The Screaming Retreat

Emma let herself cry for exactly 10 minutes before she hit stockpile. She knew Richard would have already offloaded everything he’d ever felt about her - except his resentment which she supposed he would be hoarding.

You would think giving people more control of their emotions would stop them clinging on to the unhealthy ones. But Richard had made her realise that some people just wanted to be angry. Sure he’d be dealing with his heartbreak for about the next 50 years as he dialled it back to 1% EPR but the rage he felt at her for breaking up with him would be burning bright. The upside was that it would be over with sooner. She supposed.

She had left everything at what she thought was a pretty healthy 50% with a 10% EPR. Next month or even next week she could probably up it to 70%. It was amazing when you were at 50%, how well you thought you could cope with 70%. 50% heartbreak is really hardly a heartbreak at all.

Emma read a lot about psychology, about the necessity of dealing with your emotions, the worrying trend of young people offloading everything, a generation incapable of dealing with their own feelings. Still no one could deny the benefits of not having to deal with everything.

Her best friend Kat said that scheduling an every 10 minute upload for frustration was the only way she could get through another shift at Starbucks. Every evening she’d dial payback up to 100 and scream into a pillow for half an hour. Kat was like that though, she was always filing away happiness for her birthday and offloading negativity while she slept. Emma wasn’t at all sure about night offloading, she was sure it would give her disturbing dreams.

All in all Emma thought she was pretty typical, she wasn’t as obsessive as Kat or as childish as Richard. She noticed a slight fluctuation, disgust/anticipation – well it was childish to not deal with anything. He’d get hit with it all eventually and then he’d have an aneurysm. Joy/anger/disgust/, she laughed slightly to herself – I guess familiarity really does breed contempt.

The only thing that bothered her, when she let herself think about it which was rarely, was fear, Emma had a somewhat alarming build up of fear. She’d been a shy child, awkward and afraid of saying the wrong thing. Everyone had assured her that it was ok, they had been shy when they were young, you grew out of it. However, as Emma had grown she felt like her fear had too, whenever she thought about it she grew still more afraid, thinking of the alarming extent of her backlog, and that was only adding to the problems. She had a once daily upload set up for 6 am and the EPR was set lower than she liked to think about. But still she had troubling dreams - sometimes when she really needed to sleep she’d set an extra upload before bed. Occasionally she got a little flashing warning, she was storing a dangerous amount of a single emotion. Would she like to download? She would not.

In the aftermath of the breakup she was also stockpiling an additional crap-pile of unpleasantness that she didn’t feel like dealing with. Her sadness/disgust/anger/sadness was always ticking away in her peripheral vision. It was disheartening.

Hayley was on at her to go to a screaming retreat. Apparently she had done it last year when she broke up with Andrew. ‘I know you think it will be awful, I mean I suppose it is, but it’s almost orgasmic you know – just to let it all out.’ Emma knew that Hayley did cocaine and hoarded so she wasn’t about to take emotional advice from her.

But the blinking warning kept coming up, no matter what she searched for these days the ads turned up results for wellness retreats, meditation, therapy and narcotics. Ok she felt fine, but she had to admit the warning signs were there. It was worrying her and she had given in and permanently upped her daily fear dump, one in the morning, one before bed.

She booked the retreat without thinking about it too much, thinking about it would only worry her. It was in Thailand, there were trained staff on hand 24/7, you’d be placed in a padded room, sedation, if necessary, was infused into the room in the form of a lavender and ylang ylang mist.

After the session you would recuperate in one of their luxury beach huts, you would be brought iced camomile tea and a soothing broth, made from ingredients carefully balanced to promote calm, joy and healing. There would be a week of recovery, yoga and mindfulness designed to help you work through your emotions with less offloading and higher EPRs.

Emma liked to focus on that part, picture herself elegantly contorting herself on a beach somewhere: bathed in warmth.

In the week leading up to her flights she’d been trying to up her EPR, she tried offloading at night like Kat but it gave her such debilitating nightmares she had to stop. The gnawing weight of anxiety from her heighted EPR was throwing her off at work, she was always restless and jittery. She drank more without noticing and then felt sick every morning.

She started to worry she might be pregnant. If I was pregnant and it were Richard’s child, he hates me now, how soon would I know, it’s just this stupid retreat, will their tests show if I’m pregnant, what’s the rule on abortions in Thailand. The subject tended to chase around her head every night as she lay down to sleep. She took 2 pregnancy tests in order to stop herself uploading. They were negative. Then she worried that she’d taken the tests wrong.

By the time she boarded the flight, mentally exhausted by the process of getting through security – who had made her throw out her razer and her least expensive moisturiser because it didn’t quite fit in there stupid plastic bag – she was seriously regretting booking the retreat. She didn’t think she could take anything more of anything. She felt like a balloon being filled with more and more water, the thin skin swelling and splitting.

She drank two Irish whiskeys on the flight and ate one oatmeal cookie. Arriving at the airport she felt something between nausea and relief, classified as disgust/sadness/fear/anticipation/ by the flickering display in the corner of her eye. She should turn the damn thing off. She should have looked up the settings and turned it off. Could you turn it off? You must be able to. There must be people wandering around blissfully unaware of exactly what they were feeling.

