There was an element missing. Cooper wasn’t sure what it was, exactly, but its absence was deeply felt.
Some piece of history had gone missing, which was troubling. More troubling still, because he couldn’t remember why he wanted to remember in the first place.
Instinct told him that this missing element was based in self-perception; a thing he once knew to be completely real and factual about himself, but which had somehow faded away from a lack of recall.
It’s loss was no different and no less than a genuine loss of self, though he didn’t know enough about the situation to articulate the concept. Not even internally.
He allowed his mind to wander, which was no great impediment to the task at hand; many years of repetitive work have by now coded into deliberate and reliable muscle memory.
Sometimes, he has a “moment” while driving, acknowledging that he is behind the wheel of a car, on his way home…
At any rate, while his body went through the same motions it always does, his mind drifted, trying to grasp onto the memory of whatever it was that was troubling him.
This, was, obviously, something of an unpredictable process. Sometimes he would try to remember a certain thing (he was never entirely sure what), and would remember something entirely different. And this memory would linger, far past the point when it had been deemed irrelevant. It would fill up the space in his brain where the actual thing he wanted to remember was supposed to go. It would take root, unable to be dislodged by any of the thoughts sent out to
Memory as a mighty evergreen. Memory as a constant companion, however unwanted.
The thought you can’t unthink.
If Cooper were given to such musings, it might have occurred to him that the absence had, by its very nature, become exactly this.
But he was not, and so kept doing what he was doing, until it was time to stop.
Pryorball. 