by Alex Miles
Once finished, they obediently file outwards. I place them in amino acids and they disgorge a protein string. This is collected up and read by my machines, which give out the data I need to build the soul diagram.
Free Dreams skipped these details.
“Although many requests come to us, the majority of patients change a personality trait or a memory.”
Clients sought every kind of change. For example, the childless woman was given her son or one client wanted to learn an ancient and expensive language. A few cognitive supermen now walk our city.
Predictably, half of what we do is to do with sex, in particular sexual fulfilment and deletion. One right-wing broadsheet labelled us “The ultimate pornographers”. In the other extreme I am tasked with making individuals sexless.
Artificial memories of a night with the perfect girl have more clarity than an organic experience. The process can make a man see his wife as attractive or his sister as not attractive. I do not exaggerate when I say I have prevented a handful of serious crimes, so I do not apologise if I seem self-righteous when the protesters speak of ethics. I state the tamest of things here, for when I map out the human mind, and I see every little fetish, I do ponder the paper-thin norms that keep civilisation afloat. I understand the broadsheets better than they understand me.
The broadsheets do not like an old woman to believe she is a child or a mother to talk about her dead son’s future. They fail to realise in both these cases that the patients are happier.
“Implementing this change is done by another engineered organism, the builder. This will take a few minutes to a few weeks depending on the type of change.”
The builder is the size of a fingernail; its anatomy is similar to a woodlouse, with a flatter body and a single, extended tail. Its back is supported by a soft exoskeleton and on its belly are tens of tiny legs that split as fractals into many millions of tiny feelers, which would appear as cilia under a microscope. Their miniature size allows them to cut, rearrange and solder neurons and synapses.
I feed it the protein chain excreted by the surveyors, with my corrections; it then enters through the ear, takes a wider channel to the brain and rebuilds the mind, based on these instructions.
“The last stage required is maintenance. If someone has an artificial memory they will come into contact with something to contradict that memory.”
Maintenance is implemented along with building – and may even be unnecessary. The builder adjusts the mind to monitor and reinforce a desired delusion. This reinforcement continues long after the builder has vacated the client. This type of delusion is natural in every human brain. Humans work back from wishes towards the evidence. It is the power that lets a gambler think he is about to win against the odds.
Maintenance protects the client from the self-harm caused by delusions; for example, spending all the money from a non-existent lottery win. The patient is happy that they have won the lottery, but maintenance will lower their desire to spend. Anyone denying the lottery win is dismissed and then forgotten, even if the patient meets twelve people in a day denying the lottery win, it still seems like a string of individual cases. This is just an example; my clients would not notice if they won the lottery.
As I was nearing the end of the pamphlet Mr Botts hurried into the surgery, without knocking. “There is somebody here to see you.”
“Do they have an appointment?”
“No.”
“Then they are not here to see me.” I read on.
“It is optional and recommended to have all knowledge of the procedure removed.”
Often the builders deliver the patients in a condition of knowing nothing of the procedure. Many patients go so far as to remove all knowledge of this technology.
Mr Botts whispered in my ear, perhaps under the misunderstanding that the unconscious young man could hear. “It is your old assistant.”
I looked up. “Why is he here?”
The baffled creature opened and closed his mouth twice, but said nothing. I looked at the clock.
“Please send him in. Quickly now.”
There would be fifteen minutes before the boy woke up. I would send Dr Juste Elm away in five.
I returned to my office desk, already sweating at the thought of meeting this degenerate, and without a good reason. He adored me, or at least pretended to. He was one of the few people who showed me a little affection instead of fearful respect. But I did not need that from someone so beneath me and I had no reason to think much of him. The real anxiety that he caused me was a different, groundless worry. I feel silly to mention it, however, it has caused me loss of sleep.
I was unsure how to greet him. I put on my most intimidating pince-nez and I arranged my desk so it was authoritative. In mid process a single knock came at the door.
“Come,” I said.
He came in wearing civilian clothing, his hands were shackled with a solid piece of metal and a similar construction held his ankles. A city prefect followed him in and shut the door.
The nature of Juste’s fetters meant he had to waddle to my desk. Like many liars his lips always smiled while his eyes were downcast. He had always been a handsome boy, but his blond hair had been shaved, as was standard for the prison inmates.
“George, George, I am so glad to see you. It has been hell.” He attempted to embrace me as best as he was able, but I remained seated, fingers interlaced. I was shaking. He feigned sadness. “You too? I cannot blame you. I do not make any moral case for myself.” He sat down and mimicked my posture. I looked across to see if he had the prison tag embedded within his neck. He did.
“Novel, isn’t it? Do you like these too?” He rolled up his shirt to reveal bruises the size of plumbs that had broken the skin. “Those little devils don’t know their own strength.” He covered himself and jerked his head towards the prefect.
“What do you want?”
