Requiem for Neuroscience in G Minor

Content Warning (click to expand)

bigotry, homophobia, child abuse

 

  

by Dylan Freeman

The evaluation chamber made Riley uncomfortable — everything from the hospital-like smell to the itch of the electrodes on his head to the blatant cheapness of the plastic keyboard that was on the table in front of him. Skillmonkey hadn’t become the top neuro-alteration company in the US by throwing around cash, but the cheapness of everything was still disquieting.

A disinterested male voice spoke over an intercom. “Just start with something simple, like Mozart.”

Riley rolled his eyes, placing his phone on the keyboard’s music stand. He keyed up a metronome app and the sheet music for Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2. Rachmaninoff’s enormous hands made his works challenging for even a skilled pianist, but Riley was a prodigy. His fingers flew across the keys, producing sounds rarely heard outside of a concert hall. The music filled the sterile space with warmth and sound, dispelling images in Riley’s head of empty tip jars, a savings account in the red, and a bed made for two with a single occupant; all this, despite the fact that the piano may as well have been a toy from the last century. A squeal of feedback interrupted his playing as he found his rhythm.

“Can you pick up the pace?” the voice asked.

“Rachmaninoff takes a while.”

“Which is why we asked for Mozart.”

Riley folded his fingers and flexed them before launching into another composition, The Rainbow’s Requiem. He’d won awards after writing it at fifteen, and still collected royalty checks whenever a church wanted to license it for anti-LGBT ads. At six minutes, it was also much shorter, but complex for its length; Riley’s fingers danced up and down the keys, only leaving the plastic when he needed to adjust the settings to mimic pressing piano pedals.

There was a pause when the music finished, and a beep as the technician confirmed successful data collection. “Okay. Please step out of the chamber.”

Riley exited, following the scientist to another room. Drexel — the name was embroidered onto the lapel of his lab coat — sat across from Riley, amid a panopticon of cameras. He attached a clamp for a heart rate monitor to Riley’s left index finger, and indicated Riley should sit.

“Now, standard array of questions. Full legal name?”

“Riley Greiner.”

“Date of birth?”

“July 14th, 2042.”

“Occupation?”

“Pianist at Salieri’s.”

“Love the pasta there.” Sarcasm? “Have you ever used any products or apps in Skillmonkey’s library in the past?”

“I have the Ethical Lockpicking Skilltree because I locked myself out of my car too many times.”

“And you have the neural interface?”

“Had it installed back in the ’50s.”

“Have you ever sold, given away, or otherwise lost the license to any Skillmonkey products?”

“I got fired from a merchandiser position back in ’59, and management revoked my forklift skills on the way out the door.” Riley winced. “Can’t get another retail job until their EULA expires.”

“Have you sold skills, memories, experiences, or neural tissue to Skillmonkey, or donated any of the above—” Drexel’s eyebrow raised as he looked at his tablet. “Actually, we can skip that.”

“Why?”

Drexel moved on. “Are you a homosexual— no, obviously not.”

Riley bristled. “Pardon?”

“Under 2055’s Neural Transfer Purity Act, we cannot allow individuals who identify as being on the LGBTQ+ spectrum sell or donate skills, memories, experiences, or neural tissue to Skillmonkey.” Drexel shook his head. “Not a fan.”

“…I’m not gay, no.” Riley didn’t bring up that he wasn’t attracted to anyone, really. Asexuality wasn’t mentioned in NeTPA, to his knowledge.

The remaining questions were less probing, but Riley felt disquieted by the question for reasons he couldn’t articulate. A familiar nausea filled his mouth.

“Well, Mr. Greiner, if we feel that your skills as a pianist are valuable, we’ll be in touch by the weekend.” Drexel gave a professional smile. “Have a good day.”

Riley exited a few minutes later, and was greeted by a crowd of protestors, who objected to the concept of rewriting your brain with other people’s memories. He had been involved with some protests after the forklift incident, before he just… moved on.

