"We were working on cognitive and memory theories, experimenting with technology that we didn't really understand. We wondered if memories are hardwired into the brain, or if they are mere chemical arrangements, like beads on a string… ones that can be altered and rearranged as one might see fit… or deleted completely." Partain drifted off, thinking of something, or maybe he just didn’t care anymore. Maybe there were too many chemicals saturating his system; his mind soaking in a stupor that he never wanted to return from. I begin swirling the ice in my glass around in circles. Suddenly, he continued, as if he had never paused.

"I remember things like that, sometimes. I remember things that don't make any sense, faces, strange names, and buildings. It’s all random, jumbled, and it's hard to predict when a new memory is going to surface and what it will mean, and how I’ll understand it."

"But you’re saying that the treatment’s not permanent," I suggested, hopefully.

"Yeah. No. I mean, I remember that we'd basically concluded that the final result was only semi-permanent, and that the originals were fixed, like a movie, and that you could move them around in the brain as much as you wanted to because you couldn't change anything: the brain would recompile the information in its original order, with time - since everything that had happened previously, through all of that time, had brought you to your present point. The human mind is incredible, and it never stops working, compiling information, solving riddles. At least until you distract it. Or unplug it.  So we treated ourselves, in the event that testimony would be required in the fallout after the company folded.  But we didn't really know for sure." He had creases in the dark circles under his eyes, as if he hadn’t slept in days. He seemed to focus on something far away again, and I wondered where he was going when his eyes glazed over like that. 

"What happens if the brain can’t figure out which series of events is the correct one?" I asked.

"Like yours?" He asked, turning to face me, looking me in the eye.

"I’ve never been through one of your procedures,” I said, thrown off. I set the glass down. I looked away.

"Are you sure?"