Part 2: Past and Present
He opened the door to his office for Lauren, walking in behind her. He pulled a chair for her and took his seat across the desk as she examined the room with amusement.
"I can't believe how far the Tank’s come. I remember when it was in a hidden side room in a bar. How Isaac kept everything clean and safe with shouting drunks in the next room is beyond me."
Finch nodded his head at her story. Before Finch took over the Tank, Isaac told him and Tabitha all the stories of extractions gone wrong that he witnessed over in the early days. After the final testing succeeded, exacting techniques found their ways from the sterile laboratories to seedy back-alley shops with cheap equipment, cobbled together with little more than duct tape and foolish ambition. Soon, a wave of "wax brains", victims of botched extraction with memory gaps, vicious infections, and first degree burns flooded the hospitals.
Issac scrapped through a bad clone himself and worked for months for a viable treatment for others, one that was later used throughout the city by both technicians in underground shops and doctors in hospital rooms. After his death, thousands flooded his funeral to pay their respects to the man whose work saved countless lives.
“After that, I only went to the Tank for any memories work I wanted. We did dangerous things back then, but he was always cautious. He had a way of making people trust him. You remind me of him that way. That must be why you're still open. Good quality like that is rarer than you think."
Finch fidgeted as his face flushed at her compliment. She didn't miss the reaction and smiled. "As the years passed and the business went straight, we lost contact. There wasn't a major fallout between us, just life, marriage, kids, things like that. All of those times just seemed like a book I read years ago, something I remembered happening once but possibly to someone else. Unfortunately, the past has caught up to me, in more ways than one. Recently, I went to the doctor because of memory problems. The short of it is that I have something similar to Alzheimer's. They’re not sure if it was caused by the past extractions or if I was preconditioned with it but reason doesn't change results, does it?" She asked, defeated.
Finch grabbed her hand, rubbing his thumbs in small circles. She wiped her tears before they reached her face. "I'm so sorry, Lauren."
Lauren scoffed. "For what? None of this was your fault, Daniel. Yours or your grandparents'. I knew the risks back then and I don’t regret my choices."
"If there's anything: procedures, medication, anything that might help you, I will help. I promise."
She shook her head "That's not why I'm here."
"I don't care. That's what you're going to get. Besides, your family might decide to sue me for damages and hospital bills. I might as well pay the money." He joked.
She patted his hand affectionately. "Ah, they already suggested that but I turned them down. Just didn't feel right. What I want, however, is to be a client again."
He furrowed his brows. "What?"
"I want you to clone my memories. I'm willing to give you a portion of them to sell but the majority of it goes to me. It's for when I have a lapse. Last week, I looked into the eyes of my granddaughter and couldn't remember her name from the man on the moon. Right now, I feel like everything's on the tip of my tongue but if my therapy doesn't work..." She trailed off, cringing. " I need to have something in case I forget how I am, who my loved ones are to me."
Lauren reached into her purse. "The most important ones have to be salvaged first. Graduations, weddings, the usual, but I do have a few memories that I'm willing to sell you. Here's a list I made."
She passed the sheet of paper to Finch and he read it. "Whoa. The original Yankee Stadium, the Oil Treaty of 2041, the Mitchell Street riots. " He read, stunned by one item in the middle. "The city's first extractors?”
"I thought that one might be of interest to you."
"Of interest? Do you know just how little information we have on the origins of street extractions? Tabitha and I have had some historians and researchers come to us for help but so much of the work was either off the books or deteriorated beyond recognition. Anything remotely legible is considered a major breakthrough."
She nodded. "I've been around extractors since the beginning. I can't give up names and dates but that might be of some interest to some people. Maybe even do some good in the future."
Finch folded up the page and brought his attention back to Lauren. "This makes sense from the business side but, Lauren, my first concern is your mind and your memories. Something on this scale has never been done before by anyone. We have to be sure that the potency of the clones is strong enough not only for our buyers but for you as well. With all due respect, it's been some time since you experienced those events and they might not be a vivid as they once were. We also have to consult your doctors to see what medications you’re on and their effects, take a look at your MRIs, not to mention get them to sign off on it before we even think about bringing in other treatments.”
"I completely understand." She reached for her purse. Finch stood up, ready to help her walk back to the lobby when she pulled out five large brown envelopes and placed them on his desk. He stared, stunned as he saw all of the medical records, MRIs, and more before him.
"What do you say now, Daniel?"