His shift started in half an hour. In Cleveland traffic, he’d have ten minutes to get into costume. Riley hailed a driverless autocab, contemplating the monetary value of his piano skills on the trip over. He had read in a science journal a few years back that a classically trained musician’s skills were worth around 300 grand, more money than he’d ever know what to do with.

•   •   •

Capitalism bred inequality, wage theft, rampant crime, and mindless milquetoast media; one of its odder symptoms, in the mid-21st century, was the resurrection of theme restaurants. Thanks to the likes of the Eliot Ness Cafe (“Dine with Capone!”) and the 1776 Experience (“Eat with Founding Fathers!”), there’d been a resurgence in the 2040s. Salieri’s gimmick was that it was based on the life of Antonio Salieri, Mozart’s infamous rival. Not every performer could actually play the piano, meaning Riley’s minimum wage position as the man himself had post-apocalyptic job security. Salieri’s music bored Riley; Rachmaninoff was more challenging to perform, but he could play Falstaff half-asleep.

The night’s performance was over by 7:00, and Riley had been playing through Salieri’s greatest hits for fifteen minutes. He spotted the Smiling Dude in the audience, as usual — his body was round and pale, and he wore jeans and a t-shirt, with a dreamy smile plastered on his face as he gazed at Riley. Smiling Dude came twice a week, and always tipped well, but Riley thought he might have known him from outside of work — an old neighbor or a former classmate or something. Salieri’s meals were decent, but overpriced, and you wouldn’t necessarily eat here unless you liked the ambiance (company literature italicized the word), which locals didn’t care about.

Soon after finishing a section of Tarare, Riley found himself face-to-face with the Smiling Dude. “Buonasera, signore. How may I help you?”

“I just want to give my favorite Salieri a tip.” He took out a QRter — chunk of change embossed with a QR code, redeemable for cash or crypto. “I … heard you’re leaving soon?”

Is he stalking me? “I am soon to depart for Paris to debut my new Singspiel, Die Entfuhrung aus dem Serail.” He missed an umlaut there; Smiling Dude was throwing Riley off.

“Not what I’m talking about. I…” He sighed. “I get that it’s been a while, Riley, but why the cold shoulder?”

Riley put on a porcelain grin. “If you’re one of the guys who tried to give me a swirly in high school because I was in orchestra, fine, whatever, I forgive you. I— are you okay?”

A look of utter horror appeared on the man’s face. He looked like he might start sobbing. Then, as if apologizing, he fished out a pair of twenties, put them in the tip jar, and ran out of the restaurant.

Weirdo, Riley thought. His hands shook, and he had to wait five seconds before he launched into a song from Falstaff.

•   •   •

Riley tried redeeming the QRter in the autocab on the way home. He launched into a stream of curses: it was password-locked, with a cryptic hint: “MJJ_SO(diminutive)” — Pure gibberish; who locked their tip behind a password?!

Riley’s apartment was at the edge of Cleveland’s suburbs, in a brick building above a barber shop. He opened the door and tossed his keys into a bowl on the counter, next to an antique quote-a-day calendar with a cartoon cat. The bowl slid and knocked the calendar to the floor. As Riley picked it up and flipped it to the correct date, he encountered the letters “M”, “J”, and “J”. “May, June, July.” The password hint was the months?

Riley opened the redemption app on his phone again and typed in “August”.

“ERROR: INCORRECT PASSWORD”.

 “August (diminutive)…” Riley frowned “‘Augie’?”

Riley entered ‘Augie’ and was interrupted by a call — mom was back stateside. Riley answered. “Hey.”

“Hi, honey.” Her voice was hoarse from vaping. “Another check came. You should have the money in your account by tomorrow.”

“All right.” The $17 royalty check would really help with his delinquent rent. Riley put his phone on speaker, then sat down and opened his laptop to do a websearch for Chagrin Falls Class of 2059.  “I ran into someone from school today.”

“Where?”

“At work. I think he said his name was August?” The search results showed him a decade-old yearbook photo of a man named August Burkhardt.  “He acted like he knew me.”

“Oh, him,” she paused, coughing– vaping had ruined her lungs, but Riley couldn’t help but feel that the cough concealed something. “He played viola in the orchestra with you.”

