From Memotics: an Advanced Study of Memory, NuCorp Internal Publications, 1989
mem·o·tics
noun
The study of memory
Much of the public-sphere knowledge on memory is falsified. In truth, memotics involves metaphysical and extra-dimensional concepts, the knowledge of which is (as of writing) barred from public access.
To begin, let us establish units and terms…
The first instance of separating and reinserting a memory from one brain to another, as far as the Authority is willing to disclose, was on April 27th, 1997 by clinical memoticist Doctor Czela Maxwell Ruta.
A clinical memoticist has a PhD in Clinical Memotics. The study of it is messy, unknown and unkempt. Most of her professors would have turned to Memotics from vaguely adjacent branches, so her teachers were psychologists and neurologists, often dejected, who hoped to find success by teaching in a virgin academic area.
Most memoticists by the 90s are in some way self-taught.
This particular memoticist, whose friends call her Max and whose husband calls her wife, has been possessed by the mystery of her own research, an experiment which has manifested through untranslatable sheets of paper and convoluted whiteboard notations photocopied in. Despite its complexity, the work had nonetheless been compiled into a document much thinner than she'd hoped.
“And this is it.” Max slides the papers back to the other end of the table. “The sum total.”
Doctor Weirs slowly sets his glasses aside as he ruminates during the long pause. Max inhales, but before she can speak, Weirs vocalizes his apparent frustration. “This is nonsense. I will not read this to discover what I already know. What you are proposing is based on no rationality that I know of.”
Max exhales. “I don’t know about the logic of it right now. And I know it is not science. That is why it's on our table. It needs to be reviewed.”
“Review? I already have reviewed it-“
“But-“
“-enough.” There is a creeping finality in her husband’s voice. His glasses remain folded as he raises the papers to his eyes.
Weirs recites it verbatim. “‘Total memory retrieval and restoration.’”
“I was thinking. Daydreaming, maybe, you know my imagination is vivid, and…”
“Daydreaming? What do you think I want to hear?” He begins to pace around the table. “That my wife has been seized by fantasies? As though that hasn’t happened before.”
A finger raps against the stack of papers in the center. “I know what this is. Your brother. You don’t think your family- our family- has been through enough? Do you want to wheel him into that facility, that private, restricted facility and run him through tests? How do you think our coworkers will feel to see him used?”
“No! There isn’t a need for the lab! I just need the tools!”
Weirs tossed the paper back onto the table and leans against a doorframe, facing away from Max, arm propped up.
Max mechanically brings the sheets back to tidy order, despite the tears. “The tools. I could bring them home in a backpack. They’re compact enough. We wouldn’t bother anybody.”
He sighs.
“I want to try. I need to. This is all what I have observed. If it could be replicated.”
Weirs doesn’t face her. “You don’t need to try. You need irrefutable evidence. You need a foundation before you can use Doctor Petr as a subject.”
“Animals aren’t close to sufficient, and, and what would possibly make his condition worse? If I’m wrong, what memory will there be to…”
Weirs is facing her now, arms against the table, glaring. “Don’t finish that. Not another word.” He picks up his glasses. “You can go to the lab. Petr stays with me.”
/
Doctor Czela Maxwell Ruta would pass away four months later. Heart attack. One in a million, but given her age, it was not unexpected. Anticipated, maybe. A genetic condition, apparently.
Weirs spent two weeks reading through every paper Doctor Ruta had written, before placing them neatly into several cardboard boxes that he assumed would never be opened again. One paper was titled TOTAL MEMORY RETRIEVAL AND RESTORATION. It lacked editing and in some sections where Max became particularly excited, punctuation. Most of it didn’t make sense to him, but extensive notes jotted in the margins with a frantic green pen by Max explained these things to her husband.
Doctor James Weirs would spend a month doing nothing other than studying the sixty-seven page document. He was hospitalized twice during this process.
/
It was a little bulky, about the size of a regular biking helmet, which seemed obvious given the origin of the frame and straps. His background in engineering and machining didn’t make this part easier. Doctor Weirs gently placed the design atop his head. His hair was recently shaved, something she would never forgive him for doing.
