Dreamspinner

by Merita King

  “What do you mean by anything untoward?”

  “Sometimes the new personality refuses to implant,” Melissa said. “Sometimes it starts to implant and then stops for some reason we can’t yet explain. Sometimes the original personality is too strong and rejects it.”

  “And what do you do when that happens?”

  “We bring the patient back here and start over,” Hunter said.

  “So you don’t kill them or anything,” Tearan asked.

  Hunter gave a snort of surprised laughter. “Good heavens no. Why on Earth would we do that? Our patients are valuable assets. We don’t get many people volunteering, so we look after those who do.”

  “So anyone who had this thing go wrong, they would get another go around?” Tearan asked.

  “Yes,” Hunter said.

  “So all my memories, are they fake?”

  Melissa shook her head. “No. Everything you remember is part of the new personality, part of Tearan Lindo’s life. They are his memories, and now that you are he, they are yours.”

  For some reason that Tearan was unable to fathom, this knowledge upset him greatly and he was unable to stop hot tears from flowing down his cheeks. “So I’m not who I think I am?”

  “On the contrary,” Danvers replied. “You are who you now think you are. All of the things you remember doing, all the skills you remember having, are now part of you. Even though you’ve never actually been Granyar hunting on Perialan 7, if you went there today, you would be a skilled hunter because your brain now accepts that it is Tearan Lindo, expert Granyar hunter.”

  “So you can program people with skills they never had before?”

  “Yes,” Melissa said. “So long as the memory of those skills are part of a whole new personality. We cannot yet add just the skills, but who knows where this technique will be in twenty years.”

  “That is one of the reasons why volunteers like yourself are so valuable to us,” Hunter said. “What you’re helping us with will enhance the lives of so many people in the not too distant future. You’re a brave pioneer, Tearan, not a prisoner.”

  “So what happens now?” Tearan asked. “Do you wipe me out because I forced my way in here? Do you start me over again?”

  “No,” Hunter laughed. “We will continue to observe you here and now that you know we’re here, we might as well leave the wall open so you can have the run of the whole place. There’s the firing range you’ve come to enjoy using, the vidicom and music. I umm, would hope you might lower the volume a little though, and perhaps sing a little quieter?”

  Tearan laughed aloud, delighted that he had given them a hard time. “How many other people like me are there?”

  “Forty seven at this moment,” Melissa said. “Eighteen women and twenty nine men.”

  “So we all take turns at being the lab rat huh?”

  “No,” Danvers replied. “All but four of you are active at the moment. One has caught an infection that we are treating, and the other three are in the process of receiving a new implant. They’ll be active within a few days.”

  “Look, out this window,” Hunter said as he pressed a button. A blind rose up, revealing a large viewing window. Tearan got up and went over, his mouth open in shock. The structure was immense, a tall cylinder from which pods protruded. Each of these pods was shaped like a space ship docked at a space station or deep space refuelling station. Below, the enormous curve of a planet hung serene in the void. The intense blue of the huge ocean he gazed at was reflected by the hue of his own eyes and was the most beautiful colour Tearan had ever seen.

  “Wow, what is this place? I thought it was a space ship that had broken down. None of this is visible from any of the windows I’ve seen. And that planet. What is it? It’s beautiful.”

  “That is our home world,” Hunter replied. “We call it Earth, but the galactic registration has it down as Solar 4. The Dreamspinner Project began in a small lab down there fourteen years ago, when my friend and mentor wondered if it were possible to change a person’s personality by wiping memories and uploading newly manufactured ones. This is a controversial project as you can imagine, so we’re discreet about what we’re doing. The space ship you lived in is one area of the Novosentia. There are one hundred pods like the one you’re familiar with, and there’s room for sixty more if the number of volunteers should ever increase that far. The reason you can’t see any of this from the windows in your pod is because the windows are vidicom screens on which is displayed a generic space view. We have switched them off now you know about it.”

