Authority internet vigilance services will filter mentions of "John Chase Patterson", "49 years old", and "dementia" among other related keywords
This is such a cool way to recast the function of something like the hazard icons, great foreshadowing and interest-pitching.
Due to resource constraints and insufficient room,
I also love how the addition of limits works well here… another way an omnipotent secretive organization is less interesting.
Information regarding the Authority and his condition is being withheld.
This sounds awful to type, but would they be referring to it as a "he" or an "it"?
Just great protocol work here. Reminds me that a good containment section will tell the reader how the organization finds the anomaly, and this does that well.
The analysis looks great.
legally change their name to "John Chase Patterson"
Wouldn't this merit some more specific containment protocols about monitoring databases for name changes? That can obviously be covered by what is already there, but just a thought.
(respective to the biological age of the subject),
I think this phrase is unnecessary.
(I.e.
Is that "i" always capitalized? Maybe I haven't noticed.
Among others, these include distaste for most modern forms
This is grammatically sound as is, but I would still recommend putting the "a" before "distaste" for ease.
477-positive subjects also favor socialist or otherwise left-leaning ideologies over their previously held ones. State welfare programs are almost universally approved among 477-positive subjects.
I would maybe add the capitulation on the part of the Authority that this might not be entirely a result of the anomaly, as their previously described preference for simple living would incentive them to favor welfare programs.
it is of the opinion of the author
I love the epistemological caution here, but eehhhhhh I think it'd still be better to make the conclusion more authoritative somehow. (Hi, it's me from just a little later in the read. I think the list of absent concepts in the free-association results are enough to justify the stronger claim.)
neuro-psychological scars of memetic infection… subsequent dosage of amnestics to remove it, damaging the conscious and subconscious concepts that the infection attached itself to
Super creative.
Purpose (ditto)
I'd actually write out the ditto here, my tastes. It does feel a bit out of place though.
As almost no 477-positive subjects have undergone such a process,
Changing this to "as no 477-positive subjects have evidence of such damage," would be clearer IMO.
the meme's payload
Lovin' the depth of the nomenclature here.
new memories obtained through RPC-477 are immediately consolidated and thus trigger dreaming, which would in turn explain the variance in context of common memories across 477-positive subjects. This process necessarily requires the new memories not to be locally-produced, with no corresponding neural activity to support their creation. Thus, remote reception is far more likely. Assuming this speculation to be correct, we can further assume the brain to be especially vulnerable to memetic influence during sleep, as would be suggested by the anomalous properties of the Déjà vu […]
This is real clever.
Sir— With a tab that long, you haven't had a job in a while.
The dialogue shoots, and it scores!!!
The first addendum is great because you just know what is going to happen by the first line, but the execution of it is so well done, that it lands satisfyingly. The knowledge-pacing puts the reader exactly where they should be, just ahead of what's going to happen next, and shouting "I know what's going on!! There it is, that's the damn house! The damn home thing, it's for sure!" I tried to explain this the best I could. It's very skilled staging and pacing.
…
…
AND THEN, you read the next lines and go //"OOOOH SHIIIIIIIIT THAT'S THE GUUUUYYY!!!"
and that such subjects deviate significantly from his self-image and behavior. It is most likely such subjects
Could probably stand to get rid of one of the "such" before "subjects" here.
L-R-R-L R-L-L-R
Paradiddle sighted
And then you go, "HE WORKED FOR THE AUTHORITY!?!? SHIIIIIIIIIIIII-"
I don't have more to say because I was engrossed in it the rest of the way. The end is chilling and one of the better uses of redacting in recent memory.
I love this article and there are a few things I wish I understood more, after a first read. This is something I know the author probably is going for, given that this is a very dense article; I agree with the critter above me in that it demands complete attention in a satisfying way. The trick here then will be to have all the most important parts come out strong and taut at the end.
The transmission vector (personality type), how that ties into sleep (the anomalous packing of brain wave patterns as meme-ories into 477-positive individuals), and why the memetics converge to the -alpha instances lobotomized personality traits as opposed to finding new brain matter to sensitize itself off of… all these, while answered in the article, didn't come through as strongly as I think need to, and the final emotion to the read was a bit of disorientation and having to go back and re-find the answers to these questions to make sure it made sense. It's like a dish that has salt, but not enough to come through as much as it needs to I think.
If you can find a way to reinforce these somewhat disparate themes even a bit more, I think the article would be perfect and an exemplary confic article. 5/5 as it stands though, easy.
