Total Amnesia: Forgotten Lives

by J. W. Northrup

  “They should be here soon to collect them,” says Espree from the other room.”

  “It takes less than twenty four hours to collect every single body―I mean person―on earth?”

  “Easily, this is a very small population.”

  “Compared to what?”

  “Compared to a typical breeding planet that will generally contain a population of two trillion, but in that case they would have a full crew with a hundred Harvest Ships.”

  I look over at the viewer. The holographic Rubik’s cube shows a view of earth. I wonder what I will be seeing in that thing today. I should be excited, but for some reason I feel a sense of dread. I can’t imagine why. This really should be an adventure! I suppose the fact that everyone I have ever know appears to be dead or paralyzed and about to be collected up and taken away to some other planet has something to do with it.

  “Breakfast is ready,” says Espree cheerfully from the other room, as if it’s just another day. I suppose it is.

  There has been something that has been bugging me since we first arrived at this office. Espree seems to know exactly what I am thinking. And I seem to know what she is thinking too. That IS beyond question by now. So there is another truth that coincides with her description of the mind being spiritual not material. We’re certainly not swapping brain cells.

  “Can you read my mind?” I have to ask.

  “Pretty much.”

  Strangely I’m thinking about the lunch we had before the invasion and all the thoughts I was having about being in love with her and wanting to ask her out.

  “It was sweet,” she says.

  “Ouch.”

  “I have to apologize for my restraint at the time, but as you can probably understand now, I wasn’t interested in being your girlfriend. I’ve never been a girlfriend,” she smiles, “at least not yet.”

  “And now?”

  She shrugs with an adorable shy smile, “why not?”

  “Cool, my girlfriend a supreme being.”

  “I AM NOT TIM! The only difference between you and I is that am not surrounded by a Mechanical Mind and downloaded into a brain. The only difference between you and I is that you have been thoroughly and painfully indoctrinated into limitations. That is all.”

  “OK, do you believe in God?”

  “I do.”

  “Do you think this is Gods will?”

  Espree shakes her head. “We have much to cover before we can begin to discuss a Supreme Being my friend.”

  “If you’re not a supreme being, I don’t know what one is.”

  Espree shakes her head in dismissal.

  “I am simply you without a Mechanical Mind. You get rid of that thing and we can discuss religion.”

  “OK, after you explain the secrets of the universe to me.”

  She motions to the viewer. “I will show you everything Tim. Please do not believe me just because I say it or because I can pull off a few stunts.”

  She looks at me intensely. “You must show me the way Tim. You must show me how to teach truth. You are just as much my teacher as I am yours.”

  I find myself in the apparent roll of being the boyfriend and advisor to the creator of this universe who apparently is here to free us all. Twenty four hours ago I thought I was a college student, my universe was about grades and majors and getting laid. Twenty four hours ago I was sleeping off a hangover and my concept of ‘the universe’ was about Big Bangs and black holes and quasars and ‘is there really life out there?’ Twenty four hours ago my roommates were playing a silly stunt on me. Twenty four hours seems like a lifetime now.

  After breakfast I feel better. I haven’t eaten since I had dinner a few nights ago. Espree and her deactivator interrupted what I thought would be my final meal.

  “Don’t you eat Espree?” I ask, noticing she hasn’t eaten since she deactivated me.

  She frowns. “I find the practice rather repulsive—shoving dead matter in your mouth and letting it break down in your bowels and then excreting the disgusting byproduct. I prefer to create the energy directly.”

  “And how do you…”

  “Are you ready for my presentation?” asks Espree cheerily, motioning me to the viewer; obviously choosing to ignore my question.

  “Sure, looks like I have nothing else to do today, classes seem to have been cancelled.”

  “I am going to show you how you entered this universe. Your first encounter was with a Spirit Trapper.

  “A Spirit Trapper is a ship with the devious purpose of trapping a free spirit. These newly incarcerated spirits are then sold to a breeding company. From there they are conditioned, fitted into a mind, injected into a body, and at this point, they enter the trap of being―as far as they are concerned―a body. This is the beginning of your incarceration into the life/death cycle of the body?

  “Is there something wrong with having a body?”

  “Absolutely nothing Tim, just as there is nothing wrong with a having a car. But if you own a car, you are not confined to it. You can go in and out as you please; you can decide what particular kind of car you want. You can sell it and buy another, or if you prefer, you do not have to own a car at all. If your car becomes worn out, you can get another car and never lose your identity. The car only becomes a trap if someone forces you in the car, locks you inside, and causes you to believe yourself to be the car. Imagine living life thinking you are a car! Imagine the problems and the restrictions that would impose upon you! Now replace the car with a body run by a soul and multiply the restrictions by about a million. That is the problem you have with a body. You can no longer separate yourself from a body or a mind and your viewpoint is therefore restricted to only those things the body can perceive and the mind will let you compute.

  A Spirit Trapper is your first step in becoming confined, constrained and controlled: which is the exact opposite of what you are as a free spirit.

  Every living being in this universe is a spirit confined to something physical and surrounded by a “Mechanical Mind”. A Mechanical Mind can be compared to a computer. It is the thing you “think” you think with. It is simply a computer. A computer is a stimulus response machine: given a certain input, it will respond in a pre-programmed way.

