Hypersubjects

by Ainsley Komper

  “Braith, I have to go.”

  The aura grew shinier than before and Lark moved closer towards Braith.

  “I am sorry.”

  He grabbed his hand to say goodbye but that simple touch blinded him, so he let go. Breathing heavily and scared by the experience, he looked at his friend.

  “Is that what you want?”

  The dots appeared again and, reluctantly, Lark held Braith’s hand. Everything went dark again and, this time, a red-headed woman appeared. Her glow was of intense red, like a burning flame emanating from her skin. She walked away and Braith was there now. He showed the palm of his hand to Lark. A word was written on it: E426. Suddenly, the noise of the guards trying to break in interrupted his connection. By the time they managed to enter the room, they only found a lone, unconscious Braith with a slightly opened window. Lark repeated the number in his head: E426, E426, E426. What would it mean? The red-headed woman kept appearing in his mind, until he stumbled into Dr Velia.

  “We’ve been looking for you.”

  “I want to have a word with your bosses. Now, otherwise I will run away and make a scandal in the news bigger than the alleged security breach you had yesterday.”

  “Ok, no need to be agitated, the guards will take you to them.”

  “No, you will take me to them. No guards. In fact, tell them to go to the ground floor or I will send them myself in pieces. You trained me for that and I am not bluffing.”

  She made a sign to the group and they all left.

  “Follow me.”

  They kept walking through a long corridor while she was checking her phone.

  “So, who is the red-headed woman?”

  “What woman?”

  “Braith mentioned her the other day.”

  “I have no idea.”

  Lark could tell she was lying to him. They reached some stairs to an upper floor leading to a small reception.

  “Braith was not stealing information”

  “He was definitely stealing it.”

  “It seems she was telling the truth this time but there was something off about her.”

  “What is E426? A room?”

  “My bosses will meet you soon.”

  She was lying again and when she made an attempt to leave the room, he grabbed her.

  “Listen, I’ve had enough of your games, lady.”

  By the halos approaching from all the angles in the building, he could tell now that she had been leading him into a trap.

  “You are nothing but a subject. How dare you question me!”

  “Well, this lab rat is going to use you as a shield.”

  He blocked the door with a chair and threw a fire extinguisher to the crystal door wall on the side, breaking it and leaving them exposed. The room was located at the centre of the circle made by all the inner walls of the building. He grabbed her and jumped with her to land in an upper corridor where there were no halos. He could feel the guards nearby.

  “Where is room E426?”

  He squeezed her arm, tearing some of her muscles.

  “Hurting a woman? That is a great use of what we gave you.”

  “Is it up or down?”

  He squeezed harder.

  “Down, three floors down.”

  They went up while she kept telling him to go down. Her deceit was constantly detected by Lark who kept asking her if they were on the right floor.

  “How do you know? Oh my God. You can tell that I am… how?”

  “Never underestimate a subject. What is in that room? I will know if you are trying to play me again and next time I will break all of your bones, one by one.”

  “I don’t know.”

  He grabbed her left thumb.

  This little piggy had an accident. The cracking sound of her bone was met with a scream.

  “I am not like that and you know it but you left me no choice. Take me to that room and tell me what is there.”

  “Research on him, on Braith.”

  They arrived at the room and she unlocked the door with a code. Once they got in, she turned the lights on.

  “This is all mostly the back-up on his project. The actual lab is a few floors below. Why do you want to be here?”

  “A hunch, I would say.”

  “Are you risking everything on a hunch? You won’t be able to contain the guards and the police forever. Your strength has a limit and you have no evidence to prove we have done anything wrong.”

  Lark saw a door she was blocking with her body.

  “What is that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Liar.”

  He pushed her aside and opened it.

  “What is in there?”

  “Nothing.”

  He went inside and the lights switched on. He was surrounded by 3 walls and a crystal glass. Behind him, Velia locked the door and, later, the sound of her voice resonated through the speaker.

  “I guess the lab rat has fallen into a trap. Don’t bother trying to escape. Reinforced steel has been added to all the walls and the doors are controlled electronically. You have been led to your own prison because you are nothing but a subject.”

  At that moment, everything went dark.

