The Pac

THE PAC

By DM Schwartz

“It can’t work,” said Paul.

“It will work,” said Eddy. “Think about it. We’re all of us just walking meat machines. If a kidney or a lung or even a heart goes bad, you plug in another one.”

“Kidneys and lungs and hearts are one thing. You’re talking about the central nervous system. The human brain. That’s like-”

“That’s like everything else. Made of matter. Memories are stored in that matter just like books in a library.”

“You always think in oversimplifications.”

“You always think in overcomplifications.”

“That’s not a real word.”

“It’s real if we agree it is. Just like my new procedure.”

“Your new procedure can’t work,” said Paul.

“Retrograde amnesia,” said Eddy. “You lose your old memories. Anterograde amnesia. You can’t form new memories.”

“But you’re talking about transplanting memories,” said Paul. “Intact memories. It can’t work.”

“It will work,” said Eddy. “I just need one tiny little favor.”

“You’re asking for after hours and off-the-books access to the University’s prized possession. That’s more than a tiny little favor. That could get me booted out of the program. I’d lose three years of effort. My doctoral thesis would be-”

“Fine. It’ll be just fine. Because no one’s gonna know. Because you and I are gonna be like two little ninjas.”

“Two little ninjas with genius-level IQ’s,” said Paul.

“And no fighting skills,” said Eddy. “Unless you count Super Street Fighter 5.”

“What? Why wouldn’t that count?”

Eddy looked around the cluttered lab. At the work stations, ultralow freezers, water baths and centrifuges. At the fume hoods and floor to ceiling biosafety cabinet spaces containing glassware, various chemical compounds, acids, bases and assorted biological reagents.

It was evening. Outside, the street lamps flicker on.

“You ever think about how much time we’ve spent in here?” asked Eddy.

“I’d live in here if they let me,” said Paul.

“I know you would. And that’s just sad.”

“Be nice.”

“I’m trying to be nice but you’re not letting me,” said Eddy. “You help me with this and I’ll add your name to the patent. We’ll own the technology together. Fifty-fifty. Then we’ll be billionaires. Then you can build your own lab and live in it. Isn’t that being nice?”

“I checked your algorithms,” said Paul.

“And?”

Paul nodded. “They’re legit.”

“Then let’s get in on, baby.”

Paul looked down at the floor as if some compelling counter-argument might be written there. He saw only stained linoleum tiles and his own size 44 Birkenstocks. He drummed his fingers on his ample belly.

“Stop that,” said Eddy.

“Stop what?”

“You always fidget like that when you’re trying to weasel out of something.”

The thought came to him. “You don’t have a donor. We can’t proceed without a donor,” said Paul.

Eddy grinned. “He’s waiting outside.”

Paul sighed and resigned himself.

The University’s owned a Positron-Amplified-Collider. The name was cumbersome so most called it ‘the Pac.’ It was intended to study and compare the cellular physiologic activities of normal tissue and cancerous tumors. Having been devised, designed and developed on site, it was the first and only machine of its kind. Not even the people who built the Pac fully understood the machine’s full potential or range of applications.

Eddy Parcels was one of the first graduate students allowed to watch the Pac in action (Paul had been the first). Eddy studied the machine and got to wondering. What if you simultaneously bombarded the observed tissue with attenuated, intersecting electron beams? The idea stimulated his intense curiosity and challenged his fathomless intellect. He began running simulations that day.

The Pac was housed in what had been the Bio-Physics Research Library. Since no one read physical textbooks anymore and since every journal article was now online, the stacks went to storage and the Pac slowly took form. This took a team of electrical engineers two years and an undisclosed sum of money (some estimated almost 100 million dollars). When they first turned it on there were blackouts across campus. The same engineers went to work upgrading the University’s power grid.

Paul swiped his name badge to unlock the door. He and Eddy stepped inside, followed by a man who reeked of sweat, urine and alcohol. The man’s name was Tony.

Tony looked at the Pac, a towering machine with many black cables spreading out like the tentacles of some giant mechanical squid. He paused. “Is this gonna hurt?”

Eddy patted him on the back. “You ever been electrocuted?”

“What?”

“Kidding!” said Eddy. “Won’t hurt a bit.”

“How long’s it gonna take?” said Tony.

“You got somewhere you need to be?”

Tony looked at the kid but said nothing.

“Twenty minutes, tops.”

Tony nodded.

Paul helped Tony up onto the flat metal table. Like a desk drawer, the table rested atop sliding metal arms allowing it to be fed into the Pac. Paul slid Tony into the towering machine.

“Pretty tight in here,” said Tony.

“You won’t be in there long,” said Paul. “You’ll hear a constant buzzing sound and a series of clicks. That’s normal.”

Eddy added, “If you’re hair catches fire, give us a holler.”

“What?” shouted Tony.

“He’s joking,” said Paul. He swatted Eddy’s arm.

Paul stood at one workstation and began normal diagnostics. The Pac came to life and began buzzing like a single titanous hornet. On the screen before him, Paul watched the normal metabolic activity of Tony’s brain. He dialed in, focusing on the hippocampus and amygdala, the brain’s memory storehouses.

