FUTURES

NATURE|Vol 450|29 November 2007

Repeating the past

A lesson in family history.

Peter Watts

monsters, so easily kil ed! Immerse al your Not declarative ones, anyway. senses in the slaughter!

But procedural memory? That I can do.

What you did to your uncle’s grave was

You were tired of playing with cartoons, The right frontal lobe, the hippocampus, unforgivable.

and the new model wouldn’t be out for so basic fear and anxiety responses. The repYour mother blamed herself, as always. very long. You jumped at my third option. tile is easily awakened. And you didn’t need You didn’t know what you were doing, she You know, your mother’s working on somethe details. No need to remember my baby said. I could accept that when you traded thing like that. It’s medical, of course, but it sister face-down like a pile of sticks in the the shofar I gave you for that eMotiv headworks the same way. She might even have mud. No need for the colour of the sky that set, perhaps, or even when you befriended some sensory samplers loaded for testing day, as I stood frozen and fearful of some those young toughs with the shaved heads purposes. real monster’s notice should I go to her.

and the filthy mouths. I would never have

Maybe, if you promise not to tel , we could You didn’t need the actual lesson. forgiven the swastika on your game pod but

sneak you in …

The moral would do.

you are my daughter’s son, not mine. Maybe

Afterwards you sat up, confused, then CEY

it was only adolescent rebel ion. How could

disappointed, then resentful. “That was JA

you know, after all? How could any child

nothing! It didn’t even work!” I needed

really know, here in 2017? Genocide is

no machines to see into your head then.

far too monstrous a thing for history

Senile old fart, doesn’t know half as much

books and grainy old photographs

as he thinks. And as one day went by,

to convey. You were not there; you

and another, I began to fear you

could never understand.

were right.

We told ourselves you were

But then came the retching

a good boy at heart, that it

sounds from behind the bathroom

was ancient history to you,

door. Al those hours hidden away

abstract and unreal. Both of us

in your room, your game pod

doctors, familiar with the sad

abandoned in the living room.

stereo type of the self-loathing

And then your mother came to

Jew, we talked ourselves into

me, eyes brimming with worry:

treating you like some kind

never seen you like this, she said.

of victim. And then the police

Jumping at shadows. Not sleeping

brought you back from the cemat night. This morning she found etery and you looked at us with

you throwing clothes into your backthose dull, indifferent eyes, and I pack — they’re coming, they’re coming,

stopped making excuses. It wasn’t

we gotta run — and when she asked who

just your uncle’s grave. You were spitting

they were, you couldn’t tel her.

on six mil ion others, and you knew, and it

So here we are. You huddle in the cormeant nothing. ner, your eyes black begging holes that

Your mother cried for hours. Hadn’t

Retired, yes, but I never gave up my priv-can’t stop moving, that see horrors in every she shown you the old albums, the online ileges. Almost two decades since I closed shadow. Your fists bleed, nails gouging the archives, the family tree with so many my practice but I still spend time in your palms. I remember, when I was your age. branches hacked off mid-century? Hadn’t mother’s lab, lend a hand now and then. I cut myself to feel alive. Sometimes I still we both tried to tel you the stories? I tried I still marvel at her passion to know how do. It never really stops. to comfort her. An impossible task, I said, the mind works, how it keeps breaking. She Some day, your mother says, her

explaining Never Again to someone whose got that from me. I got it from Treblinka, machines wil exorcise my demons. Doesn’t only knowledge of murder is the score he when I was only half your age. I, too, grew she understand what a terrible mistake that racks up playing Zombie Hunter al day …

up driven to fix broken souls — but the would be? Doesn’t history, once forgotten, And that was when I knew what to do.

psychiatrist’s tools were such blunt things repeat? Didn’t even the worst president I waited. A week, two, long enough to back then. Scalpels to open flesh, words in history admit that memories belong to let you think I’d excused and forgiven as and drugs to open minds. Our techniques everyone?

I always have. But I knew your weak spot. had al the precision of a drunkard stompI say nothing to you. We know each Nothing happens fast enough for you. ing on the floor, trying to move glasses on other now, so much deeper than words. These miraculous toys of yours— elec-the bar with the vibrations of his boot. I have made you wise, grandson. I have

trodes that read the emotions, take orders

These machines your mother has, shown you the world. RES directly from the subconscious — they though! Transcranial superconductors, Now I will help you to live with it. ■

bore you now. You’ve seen the ads for deep-focus microwave emitters, Szpindel Peter Watts is a reformed marine biologist Improved Reality™: sensation planted resonators! Specific pathways targeted, and failed gel-jock who is nevertheless directly into the brain! Throw away the rewritten, erased completely! Their very adept at faking science, just so long as he TU goggles and earphones and the gloves, names sound like incantations!

can mix some characters and plot in

throw away the keys! Feel the breezes of

I cannot use them as she can. I know among the numbers. His latest novel was fantasy worlds against your skin, smel the only the basics. I can’t implant sights nominated for several prestigious awards, FU smoke of battle, taste the blood of your toy or sounds, can’t create actual memories. winning none of them. 2