A blinding white light greeted
the man as he regained consciousness. It took a while for his eyes to adjust
themselves, but when they finally did he became aware of where he was: a small,
beige-colored room that was completely empty except for a long mirror on the
wall directly in front of him, a small stool underneath it, and the bed he was lying
on. The room was brightly lit by three fluorescent lamps on the ceiling. A
metal door stood shut next to the mirror.
The man saw himself in the
mirror, dressed in a green hospital gown with the lower half of his body
covered by a brown blanket. His head was completely shaven. His tanned face
looked pale and tired. He tried to move, but found numbness in his limbs.
“Hello…?” he croaked. “Is… is
anybody there?”
The door opened. A large
orderly in a blue uniform entered, carrying a bottle of water. Without a single
word, he pressed a button on the side of the man’s bed to sit him up and
proceeded to gently place the mouth of the bottle to his lips. The orderly
slowly tilted the vessel, and cool water trickled down the man’s dry throat as
he audibly gulped it down.
“Thank you,” he said. The
orderly nodded in response before promptly exiting the room.
A few minutes later, the door
opened again. This time, it was a smaller, balding old man in a white coat. He
carried with him a pen and a clipboard.
“Good evening, John,” he said
cheerfully, grabbing the stool by the mirror and sitting himself down by the
bed. “You can call me Dr Aziz.”
“Where…” – John stopped to
clear his throat – “…where am I?”
“Why, you’re in a hospital, of
course!” was the doctor’s enthusiastic reply.
“What?” asked John, confused.
“Why?”
Dr Aziz smiled. “You don’t
remember?”
“I… I don’t…”
A dark night. An empty road. Bright headlights from out of nowhere.
“I was… in an accident?”
Dr Aziz nodded, a strange
smile still on his face. “You were; a terrible one. Can you tell me what you
remember from it?”
Screeching brakes. Crunching metal. Shattering glass. A screaming woman.
John’s eyes widened as a
horrible feeling came over him. “Rose,” he said, quivering. “Where is she?”
“Rose?”
John tried getting up, but his
body refused to cooperate. He was getting more and more anxious. It was
unsettling how… upbeat the doctor
seemed.
“My sister… where is she?”
Dr Aziz’s expression suddenly
changed. He looked down at his clipboard, his eyebrow raised. Something wasn’t
right.
“Where’s Rose?”
“Don’t you worry,” he calmly told John. He
seemed composed, but no longer happy. “Rose is fine. She’s resting.”
“I need to see her,” John
said, almost pleading.
“Soon,” Dr Aziz replied. “You
can barely move yourself.”
John let out a long,
despairing sigh. He closed his eyes, not noticing as the doctor scribbled down
some notes with his pen.
Dr Aziz removed a photograph of a smiling
woman from his coat pocket. He held it up in front of his patient.
“John,” he said. “Take a look
at this. Is this Rose?”
John opened his eyes – they
widened almost immediately.
“Yes, that’s her!” he
exclaimed. “Where did you get this?”
“It was with your other
belongings,” replied the doctor. “Are you sure she’s your sister?”
“What? Of course!”
Dr Aziz stayed silent for a
few seconds, scribbling down some more notes.
“Is there a problem?” John asked.
“Don’t you worry,” smiled the
doctor. “That’s all for now. You rest up and I’ll see you again soon.”
***
The next morning, Dr Aziz entered
the room again, wearing his white coat as always. “Good morning,” he greeted John,
as cheerfully as he had the day before. “How are you feeling today?”
“I can’t move,” came the
reply. John was fairly alert; he’d been awake for a couple of hours. An orderly
had changed him into a fresh gown and fed him breakfast before Dr Aziz had come
in. “Am I… paralyzed?”
“No, no,” Dr Aziz chuckled.
“You’ll be able to move soon. Now, I have a visitor for you.”
“A visitor?”
The door opened. It was a
woman, seated in a wheelchair pushed by a nurse. The woman was in a hospital
gown similar to the one John was wearing. She also had her arm in a cast and
bruises all over her face and body. Despite her battered appearance, John
recognized her instantly as the smiling woman from the photograph.
“Rose? Is that you?”
The nurse pushed the
wheelchair over to John’s bedside. Dr Aziz motioned for her to leave the room,
and she duly obliged.
