Reboot by Andy Holmes

Author:Andy Holmes [Holmes, Andy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-02-02T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Ten

“Idon’t know why I am trying to remember,” 917 said. He was still strapped down the to bed, unable to sit up. “If what you say is true, and I willingly let the past get erased there must be something faulty in the memory blockers. Maybe a hidden corruption in the code or the implant in my brain is expiring?”

“I already told you, there is nothing amiss with the implant,” Spade replied. She cradled a mug of Earl Grey in her hands. The steam fogged her glasses as she took a sip. “The answer to this riddle is somewhere inside you, 917.”

“But I have no memory of my life before my last mission. How can I know why I want to remember something with no context?”

“Let’s try to keep it simple. If you look over the last mission in San Francisco, was there something that triggered you? Anything that impacted you emotionally?”

917 closed his eyes. Explosion filled his thoughts. He remembered standing in his hotel room, looking through the window helplessly as the cable car burned. He could sense the weight of the Beretta M9 in his palm as he listened to the screams. Body parts littered the streets. Chaos shook through the air. Rage filled him. “When the cable car blew up, and I saw the bomber across the street standing in the center of Union Square.”

Spade turned and eyed the computer monitor. The implant in 917’s head measured his brainwaves much in the same was as the electroencephalogram she used in their early experiments on agents. The wave patterns overlaying the brain warbled and bounced in jagged patterns. 917 was angry.

“What did you feel?” Spade asked.

“Hatred. Hatred towards myself for not taking action sooner. Hatred towards you for not giving me mission parameters before the bomber could kill. But mostly hatred for the man before me who’d planted that bomb. I was looking at evil incarnate and I wanted nothing more than to snuff the life out of him in the most brutal way possible.”

“Do you know why we implant amnesia into our agents?”

“I can guess. To eradicate distractions so we have a singular focus of executing our mission.”

The answer was only part of the truth. Spade promised to lay the cards out on the table for 917. “Amnesia does increase focus. The average person’s attention wanders moment to moment. It takes tremendous discipline to stay in the present and keep one’s attention on the task at hand. Unlike you, my memory is fully intact. One moment I’m typing up a report and trying to find the right words, and the next I’m staring out the window recalling a particularly competitive dodgeball game from the second grade. The mind wanders. What triggers random thoughts is a bit of a mystery, but all my research points to associations. We see a woman wearing a red sweater and the mind starts shuffling through pictures of times we’ve seen similar fabric.

“You don’t have to deal with this mechanism of the mind.

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