  CIANA

  She could not remember exactly when it all began, but the overwhelming weight of her condition was driving her to the edge of suicide. Actually, she tried to forget where it all started, but there it lied, the intrinsical definition of her suffering. She could not forget anything from four days after the spring equinox when she was eleven. Not a single detail of her life could escape her recollection, and after 11 years, the overload of memories on her brain started to escalate, thus affecting her mental health. They are not merely pieces of data because many of them are charged with feelings, emotions and no matter how logically she tried to approach the situation, it seemed that her capacity was reaching the point of maximum tolerability. The only daughter of a boring middle-class family, her aunt as an extended family member and they were all aware of what her brain could do. They tried to be supportive of the peculiar circumstance, researching for possible treatments and being there for her. The endless accumulation of information led her to seek ineffective alternatives to cope, including meditation, sports and prescription drugs. Ciana was unable to cash in using her neurological condition as her memory was centred on herself and her experiences, not in data she could memorise at will. She had a spatial mental map of time and she could travel inside it with fast speed to locate certain memories, but mainly, the map moves within her, to show her a piece of data that was required or triggered by a certain association. That tendency to unwillingly relive memories of her own past made it very difficult to concentrate and excel at school or at any job. The burden of constantly recreating her life over and over, triggered by words and sensations, affected the way she interacted with people and made it very difficult to connect with others. Such a rare curse was not widely spread in mankind and only a handful of cases have been detected around the world. It was not like certain forms of autism and is very different from cases of people with extremely high mnemonic abilities. Ciana was doomed to suffer alone with her condition, as Hyperthymesia was recently discovered and very difficult to study due to the lack of subjects. Many of them were charlatans or people with other disorders relating to cognitive performance, but nothing like hers. What is more, when a documentary emerged in the USA about a woman known as AJ (actually named Jill Price), a call was made by the media to identify more Hyperthymestics. Out of hundreds, less than a dozen qualified as such, including her. After a series of tests, her family decided to withdraw her from the process as they did not see any practical advantage to improve their daughter’s well-being.

  Years after the failed process, Ciana was contacted by another organisation called Tecnium XG that insisted harder on her enrolment in a trial process. They have already tested certain substances in similar subjects around the world. What they wanted this time was to advance further in the de
velopment of drugs to relieve the weight of her memories. Everything started slowly and relaxed as she was able to mix her normal life with periodical appointments at the institute. Her brain waves were measured, heart readings were taken and all sort of inoffensive medical tests were performed on her body. Little by little, the tests grew bigger in scope as they were more time-consuming and demanded greater efforts from Ciana. Dr Huseyin Alkan was assigned to manage her case and slowly, he became some sort of therapist, life coach and even punch bag for Ciana. When she threatened to leave the research, they offered almost double the salary she receives as a librarian at the council. Her contract was initially for two years, including a revision of her earnings every six months and an option to extend it further if certain milestones were achieved. She ignored which ones in particular as it was not up to her to reach them. The idea was to study her brain, her way of thinking and the peculiarities of the chemical and electrical imbalance taking place in her head. After a couple of months, she understood why her salary was higher and the dreams of taking long holidays were replaced by concerns regarding her actual health and figuring out a way to leave the research. A part of her knew it was too late, and soon enough, she came to the understanding that it was impossible to leave. When she received her first electroshocks, she knew she was crossing a line, no matter how faint they were. The procedures started to be more invasive, including injections, small doses of radiation to stimulate her spine and a regular drug intake. One day, she was injected with a dense substance and then after a twenty-minute rest, an MRI was taken. However, the big MRI machine was different from the one used in previous sessions. She could perceive the intensity of the emission as bigger than before. That very night, she felt she could not go home and was asked to stay in the facilities. It was the beginning of the end. Even if she did not know it, she could feel it. Everything was changing, her body felt different, her perception of life and people. Shortly after midnight, she woke up screaming due to an intense headache that an injection blocked almost instantly.

