“All right,” she said.
Dr. Webb took a deep breath. “As I was saying, emotion is a deep encoder of memory, and fear is especially effective in this regard. Even adults can have their behavior modified on a permanent basis by a deep enough fright. Look at the responses of otherwise well-balanced individuals who’ve been bitten by an untrained dog. They avoid canine interaction and flinch if a dog comes too near, unless they were, for whatever reason, unafraid of the dog which did the biting.”
“They’re reacting to the pain.”
“Not necessarily. Even individuals who experienced a bite that failed to break the skin due to protective gear or other factors have been known to develop lifelong phobias.” Dr. Webb looked at her calmly. “The key is in the interaction between neurochemistry and the body. We experience things with everything we are, not only with our minds. Most therapy focuses only on the mind. We bring the entire person into the process, by creating situations the body will respond to. We create full sense memory, and the associated chemical and emotional responses encode on a much deeper level.”
“You mean you’re using regression therapy.”
There it was: the elephant in the room, the reason Esther had been selected to be the one to come, learn, and report. If she could tell this story without somehow turning it against the institute, it would be because there was no way to give it teeth: no way to show it for the monster she knew, deep down, it had to be.
“No. I never said that. While there are some superficial similarities in the two techniques, they’re far from being the same,” said Dr. Webb.
Esther narrowed her eyes. “You know who I am.”
“Yes,” said Dr. Webb. “I do. Esther Hoffman, age thirty-four, pop science reporter for Science Digest. You’re a debunker. Well-regarded by your peers, well-reviewed in academic journals, with a reputation for an absolutely unflinching dislike of any form of therapy involving the access of supposedly ‘repressed’ memories. Which is only natural, given what happened to your father. You have my profound apologies, by the way, on behalf of my profession. The people who did that to him…they were no better than charlatans, and frankly, substantially worse in many ways. No one should have that sort of power over someone else’s life.”
“At least there’s one thing we agree on,” said Esther, with a forced, chilly calm in her voice. “Regression therapy has been discredited time and time again. The subjects are too easily manipulated, and memory is faulty. Someone who remembers abuse while under the control of a therapist is just as likely to be remembering a dream, or the plot of a television show, as any actual events.”
That was the problem. Too many people had come out of regression therapy with false memories, describing devil worship and child sacrifice and other, darker things that were entirely fictions, yet were somehow believed, because they’d been “remembered” under the supervision of a licensed therapist. Like the anti-vaccination lies of the early two thousands, regression therapy had been debunked over and over, yet kept popping up again, a terrible, pseudo-medical hydra that couldn’t be killed, no matter how often its opponents tried. Oh, how Esther had tried. She had spent the best years of her life trying, and she intended to keep trying until her dying day.
Dr. Webb sighed. “As I was saying, we researched you before we decided to let you cover this story. There was some concern that your…history…might make it impossible for you to present us fairly. I pointed out that your background would also make an endorsement fully credible. If you say we are what we claim to be, people will believe you.”
“Why would you ever think I would do that?”
“Because we’re not responsible for what happened to your father, and because if we’re successful, we’ll present a new way for people to get better, one that doesn’t carry the same risks.” Dr. Webb sounded perfectly calm, a scientist looking at a rival school of thought and pondering the best ways to blow it entirely apart. “What we do here is not regression therapy.”
Esther frowned. “But you said—”
“I said it was similar, and it is. We put our subjects into a hyper-suggestible state, using hypnotic techniques in conjunction with a carefully balanced drug cocktail that blunts the edges of their fear, allowing us to influence them without scaring them to death. Because the scenarios are more real than reality to the subjects while active, we realized early on that we had to be careful to avoid damaging our patients. The drugs help. We use our virtual reality pods—which are a proprietary technology, and which, according to our agreement with your publisher, we are allowed to limit your access to in whatever ways we feel are necessary—to guide the subjects through a tailored, agreed-upon scenario which feels entirely real to them while it’s happening, and more importantly, feels entirely real to the body as well as to the mind. Essentially, we rewrite their realities according to their own desires.”
“You’ve been very protective of your virtual reality technology.”
“We have competitors attempting to acquire it constantly. That’s why we search everyone who comes in or out, and will be making sure you don’t leave with any unapproved recordings.” Dr. Webb smiled, quick and sharp.
Esther frowned. “That’s an insult to my integrity.”
“Not with the amount of money some people would offer you for a look at our technology. It would be an insult to assume you were stupid enough to refuse them.” Dr. Webb shook her head. “It doesn’t matter now. Getting back on the topic, our drugs allow the mind to absorb the shocks we present, while the body’s nervous system locks the lessons in place without necessarily writing them to conscious memory. Trauma to the subjects is minimized by careful control of the VR environment and mindfulness training to help integrate the sensory and somatic dissonance of the scenario into waking reality.”
“But trauma is possible.”
“Yes. That’s why all scenarios are carefully monitored by our trained technicians, every step of the way, and why we do extensive follow-up with our patients.”