He met her eyes with an eager grin on his face. "I say it's time for you to meet your future technician, Tabitha."
#
Minutes later, holograms of Lauren's MRI's filled the room as Tabitha slowly rotated them. "Pop quiz, Finch. Explain retrieval cues and the different types of retrieval prompts for our esteemed customer. "She stood opposite Finch and Lauren who sat on his desk, their dangling legs swaying in harmony.
"They're access points that we use to recall something, aiding us in recalling our long-term memories for storage. It's the reason why a person could go out for lunch, smell honeysuckles in the wind, and be reminded of camping with their family twenty years ago, despite the two events having nothing in common but the smell. Some retrieval prompts aiding the memory encoding process include both context and state dependency, emotions, motivations, et cetera."
Lauren nodded slowly as she let the information sink in. "Like a memory shortcut." She offered.
Tabitha smiled as she pulled up a different hologram. "Gold star, Mrs. Campbell. Now, I believe that if we can find some of your cues, we can introduce them before and during your sessions, we'll be able to trigger the memories, thus making them more potent and the cloning process less invasive."
"Journals! I have journals from over the years along with photo albums from over the years."
Tabitha clicked her tongue as she thought. "That's a step in the right direction but we still need more. Another problem is the issue of storage decay or the strength of your memories. Even if we can clone the memories, they might be too weak for anyone to use. It would be like looking at a bad forgery of someone else's bad forgery. With that said, I might have an idea. " The holograms in the room soon changed from Lauren's MRI's to old articles in medical journals and newspapers from Tabitha’s personal files. "Back in the early days of extractions, it was decided that the first subjects should be people who suffered from cases of memory-related problems such as amnesia, PTSD, repressed memories, things like that. The hypothesis was if they succeeded with those particular subjects, they would look more like Bill Gates and less like Victor Frankenstein to the masses and grease the wheels a bit with Congress. Because those memories were locked in a sense, extractors concocted a steroid that would temporarily strengthen the connections to better encode the retrieved memories and access memories for extractions."
"If that exists, why isn't it being used now?" Lauren asked, her eyes on Tab as she flicked through the articles. Tabitha finally stopped when she reached one written by a Dr. R. Woodard, a noted pioneer in extraction, discussing the use of a new nootropic drug and the list of known side effects in subjects.
"Because while the drug worked, one of the side effect was that it occasionally worked too well, lasting days and possibly months after the extraction." Finch answered, his eyes moving over the article. "The subjects would remember things like where they parked their car at the grocery store 5 years ago or the names of their entire third grade math classmates. It's not a big problem in that aspect but when they would try to retrieve something close to the extracted memory point and find it blank, the subject's mind would try frantically to fill in the blank, causing the brain to stretch and possibly fracture like a rubber band pulled too tightly. The project of refining nootropics got scrubbed as the understanding of the mind and technology got better but every now and then, a discussion of reviving it pops up."
Finch furrowed his brows as he moved to the hologram to better read. "Given that this was published more than sixty years ago, they weren't too far off course." He noted. "Even so, I'm still hesitant. There's a reason why no one's worked on this in years."
"Lauren's a singular case though. Her doctors caught the disease early and by the looks of her records, it hasn't really spread yet. With her being a past client, it's not like we only have her current state to work with. We still have some of her old scans and clones in our database so we have the luxury of being able to compare past clones of hers to a more current one to check her storage decay and retrieval failures."
"What about the drug? Do we know someone with a background in neurochemistry or chemistry that we can trust to focus on this?"
"I might have someone. Ramona Sanchez, a double major in both. We met up at the last extraction conference in Tokyo a few years ago; you might remember her. Tiny, long black hair, really quiet until you get her started on the future of neurology. She's currently working with a team in Stockholm but this is definitely in her wheelhouse. I'll be sure to 'accidentally’ mention Lauren's cloning list to see if she bites."
Tabitha dismissed the holograms with her hands, the room slightly brightening as they disappeared. Finch turned to Lauren with his arms crossed, shuffling from foot to foot. "Lauren, it's your call. This sounds solid but honestly, this is still fairly new territory. I can't guarantee this will work or how quickly we'll see any results but whatever you choose, we’re behind you."
Lauren kicked out her legs playfully and sighed. “I don't know if this is Isaac's influence in both of you or the consequences of the business going straight but this generation has gotten soft. If I wanted to play it safe, I wouldn't be here." She turned her focus to Tabitha. "When do we get started?"
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