BARBI, Ch. 01

CHAPTER 1: THE CHOICE

“This will really work?” Marty Howard asked suspiciously. He wanted it to be able to work, but it seemed … well, it seemed too perfect. He was a man with a lot of devious and manipulative ideas that were on the boundary of legal or moral. He never went over the line, however. Or, at least, he tried really hard not to go over those fine lines. Marty Howard was an attorney, a very successful attorney who made his fortune and reputation in representing and defending clients who needed such an approach and, most importantly, could afford him. It was a small office with him as the only real attorney and four or five top-of-their-class law students and interns who were paid very well (for students) and could learn what their professors would not teach.

“Yes, it will work,” the older scientist insisted, defending his pet project. “I’ve spent years on the development of this.”

“And,” Howard interrupted, “almost ended up in jail if I hadn’t discovered that legal loophole and your security camera hadn’t recorded the consent of your three trials.” Howard shook his head at the scientist, “And, how could someone so brilliant forget about having a security system in your private lab?” He then quickly waved his hand as if waving the very question away. “It lacks formal certification or recognition by the medical community even after it was exposed.”

“There is plenty of application. The quacks do more damage to patients with their antiquated psycho-therapy and numbing drugs.”

“Numbing drugs. Isn’t that what this does?” Howard questioned, trying to recall some of the specifics that came out of the medical inquiry and hushed legal trial. “Doesn’t this approach numb the brain, too?”

“Sure, it does, but it doesn’t numb the entire brain. That was always the point, that was always the goal.” They were sitting in the scientist’s living room. He lived in a small, very modest 1960s tuck-under style house buried in what was once the rising suburbia and was now the working-class neighborhood, showing the struggles of the residents. Research and making a living off his science were no longer an option. “All those people with mental afflictions and addictions who could be helped. No, oh no, rather than attacking a specific area of the brain like a surgeon, they insist on the barbaric but accepted practice of attacking the entire brain, numbing people rather than helping them.”

Marty Howard sat back on the old sofa across from the man, listening to the rant that was coming back to him, again. The man had stumbled onto something while doing funded and approved research into treating the brain. Where he had gone with his research was not funded or approved. It was deemed dangerous and too easily abused.

Howard held up his hand to stop yet more ranting. He did feel sorry for the man. Once a brilliant scientist with numerous successes to his name, he was now ostracized from legitimate research. He now lived off menial employment, and the settlement even Howard had been surprised he managed to pull from his former employer as part of a final settlement.

“What I want to know is if you can do it?” Howard had a very specific application in mind. He was again walking up to the boundary of security and looking out over the edge of an abyss of chance and risk. And, this time, it wasn’t for a client but for his own amusement and enjoyment.

“Yes, of course it will work,” the man protested in control. “You understand it is not certified by anyone, and I was never a therapist. This would be far outside of accepted treatment.” The man studied Howard across the old, dented wood coffee table. “I have enough of the vaccine I had hidden in my private lab, which they never discovered. The rest is simply implanting directions in the proper locations, much like rewriting code in updating a computer program.” The man was clearly uneasy, though.

“We’ve agreed on compensation that will allow you to relocate and begin something of a new life in your late years.” The man nodded back. It indeed makes a difference. “So, how exactly will this work?” Howard pushed.

“Quite simple, really. I’ll need the written consent, of course, before it begins. I’ll need about six weeks from start to finish. There are two parts of the brain I’ll have to attack and overwrite impressions. One is the part affecting addiction, which, after she has completed rehabilitation, will eliminate all such impulses.”

“Her addiction is to drugs. What about alcohol after? Does she have to stay away from all of that?”

The man shook his head, “No, you’re missing the point of how this works. It won’t be her choice, decision, or desire to avoid addictive substances. The impulse for addiction will be gone. Even if she used, she wouldn’t be addicted.”

Howard smiled. One down. He didn’t need an addict in the office. “And the other?”

This was the part the man was really nervous about. Treating someone, even outside of medical practice, was helping the person. This was different. “As I understand it, this woman would voluntarily consent to having her base personality modified. I don’t really need the details, I guess, but she must be in some trouble for you to barter with her.”

“You are correct. You don’t need to know the details of why she would consent to it, only that she would, in writing, witnessed, and notarized.”

“Right … okay.” He took a breath. “There is another part of the brain where taking risk or aversion to taking risk resides. It is where our depth of modesty or lack thereof would reside. Those impulses or tolerances or fears are partially implanted by parents and society, but could be driven by trauma or some specific event that pushes a change …”

Howard held up his hand to stop the man. The detail was giving him a headache. He didn’t need all that. The man took another deep breath. “It means I will have to overwrite everything to alter what she has always believed about herself and give her a new persona she’ll not question.” He shrugged his shoulders. “It might sound like a bigger problem, but it’s not. It’s the same thing, really.”

“But,” Howard pushed at the critical detail of it all, “it will be like a split personality?”

The man shook his head, “Not really, no. A split personality can go back and forth in personality presentation outward. No, this would be changing her base understanding of herself while leaving that part of her brain that functions in tasks and thinking, as you’ve detailed to me. You said she was a brilliant legal aid and researcher. She would remain that while … her personae would change, the way she would appear to others and to herself. I will have to be precise in application.”

Howard liked what he was hearing, but was confused. “It still sounds like split, like there are two personalities that have to be managed. Wouldn’t there need to be a command or trigger for her to switch from one to the other?” Howard hoped he was just misunderstanding. Managing change back and forth would be … less attractive.

“No, no, no … okay, think of it this way: Let’s oversimplify it and say she is shy. Okay, what about being shy keeps her from performing complex tasks and achieving stunning results? It isn’t being shy or not shy. It has to do with your brain’s ability, whether a true functional capability of the brain or education and training.”

“Right, but her public and personal identity will be dumb,” Howard stated, hoping the man hadn’t lost track of what he was expecting.

“Right, but only as she appears to others. And to herself, of course, but only as it appears by her reflection and not how her mind actually works. She’ll be dumb but will also be able to focus and perform. I admit, though, it won’t be one to the other instantly. Her brain will need to respond to the change in expectation. Think of it like an older brain walking into a room and forgetting why it was there until, ‘my glasses, right’, and then it is fully functional.”

“Six weeks, you said.” The man nodded. “In-person sessions … how many for how long? I’ll need to work that out with the rehab facility.”

“Three weeks for each separately. Three days each week for … say two hours. Injections and hypnosis.” They studied each other. The man broke first. Of course, he did. “Get me the written consent and her availability.

Howard smiled.

* * * *

“Who are you?” she asked the man sitting across the table in the prison visitor room after she was led in and sat down. She was wearing the standard prison garb, including the soft slippers everyone inside were issued.

“I’m an attorney,” the man said with a calm confidence that was somehow unnerving.

“I already have an attorney,” she retorted with the same false confidence prison required.

He smiled in a way that added to the unnerving feeling. “A public defender with no chance in hell of helping you.”

The woman sat back against the hard metal chair.