“You keep calling them ‘scenarios.’ Why not admit that you’re telling lies?”
“We’ve never concealed that aspect of our therapy,” said Dr. Webb. “We’re creating scenarios which feel real, which may linger as a vivid but patently untrue memory of a summer night that never was, or a blizzard that isn’t in the record books, and which the patients know to be fictional. There will be no trials based on the stories we tell our patients. There will be no ruined reputations. There are signed consent forms describing the scenario to be programmed. There are logs. We’re telling them lies, and then we’re telling them that we told them lies.”
“Then why even bother?” asked Esther.
“Because the human mind, while infinitely malleable, forms assumptions and associations, and clings to them tightly, sometimes long past the point of usefulness. Consider the women whose treatment you observed—Diana and Kim. They’re sisters, with a seven-year age gap. By the time Diana was born, Kim was comfortably accustomed to being an only child. She resented and avoided her younger sister, viewing every interaction Diana had with their parents as favoritism. As for Diana, she saw Kim as distant and cruel, and never learned to show affection to her sister. Their parents have died. They are the only family they have left in the world, and both of them are hampered by the damage done to their emotional landscapes by their failure to form sibling bonds. So we, with their full consent,” Dr. Webb stressed the words like they were the only things that mattered in the world—and perhaps they were, “created a situation where they’d need to learn to work together, as sisters. To trust and love and sacrifice for each other, as sisters. The scenario involved a regression to childhood, to access the levels of their emotional landscape where the damage was greatest, and was accompanied by the sort of fixative adrenaline that has shown the most success in making emotional changes permanent.”
“You ran them through a horror movie and now they’re supposed to be loving sisters,” said Esther flatly.
>
“We ran them through a horror movie and now they are loving sisters,” said Dr. Webb. “They have three more sessions planned—sequels, if you will—but when their course of treatment is finished, they’ll have the sort of strong emotional bond they should have had all along. They may have nightmares, but there won’t be any lasting damage in the waking world, because the scenarios we’re using are too unrealistic. That’s the beauty of what we do here. We change lives without ever creating a situation that could be taken for real.”
“I don’t believe you,” said Esther.
Dr. Webb smiled. “I knew you wouldn’t,” she said. “If you’d agree to sign a few release forms, I could help you with that.”
“Because allowing you to brainwash me is the right approach?” Esther scowled. “You must think I’m a fool.”
“No. I think you’re someone who blames yourself for your father’s death, who would do anything to make sure that what happened to him never happens again.” Dr. Webb leaned forward. “We don’t ‘recover’ memories. We don’t even truly implant them. We modify ways of thinking. We undo damage. We could help you, if you let us—but that’s not what I’m proposing. I want you to let me show you that we’re not monsters. We just make imaginary ones.”
Esther hesitated. “That isn’t exactly unbiased reporting,” she said finally.
“Miss Hoffman, nothing you did here was ever going to be,” said Dr. Webb. “Will you let me show you?”
After a long, long pause, Esther nodded.
THE PAPERWORK was…daunting, at best. At worst, it was a Sisyphean nightmare designed to keep most people from reading everything they were agreeing to. Esther pinched the bridge of her nose and forced herself to focus, reading every line, looking for the hidden hooks behind the tempting bait.
The room where she’d been tucked away to read and sign her release forms was small and featureless. The walls were glossy white, clearly repainted on a regular basis to keep imperfections from creeping in. The table matched them perfectly, and was bolted to the polished white tile floor at the center of the room. The bolt heads were exposed gunmetal gray, and somehow that little bit of variation made everything around her all the more clinically sterile and unnerving.
The staff files on the facility mentioned that several of the employees came from a theatrical background. A little digging on her part had revealed that they had, each of them, been involved with haunted house design. Several had won awards, placing among the top five percent in the world. And they’d given it all up to come here and rewire the brains of people desperate enough to submit to a half-tested, half-baked idea of therapeutic treatment.
Those bolts were exposed on purpose. They were meant to invoke unease. Esther glared at them, and refused to yield to the psychological design of the room. She was better than these people. She was smarter. She had done her research. They weren’t going to break her. They weren’t going to beat her. And they certainly weren’t going to fool her with something she could buy at the hardware store.
The paperwork was much more frightening. Essentially, she was agreeing to be injected with a complicated, proprietary cocktail of sedatives, hallucinogens, and memory-altering drugs, putting her into a suggestible state that would cause her to accept everything that happened once she entered the pod.
Like hell, she thought. She’d done her share of recreational drugs in college and grad school, and she had never once lost sight of what was real and what was fiction. Reality was a hard habit to quit sometimes, especially for someone who knew what lies could cost.
She would go in knowing who she was, and she would come out the same way, but prepared to tear down everything they’d built here if she had a single unanswered question. She owed it to her father. She owed it to herself. Anything else would be a failure, and Esther Hoffman did not fail. Had not failed since she was fifteen years old, when she’d been unable to save the man she’d loved best in all the world.
If she couldn’t save her father, she was going to save everyone else. It was redemption. It was obsession. It was the only thing she had.