Riley found a photo of the Class of ’59 orchestra — both of them were there, side by side. August held a viola, likely a rental. “How’d I forget about him?”

“Honey, it was a decade ago. Now, you’re positive you want to go through with this Skillmoney thing?”

“Skillmonkey, mom. I don’t want to work at Salieri’s forever. Plus, I might be able to get an actual job.”

“Brain surgery isn’t a replacement for a degree, Riley.”

“It can put me on a good path. Besides, I can always rent my skills back if I ever need to play again.”

“If you say so. Oh, are you coming to church? It’s been ages, everyone misses you!”

Riley’s skin broke out into gooseflesh. “Sorry, mom, but I’m getting a call from work. Call you back. Bye!”

“Okay, honey, I—”

Riley hung up. The idea of setting foot in his mother’s church filled him with a stomach-churning dread for some reason. His nausea faded when he remembered he was in the middle of typing a password. Riley hit ‘enter’ and found two things behind the QRter code: $500 to be immediately deposited into his checking account, and a link to a study titled “The Development of Neural Pathways in Homosexual Male Teenagers.” A section was highlighted under ‘methodology’:

“These neural pathways were willingly donated by twenty-seven individuals who were dissatisfied with their sexuality, and wished to have it expunged. Collected by Skill-Monkey Industries, 2059.”

Riley stared at that sentence for a few minutes. His first thought was that the Smiling Dude was running some bizarre long con. But they had known each other at some point. Neuro-alteration had still been still new tech with plenty of bugs when Riley was fired from his merchandiser position; maybe some personal memories got deleted when the forklift training got yanked out?

Exhausted and uneasy, Riley climbed into the shower, then bed. The inside of his eyes showed August’s face.

•   •   •

The next morning, Riley’s contemplation of his social media pages was interrupted by a friend request from August Burkhardt. This perplexed Riley. The past was a different country, and Riley could barely remember the name of most of his classmates at this point. Still, it troubled him that he and August had over two dozen mutual friends all from high school.  Intrigued, and with it being his day off, he clicked ‘accept.’

“Hello?” Riley typed.

A few minutes later, a reply. “Hey, sorry for being weird last night. Just thought it seemed weird you didn’t remember me.”

“Orchestra was a long time ago. But you seem cool.” Riley scrolled through August’s page, which was plastered with Pride-related images. “Though if you’re looking for something serious, I’m not gay. Sorry!”

August didn’t respond for twenty minutes. “You really don’t remember?”

“Sorry.” Five minutes passed with no reply.

Riley was about to step away from the computer when August uploaded a link to a photo album. It was filled with sights alien to Riley —  the two of them together at an amusement park over in Sandusky before it closed for good in ’57, spending time at a waterpark, at a movie theater… Riley activated a plugin on his browser that would detect AI manipulation, deepfaking, and other edits; it all came back negative. He sat at his piano, phone out as he typed back.

“We were… close?” Riley guessed.

“Yeah.”

“Why don’t I remember?”

“You got a job at some big box store, then we fell out of contact. IDK why.”

Riley’s hand shook as he felt the neuro-port on the right side of his skull. “My mom got me that job,” Riley explained. “She knew the manager from church.”

Yet another long pause. “Do you remember what St. Elmo’s is like?”

“No?”

August sent another link — this one to an article from a local paper. It was paywalled, but the fragment of a headline that Riley could see — “ST. ELMO’S CHURCH LABELED HATE GROUP FOR HOMOPH…” — deepened the dread he was feeling.

“There was a scandal a few years ago, where they tried to use neuro-editing to ‘cure’ queer kids.”

“Wait, so… I used to be gay?”

“We were inseparable.”

Riley forced himself to play through Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2. His nausea faded, his nerves calmed. He placed his phone on the music stand and turned on voice transcription so he could type as he played. “Did I do piano back then?”

“Yeah. Your mom stole a song you wrote for me.”

“The Rainbow’s Requiem?”

