Mind + Body by Aaron Dunlap (free books to read TXT) 📖

as well as several other, much more arbitrary connections. These string connections are created when the memories are first stored, but our subconscious is able to alter them at will. A person with a traumatic experience such as being raped or witnessing a violent crime, for instance, may just have that tennis ball dropped anywhere without any connections made. The mind does this as a way of self-preservation, repressing a memory that’s too painful to process. A person could live his whole life without ever acknowledging or being aware of that memory, but most times as that tennis ball floats around it will ‘bump’ into a similar memory.

“If the event happened at a certain location or the day after something important like a birthday, it might try to make spontaneous connections to memories of that location or to birthdays. This is one way for people in therapy to recall these events. The other way is under hypnosis.

“With hypnosis, the subconscious can be instructed to dive into that vacuum and start grabbing tennis balls, regardless of connections, and then the subconscious can be told to invent new connections so that the conscious mind can recall the event freely. In the same fashion, the subconscious can be told, with some restrictions, to sever connections. This can be done for entertainment in stage hypnosis where a person is made to temporarily forget his own name, or forget about the number seven, but using the correct procedure, the ‘forgetting’ can be made much more long-lasting. Under hypnosis, a person could be trained in whatever way, and then made to disconnect those new memories with anything else.

“This is how the ‘activation’ is handled, at the end of the training. If the subject wishes to be made to remember everything he learns, his subconscious can be instructed to find all those tennis balls he was told to disconnect over the years and reconnect them. Or, if he chooses to reject the training, the memories can be, more or less, thrown out.”

“You said that if somebody forgets something that it isn’t really gone, just disconnected. If the training tennis balls are already disconnected, how can they be removed forever?” I asked.

“That’s the most complicated aspect of this whole procedure,” Secomb said. “It’s the thing I had to work hardest to sort out, but it’s something I insisted that I include. I didn’t think it would be right to, even in theory, give somebody training they weren’t aware of without giving him the option of completely removing it, be it cupcake recipes or bomb making.”

“So how did you do it?” I asked.

“I had to do a bit of theoretical mind-hacking,” he said. “When you’re sleeping, your subconscious is working with your memory to take all of the information you gathered that day and deciding whether it’s something you should hang onto forever or just discard it. This is, effectively, what dreams are all about. Your mind is basically experiencing a vivid hallucination, a literal drug trip, but it’s told to recall everything you experienced that day and go off on tangents. Important things, like things you actually did or important sensations, are sent off to your long-term memory. Things that serve no purpose, like sounds, smells, or sights you experienced that had no significance, are just flat-out removed from memory. This is why I tell my students to make sure they get plenty of rest before an exam instead of staying up all night studying. Your brain doesn’t actually remember something until you’ve slept and it’s had a chance to sort it out. Until you’ve slept, everything kind of swims around your short-term memory waiting to be dealt with.”

“Okay…”

“Right. Well, I had to identify the actual process of the brain that does the permanent removal of useless information, and then I had to find a way to channel old memories into this process for them to be deleted. In a sense, if a person chooses to have his unconscious training removed forever, I found a way for the subconscious to grab all of those tennis balls and sneak them into that trash bin so that when the person goes to sleep, the brain just dumps it all out. That explanation kind of trivializes the size of that accomplishment, but for all I knew it was just hypothetical so I didn’t care to spend any more time thinking about it.”

“Let me make sure I have this straight,” I said. “To permanently remove the training, you basically trick the subconscious into thinking that all training is useless and sneak it into the short-term memory’s trash bin so it can be removed the next time the person sleeps.”

“That’s basically it, yes,” Secomb said.

“Then, wouldn’t the person be able to remember it all, until he was able to sleep. You said everything swims around up there until it’s been sorted out in sleep. If eighteen years of training was swimming around where there’s usually only a day’s worth of stuff, wouldn’t you notice?”

“That’s true. For that, the person should be given a sedative and made to sleep immediately after the process; otherwise for the rest of the day he would… well, I’m not sure. He might feel like he’d been awake for years, or he might go insane. It’s hard to estimate what would happen, which is why immediately going to sleep is required. The subject should be kept asleep for at least twenty-four hours, as well, to allow for all that information to be processed.”

I let that settle in for a bit.

“Another question,” I said. “Suppose a person had all this training, the tennis balls are floating around with no connections, could anything spontaneously create connections as needed. Say a person was taught how to tackle a bear but isn’t supposed to remember, and there’s a bear about to eat him…”

“Fight or flight,” Secomb said, knowingly.

