Science Fiction Story: Letting Go
In Dr. Adam Steiner’s Psy 321 Introduction to Brain and Behavior course, students are given an assignment of writing a science-based report, either fiction or non-fiction, about a topic in brain science. They are asked to tell an engaging story that uses and explains concepts explored in the course, and ensure that all details are based in scientific evidence, using peer-reviewed sources. If you’d like more details about this assignment, just use the contact form on this website to get in touch and we’ll share more information.
By Heather Pecore
A desperate scream echoes down the hallway, ricocheting off the walls like a spray of bullets. Although blocks of concrete separate each room of the base hospital, they do little to muffle the frantic pleas and attempts at negotiating from the soldiers who are brought here against their will. It doesn’t matter what they say though; whether they beg or cry. Because once your performance has been compromised and your commanding officer has decided that you need a memory erasure, there’s nothing that can be done to stop it.
Before the war began, this kind of procedure was initially used for victims of trauma or drug addicts (Columbia 2017). Doctors would simply infuse a patient’s brain with drugs that could modify nuclei in the limbic system and normal emotional processes (Glannon 2017). Then they’d stick you in a deep brain stimulation machine to selectively deactivate neurons and synapses in order to erase maladaptive memories (Glannon 2017). The technology was so precise and worked so well that pharmaceutical companies and investors realized that they could make a profit from it and before long it became so common to have an erasure that people were having shitty days at work or hangnails omitted from their mind. We had lost sight of the fact that both good and bad experiences make up who we are, but at least it was our choice as to which moments we held onto and which we casted away.
But then the Others arrived. No one knows why they came to earth or from where, just that one day they weren’t here and then the next they were. They announced their arrival by releasing an EMP wave into the upper atmosphere that took out all of our electronic technology. Unsure of the cause, people worldwide were left confused and cut off from each other. But then the Others began attacking us and it became all too clear what was going on. We were being exterminated.
The military did their best to fight back, but once their numbers became sufficiently depleted, every man, woman, and child over the age of fourteen was drafted into a war that we had no chance of ever winning. Not going down without a fight has never really been our species style though. But untrained civilians make poor soldiers and the casualties of combat were taking a mental toll on many. That’s when it was decided by those in charge that memory erasures would be used to cure the effects of extreme exposure to carnage. The downside to this idea was that the DBS machines were now useless.
But we still had drugs. By ramming a syringe with a needle that’s long enough to impale an emaciated child into the base of a person’s skull, non-declarative emotional memories could be eliminated so that shell-shocked soldiers could be returned to fight mode (Chen et al. 2013; Milton 2019). Unfortunately, the injection alone lacked the selectivity of the DBS machines and sometimes, a lot of times, memories that weren’t ever meant to be removed were gone. Your hometown, the name of your parents, whether you had children; precious little details that we all took for granted until they were lost to us forever.
Those who had been ordered to have a memory erasure didn’t know about the adverse effects at first. I mean, how could they? But when family or friends rushed over to them upon their discharge and they were unrecognized, the realization about the missing pieces of their past hit them like a pistol-whip. Although they couldn’t remember all that they had lost, one doesn’t always need to fully understand what was stolen from them to feel its absence.
So now when one is ordered to report to the base hospital for an erasure it’s comparable to a death sentence. Grown men with arms like tank barrels are sometimes rendered to sobbing boys who have to be dragged away. Many women, especially the mothers, try to make a run for it despite the futility of escape. And sometimes, though not too often, an inconsolable soldier will unload the contents of a pistol down their throat. Any fate is better than the condemnation of being robbed your most cherished memories; the moments that you clutch tightly to your chest so that you can remember why it is that you keep fighting in this impossible battle to save humanity.
Knuckles rap twice against the splintered door to the room I’ve been waiting in before a lanky-limbed medic pushes it open. He eyes the unfastened restraints at my sides for a long moment before turning his gaze up to meet mine. “Soldier 447?” he asks. I flatten my hands against the exam table beneath me, letting the coolness of the metal bleed into my palms, and nod.
The medic regards me the way one would a feral dog that’s hellbent on biting those who venture too close before hesitantly glancing down at my medical chart. “Says here that you requested this procedure?” My whispered affirmation causes him to frown. “But you have high performance marks. You know this isn’t necessary?”
“I know, but I still want it done.” My jaw clenches at the pointlessness of his mild interrogation. I just wish he’d get this over with.
His long fingers absently scratch at the ginger stubble that covers his jawline. “But why?”
“Because I need to forget,” I reply in a strangled tone that I hope conveys my desire for him to end his questioning. What I don’t say is that there are worse fates than losing your past. That the thought of forgetting the one thing you can’t live without is less painful than having to remember it every waking moment. That watching your beloved leave on an assignment and only getting mangled pieces of her back is an anguish that no one should ever have to endure.
The medic’s brow furrows, as if he’s heard all of the things that I’ve left unspoken. “Are you sure about this? There’s no way of telling which memories you’ll lose and once they’re gone there’s no way of ever getting them back.”
His words are like a subtle plea for me to reconsider and think things through more, but I’ve already made up my mind. “I’m sure.”
With a weary sigh, the medic nods. He pulls a capped syringe from the tattered pocket of his uniform and slowly approaches. “Tip your head forward please.”
The chilling sweep of an alcohol wipe kisses the nape of my neck and is shortly followed by the fiery bite of a needle. “Lay back now,” the medic says in a hushed murmur, “This will take a little time.”
I obey his request and then close my eyes. And when I do, I see my Emma. She’s lying on the soft dunes of Madaket Beach; smiling and laughing, the fevered rays of the sun setting her windblown hair aglow. We had woken early that day and rushed down to meet the dawn. Sitting at the edge of the sea, the surf lapped at our ankles and crusted them with salt and sand as we huddled so close that I could smell the jasmine perfume on her skin. It felt like a moment that you’d read about in some sleazy romance novel, too perfect to be real. But then an airborne seagull shit on my head.
Emma laughed so hard that tears spilled over her freckled cheeks, causing my initial outrage to wash away with the waves and before I knew it I was laughing with her. She told me that no amount of seagull shit could ever change how she felt about me and I knew in that moment that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her. We laid back against the shoreline and watched as daylight and wild swells swallowed the last traces of night. Our fingers were laced so tightly together that I can still feel her hand in mine now. And I don’t ever want to let her go. But then I start to feel my grasp falter and then Emma is slipping, slipping, slipping. Gone.
References
Chen, Y., Imai, H., Ito, A., & Saito, N. (2013). Novel modified method for injection into the cerebrospinal fluid via the cerebellomedullary cistern in mice. National Library of Medicine, 73(2), 304-11. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23823990/
Columbia. (2017, June 17). Select memories can be erased, leaving others intact. Columbia University. https://www.cuimc.columbia.edu/news/select-memories-can-be-erased-leaving-others-intact
Glannon, W. (2017). Brain implants to erase memories. Frontiers in Neuroscience, 11, 584. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnins.2017.00584
Milton, A. (2019). Can we edit memories? Ted. https://www.ted.com/talks/amy_milton_can_we_edit_memories/up-next?language=en