind of weird.

Keep running. It's already beginning to wear off, and when it wears off, you'll realize that you should be at work. But that's not true. Just a few blocks ahead is a view of the most spectacular mountain you've ever seen.

I was supposed to be at work? What did I do for work? Why was I heading toward a view of a mountain when I should be at work?

All doubts of what I was doing were erased from my mind when I passed a fairly large building and saw what had been hiding behind it. What hit me then was utter euphoria. The buildings ended ahead pretty abruptly, becoming a field of cracked sand that made me want to just run and scream and play on like I was a little kid. It was desolate, beautiful, profound, and amazing. And it was all in the shadow of the most glorious snow-capped mountain I have ever seen, (though I can't ever remembering to see a snow-capped mountain).

You really should get going. There's a good chance your boss will take the serum tonight, but if he decides to remain sober, you're going to get a call from him about being truant from work, and he's going to be mad...

What the hell?

I started walking back, too confused to do anything else. I had seen the mountain. It was amazing. But I couldn't fully appreciate it's beauty with my brain talking to me like this.

"Leonard!" shouted what looked like the bartender, coming out of the saloon. He was a big guy, with long hair in dreadlocks. He came up to me and gave me a huge, crushing hug. "You're not on the serum, are you? I thought I told you to stop taking it. It's what's destroying this once-magnificent city."

"What's happened to this city?" I asked in a concerned voice.

"Ah, so you are on the serum. Actually, the effects are probably just starting to wear off. Want a drink? It'll temporarily raise your mood."

Yes, you do want a drink. Actually, what you really want to do is take the serum again. Because it's all coming back to you. No one pays this city any attention because they're all on the serum, all wandering around with no memory. It doesn't feel great to have no memory, but people like it because it's so much better than living in a failing city.

You remember the days before the serum, when there were still plumbers, firefighters, housemaids, contractors, architects, writers, thinkers, actors. Then somebody decided it might be cool to have a few hours of amnesia, and now everybody thinks that's cool. And so the city is failing. And when people return to the city and to their painful memories, all they want is to go back into their fantasy land.

But you don't hate the people who like their little fantasy lands. Because you are one of them. You like to see the mountain and the plain as if you were seeing them for the first time. And you hate living in a city working for a company that no one works at anymore for a boss that's on the serum just as often as you are. You don't want that to be your life. You want to every day like it's your first.

"No thanks, Bob," you say to his offer for a drink. "I think I'll go home."

As you walk home, you realize that you live in such a crummy house because there are none better to live in. The world is falling apart because people like you aren't doing anything about it.

You reach into your pocket, pull out the needle, and prepare to jam it into your hand. But as you look around, you have a realization that you haven't had any of the other times you've entered willful amnesia.

You have a choice. You can fix your life. You can help fix the world. There's a way out of this mess. Just so long as you do not use the serum. Bob is right about it being bad.

You take one last look at the needle, then put it back into your pocket. You look around the room and say, "Ok! There's so many things to do, I don't know where to begin."

And for the first time in a very long time, you smile after the effects of the serum have worn off.