When the Devil Dances

“Look,” Richards said with a sigh, leaning back in her chair and taking off her glasses to rub her eyes. “None of us are experts at this. I was a damned family counselor before they sent me down here. We have one, repeat, one clinical psych researcher, and he was an expert on sleep disorders. We’re all out of our depth on this… phenomenon. But… yes, we have come to the conclusion that there is more than one… person, not just personality, person, living in Elgars’ head. And that the primary personality might not be, probably is not, Anne Elgars.”

“Why not Elgars?” Mosovich asked, thinking that Mansfield was really gonna owe him big time.

“Memories mostly,” Richards said, putting her glasses back on and scrabbling through her notes. “Anne Elgars has memories that she really shouldn’t have.” The doctor finally seemed to find the notes she was looking for and frowned. “Ever seen the movie Top Gun?” she asked.

“Yeah,” Mosovich admitted. “A few times.”

“You’re a rejuv though, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Did you see it when it first came out?” Richards asked.

“I think so,” Mosovich said with a shrug. “Probably. That was, what? ’82? ’84? I think I was at Bad Tölz then. If I saw it, I saw it on post.”

“The movie came out in 1986,” Richards said, glancing at her notes. “Elgars has distinct memories of seeing it for the first time in a movie theater then going over to a friend’s house, driving herself to a friend’s house to, as she put it, ‘jump his bones.’ ”

“So?” Muller asked.

“Anne Elgars was two years old in 1986,” Richards said, looking up and taking off her glasses again. “Even the most open-minded of parent is going to question her two-year-old driving. At the least. And she has another memory of watching it for the first time on TV in a living room.”

“Oh,” Mueller said. “What about… what’s it called… ‘implanted memory syndrome’?”

“Up, got me there,” Mosovich said. “Whassat?”

“We considered classical implanted memory,” Richards said, leaning back again. “Implanted memory used to be called ‘regression analysis.’ It turned out that the process for regression analysis implants a memory that is absolutely true to the person with the memory. I could run you through a little scenario right now and you’d end up with a memory of having been a giraffe. Or a woman. Or that you were sexually abused as a child. Guaranteed. And none of them would be real.

“It caused huge problems for a while with child molestation cases; I was still dealing with the repercussions when I got moved down here. Still am for that matter. Women that have a distinct memory of having been molested by a parent or a family friend and it’s very unlikely that it ever happened. The only way to get them to even consider that the memory is false is to go through the same process with one that is clearly impossible. And then they end up with this really impossible memory. Which has its own problems.”

She shrugged and put her glasses back on. “What can I say? I’ve dealt with dozens of implanted memories in my time. This one doesn’t show any of the classic signs. She recalls small details that are not germane to the memory. That’s one sign of a ‘true’ memory versus implanted. Then there’s the EEG.” She picked up the alpha rhythm sheet and pointed to the transition. “We think that weird transition is where she is hunting for the right… call it ‘soul’… to manage the action. It only happens the first time she engages a skill, so new examples are getting harder and harder to find. But it’s consistent. And she goes alpha when she shouldn’t. When she’s writing, for example. That’s not a normal alpha moment, except when typing.”

“So what’s going on here?” Mosovich asked in exasperation.

“Like I said, we’re not experts,” Richards answered. “We can only speculate. You want our speculation?”

“Yes,” Mueller said. “Please.”

“Okay,” Richards said, taking off the glasses and setting them on the table. “Anne Elgars sustained a massive head wound in the battle of Washington. The damage was extensive and large portions of her brain showed no normal function. She was in a coma, effectively a permanent one, for nearly five years.

“The Tch… Tchfe…” she paused.

“We usually just say Crabs, doc,” Mosovich said. “Although the best pronouncement a human can get along with is Tch-fet.” He smiled. “I’m one of the few people I know who has ever had to try to speak Crab. And even I don’t try when I don’t have to.”

“Very well, the… the Crabs approached the therapy team, us that is, with an offer to try to heal her. They noted that she might die in the process, but that if it worked it would permit various others who had sustained damage to be recovered as well.

“We had… authorization to do whatever we liked, except cut off her lifeline, so we acquiesced. She disappeared with the… Crabs and reappeared… as she is. In less than a week, with significant muscular improvement. ‘Miraculous’ was the most minor word we used.”