  Dr Alkan explained that they were trying to isolate the areas in her brain related to her condition, but it was more complex than that as there were not specific points but more like several webs that intertwine with others and the idea was not to affect the rest, something that was proven very hard to achieve. When she was recovering from this episode, others came, and in a blink, three months had passed since she left home. On one hand, it was hard to complain because her room was way better than her actual room at home, but she could feel her liberties slipping away slowly as she was constantly being monitored, from her sleeping times, food intake and even contact with the outside world. The breakdown took place just after she was given an injection to ease her nerves but now that she looked back, she realised that the injection was not actually for that purpose. Everything was different about that injection because of the amount of people who witnessed the procedure, the way she was monitored and how her body felt. It did not affect the symptoms she was having, which were a mild migraine and a general discomfort in her back. She was taken to a recovery room where she went for a nap but Ciana had the feeling she was being observed, maybe there were cameras or microphones, and when she decided to leave, it happened. To describe it as a strong headache was not enough because it derived from her Hyperthymesia. She felt like she was seeing all her memories at once, each one of them appeared before her eyes, even when she closed them. There were all there, like a traffic jam of images taking place somewhere between her brain and just behind her eyes. The main difference with her condition before was that every one of those images felt as if they were trying to come out of her, some of them itching, some of them weighted, heavily compressed. Before, she could see images and memories triggered by words or connections, but now, she could see all those memories at once, the doors to her visual storage were not regulated anymore by any rule as they were wide open, allowing her memories to flood her. Her screams and attempts to self-harm caused the personnel to restrain her which was even worse and she only regained calm once she was sedated. Once she woke up, the world was different and she described her state as what she was looking for her whole life. The bank of memories remained there, but for the first time, they stayed at bay. Maybe that is what being normal was like. Ciana could not believe how everything had changed after reaching the point of overload, but the potential consequences worried her. It was all too good to be true and the conversation with Dr Alkan confirmed that. The institute had all the legal rights on the drug to calm her condition and they did not invest a huge amount of money just to make her happy. They needed to keep exploring her brain to a bigger extent, and in exchange, one of her perks would be the access to that drug on a regular basis. She felt as though she was making a pact with the devil but there was no other choice to be made. They had something that she wanted so badly and although she felt she could sue them, Ciana did not want to waste any time without her precious drug or Mnemo Inhibitors as they called it. The institute developed the inhibitors into a small patch that she had to place on her skin every night just before sleeping. Each patch had a 24-hour effect and they slowly released the right amount of inhibitors to be continuously absorbed. Dr Alkan finally told her what she did not want to hear. After a week, it was time to spend a day without the patch in order to see how her body will react. She was terrified to do it but there was no turning back. Everyone at the lab seemed to be very excited about it, except her. Scared, she removed it from her skin that night around 11 and gave it to Dr Alkan. Ciana was taken to the room that she knew had cameras and constant vigilance. The lights went off a few minutes after midnight and she slowly fell into a deep sleep.

  The morning after, everything was different, the way she saw the world was unlike anything she had felt before but she did not know how or why exactly. Everyone was watching her at all times and she was barely allowed to take a shower. Once she felt ready, they went to examine her at the lab but all the tests were normal. She knew her condition was back, but somehow, she had some degree of control. However, she was feeling something different but could not point her finger at it. During the interview with Dr Alkan, she became anxious until she demanded for him to tell her what the ultimate goal of all this was. Husseyin said that creating a treatment to enhance brain capacity, including memory, was the North of this mission. However, they knew it was an unexpected journey as her condition was so rare and peculiar. He explained that they may stumble in all sorts of directions, probably not finding anything or perhaps discovering new routes to treat diseases. So far, the development of a new variety of memory enhancers and also blockers were still on the horizon. She decided to lay down on the sofa while they were still talking. Dr Alkan asked her to elaborate about her current perceptions but it was difficult to put them into perspective back then. Hyperthymesia has always been about her, an intensification of her experiences, the way she perceives the world and interacts with it. This time, those experiences were more intense and more detailed. It was as if for people she could read more ways to define them. Every person seemed to have a special scent that Ciana was able to detect, every person was emitting a peculiar vibration or sound she could also sense. Every human being has their own visual traits in shape, body language, smell, rhythm and so on. There was a combination of all of those peculiarities and beyond that was translated inside her brain as a signature. That was it, a signature, an individual definition she was unable to comprehend but just feel. It was there, lying on Dr Alkan’s sofa that she said it for the first time.

