APv2.0: Nightmare salts
Sep. 17th, 2008 06:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crowsThe stairwell I raced down terminated in a slightly more expansive platform of raw concrete with an unkind looking metal door. Pushing my way out, I turned blindly onto the sidewalk and moved against traffic, away from the light of the apartment community and into the tangerine glow of the street lamps. My shoes slapped against the rain-glazed street, my only company, and my thoughts could not decipher any reason. I clutched the paper dampening in the cold sweat of my palm. I did not know where to go.
The more space I put between myself and the looming grey facade of the apartment complex I exited, the better I felt. Feeling better, however, should by no means be construed as feeling good about my situation... even far improved in state, my mind raced unrelentingly as I reeled to grasp what might have happened to me. When one has lost their memory, there is no reasoning out why one might have lost their memory. The night's chill began to get to me sooner than I anticipated, and the rustle of paper from the coat's breast pocket suggested to me that I ought to determine what I could inventory from my person and my clothing, as my surroundings had so far yielded nothing. Ducking beneath the shelter of an empty, darkened parking garage, I dug around in the pockets of my garments to see if I could find any clue or tool to assist in reclaiming my sanity.
One pen clipped around a fold of blank paper, wrapped around five uncreased 100 dollar bills. Approximately two inches of twine. One flimsy pocket knife no longer than my middle finger. Eighty-seven cents in assorted coins. Shoes, socks, jeans, underwear, a black tank top, a grey sweater, and the tawny-beige flight jacket I'd grabbed from the hook beside the door. No wallet, no jewelry, no personal identification, no watch. I walked, to my estimate, several more miles down the road before spending the rest of the night soaked to the bone underneath a bus shelter, wide awake and staring at the indistinct reflections of the city in the rain.
When the dawn light began to sharpen the buildings back into focus, I got up again, bedraggled I'm sure but a little drier than I'd been. The rain let up by mercy of a narrow cloud break that promised only a limited window before it would start coming down again, hard, from the darker front that moved swift in from the east horizon. The cold and stillness, the sheer impossibility of my situation, wore my mind down over the course of the night and I needed to sit somewhere and get warm in order to regain my capacity to think reasonably. The first diner I came upon opened their doors to let me in as their first customer, whereupon I reluctantly ordered a cheese omelet and a cup of coffee. As the heat soaked slowly into me, my mind wandered over a malaise of strange anxieties. What if I have food allergies? What if I see someone I know? Despite the nipping of such thoughts at my proverbial ankles, I could not displace the sensation that – because of some un-recalled menace – these were the least of my concerns of the present. I ate slowly, nursed my coffee, and kept to myself. A few other patrons came and went, and after initially flinching whenever anyone sat near me, I successfully calmed myself into something like relaxation and eventually claimed a newspaper left on an adjacent table.
I wanted to note the date, and look like I had something to do other than sit and stare into my coffee; a reason to linger, a way to at least partially shield my face from view.
“Military Conducting Unregulated Experiments on Humans”
A security leak allowed information about top secret drug development to reach the media. Following that, the most sordid facets of the recent discovery were quickly sensationalized in order to condition the facts for public consumption. The headline hummed ominously in the back of my mind, not letting my consciousness move on from it as I tried to parse out some sense of familiarity with the information I read on the page.
The fact of the military experimenting on the unnamed poor or incarcerated did not hold my attention so much as the allusions made to the nature of the substances being engineered. Psychotropes to play on the memory, to erase the memory of a man in full, or selectively with great precision coded into into chemical markers built into the cocktail. This 'latest generation' of truth serums could theoretically absorb and record memory-related signals in the brain before obliterating them. The government wanted a 'cut and paste' interface for the human psyche, and the spin already being set to the unbecoming news was the intention to provide a tool to reduce instances of human rights violations related to interrogation and imprisonment of criminals with information.
What rights does a man have to his own thoughts?
A clatter of dishes not far from me interrupted the early stages of philosophical reverie, and nearly caused me to jump out of my skin. With an unreasonable level of inexplicable anxiety, I looked up to see the waitress lifting more plates into a bus tub before heading my way with the coffee pot. Her eyes fell on the newspaper beneath my hand.
“Oh, I know, dear. Isn't that just awful? You'd think there'd be some decency among the privileged, but no, no... it's up to us, down here,” she paused to indicate her restaurant, her working-class status, her barely-getting-by, “to keep the world civilized.” Smiling at me, she filled my cup and shook her disdainful head at the newspaper as if to chastise the public icons implicated by the journalist. My fear ebbed into the uncomfortable sensation of being expected to identify with her. Perhaps, two days ago, I would have entirely... I couldn't tell.
“You sure you don't want any cream for that, dear? It does awful things to my poor stomach if I drink it black.”
“Yes, I'm sure. Thank you,” I said, before hesitating. Well trained sensitivity kept her eyes on me while she waited for the rest of what I had to say. “May I take this newspaper with me?”
