“You're telling me something's growing in my brain?”
“No.” Santizo turned to Akira, then pointed toward another film. “There's an identical speck in the same area of your brain. The coincidence leads me to conclude that whatever it is, it's not a growth.”
“What is it then?” Akira asked.
“An educated guess? Scar tissue. From whatever was done to your brain.”
5
Savage listened in shock as Santizo returned to his desk. “More basics,” Santizo said. “First rule. Eliminate the obvious. The purpose for the operation performed on each of you was not to excise a tumor. That type of surgery requires a major invasion of the brain. Hence a major portion of the skull would have to be removed.”
“But not,” Rachel said, “a five-millimeter plug of bone.”
“Correct. The only reason to create so small an access to the brain would be”—Santizo debated—“to allow an electrode to be inserted.”
“Why?” Savage had trouble breathing.
“Assuming familiar but serious circumstances? Many reasons. I mentioned epilepsy. An electrode inserted into the brain can measure electrical impulses from various clusters of neurons. In an epileptic, different levels of the brain transmit normal and nonnormal current. If we can determine the source of the nonnormal current, we can operate in a specific location to try to correct the abnormality.”
“But we're not epileptics,” Savage said.
“I was offering an example,” Santizo said. “I'll give you another. A patient with impairments of sight or hearing or smell—impairments due to the brain and not external receptors—can sometimes have their impairments corrected if internal receptors, those in the brain, are stimulated by electrodes.”
“But we can see and hear and smell,” Akira said.
“And yet you think you saw each other die. You can't find a hotel where you were beaten. Or a hospital where you were treated. Or a doctor who supervised your case. Someone has interfered with your brain functions. Specifically your ability to …”
“Remember,” Savage said.
“Or more interesting, has someone caused you to remember what never happened? Jamais vu.The phrase you invented is fascinating.”
“To remember what never happened? I didn't mean it literally. I never believed …”
“I can take you down to Pathology,” Santizo said. “I can dissect a corpse's brain and show you each component. I can tell you why you see and hear, why you taste, touch, and smell, why you feel pain—though the brain itself cannot feel pain. But what I can't do is show you a thought. And I certainly can't find a specific site in your brain that enables you to remember. I've been doing research on memory for the past ten years, and the more I learn, the more I'm baffled ….Describe what happens when you remember a past event.”
Savage and Akira hesitated.
Rachel gestured. “Well, it's sort of like seeing a movie inside my head.”
“That's how most people describe it. We experience an event, and it seems as though our brain works like a camera, retaining a series of images of that event. The more we experience, the more films we store in our brain. When circumstances require, when we need to review the past to understand the present, we select an appropriate reel and view it on a mental screen. Of course, we take for granted that the films are permanent records, as immutable as a movie.”
Rachel nodded.
“But a movie isn't permanent. It cracks. It discolors. Scenes can be eliminated. What's more, we're explaining memory by means of analogy. There aren't films in our brain. There isn't a screen. We merely imagine there are. And memory becomes even harder to explain when we pass from concrete events to learned abstractions. When I think of the mathematical principle of pi, I don't see a film in my head. I somehow, intuitively, understand what pi signifies. And when I think of an abstract word such as ‘honor,’ I don't see a film. I just know what ‘honor’ means. Why am I able to recall and understand these abstractions?”
“Do you have an answer?” Savage's chest ached.
“The prevailing theory is that memories are somehow encoded throughout the brain in the neurons. These billions of I nerves—the theory goes-—not only transmit electricity and information but also retain the information they transmit. The analogy of a computer is frequently used to illustrate the process, but again, as with the illusion that we have a movie screen in our heads, an analogy is not an explanation. Our memory system is infinitely more complex than any computer. For one thing, the neurons seem capable of transferring information from one network to another, thus protecting certain memories if a portion of the brain is damaged. For another, there are two types of memory—short term and long term—and their relationship is paradoxical. ‘Short term’ refers to temporary memories of recently acquired but unimportant information. The telephone number of my dentist, for example. If I need to make an appointment, I look up the number, remember it long enough to call his office, and immediately forget it until the next time I need an appointment and repeat the process. ‘Long term’ refers to lasting memories of necessary information: the telephone number for my home. What physical mechanism causes my dentist's number to be easily forgotten but not my own? And why, in certain types of amnesia, is a patient unable to remember any recent event, whether trivial or important, while at the same time he can recall in vivid detail minor long-forgotten events from forty years ago? No one understands the process.”
“What do you believe?” Akira asked.
“A musical by Lerner and Loewe.”
“I don't …”
“Gigi. Maurice Chevalier and Hermione Gingold sing a wonderful song, I Remember It Well.’ Their characters are former lovers recalling when they met. ‘We went here.’ ‘No, we went there.’ ‘You wore this dress.’ ‘No, I wore that.’‘Ah, yes, I remember it well.’ But they don't. Sure, the point of the song is that old age has made them forget. The trouble is, I'm not sure the rest of us don't forget also. A lot of specifics. And sooner than we realize. Dr. Weinberg and I have a sentimental tradition. Every Saturday night, when Max and I aren't on call, we and our wives see a movie and then go to dinner. After the stress of the week, we look forward to the distraction. Yesterday, Max fondly remembered a film the four of us had seen together. ‘But Max,’ I said, ‘I saw that movie on cable television, not in a theater.’ ‘No,’ Max insisted, ‘the four of us saw it downtown.’ ‘No,’ I told him, ‘I was at a conference that weekend. You, your wife, and mine went to see the film without me.’ We questioned our wives, who didn't remember the circumstances. We still don't know the truth.”
