In any city, in any country, go to any mental institution or halfway house you can find. Walk to the front desk. Speak clearly. Tell the person at the desk that you wish to visit someone who calls himself the Holder of Forgotten Things.
One of two things will happen.
The first: the person will look at you blankly, ask you to repeat yourself, and eventually ask you to leave. This is fine. Leave. Go to another institution. Try again. Keep trying until the second thing happens.
The second: the person at the desk will stop moving. Not pause — stop. Their eyes will remain open. They will not breathe for approximately three seconds. Then they will set down whatever they are holding and stand and say, without looking at you, "Follow me."
Follow them.
They will lead you through parts of the building you will not be able to map later. The hallways will change in ways that are difficult to track. You may hear sounds from behind closed doors — weeping, mostly, and occasionally laughter that sounds like it is being used instead of weeping. Do not listen too closely. Do not try to open any door.
You will be brought to a room at the end of a hallway that was not there before.
The room contains a chair. In the chair sits an elderly person of indeterminate gender, wrapped in a grey blanket, facing away from you. Their breathing is audible.
You may speak to them. You must ask: "What has been forgotten?"
They will begin to speak.
They will speak for a long time. What they tell you will depend on what you carry with you — not possessions, but memory. Things you have lost. Things you have tried to lose. They will name them. They will name things you have forgotten without realizing. They will name things that happened to you in rooms with closed doors, and things said to you by people who are now dead, and the correct names of three things you have always called by the wrong name.
This will go on until you cannot bear it.
When it ends, they will hold out one hand, palm upward. In the palm will be a small object: a stone, or a coin, or a button, or something smaller than all of these.
You may take it.
But before you reach for it, you must know: there are words you cannot say in that room. They are not words you would use in ordinary conversation. But they are words you might think. They surface, in that room, more readily than they do anywhere else.
The words are a greeting. In a language older than the institution. In a language older than the city.
If you think them clearly enough, the person in the chair will hear.
You do not want them to hear you. You do not want them to turn around.
Take the object. Leave quickly. Do not look at what you are carrying until you are outside.
Object 2 of 538.
They must never be brought together.