  Tearan sat down again and dropped his gaze to his hands. There were two questions he wanted to ask more than anything, but now he had the opportunity, he found himself afraid to do so.

  Danvers noticed he seemed worried. “It’s a lot to take in I know. I’ve no idea how you’re feeling about all of this, but if you can open up to us as much as possible, it will help us fine tune the process and make it easier for future participants.”

  “I don’t really know how to feel about it, and that’s the truth. I feel angry at having this done to me. I know you say I agreed to it, but because you wiped that part of my memory, it feels like it’s been forced on me.”

  “Don’t worry,” Hunter said. “We have your signed consent papers and vidicom footage of you signing them. They show you clearly stating that you understood what you were volunteering for and that you gave us permission to go ahead. We will show you the film at the earliest opportunity.”

  “Okay. Can I ask a couple more questions?”

  “Of course, ask anything at all,” Hunter replied.

  “Why did you pretend to be the other guys, Mykus, Tovis, and Doctor Arma? It felt like I had friends in there and that made me feel like I wasn’t alone, abandoned.”

  Everyone shuffled in their seats as an uncomfortable quiet descended on the room. Tearan guessed he had asked something they did not wish to answer, but he did not care. He glared at Hunter.

  “We didn’t pretend, Tearan.”

  This took Tearan by surprise and it showed. “Oh. So they’re real? They’re other volunteers? Are they okay? Where are they? Can I meet them?”

  Hunter hesitated for a split second and Tearan got the feeling that he was not going to like what he was about to hear. “Okay, let me explain about them as clearly as I can. If you can’t follow me, stop me and I’ll try to explain better.” He coughed nervously. “Mykus Romin, Tovis Kerral, Doctor Soval Arma, and Jole Smoy were not real people.”

  Tearan frowned. “Huh? But you said.”

  “I said we didn’t pretend to be them.”

  “So what do you mean they aren’t real people? They’re not volunteers like me?”

  “This process involves implanting a new personality into your mind, which we hope integrates with your mind successfully and becomes the new you.”

  “You told me that already. Get to the point please.”

  “I’m trying to make sure we explain the whole picture to you. It is our experience that around twenty-seven percent of procedures do not implant successfully. They are rejected and the original personality remains the stronger one. In order to overcome this problem, we have had considerable success by implanting more than one new personality at a time. This seems to help one of them to implant quicker and more successfully. It’s as if having others to compete with enhances the strength of one, which then becomes the one that fully integrates.”

  Tearan felt his head sway a little as he took in Hunter’s words. “So you’re telling me that the other guys, they were me too?”

  “Yes, Tearan,” Melissa said, again holding his eyes with her own. He gazed back at her, feeling instinctively that above all the others around the table, she was the only one to trust. “Mykus, Tovis, Doctor Arma, and another called Jole Smoy. They were also implanted alongside the personality of Tearan Lindo.”

  Tears coursed down Tearan’s cheeks. “So what happened to them?”

  “They failed to implant. Te
aran Lindo was the strongest personality and implanted successfully.”

  Tearan let out a loud cry and stumbled to his feet, sending his chair toppling to the floor behind him. Covering his eyes with his hands, he battled with the emotion that flooded his soul. Anger whirled him around to face the scientists, his face red with rage as he banged his fists onto the table top. “They felt like people I was going to be friends with and now it feels like I killed them. I feel like a murderer. You shouldn’t have made it possible for us to speak to each other.”

  Hunter wrote furiously on a pad as Tearan yelled at them. When quiet once again filled the briefing room, he looked up. “Okay, thank you for being open about it. You formed a bond with the other personalities and now they’re gone, you’re grieving. I’m sorry this has caused you pain. Your candour will help us fine tune the process so that future volunteers won’t suffer the same way.”

  “Where did the other personalities come from?” Tearan asked. “Were they invented or are they somehow uploaded from real people?”