“Of course,” Savage said. “You just explained short-term memory doesn't last.”
“But where does short term end and long term begin? And how can we be sure that long-term memory truly endures? The basic issue is the limitation of consciousness. We're capable of knowing we remember only if we remember. We can't be aware of something we've forgotten ….Describe the future.”
“I can't. The future doesn't exist,” Savage said.
“No more than the past, though memory gives us the illusion the past does exist—in our minds. It's my opinion that our memories don't remain permanent after they're encoded. I believe our memories are constantly changing, details being altered, added, and subtracted. In effect, we each create a version of the past. The discrepancies are usually insignificant. After all, what difference does it make if Max and I saw that movie together or separately? But on occasion, the discrepancies are critical. Max once had a neurotic female patient who as a child had repeatedly been abused by her father. She'd sublimated her nightmarish memories and imagined an idyllic youth with a gentle, loving father. To cure her neuroses, Max had to teach her to discard her false memory and recognize the horrors she'd experienced.”
“False memory,” Savage said. “Jamais vu.But ourfalse memory isn't caused by psychological problems. Our brain scans suggest someone surgically altered our ability to remember. Is that possible
?”
“If you mean, would I be able to do it, the answer is no, and I'm not aware of any other neurosurgeon who could do it, either. But is it possible? Yes. Theoretically. Though even if I knew how to do it, I wouldn't. It's called psychosurgery. It alters your personality, and except for a few procedures— an excision of brain tissue to prevent an epileptic from having seizures, or a lobotomy to stop self-destructive impulses—it isn't ethical.”
“But how, in theory, would you do it?” Rachel asked.
Santizo looked reluctant.
“Please.”
“I pride myself on being curious, but sometimes, against my nature, I've refused to investigate intriguing cerebral phenomena. When necessary, I've inserted electrodes into the brains of my patients. I've asked them to describe what they sensed.”
“Wait,” Akira said. “How could they describe the effects if their brains were exposed? They'd be unconscious.”
“Ah,” Santizo said. “I take too much for granted. I skip too many steps. I'm too used to dealing with fellow neurosurgeons. Obviously you think exposing the brain is the same as exposing the heart. I'll emphasize a former remark. The brain—our sense receptor—does notitselfhave a sense receptor. It doesn't feel pain. Using a local anesthetic to prevent the skull from transmitting pain, I can remove a portion of bone and expose the great mystery. Inserting an electrode into the brain, I can make the patient smell oranges that don't exist. I can make the patient hear music from his childhood. I can make him taste apples. I can make him have an orgasm. I can manipulate his sense receptors until he's convinced he's on a sailboat, the sun on his face, the wind in his hair, hearing waves crash, skirting Australia's Great Barrier Reef—a vacation he experienced years before.”
“But would he remember the illusions you caused?” Rachel asked.
“Of course. Just as he'd remember the true vivid event, the operation.”
“So that explains what happened,” Savage said.
“To you and your friend? Not at all,” Santizo said. “What I've just described is an activation of the patient's memory by means of an electronic stimulation to various neurons. But youhave memories of events that apparently …”
“Never happened,” Akira said. “So why do we remember them?”
“I told you, it's only a theory,” Santizo said. “But if I expose the left temporal lobe of your brain …and if I stimulate your neurons with electrodes … if I describe in detail what you're supposed to remember, perhaps show you films or even have actors dramatize the fictional events …if I administer amphetamines to encourage the learning process … and when I'm finished, if I use the electrode to scar selected neurons, to impair your memory of the operation …you'll remember what never happened and forget what did happen.”
“We've been brainwashed?”
“No,” Santizo said. “ ‘Brainwashed’ is a crude expression that originated during the Korean War and is used to describe the process by which a prisoner can be forced to surrender deeply held political convictions. The methodology originated in the USSR, based upon Pavlov's theories of stimulus and response. Subject a prisoner to relentless pain, break his spirit, then offer him a reward if he'll agree to denounce the country he loves. Well, as we know, a few soldiers did succumb. The miracle is that more did not. Especially when psychosuggestive drugs are added to Pavlov's theory of conditioning. But if you've seen newsreels from the fifties, you know that prisoners who were conditioned always looked as if they'd been conditioned. Gaunt features. Shaky hands. Glazed eyes. Their confession of war crimes wasn't convincing. You two show none of those symptoms. You're frightened, yes. But you're functional. What's more, no attitudinal changes seem to have occurred. Your identity remains intact. You're still determined to protect. No, you haven't been conditioned. Your problem isn't directed toward the future. It's not anything you might have been programmed to do. It's what happened to you in the past. Or what didn'thappen. And what really happened that you don't recall.”
“Then why was this done to us?” Savage asked.