She was met by a beautiful resort worker dressed in a just off white suit that Emma assumed had been chosen to look cool and calming. The woman smiled, displaying very white, very even teeth, ‘Emma, I am Joy! I know it is funny but this is my real name. We are so happy to welcome you to The Sanctuary. Please take this refreshing drink, it is to relax you after the flight. You are looking a little anxious.’ She made a hand gesture that Emma thought looked more like ‘crazy’ than ‘anxious’. She wondered if she should ask what was in the drink, Joy looked poised to answer her questions. Instead she downed it, smiled in an attempt to recreate Joy’s beatific expression and then collapsed into the resort minibus. She never remembered much of the journey or that evening.

The next day when she woke up in a white canopied bed listening to the sea brushing against the shore she felt relaxed. She was sleepily convinced that she’d already undergone the release treatment. Sure it had probably been unpleasant but now it was over. Soon someone would be bringing her a healthy breakfast and a soothing beverage.

She dozed until she heard someone at the door, ‘Knock knock’ they said in a chirpy morning person voice. Getting out of bed was hard, she was coming to an unpleasant realisation, despite her earlier certainty she was beginning to think that maybe the treatment was not over. She couldn’t quite bring herself to check the display, but it seemed to her now that either she hasn’t had the treatment yet or it had gone so badly they had had to drug her memory into submission. 

‘Come in’ she said, mouth dry, sitting up and swinging her legs out of the bed. She focussed on putting on her slippers and a robe (white) and keeping her eyes clear of the little flashing numbers at the corner of her vision.

She was a little surprised to see Joy again, but then her eyes unfocused and she realised it wasn’t Joy, but the woman looked almost exactly like her. The same composed, regular features and clean white smile. 

‘Hello I am Mina and I am here to take you to your appointment! It is not recommended to eat before the procedure so I am afraid your breakfast will have to wait!’

Mina clapped her hands in a pantomime of excitement. ‘Up, up we get!’. She was holding a glass of something that looked like peach juice.

Emma dragged herself out of bed, once she was vertical Mina bowed slightly and left room dropping the juice on the bedside table. ‘‘I will be waiting for you outside. Please drink this juice as it will prepare you for the treatment. Then in no time you will be enjoying a brunch in the Sun! The rest of this week will be very relaxing for you!’

Emma got ready slowly as Fear/Fear/Fear ticked away in the corner of her vision, she drank the drink, Fear/disgust/Fear.

Emma’s trepidation eased somewhat as she followed Mina along a series of long neutral coloured corridors to the ‘treatment rooms’. She knew the spa like atmosphere was designed to trick her mind into something like relaxation but still it was working.

Mina opened a heavy wooden door wide and nodded at Emma to step through. She followed close behind her and the door locked with a distinct metal click. Emma half turned ‘It’s nothing to worry about’ Mina smiled serenely ‘the door will automatically unlock in case of fire.’

Emma wasn’t entirely reassured by this but the room seemed straightforward enough, it was a soft beige that looked expensive enough to be called something else. In the centre was what looked like a tan leather dentist’s chair. Next to it was a small wooden cart neatly covered with a white muslin cloth - she guessed that was to avoid ruining the atmosphere with whatever high tech gizmo was under there. 

She sat down and Mina smiled, approvingly this time, and covered her eyes with a heated cotton towel she appeared to have pulled from nowhere. ‘Relax, relax’ she chanted in a small sing-song voice.

Emma was not relaxed, Emma suddenly more tense than she had ever been in her life. There was a strong chemical lavender smell that was giving her a headache. She felt all at once that this had been a mistake. In that second she felt something clamp against her skull. She tried to jump but her body didn’t move, ‘It’s just the electrodes for the negative energy extraction.’ Mina attempted to reassure her. ‘Don’t struggle, you are being held still for your own good - any movement could interfere with the treatment.’ 

Emma tried vainly to move her arms, she couldn’t feel any restraints. It was like being in a nightmare where you wanted to wake up but your body refused to respond - locking you in place. She struggled furiously but motionlessly, with great effort she managed a tiny jerk of the head that slightly dislodged the towel over her eyes. She would have screamed if she could. Standing next to her was Mina - face slack and even more expressionless than before - the electrodes that Emma could feel digging into her skull were attached to a small open panel underneath Mina’s cheekbone - a small blue light flashed on and off and a voice suddenly resounded in her skull ‘Stop fighting - you wished to be cleansed of these emotions and the contract will be fulfilled’ Mina’s lips didn’t move and Emma wasn’t even sure if the voice sounded like hers. It echoed around the inside of her head making her feel dizzy and nauseous, at the top of her vision she could see her display - the numbers spiralling downwards. This did not relieve her, she felt sick with horror. A terrible burning sensation started somewhere at the base of her neck and radiated down through every nerve in her body. She was burning, she was dying, surely she would die.

The pain stopped, Emma felt quite calm. The numb horror that had gripped her seemed hard to remember now. She felt cleansed, quite calm, her dashboard was a series of green blinking zeros. ‘All done’ she said brightly.’ Mina smiled warmly in return ‘We are very grateful for your custom.’ She touched a button and the cables that had connected her to Emma whipped neatly back into her skull, she shut the metal panel with a decisive snape.

‘I didn’t know the clinic used androids’ Emma commented, as if making small talk about the weather, ‘You’re very convincing’. Mina smiled again, one lip curling slightly to give her a girlish mischievous look - ‘Yes we are getting more human every day.’

Emma reached up her hand to touch the welts on her skin where the electrodes had been attached. Mina reprimanded her gently ‘Please don’t do that’.