  It doesn’t matter if it’s a biological computer such as a brain or a constructed computer, such as the computer I’m using here. When a spirit gets trapped in the mind and this body it can’t differentiate itself from them. In this condition, the spirit considers that it IS that physical entity. Generally that entity is a body. This is the perfect control mechanism of a free spirit. This is how your thoughts are controlled.

  “Your whole body is a bundle of coordinated sensing devices, continually feeding perceptions to your brain, then to your mind―or “Mechanical Mind”—which is the thing that you wear like a strait-jacket. The mind is almost exactly like a circuit board―only in 3D. It surrounds you in an invisible field of suspended energy, each circuit is created to filter certain kinds of thoughts and run them through a program.

  For instance, let’s say you think the thought: I want to want to fly across the universe—which, incidentally, is one of the simplest things a free spirit does.

  That thought is run through the circuits of your Mechanical Mind. Each concept, is converted to words of the in the current language and will be picked up by the circuitry of the Mechanical Mind. The first word of the sentence, ‘I’ runs through a program that converts thoughts of being a free spirit (who you really are) into an identification of you (the spirit) to a body―thus ‘I’ becomes ‘body’. The second word: ‘Want’ runs through the circuit of hormonal feelings and physical cravings―thus want becomes a physical craving or desire. The concept of ‘fly’ is run through another circuit complete with, birds, air flow, vacuums, Peter Pan fantasy, engine propulsion, velocity etc.―depending which circuits have been activated by your education . This circuit will totally disregard anything to do with moving to another location as a free spirit. The w
ord ‘Universe’ is run through a program of gravity, physics, quantum theories, black holes, Einstein and energy. Now when you think the thought I want to fly across the universe, it becomes incredibly complicated and virtually impossible, which activates another circuit that turns it all into ‘fantasy’ and invalidates the whole thing.

  “You were fitted to a mind long before you were downloaded into a body. I can’t believe how you can concentrate with all those computations running at once!

  Although I don’t have a Mechanical Mind to complicate my thoughts, the hardware of the brain, like the circuitry and firmware on your computer, adds computations and circuits that restrict and redirect your bodily perceptions and thoughts. I honestly couldn’t even think straight when I operated this body from inside; so I had to figured out how to operate if from outside.”

  I’m listening to her, but her words speak of things I cannot grasp.

  She pauses, seeing she’s lost me.

  “I’m sorry Tim. I know this sounds rather bizarre, but that is my challenge, to find a way to help you understand the situation―the big picture―the one that all of you are completely oblivious to. I must somehow free you from that dastardly Mechanical Mind that surrounds you so you may once again be who you are; a free spirit.”

  I’m confused. “But we think with the brain.”

  “NO, Tim! Listen. You can compare the brain to the guts in a computer. The brain is all the hardware that coordinates the information you receive and send. For example you push a key on your computer keyboard and it directs and coordinates where that signal will go. You “select” an icon on your computer with a mouse, well the icon and the mouse are like the brain, and they coordinate and direct the signals to the CPU so they data can be COMPUTED. The computations are done with your Mechanical Mind (i.e. the CPU), then the “computations” or answers are directed to your computer screen by the brain so you can see them. YOU are the computer operator. YOU perceive the answers via the computer screen (or the brain).

  The SOLE purpose of the computer and the brain and the Mechanical Mind is to CONTROL you—a free spirit. You see a spirit can do anything. That is totally unacceptable in this universe. So they found a way to make you believe you are a mind and a body and now you can’t GET OUT!

  Espree is visibly angry. She takes some deep breaths and softens.

  “I am sorry Tim. I know this makes no sense to you, but I am very passionate about this as you can see.”

  “Sorry Tim. You need to observe this. My words get lost in the computations of your Mechanical Mind. I get carried away, as I always do.” She turns back to the Universal Viewer and the big hologram in the middle of the room.

  Espree types “EHF Collector” on the Universal Viewers’ search engine.

  “TOP SECRET – LEVEL VII ONLY” shows on the screen. She taps a combination of keys. “ENTER CODE” shows on the screen.

  She opens her drawer and pulls out a piece of paper with a list entitled “Codes” and runs her finger down the list stopping on one of the items, then enters 29097SDFPOU9070RXXR”

  It says “Searching,” on the screen.

  She looks over at me and in a low, serious voice begins to explain:

  “Now I want you to listen carefully Tim. This is the first big lie and the first big joke played on you and everyone else―including the trappers themselves.

  “They do not consider that you are a free spirit. They do not believe in such a thing as a “spirit” as something independent of a body. Your Mechanical Mind’s has as its prime purpose and most basic program, to absorb all the thoughts you think and run them through a program. That program begins with the basic computation that you are a body.