“Why? The only answer I can suggest—”
The phone rang. Santizo picked it up. “Hello?” He suddenly listened intensely, his face becoming more grave. “I'll be there at once.”
He set down the phone. “An emergency. I'm due in OR right away.” Standing, he turned toward a wall of bookshelves. “Here. Some standard texts. Young's Programs of the Brain, Baddeley's The Psychology of Memory, Horn's Memory, Imprinting, and the Brain. Study them. Call my secretary tomorrow. She'll arrange a time for us to meet again. I really have to go.”
As Santizo hurried toward the door, Akira surged from his chair. “But you started to tell us why you thought—”
“You were given false memories?” Santizo pivoted. “No. I can't imagine. What I meant to say was the only person who'd know is whoever performed the procedure.”
6
They managed to get a room in a hotel near the hospital. The setting sun was obscured by smog. After ordering room service—fish and rice for Akira, steak and fries for Savage and Rachel—they each took a book and read in silence.
When their food arrived, they used the distraction of what Savage called “refueling” to talk.
“The medical terms are difficult for me to interpret,” Akira said. “My knowledge of English, I'm embarrassed to confess, has limitations.”
“No,” Rachel said, “your English is perfect. For what it's worth, these medical terms might as well be Japanese to me.”
“I appreciate the compliment. You're very gracious. Arigato,”Akira said. “That means …?”
“Thank you.”
“And what should I say in return? What's the equivalent of ….?”
“ ‘You're welcome’? I'll make it simple. Domo arigato.A rough translation—‘thank youvery much.’ “
“Exactly,” Rachel said.“Domo arigato.”
Akira smiled, despite his melancholy eyes.
“Well,” Savage said, “while the two of you are having a cultural exchange—”
“Don't get grumpy,” Rachel told him.
Savage studied her, admiredher, and couldn't help smiling. “I guess that's how I sound. But I thinkI understand a part of this book, and it scares me.”
Rachel and Akira came to attention.
“Memory's more complicated than I realized. Not just that no one's really sure how the neurons in our brain store information. But what about the implication of what it meansto be able to remember? That's what scares me.” Savage's head throbbed. “We think of memory as a mental record of the past. The trouble is the past, by definition, doesn't exist. It's a phantom of what used to be the present. And it isn't just what happened a year ago, last month, or yesterday. It's twenty minutes ago. It's an instantago. What I'm saying is already in the past, in our memories.”
Rachel and Akira waited.
“This book has a theory that when we see an apple fall from a tree, when we hear it land, when we pick it up, smell it, and taste it, we're not experiencing those sensations simultaneously with the events. There's a time lag—let's say a millionth of a second—before the sense impulses reach the brain. By the time we register the taste of the apple, what we think is the present is actually the past. That lag would explain déjà vu. We enter a room and feel eerily convinced we've been there before, though we haven't. Why? Because of the millionth of a second it takes the brain to receive a transmission from the eyes and tell us what we're seeing. If the two hemispheres of the brain are temporarily out of sync, one side of the brain receives the transmission slightly before the other. We see the room twice. We think the sensation happened before because it did Not in the distant past, however. Instead, a fraction of an instant before, one side of the brain received what the other side later received.”
“But our problem isn't déjà vu—it's jamais vu” Akira said. “Why are you disturbed by what you just read?”
“Because I can't be sure of the present, let alone the past. Because there
is no present, at least as far as my brain's concerned. Everything it tells me is a delayed reaction.”
“That may be true,” Rachel said. “But for practical purposes, even with the time lag, what we perceive might as well be the present. You've got a big enough problem without exaggerating it.”
“Am I exaggerating? I'm scared because I thought I was struggling with false memories someone implanted in my brain six months ago. But was it six months ago? How do I know the operation didn't happen much more recently? How can I be sure of what occurred yesterday or even this morning?” Savage turned to Rachel. “In France, when you learned about our pseudonyms and the cover stories we had to invent, you said it seemed that everything about us was a lie. In a way I never imagined, maybe you're right. How many false memories do I have? How do I know who I am? How can I be sure that you and Akira are what you seem? Suppose you're actors hired to trick me and reinforce my delusions.”
“But obviously we're not,” Akira said. “We've been through too much together. Rachel's rescue. The escape in the helicopter. The ferry out of Greece. The vans that tried to intercept us in France.”
“My point is maybe none of it happened. My false memories might have begun today. My entire background—everything about me—might be a lie I'm not aware of! Did I ever meet Rachel's sister? Is Graham really dead?”
“Keep thinking like that,” Akira said, “and you'll go crazy.”
“Right,” Savage said. “That's what I mean—I'm scared. I feel like I'm seeing through a haze, like the floor's unsteady, like I'm in an elevator that's falling. Total disorientation. I've based my identity on protecting people. But how can I protect myselffrom my mind?”
Rachel put an arm around him. “You've got to believe we're not actors. We're all you have. Trust us.”
“Trust you? I don't even trust myself.”
7
That night, as Savage slept fitfully, assaulted by nightmares, he woke abruptly from a hand that caressed his cheek. Startled, he grabbed the hand and lunged upright on the sofa, prepared to defend himself.