Petr didn’t mind. He continued to stare into an infinite distance from the other side of the room as Weirs finished propping up his phone to record.
“This is the sixth test.” Weirs turned back to Petr, now with additional wires leading from the sides of his head down to a man-portable transformer. If Weirs became unconscious, there was an alarm usually around Petr’s neck that was set to go off in fifteen minutes if nobody turned it off before then.
Next to that was a container, sealed. A dampglass lens was immersed and absorbing its barely-tangible contents for a week before it was attached to the flash of a somewhat bulky camera directly in front of Weirs’ face. Sigils were laser-engraved into the dampglass, which required delicate handling and precise machining to utilize. Weirs had neither.
The contents of the container were about ten seconds of Doctor Ruta’s life, separated from her brain via obscure amnestics and pulled from a singularity for a then-unrelated experiment. How she brought it out of the lab, Weirs didn’t know. But the green pen showed him how he would find it.
This stage was a little less than testing. The simple impression of a memory was possible. Contact with vectors could do this, but it wasn’t consistent or complete. One “memory” was dozens of separate sensations. She managed to seize the majority of the senses in the sample that Weirs now looked at uneasily.
The lens has microscopic differences in it now that the lethium had been exposed to the vector. The impression of a memory in glass. A sigil from a monolith engraved on its face.
Weirs glanced at his watch. It’s 6:43, thirteen minutes until the call. He ran his thumb along a button twice before pressing down.
/
The corridor echoes the clacking of shoes against the tiled floor outside of the janitor’s closet. You pop a pill in your mouth and look at your watch. It is ten-to-four, January 18th, 2019.
Your tongue tastes like spent saliva. The air smells like boiling water. Make sure you’ve checked the boxes for your report.
/
Weirs awakes on the floor, splayed, breathing heavily. He scrambles for his watch. 6:50, six minutes. He exhales, and stops the timer. Petr remains indifferent.
She was right! Brief exhilaration. Then a terrible twisting sensation, the heart grappled. My God. She was right.
/
Presenting home experiments to NuCorp was fairly common, and almost expected. A sizable percentage of NuCorp’s research personnel were hired due to a home experiment with “abnormal” results, and/or a reputation for psychotic episodes regarding bizarre data.
Director Kings had just fielded a call when Weirs walked in clutching a folder and a black box. She looked surprised at first, then gravely concerned.
“You’re on leave, Doctor Weirs.”
His appearance seemed deprived in every way. Baggy eyes and ragged hair were expected. The gaunt appearance and cracked lips had a more grim implication.
Kings stared at Weirs. Was he going to keep standing there? Should she say something? Does security need to be called? No, he clearly needs medical attention. She reaches for the phone.
“I know my wife is dead.”
There is a long pause.
Her fingers hover above the numbers. “I know. We all do. We’re deeply sorry for your loss, Doctor Weirs.”
“She left behind jars. Many. They have her memories in them. I’ve used 4. There are 89 in the walls of our house. I only have so many lenses to apply them.”
“Apply..?” Kings swallows involuntarily. Her mouth feels immediately dry. “Why don’t you sit down, and I can get you a cup of water? There’s a cooler outside.”
Weirs shakes his head and drops the folder as he holds the black box in both hands. It’s a camera. No- a flash. A glass lens is fitted to the front of it. “This is the only way to convince you. I know.”
/
It’s August. You are no longer visibly pregnant. There is no child and there are no questions. You don’t know how to make a request for leave. You don’t know how to talk to James about this.
Your hand covers the side of your face as you watch it slide down the bathroom mirror. There is an unmarked pill bottle next to the hand soap. You open it.
/
“-only a minute, I think. I wasn’t timing that. But you know what this means.”
Kings gasps and grabs the edge of the desk. She sees Weirs standing there, still holding the camera. The director walks up to the man on mourning leave, and immediately punches him in the chest. He wheezes like an air bag and comes down like one too.
tagnone
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