  “The Spirit Trappers think they are collecting ‘EHF’ units when in actuality they are collecting free spirits. EHF is an acronym for ‘Extremely High Frequency’. The Spirit Trapper―and apparently everybody else who has become confined in this universe―has been indoctrinated, by its Mechanical Mind, to believe that these EHF units are specialized units of energy that can be captured and used to animate bodies. They have a ridiculous, completely false, ‘science’ based on some strange theory that EHF is something like a ‘spark’ of energy. It is practically identical to your Frankenstein story―it’s absurd. Their Mechanical Mind will compute that EHF, injected into a body, will animate it. Of course that is actually true―you do bring your body to life and in fact, you are the “life” that animates the body; but that whole science is twisted and skewed and full of lies programmed in the circuits of your Mechanical Mind.

  Of course those who engage in this activity of trapping free spirits do not compute themselves to be EHF units―which is rather ironic, because they are―and that is also where all logic diverges into strange tangents that I have yet to comprehend because I do not use a Mechanical Mind to think with as you do, and therefore I cannot seem to follow the illogical path of its hard-wired programming.

  “But I do know that those who trap free spirits are completely oblivious to the fact that they were once a free spirit and were themselves trapped by one of these Spirit Trappers who in turn believed that they were trapping EHF units.”

  She shakes her head in obvious frustration. “Welcome to your universe.”

  She notes my blank stare. I’m just not getting where Espree is trying to get me to go―which has pretty much been the case since she arrived at my door yesterday afternoon.

  The scene in the viewer changes to a view of something that reminds me of the bridge of the star ship Enterprise, but there where Captain Kirk’s chair would be, is a huge green tinted transparent globe with console around its circumference. Each console has a chair with two joysticks, one on each arm. It looks like some kind of advanced gaming area.

  “What’s that big globe?”

  “That’s called an ‘Ergometer’,” she says. “An Ergometer is use to locate the spirits―or so-called EHF units. They locate the spirit when it reacts to what they call a ‘Stimulator’.

  “And a Stimulator is…?”

  “We’ll get to that; one step at a time.”

  Espree zooms out. “Let me show you a trap ship.”

  As she zooms I see a rather plain looking ship that looks like one of the shuttles on Star Trek. To the side I see what appears to be some kind of explosion or energy field.

  She zooms in closer.

  The energy field is surrounded by a ring with 12 gun-like devices around its periphery. They look like toy ray guns―but I figure they are probably not toys. My attention is drawn to the area inside the ring.

  What an incredible light show! I stare, transfixed, as it changes from a colossal 4th of July-style firework display into a series of brightly glowing orbs of different colors. The globes begin spinning rapidly—throwing off sparks of colors―then suddenly they shoot around the ring in all directions with sparks trailing behind them like comet. Then the comets stop and change into a wild series of rotating, evolving cubes that subdivide and start spinning rapidly as they change colors. The spinning finally becomes so fast that the shapes look like balls and the balls suddenly blow up into the fireworks show. Then it all starts again―this time slightly different than the previous evolution.

  Strangely, I am feeling mesmerized by the show and I feel my attention being pulled into the viewer like a magnet.

  Now I am in the show, part of the display, flying around with the lights, bursting, spinning, exploding; caught in the rapture, like having front row seats at rock concert!

  Suddenly, unexpectedly, the rhapsody begins to change into an unexplained mounting terror—a terror that begins to engulf me.

  “Turn it off!” I hear myself yelling, “Espree! Turn it OFF!”

  “What Tim? Turn what off?”

  “THAT! I yell pointing at the viewer. THAT!”

  I can see that Espree is confused. She quickly reaches over and hits a button on the computer and thankfully the offending viewer turns off. She looks fearfully back at me.

 
I feel a cold sweat, as if a fever has broken. The intense emotion slowly begins to fade and my breathing returns to normal. The rush of blood begins receding from my face as the terror subsides.

  “Are you OK Tim?” says Espree, staring at me with concern. “What happened?”

  “I don’t know. It was the lights; I suddenly felt trapped and it….honestly, it scared the hell out of me. It seemed to draw me in and surround me. And I felt so angry! I just had to get away; I had to get out of it!”

  Espree is nodding with a fascinated expression on her face.

  “Amazing! This is absolutely amazing!”

  I don’t feel amazed, I feel ill.

  “Tim don’t you see? This is a Spirit Trap. This is how you were first trapped in this universe! The light display that you saw is the lure to the trap. Its purpose is to attract free spirits to the area inside the circle called the ‘Trap Zone’ where they can be located and confined.”

  “Well I don’t want to see that again.”

  “Of course not!” says Espree excitedly, “the reaction you just felt was almost certainly the reaction you experience when you first were trapped! You were obviously re-experiencing your original entrapment!”

  “We’ll I don’t want to experience that again. Let’s find something interesting in that thing,” I say nodding at the viewer. “Show me some interesting planets or something.”

  Espree looks at me very intently. “I’m afraid that may be just the thing that you must do.”

  “WHY?”

  Espree is becoming excited.

  “Because Tim, I believe that is why you are still trapped! You are still restrained by the effects of that trap―to this day―you are still IN IT, fighting it, and those reactions you felt are obviously still IN YOU!”

  I have to disagree.

  “No, no Espree, that isn’t it. There’s just something real strange and disturbing about that light display. I think it has some kind of subliminal hypnotic effect on the observer. I don’t know how it does that, but it just kinda freaks you out.”