“Yeah. 🙂  You wrote it for me after I got through a really bad break-up with my ex. It’s beautiful.” Another pause, then, “Can we meet up for coffee? And maybe something else? I have some friends who work in neurorestoration, maybe they can help?”

Riley smiled at that; it would almost be like a date. He had never gone on a date. Or rather, he didn’t remember ever going on one. “Coffee sounds good. See you in an hour?”

•   •   •

Agonizing, awkward silence reigned. Riley reasoned that, though he didn’t remember being in a relationship, learning it couldn’t be that hard. He started with some small talk. “So, you do neuro work?”

“For ThoughtVessel. Neuro startup out of Youngstown,” August said in reply to Riley’s unasked question, sipping from a flat white. “I’m part of a research team that’s trying to prove you can’t catch being queer from a skill tree.”

“I kind of wanted to go into it,” Riley admitted. “But knowing what I know now…”

“They don’t do that kind of procedure anymore. Civil rights groups threatened to sue the whole industry out of existence if they kept doing it.”

“You single?” Riley asked. “Just curious, because I was kind of forced to ghost you.”

August made a ‘kind of’ motion with his hand. “Fell in with the Akron polycule for a few years, before they got busted up.”

“Aww, I heard they were sweet.”

“Well, bombing the Columbus PD didn’t do them any favors.” August shrugged. “You?”

“Been at Salieri’s for seven years. Started playing Salieri last year.” He squinted. “How did you find me there?”

“Heard you were in the area a few months ago. Didn’t think to send a friend request until today, because you deleted your social media straight out of high school.”

“I did?”

“As far as I know.”

“I… don’t remember having any until a few years ago.” Riley squirmed in his seat. “I’m sorry, but this is weird.”

“I’ve worked with a lot of people who’ve had their memories tampered with. It’s fixable.”

“…what if I don’t want it fixed?”

August nearly choked. “What?”

“Look, I’m… good at music, but I don’t want to spend my thirties as Salieri. I’m selling my piano skills.”

The look of horror returned to August’s face. “Riley, you… that…” He floundered for words. “You… your music. You know what it’s done?”

“I wrote one song that made me less than a grand over the last decade, and is being used by homophobes.”

“That’s… no.” August stared in disbelief. “Your music saved my life, Riley. I… do you remember why you wrote it?”

Riley thought for a moment. “It… it was raining out. Worst thunderstorm of the decade. There was someone there with me. I started playing. I had my phone on. He picked it up and recorded my playing. This person, I… I transcribed the song…” Riley clutched his neuro-port. “I’m sorry, but I can’t remember.”

“You wrote it for me.” August was crying. “They made you forget. I’m sorry.”

 Riley’s phone rang; he didn’t recognize the number. “Sorry, but can I take this?”

“Sure.” August wiped his eyes.

He picked up. “Riley Greiner’s phone.”

“Mr. Greiner, this is Alan Drexel with Skillmonkey. How are you?”

“I’m good,” Riley lied.

“Awesome! Well, in your email right now, there should be an offer for your piano skills. If the terms are agreeable, we can get the procedure scheduled ASAP.”

Riley looked at his email. He had to count the zero’s twice. “Why the high price?”

August looked concerned at the conversation.

“Part of it is ease of procedure. You got a neural rewrite a decade ago, and because of that, there’s minimal edits we have to do to access it.”

“…what was the rewrite for, exactly?”

“It was a ‘neurological correction’ requested by a parent or guardian.”

Riley’s heart hammered. “Can you… undo the correction?”

“Ah,” Drexel said awkwardly. “Well. Um. that’s the thing, Mr. Greiner. It’s technically possible, but… well, unofficially, everyone in the industry knows what the corrections were for. And we’d have to undo the correction before extracting the skillset, which means that, per NeTPA, we’d have to withdraw the offer.”

Riley stayed quiet.

“I’ll give you a week to think about it. How did you find out?”

“Bad luck.” Riley grumbled.

“I’m sorry.”

“Thank you.” Riley hung up, and looked at August, who was watching, eyes wide. “So, um,” he said, and explained the situation, feeling as awkward as Drexel must have. “It’s… a lot of cash. We’d be comfortable.”