  “I can feel those individual signatures around. I know where they all are now and I can point to them if I want to.”

  “Who?”

  “The people I’ve met since this morning. Patricia from the lab with her black curly hair and smell of bubble-gum mixed with softener and cigarettes. She is here, I can feel her in the building.”

  “Anyone else? You only met a handful of people this morning.”

  “23 to be precise. Some of them
have left the building already. Four exactly: The cleaning lady whose name I keep forgetting, one of the doctors in charge of my watch, a nurse, and the man with transparent glasses.”

  “Do you mean Nicholas?”

  “Yes, they are all gone. I cannot read them around me.”

  Dr Alkan asked her to make a list of the people she thought were still in the building while he contacted the guys in security to determine if the four she had mentioned were actually gone. Ciana was right – even if she did not understand how, since it was difficult for her to put down in words why. They kept her isolated in the room with the cameras and they brought a team of people. Each one of them was introduced to Ciana, one by one. She engaged with every member, asked them questions and basically spent around 10 minutes with each person.

  Once she was alone, Dr Alkan asked her about her impressions and she said what he suspected. She knew which ones were in the building and which ones had left. Two of them were around but not that close, which they were, since they stayed put in a van a couple of blocks away. Further tests determined that her capacity to recollect data had improved considerably as she was picking up two different languages in a matter of weeks, but the striking news could not be ignored as she had become a human tracker. It was as if her inner spatial mental map of memories was now inhabited by people also. The inhibitor patch was applied for a week and everything reverted to normality again, but once its effects wore off, the memories came back and so did the tracking. Her new trait was not as burdensome as before and every day new tests took place to map out the scope of her abilities. During the first week, she was kept in isolation, and except for the people she normally worked with, Ciana only interacted with the 10 members of the team she was asked to track. After that week, where her brain was scanned continuously and different attempts to measure her condition were made, she was finally allowed to see a different group of people. There were twenty to be precise but were split into seven sessions. The first one was a group of ten, all of them at the same time in a room. After they introduced themselves, they interacted with her by building a castle using some weird pieces. Once they left the room, the second session began, but this time, the group was of five women, all of them talking at once, mainly about TV shows. The next five sessions were individual ones of ten minutes each. There was only one woman in the bunch and she identified herself as Dr Meckler. The guys introduced as Lark, Braith, Gabriel and Taran. The last one was a very peculiar man who was wearing a weird glove on his left hand, trying to pose as a quirky character, but at the end, he always made her laugh. His social clumsiness was so obvious that he seemed like a fish out of water. She wondered who he may actually be and what kind of name Taran was. Out of all of them, he seemed to be the happiest in his role. At some point, she considered them to be actors or people randomly hired just to be the guinea pigs of her tracking. After the sessions finished, she was able to concentrate on her spatial mental map and somehow locate them in the building and even in the vicinities. The ones who were further away left an easier trail to pick up, so even if their location was unknown to her, at least there was a trail to follow indicating the direction they went. Her body made all of this in the most natural way, although she was aware of how fascinating her ability was. She always knew that her life was an open book, lying or pretending has never been her forte, but still, Ciana felt a bit ashamed when they told her about seeing Taran again. Apparently, it was not a secret that she wanted to see him and, hopefully, it was a mutual feeling. He did not look like an actor or someone they were just paying to be her friend. What is more, he seemed to be someone who was enrolled in a similar program like hers. The initial idea was for them to be partners. They got along really well, talking with each other down at the lab about everything and nothing. Ciana did not want to tell him about what she could do, but at the same time, she wasn’t sure if he already knew or not. Dr Alkan said to her that there was a general concern about how she would react to the outside world because it was one thing to slowly meet people she could register in her mental map but a very different thing to continuously bump into many individuals in the street. It could be dangerous for her as they were fearing some sort of overload. Taran was going to be with her at all times on a short trip to the nearest high street just to see how well she would handle the situation. A team with all the medical equipment came along in the van just in case, but to her surprise, it was not necessary. The feeling was very strange and Taran knew that something weird was going on with her because of the way she was looking around.