Rose mustered a smile. “It’s
me, darling. Are you okay?”
John looked confused. “What?”
“Is there something wrong?”
asked Dr Aziz.
“Is… is this really Rose?”
“Of course it is.”
“Something’s not right,” said John
suspiciously. “She looks like Rose
and sounds like Rose, but Rose would
never call me darling.”
“Why not?” protested Rose.
“You’re my husband!”
“What?” John was shocked. “No!
I’m your brother!”
There was a startled silence.
“Don’t… don’t you remember our
honeymoon?” asked Rose. “Don’t you remember that night on the beach? With the
campfire?”
“That… that was with my wife!”
“I am your wife, John,” Rose pleaded. “I’m not your sister!”
She reached out and held his
hand. “Darling... try to remember...”
John froze as the woman’s
touch triggered a frenzy in his brain. His mind was struggling to reconcile his
conflicted memories, and the stress showed on his face. He started to sweat.
Rose quickly removed her hand.
“Put him to sleep,” she said urgently. “Now.”
Dr Aziz removed a syringe from
his coat pocket and stuck the needle into a vein on John’s arm. He soon calmed
down and lost consciousness.
The doctor breathed a sigh of
relief. “That was a close one, Laila,” he said. “You might have pushed him too
hard there.”
“Perhaps,” Dr Laila said,
getting up from her wheelchair. She removed her wig and pulled off the cast
from her arm. “But at least he’s still alive. Remember what happened to the
last one?”
Dr Aziz nodded at his research
partner. She was much younger than he was – about thirty years his junior – but
she was equally brilliant. It was the reason why he’d chosen her to work with
him on this project.
“At least we’ve made
progress,” said Dr Aziz. “We got the memories mixed up again, but this time the
misconsolidation didn’t fry the subject’s brain. That means the degree of the
error wasn’t as severe as before.”
Dr
Laila was wiping off the fake bruises on her face with a tissue. “That is
true,” she said. “Now we just need to bring the error down to zero.”
“Just
a matter of fixing the coding,” Dr Aziz said. “I’m confident we’ll be able to
do it before the deadline.”
He placed his hand on his
partner’s shoulder. “We’re so close to cracking this, Laila. I can feel it.”
“We’d
better be,” replied Dr Laila. “I hate dressing up like this.”
One year later…
The Opposition Leader, seated
at his desk, was listening carefully, not quite believing what he was hearing.
It sounded like something straight out of science fiction.
“Let me get this straight,
Halim,” he said, addressing his chief aide, who stood before him. “You’re
saying this device has the ability to transfer memories in and out of a
person?”
“That’s right, sir,” said
Halim, nodding. “I saw it happen with my own eyes. They’ve already started
mass-producing handheld versions of the device.”
“Do you realize what this
means?”
Halim was silent. He knew
precisely what it meant.
“Memories come from
experiences,” said the Leader. “Experiences dictate the way a person thinks and
acts. If this device can take away memories and create new ones, it can
completely change a person’s thoughts and mannerisms.”
The chief aide nodded
solemnly.
“The government now have a
device,” continued the Leader, “that can physically
brainwash people. Instead of having to psychologically break down the mind’s
defences, they can just go directly to the source.”
“It’s… terrifying, sir,” said
Halim. “What should we do?”
“The people need to know,”
said the Leader.
“No one will ever believe us,”
said Halim, shaking his head. “We’ll sound like lunatics.”
“Then what do you suggest?”
Halim reached into his trouser
pocket. “We can’t beat the government, sir,” he said. “They’ve already won.”
His hand emerged; in it was a
silver, pen-like object. “The only option left is to join them.”
The Leader stood up, his body
tense with fear. “Halim,” he whispered. “What is that?”
Putting on a pair of
sunglasses, the chief aide held the device up vertically to eye level. His four
fingers were wrapped around it with his thumb perched on top.
“This little thing,” Halim
said, “was made specially for you.”
His thumb pressed down on the
device; there was a blinding flash.
“How are you feeling, sir?”
Halim asked, grinning. He removed his sunglasses. “You look a little dazed.”
The Opposition Leader blinked.
“I… I understand now,” he said. “Everything is… so clear.”
“The Prime Minister knew you’d
see it our way,” smiled Halim.
