Warren Murphy: Lost Yesterday

“My father tried it again on a man in West Newton, Wyoming, named Mean Nathan Cruet. Old Cruet was one mean-looking SOB— never did hurt nobody, though. He just went around mumbling. Mumble in the morning. Mumble in the afternoon. Finally my father asked what he was mumbling about, the old Cruet answered he had this headache. Had a headache from the first bejesus day he could remember.

“My father warned him about the potion, but said it might help in a small, small dose. Mean Nathan Cruet took just a little bitty tongue touch from the jug my father was saving, and a smile crossed his face. A big, benign smile.”

Hiram's voice would become mellow with that statement, his hands marking the path of a big smooth smile.

“And my father said:

“'Nathan, how is your headache?'

“And Mean Nathan Cruet, who had been suffering from headaches since as long as he could remember, answered, clear as a bell:

“'What headache?'

“Gentlemen, I don't know what they teach you in your fancy colleges, but I don't need no slide rule to recognize a headache remedy. What we're selling now is a headache remedy in spruce water. Pure spruce water. But figure out what's in that Indian potion and Brisbane will be the biggest drug company in the world. We'll call it the 'brain regenerator', just like my daddy did. God rest his soul.”

With that, in the presence of the first generation of Brisbane chemists, the old man ordered the big safe in his office to be opened. And for the first time ever, out came the wood-stoppered jug. One chemist actually tried to analyze a small portion of it. Some said he merely tasted it. Others said he took a big drink. In any case, he wandered away from the lab and never returned, his mind so addled he didn't even recognize his wife.

To Brisbane's first chemist, the “brain regenerator” had proven itself to be as cursed and “ungodly” as Darwinian theory, but in the 1950's, when no scientist believed in curses and the faith of reason ruled the land, another chemist decided to analyze the potion. This was a time of splitting the atom, of mass spectrometers, of the absolute certainty that all things were matter, and all matter could be understood. It was a faith so firm it would have made a pope envious.

The chemist announced that with only one gram of the potion, he would quantify to the last molecule every ingredient in the “cursed brain regenerator.”

He uncorked the jug with a smile. He was still smiling when he asked what time of day it was. He was told it was three-thirty.

“Oh,” he said, beaming with enlightenment. “That means the little hand is on the three, and the big hand is on the six. That is the six, isn't it, the one with the handle and the little circle on the bottom?”

In the progressive fifties, crazy people were helped, not ignored. So the chemist was helped into a straitjacket, then into a quiet hospital. Within a few days he was well again. But he could not remember one iota of what had gone wrong. The last thing he could recall was spilling a drop, and trying to wipe it up.

When, decades later, Wilbur Smot happened over the company threshold, Brisbane Pharmaceuticals was on the corporate forefront. Their nursery provided day care for under-paid female employees. Their Enlightened Employment program introduced “blacks” both into the vocabulary and the lab. A minority quota was hired, and that quota met visiting government officials at the door and toured them around the lab. In fact, the “enlightened” employers knew there were no more blacks in the laboratory now than there were during old Hiram's days, but now everyone knew not to call them insulting words. And they had learned something else— something about the “mind regenerator.” It could actually be absorbed through skin.

Thus when Wilbur Smot walked into the lab, it didn't surprise him to see the senior chemist wearing rubber gloves and a rubber mask. He knew he was trying to crack the chemical code of the “mind regurgitator,” as the chemists jokingly called it.

Wilbur sidled over to the senior chemist. He had to make him understand that the real power of the mind could be unlocked only by eliminating resistance to natural power.

“I've got it,” said the senior chemist, seeing a pale cloudy reaction in a beaker. “Of course. Do you know what it is?”

“No,” said Wilbur Smot. He knew the senior chemist had discovered a component because it had reacted to an element in the beaker, a common chemical test. But he had no idea what great secret the senior chemist had discovered.

“This supposedly cursed formula doesn't regenerate the brain at all. It is unique, no doubt about it. But it doesn't make the brain work better, although people might think it does.”

“What is it?”

“It is the reverse of sodium pentothal. I've never seen anything like it.”

“The truth serum?”

“No. Pentothal used in small doses will trigger the memory, free it up. It isn't so much truth you get with Pentothal but memory. This 'brain regenerator' actually hardens the arteries in the brain, cutting off functions, not freeing them. It is like instant amnesia.”

“So that was why the chemist in the fifties forgot how to read time?” said Wilbur. “Every Brisbane chemist knew the story of the old Indian secret the founder of the company had challenged his chemists to unlock, and how the years had yet to bring an answer.”

“Exactly,” said the senior chemist. “But his memory came back. Fifty years earlier he would have been allowed to wander out of town, like the previous one. Maybe the first chemist took too much. Powerful compound.”

“And the black person,” said Wilbur, understanding now, “forgot to be subservient. It eliminated all learned functions.”

“So he became absolutely normal, and was called ornery.”

“And the Indians gave criminals a large dose so that their negative adult behavior patterns reversed to those of infancy,” said Wilbur, who had learned much about negative thoughts at Poweressence. But then he wondered why it would be called “cursed” by the Indians.

“Well, think about it, Wilbur,” said the senior chemist. “If you forget enough, you forget who you are. You forget who you love or who loves you. You forget where you belong. And for an Indian to forget his traditions is to die a living death.”

“That's awful,” said Wilbur.

“Yeah. We should be able to sell this to mental hospitals,” said the senior chemist, swirling the fluids in the beaker to better examine the reaction. He breathed deeply, satisfied with himself.

“But if it is so powerful, don't you think we should use it for all mankind?”

“Use what for all mankind?” said the senior chemist.

“The solution you're examining.”

“What about the solution I'm examining?”

“It can harm people,” said Wilbur.

“This?” said the senior chemist, holding up the vial.

“Yeah,” said Wilbur.

“What is it?” said the senior chemist.

“The 'mind regenerator.' You have discovered it works in reverse of a memory jogger. You've broken the secret of the curse. You have discovered it induces amnesia.”

“What induces amnesia?” asked the senior chemist.

“That,” said Wilbur, pointing to the vial.

“Yes. What is it?” said the senior chemist.

“A memory suppressant?”

“Thank you, no. I already forgot what the hell I am supposed to be doing today,” said the senior chemist.

And in that instant, Wilbur realized his superior had inhaled the potion. He also realized it was too valuable to leave in the hands of the crudely commercial. It had to be taken from those people whose negativity was so strong they would inflict it on anyone just for profit.