Eddy stood at a second workstation. He fed his algorithms into the computer and began manipulating the various energy fields within the Pac. If his theory proved correct, Eddy could identify, record and electronically retain the memories encoded within the meat and matter of a person’s brain. Memories were, after all, fairly straightforward electro-chemical imprints upon just a few billion neurons in a relatively small section of the central nervous system.

“Okay,” called Eddy. “Tony, I want you to focus on your very best memory. The time in your life when you felt really alive. The moment you would go back to in a time machine. Can you do that?”

“Yep,” said Tony, his voiced muted.

“Find that and focus on it the best you can. Sights. Sounds. Smells. Every little detail. Got it?”

“Can we get this over with?”

“You ready?” Eddy asked Paul.

Paul nodded.

“Light him up.”

The lights in the room dimmed for a moment as Paul started the procedure. The Pac began humming and emitting a stuttering series of clicks. Eddy felt the floor vibrating under his feet.

“How well do you know this guy?” asked Paul.

Eddy couldn’t make this out over the din. “What?”

Paul shouted, “How well do you know this guy?”

“What does that matter?”

Paul considered this, then shrugged.

It took only ten minutes for Eddy to extract and record a satisfactory sample. Much less time than he’d anticipated. Satisfied, he motioned for Paul to terminate the test. They slid Tony from inside the Pac.

“How was it?” asked Eddy.

“Rattled my teeth some.”

“You focus on that one specific memory?”

“When I felt alive? Sure. Was the time I-”

“Don’t tell me!” said Eddy. “That would contaminate it with my own assumptions!”

Tony gave him an odd look. “About that money.”

Eddy counted out fifty dollars in tens and placed them in Tony’s palm. “You gonna spend it all on cheap beer?”

“Hell no,” said tony. “Cheap liquor.”

Paul showed the man to the exit. When he returned Eddy was seated atop the Pac’s sliding table.

“You sure you want to do this?” asked Paul.

“Nothing ventured, nothing gained,” said Eddy. “Why so nervous?”

“I don’t know. It’s just, wouldn’t have unprotected intercourse with a complete stranger.”

“That depends on the stranger.”

“You’d have no idea what they might infect you with.”

“Tony’s memory of having syphilis isn’t going to infest me with spirochetes.”

“Maybe. But we don’t know what it might infect you with. If such a thing is possible.”

“Paul, we’re talking about the tiniest possible traces of neuronal charge and chemical energy. Not the boogeyman. Now, might we proceed?”

Paul relented and the test continued. He slid Eddy into the Pac and returned to his work station. He once again dialed up the Pac’s power and the thing began humming a clicking and rattling the pens on the desktop.

Paul then moved to the second workstation and, as Eddy had instructed, initiated the implantation protocol. Then, unsure what to do or expect, he stood waiting.

A minute passed. Then another. The room filled with the faint scent of hot copper wires.

Five minutes into the test, Eddy began to scream.

“Turn it off! Get me out! Oh please, get me out!”

Paul ran to the controls and hit the Pac’s kill switch. Then he grabbed the table and yanked Eddy free from the machine.

Eddy tumbled off the table and onto the floor. He lay there on his side, writhing and clutching his head.

“Eddy! What is it?”

“They’re all dead! All dead! The men. The lady. That little girl. Oh my God, they’re all dead!”

When Eddy began clawing at the flesh on his scalp hard enough to draw blood, Paul dialed 9-1-1.

It was two hours later when the doctor ushered Paul into the quiet room just outside the Emergency Department. They both sat.

“Your friend is stable,” said the doctor. “He’s been sedated but is still requiring wrist restraints.”

“He’s okay?” asked Paul.

The doctor measured his words. “Physically, he appears fine. A head CT was unremarkable. Vital signs normal. Blood work all within normal limits. Did your friend take any drugs tonight?”

“Eddy? Never. No way.”

“Was he ever in the service?”

“Service? Like, the Army?”

The doctor nodded.

“No. Not even the Boy Scouts.”

“Odd,” said the doctor. “Your friend keeps going over and over a certain traumatic event. An assault that apparently left quite a few people dead and injured. He was very specific. Vivid, even. Any idea what that might be all about?”

Paul squirmed in his seat and drummed his fingers on his belly for a moment. He considered his own research. His near-complete doctoral thesis. The repercussions of honesty in this moment. Finally, he shook his head. “Sorry.”

“He kept mentioning Kalawali. Over and over. I Googled it. It’s a little town in Afghanistan outside of Kandahar. Does that mean anything to you?”

Paul licked his lips and glanced at the wall. “No. That does not mean anything to me, specifically.”

The doctor’s eyes narrowed. “So, this is a hallucination? Not a memory? I ask because it changes the differential diagnosis.”

“Well,” said Paul, “I can say with all honesty that that isn’t Eddy Parcel’s memory.”

The doctor studied Paul for a moment. The man’s skepticism was apparent. Then he stood and exited the room.

Eddy had been placed in Exam Room 22. He lay there with drool pooling out the right side of his mouth. His eyes were open but unfocused. He gave feeble kicks and tugged listlessly at the tethers around his wrists. The five milligrams of Haldol had deadened everything, but it could not erase the bloody and barbaric memory of what he’d done to the villagers. It was so graphically vivid and horribly crystalline in clarity. And, worst of all, he recalled that the killing had made him feel good. It had made him feel really…alive.

            THE END