Peter Prellwitz - Shards Book One

"Please. Just relax. I know you're feeling different. You're in the final stage of an imposed condition medicine calls Healer's Sleep. You're awake mentally, but still in near coma physically. This gives the double advantage of your body committing its vast resources to healing, while freeing your mind to help in the process. The medicine in your day assumed that a positive mental outlook aided in healing. A good assumption, because it's true. Healer's Sleep allows you to take full advantage of that. Since this is probably your first experience with it, Healer's Sleep can be disorienting. Take my advice and stay calm.

When your body is healed sufficiently to spare energy to other functions, you'll regain control.? He squeezed my hand reassuringly. I almost wished I could slug him. Still, he was the doctor, and I tried to take his advice. Presently, I felt my body relax slightly, and my breathing rate decline. It was the strangest sensation, as though I was only along for the ride, and my body was the driver.

Apparently the change was enough for him to notice, for he released my hand and stood up. I heard him move around the room.

"Good, good. I must apologize for trying to awaken you prematurely. For about an hour this morning, it looked as though we'd have to either force you awake-not a good idea-or abandon you. Fortunately, it was a false alarm.? He paused.? Hmmm. I suppose this is very confusing to you and getting worse.

Again, I apologize. Let's try a different tack.

"My name is Philip Barrett. Doctor Philip Barrett. I'm a specialist in cognitive reconstruction. A brain surgeon is the ancient term, I believe. You are my patient. My only patient for the moment, so I'll be spending a good deal of time with you for the foreseeable future.? He gave a short laugh.? Future.

There's a word I suspect you'll think of differently before long. Sorry. Shouldn't be so cryptic. One of my idiosyncrasies, I suppose. But it's also that I've rarely dealt with a case as-advanced-as yours. I'm not trying to keep you unawares. But I wish to restrict what I say until you're altogether, as it were. So I'll give you tempting morsels and less alarming information for the next day or so, then fill you in completely when you're fully conscious."

He may have had an odd way of saying things, but he made a lot of sense. By keeping me in the know, to a limited degree, he roused my curiosity while keeping under control my understandable nervousness over my helpless state. Although I didn't like the idea of having others decide what I was going to hear, I didn't have a lot of say at the moment and, frankly, enjoyed the company. He seemed to have read my mind.

"In the meantime, I imagine hearing anything will help pass the time. Well, where to begin? This is, as you've probably guessed by now, a number of years into your future. You've spent those years in an altered state. Bluntly, you were not yourself. You were… someone different. Let's talk about that, shall we? When you're up to it, we'll talk about your case specifically. For now, I'll give you the story in general.? He added, somewhat bitterly,? I suppose I should begin with 'Once upon a time', huh?"

"Once upon a time, a process was developed that allowed the mind to be wiped and re-mapped, with a new persona being written to an unused portion of the mind. The idea first got started as a treatment.

People who had suffered severe cranial trauma were often left in a vegetative state. The option was made available to reroute the mind, bringing it back to a functional state. Unfortunately, all memories were lost, and a new persona was the result. Still, many loved ones of the patient chose this over seeing the individual wither away, to die a lingering and unknowing death.

"Later, many governments saw this rerouting as a viable alternative to the death penalty. Since any mind, once rewritten, closed off previously used portions, the criminal suffered a type of death, yet was able to be returned to the community, a valuable and productive citizen, utterly unaware of their past life.

"This worked so well that it became a broader treatment, and abuses began. Violent offenders, those who were guilty of cruel acts that didn't merit death, were reprogrammed. The success of the program soared. Insanity became the next just cause for wiping and rewriting. Then, with the progress of suspended animation, terminal patients submitted to the wipes just prior to suspension, to help adjust to a newer brighter future after being revived. Fools-willing to give up who they were, because they were afraid of what their future life might hold. Soon, individuals who were merely depressed had the treatment.

"It was at that point that a problem came up. The medical community had labored under the assumption that returning the patient to his or her own original persona was difficult but possible. Early experimentation on simian subjects indicated such. Well, the early experimentation was also very preliminary, very cursory, and very, very wrong. It turned out that once closed off, that portion of the mind was never accessible again. At least at that time. We can now reset the original patterns. It is very difficult, but possible. We'll discuss that later.

"Further, it was an all or nothing proposition. A mind wipe was in all cases complete, no editing allowed.

And finally, wiping and rewriting not only didn't solve all the problems, it made some worse. People who had been insane now became criminally insane. Others who were treated for depression went into a vegetative state. And some of those sentenced to death had sufficient problems with the chemical make up of their brains that wiping and rewriting only covered the problem temporarily. Certainly, the vast majority of treatments were successful, but enough failed to give even an ambitious government pause.

"Then one day, a man was convicted of murder, sentenced to death, and rewritten. Only this time it was for the worse. The psychology of the day had actually mitigated the problem, and his original state was a best case scenario. The rewrite erased that work, and his mental condition deteriorated. Records prove he killed nearly 300 people over five years before being killed himself. Other cases came to light, though none as notorious as his. And the public finally woke up to the moral difficulties of this rewriting.

Watchdog groups sprang up overnight, some more prepared than others. It looked as if the entire mess would be dropped entirely, and the rewriting process abandoned.

"Then some idiot came up with the idea, why not just re-rewrite if things didn't turn out? While the connection between mind and brain is difficult to explain, it is essentially a one to one ratio. Development of the brain is related to the advancement of the mind. And the average human mind uses only the smallest fraction of his or her brain over an entire lifetime, so there was enough of the brain for literally dozens of rewrites of the mind. In one case, which I'll talk about later, the mind was written forty-one times. So instead of dying the death of atrocities, mind wiping continued, and rewritten rewrites became the thing to do in case of failure. Your generation had the perfect phrase: 'If at first you don't succeed, success will happen on the next try.' Public awareness again went on the decline, and acceptance of the rewrites as an everyday thing reemerged."

I was getting the distinct impression that I had been out for a long time, which made me somewhat concerned about my physical well-being. The thought of waking up a withered old man with a thirty-one-year-old mind and memories put a lump in my gut, or would have if my head was in charge. I forced myself to be calm. Dr. Barrett had mentioned work with suspended animation. We had already started work with it at NATech before I… before I… I realized for the first time that I had no idea what had happened to me. Regardless, I guessed that the chances were good that NATech had rushed the process to keep me alive and kicking. Or at least alive. It was within the realm of probability that I had aged little. Perhaps it wouldn't be a total… Dr. Barrett was talking again.