“Forgiveness.” I said nothing at the insulting remark. “What? Is it so strange I use my big day out to come and see you, my friend? All my worshippers, they love me, but they don’t understand, the poor dears.” He had never shown any real regret at the abominations he had inflicted on his patients.
At his mention of the fourteen, I dug my nails into myself. Throughout the interview, I behaved in this unreasoned and emotive way.
“Well alright then … forgiveness and a job. Like I said, you did always know me, George. I’m a client now. I know business is always serious.”
“I see.”
“I want a job from you, George. I want the last few years to be happy.”
“Maybe. You are so sure of the verdict?”
“I am sure.”
“It’s a maybe. What is this job?”
“I don’t want to be me.” He had begun to fiddle with sensitive items on my desk. I slid the papers away from him.
“I don’t want you to be you, either.”
“Well George, lucky for us both, I have a friend who can do this kind of thing for us.”
“Excuse me, you cannot smoke in here,” I signalled to the prefect. Turning his vacant head towards me, he took one last deep drag and threw it down on my floor. I looked at him stunned for a second before choosing my battle, but Juste was already mid-game.
“George, it has been months since we spoke and we barely greeted. How are things? How’s your life? What are you reading? Where are your holidays this year? Who are you fucking?”
“Look here, what do you want me to do exactly, Juste?”
“A complete rework. I love you, George. You are a brother. All the whores come and go, but you stay. It’s so hard to find anyone like you.”
I laughed. “Show me some respect. I’m going to lose my temper soon.”
“You still don’t think I’m sincere? You will know when you realise what I have come for. I want a little more success, a special kind.”
“What kind?”
“Only the best. That is why I came to you.”
I ra
ised my voice. “We both have no time for this. What kind?”
“I hate myself, George. I want you to turn me into someone else.”
“Well, to create a lifetime’s worth of memories is ten lifetimes’ work.”
“But you can copy the majority of someone else’s memories. You have done that before. It’s simple.”
“I know what my job entails. Whose memories?”
“Have a guess! I am a lonely person, George. I have no family and only one friend.” I stared at him and shook my head. “That’s what I want. I could survive as you. I want all your memories.”
“Nonsense.”
“I want to be you? My personality, your memories. This is the biggest compliment anyone can give, you know.” I was still shaking my head.
“You don’t want to be me. You just want success. That is less technical.”
“No, no, no, no. You’re the one.”
A brass bell rang in the lab indicating it was five minutes till the boy’s surveying was complete.
“Oh, and who is that?” He attempted to get up, looking over to the table where the young man slept. “I’m glad to see the old place is ticking over. I hear you have to thank me for a lot of business.”
“They still come to me, despite you. But now I have to elbow my way past lunatics. Parliament came done hard on us too. You did all that.”
“I didn’t do that, at least it wasn’t all me. How is your mother dearest, by the way?”
“I can’t do what you ask.”
“You say that because you can’t do it, or you don’t want to do it? Because neither of us is fooled by that.”
“The maintenance will be too high. You will be in prison all the time.”
“Now George, don’t be a tease. You can do anything. I mean that in a very literal sense. It’s easy to cook up some wishy-washy reason. Very standard. Take away the memory of the operation too.”
To seem in control, I took off my glasses and polished them on my tie. “It’s a very intimate thing to share memories with someone.”
“You don’t need to give me all of them, just the good ones.”
“That’s very kind of you.”
“It would make me happy. I’m allowed to ask, at least?”
“What of your memories?”
He was staring at the wall and began drumming his fingers on the desk. “Cut out the incompatible. Keep the compatible.”
“There is one other problem. What on earth could make me want to help you? Can you even pay?”
“I did help you, George. Wasn’t I good? Didn’t I help you make all this? At least half of it is because of me.”
The thought of the fourteen returned to me and I slumped in my chair. “Oh, Juste. Why did you do it? What makes you hurt people like that.”
“Don’t ask me that. Everyone asks me that. I don’t know. A couple of things. I was interested I guess. Don’t judge me. I have enough of that to go round.”
“I have found when you study people’s minds you realise why people are the way they are, and you don’t judge, but you sympathise. So tell me. I am ready to understand.”
“If you did the job you would understand.”
“It would make me happier to hear it from you.”
“Well, as you said, we don’t have the time really, do we?” He smiled. “I can give you your reputation back. I still have fourteen of your customers who are very sick and are in need of a doctor such as you. But there is only person they will take advice from. I can give them back to you. You can make them whole. Is it a deal, George?”
“It’s a fake offer. I can’t fix them.”
“Well then, maybe I will stop them misbehaving. How about that?”
“And how exactly would you communicate with them from prison?”
“I do think ahead, George.”