There was a knock on the office door. Esther raised her head as the door swung open, revealing a placidly smiling Dr. Webb.
“I brought a few people who wanted to speak with you,” she said. “I’m sure you won’t mind.”
Esther was about to protest—was about to say this was not how these things were meant to be done, that reporting was a process, a series of carefully considered facts strung on a silver wire of narrative, until it could all make sense to the outside observer—when she saw the two women standing behind the doctor. She all but jumped to her feet, sending her chair skittering a few inches back along the tile floor with an unholy screeching noise.
Kim and Diana Nappe, standing patiently, hand in hand, smiled.
“Dr. Webb said you’d like to talk to us about our experience,” said Kim, and there was nothing of the hectoring older sister in her tone. She was protecting Diana, that much was clear in every angle of her body and in the way she put herself ever so slightly in the front—not to draw focus or reach for the limelight, but to keep any dangers from reaching Diana before she had a chance to stop them.
Esther wished, briefly, that she’d been able to interview the Nappes before they’d gone into their pods, rather than arriving with their first treatment almost finished. This could be another uncovered bolt, all smoke and mirrors, designed to throw her off the scent of the story. They could be lying.
As she looked into Kim Nappe’s eyes, she strongly suspected they weren’t.
“Yes,” said Esther. “My name is Esther Hoffman. I’m a reporter, working for Science Digest, doing an in-depth report on this lab and its techniques. This is the first time the press has been allowed full access, so I’m sure you’ll understand why I’m eager to speak with someone who’s been through the process. Are you willing to speak with me? On the record?”
“Dr. Webb saved our lives,” said Kim. There was absolute conviction in her tone, the conviction of the convert, of the saved, of the survivor who had believed themselves destined to play the victim. Esther blinked, taken aback, as Kim continued, “We’re happy to go on the record with you. If we could have done this years ago, we would have.”
“Well, no,” said Diana, with a warm smile for her sister. “We wouldn’t have. We needed to see how bad things could get before we were able to make the effort to help them get better. But I wish we could have done this years ago. I wish we had been strong enough.”
“I’ll leave you to it,” said Dr. Webb, and walked away, giving Esther through her absence the permission to ask the necessary questions. The ones the institute might not want answered.
“Please, have a seat,” said Esther, and motioned for the sisters to follow her to the table.
Diana cast a knowing glance at the release forms. “Are you planning to test the process for yourself?” she asked.
“It seems like a necessary part of fair and accurate reporting,” said Esther stiffly.
“It is,” said Kim. “But maybe lie about your phobias. I can’t imagine what would happen to someone who was afraid of spiders.” She and her sister giggled as if at some long-standing inside joke, leaning toward one another. They still hadn’t released one another’s hands.
Esther cleared her throat. “I understand that the two of you chose this procedure in an effort to repair your relationship. Can you tell me what led you here?”
“Oh, no,” said Diana. “This wasn’t an effort to repair our relationship. We didn’t have anything to repair. We barely spoke. We couldn’t stand to be in the same room for more than a few minutes. When we had to be in the same place, we sniped at each other constantly. We hated each other.”
“It was hell,” said Kim, matter-of-factly. “I wanted to love my sister. I barely even knew how to like her. Something had to change.”
“Why?” asked Esther.
The sisters looked at her with wide eyes, silent and pitying, f
or several seconds. Finally, Diana said, “Our parents are dead. Did Dr. Webb tell you that?”
“Yes,” said Esther. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
“I’m sure,” said Diana, stiff tone putting a lie into her words. “While our family medical history is none of your concern, we have certain genetic conditions which can dramatically reduce quality of life in later years. Our mother died of one of these conditions. As neither of us is married, it seemed sensible for us to have medical power of attorney over one another.”
“But no one gives a sister they hate that kind of power,” said Kim. “We’re both too smart for that.”
“Rewriting your entire personality seemed more intelligent?” asked Esther.
Diana scoffed. “I told you, Kimmie. I told you she didn’t really want to listen. Dr. Webb asked us to talk to you,” she added, shooting a glare at Esther. “She said you had some preconceptions we might be able to help you with. But you don’t want to be helped, do you? You want to sit there and judge us.”
“As you can clearly see, my sister is still herself,” said Kim, with a fondly long-suffering smile. She patted Diana’s hand, and Diana calmed.
A twitch at the corner of Diana’s right eye caught Esther’s attention. It was like the woman knew, deep down, that the situation was wrong. That she’d been manipulated, changed by forces outside her control. Was the real Diana, the one who would have slapped her sister before yielding for her, still in there?
It was possible this so-called “therapy” worked better for the willing. That would actually be a vote in its favor, strange as that might seem—something that couldn’t rewrite the reluctant was much less likely to be adopted by the government as a new form of brainwashing.
Esther took a breath, and smiled. Practice was on her side here: to anyone who didn’t know her, it would seem entirely sincere. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to give the impression that I wasn’t willing to listen. Please. Can you tell me why the decision to rebuild your relationship led you here?”