“Right.”

“The whole notion of tennis balls floating around with no connections only applies in an ideal scenario. Given the right stresses, or the overwhelmingly powerful reach of the FOF response, it was always entirely likely that such a situation might cause the mind to reach in and pull out anything it could use. This is demonstrated in reality, when some people are able to remember first aid or survival techniques they read about or saw on TV years ago in a life-or-death situation. The mind will do anything it can to keep itself alive, it will respect no arbitrary rules, even its own. If it thinks passing out will save you, you’ll pass out. If it thinks repressing the memory will save you, you’ll repress the memory. If it thinks creating a whole new personality to handle the stressing event while your original personality takes a nap in the back of your mind will help, it will do that. In the same way, if your brain knows how to escape a situation but isn’t ‘supposed’ to remember, it will veto its restriction.”

There it was. There was my answer. I then explained to Professor Secomb everything that had happened to me, that I had been in my first fight after a lifetime of avoiding confrontation, and I felt something snap and was able to fight. After that, I was in more and more life-or-death situations and each time, more and more of my training had become available. Each time, I felt more and more of myself slipping away.

“It’s interesting, and completely understandable,” Secomb said after I’d finished. “When you were in danger in a physical assault, your mind retrieved its information on how to handle that. When you were in danger in a car, the car training became available, then gun training as you needed it.”

“I would have thought, knowing all this, that from the first time the sanctity of the tennis ball connections was broken, that I would be able to remember all of it,” I said.

“No, what happened sounds about right. The training you received doesn’t represent one giant memory; it’s thousands of memories and skills. It wouldn’t all rush out like poking a hole in a dam; it would only become available as needed, something like a reflex. If you were to be officially activated, all of the training would be moved to your active memory. Until then, it remains available on a need-to-use basis. If you tried to tell someone how to tie shoelaces without thinking about it, you might have trouble, but if your shoe is untied you can reach down and perform a complicated manipulation of two strings with two hands without applying any thought whatsoever. The motions and techniques of lace-tying just come to you as you subconsciously ask for it. Do you understand?”

“I think so,” I said.

It made enough sense. I knew how to treat strychnine poisoning because I needed to, and I knew how to shoot when I needed to. When I tried shooting at the range in Lorton, I wasn’t an expert when I first tried. It wasn’t until I stopped thinking about it and treated it like a reflex that I was able to shoot so well. Each time I had to pull from the training, though, it seemed like more and more baggage came with it.

“You said you wrote scripts for everything, right?” I asked.

Secomb nodded.

“You have the script to remove the training?”

He blinked a few times then said, “Yes, I believe I could do it.”

“Would you?” I asked.

“On you?”

I nodded.

Secomb opened his mouth to speak, then hesitated, then finally said, “It would take a while. And like I said, you’d have to sleep right afterwards. It would be dangerous, and I’d have to review my notes and do some research to make sure all the information and techniques are current.”

“What about activating?” Amy asked.

Secomb thought some more. “That would be easier. Much easier. I could do that in an hour.”

Amy looked at me. “What do you think?” she asked. “If you got rid of it, you would be you again.”

“Yeah,” I said. “And if you got rid of yours, you wouldn’t have to worry about being something you’re not.”

“Or,” Amy said, “We could make of ourselves whatever we want. We could do it, to hell with the consequences.”

“You can do whatever you want to do,” I said. “You don’t have to base it on what I do.”

“I think we should go through it together, whatever it is,” she said.

My heart began beating faster. Amy’s eyes were sincere. Her hand, I’d just noticed, was on mine. I remembered saying to her once, “When this is over with.” It felt like ages ago, of course, but I had known so clearly what I meant then. I also remembered the scar on my back, probably a remnant of an accident during knife training. I thought of what it represented, the lifetime of knife fights and gun battles I could get myself into and out of, the scars I might bear.

I had an option here. I could opt for a simple life, a safe life, a life with somebody who might care enough to live it with me; or, I could opt for a life that would probably get me killed far before my time, but might just be more worth living, a road less traveled. If my training was as inclusive as Schumer made it seem, I could probably get any kind of position I wanted. “When this is over with.”

“Well? Which will it be?” Secomb asked, cutting through the silence. “I’ll have to prepare, whichever it is.”

I looked up at Amy once more, and then turned back to Secomb.

The decision was easier than I thought.

A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR

ON THE PHILOSOPHY OF SELF

The basic premise of this story comes from many late-night ponderings of the concept of “the self.”