“Of course, some one brought it to pass along, I suppose.”
“Thank you.”
She left and I sighed, folding the relevant pages in a careful attempt to order my thoughts as much as possible.
The more space I put between myself and the looming grey facade of the apartment complex I exited, the better I felt. Feeling better, however, should by no means be construed as feeling good about my situation... even far improved in state, my mind raced unrelentingly as I reeled to grasp what might have happened to me. When one has lost their memory, there is no reasoning out why one might have lost their memory. The night's chill began to get to me sooner than I anticipated, and the rustle of paper from the coat's breast pocket suggested to me that I ought to determine what I could inventory from my person and my clothing, as my surroundings had so far yielded nothing. Ducking beneath the shelter of an empty, darkened parking garage, I dug around in the pockets of my garments to see if I could find any clue or tool to assist in reclaiming my sanity.
One pen clipped around a fold of blank paper, wrapped around five uncreased 100 dollar bills. Approximately two inches of twine. One flimsy pocket knife no longer than my middle finger. Eighty-seven cents in assorted coins. Shoes, socks, jeans, underwear, a black tank top, a grey sweater, and the tawny-beige flight jacket I'd grabbed from the hook beside the door. No wallet, no jewelry, no personal identification, no watch. I walked, to my estimate, several more miles down the road before spending the rest of the night soaked to the bone underneath a bus shelter, wide awake and staring at the indistinct reflections of the city in the rain.
When the dawn light began to sharpen the buildings back into focus, I got up again, bedraggled I'm sure but a little drier than I'd been. The rain let up by mercy of a narrow cloud break that promised only a limited window before it would start coming down again, hard, from the darker front that moved swift in from the east horizon. The cold and stillness, the sheer impossibility of my situation, wore my mind down over the course of the night and I needed to sit somewhere and get warm in order to regain my capacity to think reasonably. The first diner I came upon opened their doors to let me in as their first customer, whereupon I reluctantly ordered a cheese omelet and a cup of coffee. As the heat soaked slowly into me, my mind wandered over a malaise of strange anxieties. What if I have food allergies? What if I see someone I know? Despite the nipping of such thoughts at my proverbial ankles, I could not displace the sensation that – because of some un-recalled menace – these were the least of my concerns of the present. I ate slowly, nursed my coffee, and kept to myself. A few other patrons came and went, and after initially flinching whenever anyone sat near me, I successfully calmed myself into something like relaxation and eventually claimed a newspaper left on an adjacent table.
I wanted to note the date, and look like I had something to do other than sit and stare into my coffee; a reason to linger, a way to at least partially shield my face from view.
“Military Conducting Unregulated Experiments on Humans”
A security leak allowed information about top secret drug development to reach the media. Following that, the most sordid facets of the recent discovery were quickly sensationalized in order to condition the facts for public consumption. The headline hummed ominously in the back of my mind, not letting my consciousness move on from it as I tried to parse out some sense of familiarity with the information I read on the page.
The fact of the military experimenting on the unnamed poor or incarcerated did not hold my attention so much as the allusions made to the nature of the substances being engineered. Psychotropes to play on the memory, to erase the memory of a man in full, or selectively with great precision coded into into chemical markers built into the cocktail. This 'latest generation' of truth serums could theoretically absorb and record memory-related signals in the brain before obliterating them. The government wanted a 'cut and paste' interface for the human psyche, and the spin already being set to the unbecoming news was the intention to provide a tool to reduce instances of human rights violations related to interrogation and imprisonment of criminals with information.
What rights does a man have to his own thoughts?
A clatter of dishes not far from me interrupted the early stages of philosophical reverie, and nearly caused me to jump out of my skin. With an unreasonable level of inexplicable anxiety, I looked up to see the waitress lifting more plates into a bus tub before heading my way with the coffee pot. Her eyes fell on the newspaper beneath my hand.
“Oh, I know, dear. Isn't that just awful? You'd think there'd be some decency among the privileged, but no, no... it's up to us, down here,” she paused to indicate her restaurant, her working-class status, her barely-getting-by, “to keep the world civilized.” Smiling at me, she filled my cup and shook her disdainful head at the newspaper as if to chastise the public icons implicated by the journalist. My fear ebbed into the uncomfortable sensation of being expected to identify with her. Perhaps, two days ago, I would have entirely... I couldn't tell.
“You sure you don't want any cream for that, dear? It does awful things to my poor stomach if I drink it black.”
“Yes, I'm sure. Thank you,” I said, before hesitating. Well trained sensitivity kept her eyes on me while she waited for the rest of what I had to say. “May I take this newspaper with me?”
“Of course, some one brought it to pass along, I suppose.”
“Thank you.”
She left and I sighed, folding the relevant pages in a careful attempt to order my thoughts as much as possible.