A cough arose in my throat. I looked for something, but all there was on my desk was cold tea, which I drank. I did not want to cough in front of him. I was being taken in by his threats. I could not help but ask the question I wanted. “Did you ever get me on that slab? What did you do in my head?”
He looked surprised by the question. That was the only answer I would have believed. “Why do you ask me that? You know that I didn’t.”
“You are sure?”
“I didn’t.”
I held up my hands in a gesture of surrender.
“What do you want me to say, George? Will it convince you if I say it three times maybe? You know, if I brought witnesses and proof, maintenance would make them count for nothing. I did nothing. Ask me again if you like.”
I knew he was correct, at least on this, but I have had this feeling that everything was incorrect, since I learnt of what he did to the fourteen. If he ever had me on that slab, nothing mattered.
He leant forward. “You’re really not thinking of those fourteen lives, George, or the people they might hurt. You are just thinking of yourself.”
“Why are you doing this, Juste? It doesn’t have to be like this.”
“No, exactly; you have the power to change it. This whole thing is a storm in a teacup, you know. Those patients need your help.”
Every mention of his fourteen patients caused me distress, nevertheless, thinking of them logically, they are curious things. They are souls cut in half and surgically melded to man-made designs. Their cannibalised mentality was as apparent as any physical deformity.
He had made them devoted to him, to the point I was almost jealous. He was their religion and they would tear a child’s eyes out to save him the trouble of a pinprick. Other loves are conditional, but they would let him put a finger in their bleeding wound for his fancy.
They refused any medical help. I have seen the relatives beg these patients to come back to them, as if enough weeping would undo the physical medicine.
His first victims where subtly done, with a delay, but he grew more greedy and the last two he butchered. It had been impossible for him not to get caught. When they interrogated him he produced documentation detailing the cleverness of what he had done.
“What would you make those patients do?”
He turned and laughed towards the prefect as if he expected a heated response, but the prefect did nothing. “They love me and I love them. They are sweet, really they are. I would miss them dreadfully if they did something awful, but I miss you all the more. You have to try, don’t you?” I thought for a moment. “George?”
“I don’t know.”
“What does that mean? I need an answer. I can’t come back here again.”
“I’m thinking.”
“What does the least harm?”
We both sat in silence while I thought. I nodded my head.
“That’s a nod right?”
“Yes.”
He smiled. “Perfect! You see. You see. I knew you still loved me. You will need to come by the prison. I don’t get out much recently.”
I did not say anything.
“So maybe we can talk of other things, now business is done?”
“If you’re finished, you can leave.”
“Well, since you ask, the days have dragged for me. It’s not the boredom or the labour. It’s the food.”
“Please, take him away,” I said to the prefect, and on his approach Juste got up obediently.
“I’m sorry George. I don’t blame you. I really, really mean that. But if you feel like a chat, anytime, you know where I am. I mean it now, anytime.”
The prefect helped him up and out of the room. As the door shut I put my head in my hands. I knew why Juste wanted to be me – he needed to win. He needed to be the father of a whole science, loved academically and hated publicly.
In terms of a plan, all I could think of was an arbitrary code of utilitarianism. I decided I would perform a different operation on Juste. I would make him the good and ethical person he did not want to be. I decided I would purge his rotten ethics and correct his lost link to moral empathy.
I had no
t known why he had trusted me to do this job, or why I missed this chance. Reflecting on this later in his prison cell, other plans would have suited my tastes better. I had had an opportunity to punish this man, to warp his soul on a cruel anvil. Perhaps he thought what he had done was pitiless? Wait till I filled his soul with every kind of parasitic idea. The voices I would place in his mind would keep him company forever.
I thought over this problem in the consultancy, until the final bell announced my work upon the boy was done. I collected up the precious surveyors. Mr Botts and the nurses returned, undid the lad's straps and carted him out of the room, unconscious.
I cancelled my other appointments, to the anger of many powerful people, took the populated agar and my coat and left the building. After I was attended out in a secure manner, I asked to be dropped a little distance from my home. The walk was to cure my harmful worries.
The smog was thick, so I masked up to take a long route, travelling through the concrete gardens, then down by parliament, and then passed south to the light district. I sat down in one of the overpriced cafe’s gazebos, which recreated a hospitable outside. I watched black and white adverts project themselves onto the buildings, while clearing my mind with liquid fungal cakes and tea. I knew I had to be brief, as my photograph is well known to those interested.
Perhaps through an over-active mind, I thought I saw one of Juste’s patients drifting through the streets, but the distance made it uncertain. They took a side road and left my sight. I paid the bill and hurried home.
I live on New Motor Street, the aorta of the city. For a little while I stood at my doorway watching the great, permanent military parade and daydreaming.
I took the elevator to my apartment. I took off my clothes and I washed my face repeatedly with cold water. The magnified reflection showed grey water droplets running in chaotic paths down my face. My doubts on Juste’s honesty were not affected.