  “It’s a mixture of both,” Danvers said. “Volunteers who agree, allow us to implant a chip into their brains, similar to the one you have. This collects information from their brain and sends it to us, where we collect it, alongside a full written record of the person’s life and information. After they die, our sophisticated computer programs clean and recombine all the collected information into a format we can then upload into a volunteer like yourself.”

  “So the other guys, Mykus, Tovis, Doctor Arma, and the other one, what did you say his name was?”

  “Jole Smoy.”

  “Yeah, him too. So they were once real people who are dead now.”

  Hunter’s eyes widened as he understood what Tearan was saying. “Yes, so we can show you their information if you’d like. Would that help you feel better? It would enable you to say goodbye to them, sort of.”

  “Yeah. I would appreciate that.”

  “No problem at all. We will arrange that as soon as we can collate the information together.” Hunter indicated to one of the men around the table, who wrote on the pad in front of him.

  “Thanks. There’s just one other question.”

  “Of course, fire away.”

  “Who was I? You know, before.”

  Silence fell upon the room once again, so thick it almost choked him.

  Hunter ran a hand through his hair. “Oh, Tearan, that is the one question we really don’t want to answer right now.”

  “Why not?” Tearan demanded, an edge to his voice that was not there previously.

  “For a couple of reasons. First, you haven’t long integrated as Tearan Lindo. It is our experience that the original personality retains a strong hold over the mind for quite a time after it has been subjugated by another. To confront a newly integrated identity with the original one would undoubtedly result in the process failing. Tearan Lindo needs time to fully bed in and take control enough so that you will feel as if you’ve always been him. You will know when this is happening because you will dream of yourself being him. At the moment, your dreams are likely to be either unpleasant or missing completely. Tearan’s dreams will contain images that you remember from his memories. Smells will spark a memory, a song perhaps. All of these things will show that you are fully becoming Tearan Lindo. The second reason we don’t want to face this yet is because it’s like a death has taken place for you and it has, in effect. It’s as if you died and were reborn as someone else. You will go through a grieving process for the person you used to be. You can’t remember him yet you feel guilty for abandoning him. These are all natural parts of the process. We’ve learned this through the brave efforts of people like yourself. You need time to come to terms with losing your old self, losing the other guys you thought were real and to fully become Tearan Lindo. Once you reach that comfortable place in your head, you will be ready to learn about your old self. Please trust me on this.”

  “Yeah, I umm, I understand,” Tearan said. “It makes sense I guess.”

  “Of course you’re curious,” Danvers said. “That is totally normal. We get that and we will help you all we can.”

  “How long will all that take?”

  Hunter shrugged. “Well, how long is a piece of string? Obviously this isn’t something we can pin down to a definite time frame. Every person is different and every race of people takes the process in a different way. The quickest we’ve ever had someone reach that point of total integration was seven weeks. The longest was eleven months and two weeks. All I can tell you is that of the two other Arlenikan volunteers we’ve had, one took nineteen weeks and the other took twelve.”

  “So I have to keep living here like I’ve been doing?”

  “Yes. You won’t be on your own now though. There are lots of people to talk to and hang out with. You’ll have access not only to your own familiar pod, but many areas in this part of the vessel too. There are state of the art recreational and sports facilities were you can meet people, keep fit, and relax. You’ve already sampled our restaurant. There is a vidicom theatre, library, and even an educational facility if you wish to expand your knowledge and skill base.”

  “That reminds me,” Tearan said. “Why were the vidicom screens not working? What harm could there possibly be in letting us, I mean me, watch a few movies?”

  Hunter grinned. “That was done to encourage the personality of Tovis Kerral to remember his electrical engineering skills, which he did.”

  “Oh, okay. Do I still have to sleep back there?” he asked, pointing behind him.

  “Not if you don’t want to,” Danvers said. “We can give you a room here if you’d prefer.”

  “I would.”

  “Okay, I’ll fix that up.”

