The next day, one of the nurses at the local surgery received an unusual email…
“Dear Ms Haines”, it started, “Due to some issues at our data centre, we have had to temporarily archive some of our personality records. We are contacting you because it will affect your cognitive abilities.”
Mystified, Julie was tempted to treat it as any other junk mail, but something made her read on…
“You may find some short-term memory loss.”, the email continued. “This is because we are having to perform a soft reset of your brain. Please accept our apologies in advance for any inconvenience caused.”
Julie shook her head. What the hell were they talking about? At the same time, she realised that she couldn’t remember coming into work that morning…
Shaking her head again, trying to clear it, Julie sat down in a chair in the waiting room. She was still trying to work out what was going on as everything went black…
She woke up lying on a hospital bed, naked. She tried to lift her head, to see what was going on, but something held it down…
“Easy, Julie”, a voice said. “Try not to move, please.”
“What’s… going on…?”, Julie asked, in a shaky voice.
“The reset locked your brain up”, said the voice. “We’re having to reload you from scratch…”
“What…! No… it can’t be. What have you done to me?”
“I realise that you can’t remember what happened a while back”, the voice continued, “but you had an accident. We had to partly rebuild your brain using an advanced implant to let you live again. We just had a software ‘glitch’, but you’re alright now. You should be back at work tomorrow.”
“Uh… OK…”, Julie said. She was already feeling drowsy again.
Next day, Julie was back at work.
The implant’s control was so total, Julie never realised that she had been lied to.
She had never been in an accident. She had been a precocious college student, carefree, with a real attitude, who always wore t-shirts and jeans and behaved like ‘one of the boys’.
Her parents had asked for her to be taught respect, and care for others. They hadn’t realised that the lesson was going to be forced on her, and permanent…