Page 33 of The Love Operation

Me: Are you stalking me now, Mr. Thompson?

Isaac: Five minutes. That’s all I’m asking for.

Me: Seems like you’re asking for a lot lately.

Isaac: Five minutes is a lot? What if I told you it was hospital business?

Me: Like when you came to my office for “back pain”?

Isaac: Everyone has back pain. I do have intermittent back pain.

Me: You’re a technicalities man, aren’t you?

Me: I can’t meet you. I promised my friend Delenn that I’d help her with a research project. It’ll go late. Another time. Because I’m not avoiding you.

I’m so avoiding you.

Isaac: The memory study? I actually wish I could be a part of that one. Another time then. Have a good night, Dr. Wren.

Me: Same to you, Mr. Thompson.

I shouldn’t be surprised that he knows about the study. He meant what he said. He’s involved. Though, I am surprised he gave up that easily. I lock my phone before I do something stupid—like let him have those five minutes.

Delenn asks a battery of questions:

“What exactly happened?”

“Were all memories equally vivid no matter how far you went back?”

“How far back did you go?”

“When did it start to fade?”

She reminds me that I promised not to visit anything else in my past. I gloss over this one, and then we dive deeper into my medical history, like where I am in my cycle—because hormones influence cognition—and what I ate in the past forty-eight hours.

She sighs. “I’m writing nutritionally deficient.”

“Rude.”

Next, she makes me recite the Chiari procedure again. It’s still effortless, but the immersion remains inaccessible.

She then turns on the diffuser to see if that alone will trigger more.

It doesn’t.

“Okay,” she says, switching it off. “We try again tomorrow. Let’s see how long this lasts.”

“But it hasn’t lasted. I can’t memory dive anymore.”

“But you can still remember the procedure,” she says. “That’s the study. Your recall was significantly improved from baseline and in a fraction of the time.”

I stare at her. “So we’re just going to forget about the other thing?”

“Of course not, but I’m responsible for you, and I don’t know what’s happening. You were unresponsive during our first run. That kind of reaction hasn’t shown up in anyone else.”

“I almost forgot.” I lean toward her, excited. “You had another round of subjects today.”

“Three more. And I retested the first subjects. Nothing like what you experienced happened. It’s early, but it’s clear: Memory is enhanced, even as time passes.”