  “We try to make your time here as comfortable as possible in exchange for your indulgence in our testing and monitoring,” Melissa said. “We will want to monitor your brain functions every day, which will involve you lying down for two hours and answering questions. There will be simple tests to check your motor and cognitive function as well. It will be boring but painless. We will also ask you to sleep with a brain monitoring cap on at night. It’s like a light cap; it’s not uncomfortable. It sends us your brainwaves while you sleep and your implant performs certain functions while you’re asleep that it can’t do while you’re awake. We like to keep a check on how the implant is performing. Other than that, your time will be your own. We’ll introduce you to two others who are both at the same stage as yourself, so you can exchange experiences.”

  “Okay. It will be good to have company at last.”

  Hunter leaned forward. “The only facility we do not provide here is alcoholic refreshment. You will have to abstain until you’re fully integrated. Once you reach that stage, we will gradually reintroduce it and monitor how you cope. Alcohol affects the brain in many ways, one of which is memory retention. Whilst your new personality is still embedding itself, it is at great risk from anything which can impair memory function or retention. We’ve found in the past that even a small amount can result in a total breakdown of the new personality and a breaking through of the old one. Arlenikan males have quite a low tolerance anyway, so you might find you have to abstain even when fully integrated.”

  “I don’t drink,” Tearan said without thinking, then blushed. “At least I think I don’t. Is it the old me, or Tearan Lindo who doesn’t drink? I’m not sure who I am now.”

  “That is a perfect example of why we don’t want to deal with who you used to be just yet,” Hunter said. “Tearan Lindo is who you are. All your thoughts, memories, desires, likes and dislikes, and personality foibles are his and therefore yours. When you said, I don’t drink, you were being Tearan Lindo perfectly. Don’t question it, be natural and let yourself be yourself.”

  “Okay. Well I don’t drink so abstaining from alcohol won’t be a problem.”

  “That’s wonderful. Now would you like to meet the other two volunteers who are at the same stage as yoursel
f? My colleague will collate all the information on Mykus, Tovis, Doctor Arma, and Jole for you to read later today.”

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  15

  “Are you sure this isn’t going to fuck things up?” Tearan asked as he sat down.

  “On the contrary. Seeing the others as individuals separate from yourself will help cut any lingering threads of attachment that your mind might be harbouring towards them. Your sub conscious mind will know beyond doubt that those people are not you. It will help Tearan Lindo to fully take over.”

  “Okay, thanks.”

  “No problem. Take your time. You’re familiar with a library console?”

  “Yeah.” He watched as Hunter left the room before turning back to the console in front of him. With a couple of clicks he was staring into the face of a man labelled Donor number P848902-693L – Mykus Romin. Tearan’s eyes widened as he gasped in shock. Even if there had been nothing to identify the man as Mykus, he would have known it was him. A wave of emotional recognition flowed through him and he smiled at the face that gazed up at him.

  “Hey there Mykus, I’d know you anywhere.” Another click and the photograph became animated as the vidicom footage began. Tearan watched the thirty-minute film in silence, emotion overtaking him as he listened to the man he thought of as his friend, speak about himself.

  “Hello there. I am Donor number P848902-693L and for the purpose of the Dreamspinner Project, its aims and objectives, I will be known as Mykus Romin. I am at the time of joining the project, twenty-eight years of age, single, and from Arlenika Prime. I joined Dreamspinner as a donor of my own volition, and hereby give the project’s scientists and doctors, full permission to carry out whatever procedures they may deem necessary. I understand that I will be required to undergo a surgical procedure to implant a chip into my brain and that the aforementioned chip will remain in place for the rest of my life. The rules are that I state all of the aforementioned clearly, along with my assurance that I am a willing participant and donor. I’ve also been asked to explain why I decided to donate, and I know it sounds like a cliché, but I want to make a difference y’know? A good difference if possible and this seems like a way to do that.”