6
Tim waits for Randy Mitchell to finish his rounds.
“Trident?” Mitchell asks.
“Stable,” Tim reports.
Then the quiet, heavy door seals closed once more and Tim now has plenty of time.
He accesses Julie’s memories.
He prefers to work with the original file still on the left side of her brain. He can work off the copy if he has to, but sometimes the original has just slightly clearer resolution.
And sometimes, he suspects, Julie unconsciously edits her memories as she moves them to the safe repository over on the right.
She dampens the fear. It’s natural. The mind doesn’t want to remember how terrified it felt, in the same way the body won’t save a crisp, clear memory of pain. It generalizes.
It’s a survival mechanism. It was something studied extensively with burn victims. The agon