August stared. “You said you’re not gay.”

“I could learn?” Riley ventured.

August shook his head. “We… you need to make a choice. I want to be your friend again and I’m fine with just being that. But if you do this, then…”

“I’m almost broke.” Riley protested. “95% of my royalty checks from that song go to my mom.”

August inhaled. “We were… inseparable. If… if there was just a way to…” He sighed. “Certain stimuli can trigger memories.”

“We’re not kissing.”

“It’s gross anyway.” August took up Riley’s hand and squeezed it several times, in rhythm. “You know this?”

Riley recognized it.”Rachmaninoff. Concerto No. 2.” Tears filled his eyes. “That was the first piece I learned how to play. How do you know that—”

Sparks flew from Riley’s head as his neuro-port fizzled. He collapsed onto the floor, screaming. There was no flood of recollection, no sudden lifting of amnesia’s veil. It was more subtle; Riley remembered that August had a birthmark on his right arm in the shape of a maple leaf. He held onto Riley, and Riley felt…

…instinctively revulsed. There was no affection. He jumped up and backed away. “G-get away,” he stuttered.

“Riley, do you remember?” August stood and followed. “Do—”

“It didn’t work!” Riley said. “Look, I’m sure you’re a nice guy, but… you can’t fix me.” Riley’s port was hot to the touch as he clutched his head. His hair smelled burnt.  “Don’t follow me.”

“Riley, wait!” August ran after him.

But by the time August exited the cafe, Riley had clambered into an autocab and had asked the automated vehicle to drive him as far away as possible. August ran after it, until the autocab entered traffic.

Riley had flashes of a life that wasn’t his — held hands, shared hugs, promises now forever broken. His phone vibrated and vibrated with messages that he assumed were from August. Riley knew they’d been in love at some point, but now… now he felt nothing but confusion and panic.

It took the better part of an hour for the autocab to reach the perimeter of Cleveland’s transport zone. Tears hot on his face — from pain or confusion or something else, he didn’t know what — he finally reached for his phone. He read the most recent message.

“I’m so sorry. Could we at least be friends?”

Riley didn’t respond.

•   •   •

Four Months Later

A nurse wheeled Riley, clad in a medical gown, in front of the keyboard where he had displayed his skill with Rachmaninoff. “Try playing a bit,” Drexel instructed.

Riley’s fingers hung over the keyboard. He clumsily tapped out a few notes, but nothing matching the musical mastery he’d displayed months ago.

“Excellent.” Drexel said from beyond the glass. “The other half of your payment will be delivered before Friday. Have a good life, Mr. Greiner.”

“Thanks.”

The nurse wheeled Riley to the autocab outside. At their new apartment, August lifted him out in a bridal carry, sent the autocab back with a wheelchair, and placed him in a more comfortable one.

They were both trying. Riley was trying to learn to love him. He was squeamish.  But he was learning, slowly, to love August.

“Got a call back from that attorney,” August mentioned as he wheeled Riley into the elevator. “He’ll take the case against your mom. We’re going to be set for life.”

“We already are,” Riley sighed; whether in resignation or relief, he wasn’t sure.

The elevator opened to the penthouse. August carried Riley out of the wheelchair and onto a couch, where a glass of red wine waited. August thumbed through their vinyl collection on one wall, and put on a collection of Rachmaninoff’s best pieces. One day, August hoped, it might re-ignite the now-extinguished neural pathways and allow Riley to play again.

The two of them sat in silence for most of the night, as they often did.

About the author and the piece (click to expand)

This story is a good example of why Hell Itself was founded. This is a piece that would be right at home at any of the major science fiction publications, but it didn’t quite make the cut at 17 of them. Dylan Freeman was a major contributor to the SCP Foundation creative writing project between 2012 and 2024, but has since stepped back to pursue professional publication. Their work can also be found in Shadows over Avalon, Vol. 1 from 18thwall Productions, and Weird Tales to Haunt your Reptilian Brain from Burial Books.

 

©2026 by Dylan Freeman. All rights reserved. not be used for A.I. training.