A series of observations: I don’t know how long I’ve been here. It might only be a day or two, but it feels longer. There’s nothing but the dark-light cycle to judge how long time has passed. To clarify, that’s just when the lights are left on in the Think Tank and when they shut them off. All the artists assume that’s when we’re supposed to sleep. Next observation. I’ve only actually seen a few Heartless from this base. There was the woman who moved me from the detox shower to the brain drain room, that steel-jawboned man, the younger woman in purple scrubs, and— —a couple of lab assistants. Gosh, sorry, this thing is going on the fritz again. I haven’t seen any Heartless since coming into the Think Tank. It makes me wonder if— —there actually are that many Heartless at this base. I don’t have enough evidence to back that up, but just the way so many things seem to be auto— —mated. They transport prisoners in a shuttle, the day/night cycle in the Think Tank seems pretty automatic, and synthesized food product is delivered through a chute. There just hasn’t been contact with many people. Third observation… Oren is… really bad at sculpting. He’s trying! It’s about all he does. He’s just not good at it. The things he’s carving keep crumbling, or they’re so lumpy and vague I’m not sure what they’re meant to be. Which raises the question: If he’s been here for a few years, but hasn’t been able to sculpt any useful art, why do they keep him around? I wonder if something made him lose his touch? Maybe whatever they did to his head, taking memories, accidentally took away some of his skill to sculpt? But again, if that’s true, why do they keep him around? Are they hoping he’ll get better, or do they need something else from his head? Oops, hold on. - - - - - (Sorry, I’m trying to keep the existence of this recorder a secret, even from Oren.) (I figure the less information is in everyone’s heads, the better.) (Saroleen, the woman who’s been shuffled with memories of a Sarah, Olaris, and Eisleen, had a bit of a breakdown, and in all the confusion, I th— —ought it would be bet— —ter to— —put— —th— —is away— Oh, blast! —ng on! - - There, sorry. I’ll see if I can’t sneakily work on this thing. Maybe Oren has some tools I could use. - - - - Oh shoot, more developments! I didn’t even realize there were… or at least I didn’t think about… There are little microfiber indicators on these scrubs we’re all wearing, and a little light on mine just started blinking. And Oren’s. Right about the same time, a shuttle arrived and opened up. Oren said that means we have to get in. He looked scared. I’m stalling by saying I need to go to the bathroom, but I have to go back out now. - - - - - - - - Okay. I saw a flaw in their system. The staff here is very limited, and it does rely a lot on automation. I’m guessing they only have a skeleton crew to deal with security and maintenance, relying on the lack of navigability throughout this compound to control any breakout threats. You can’t have prisoners storming the halls if there aren’t any halls. All it would take is someone to get to a control panel and freeze all the shuttles. That means if they have to focus one something outside of the compound, they won’t be able to divert attention to things going on inside! So if anyone is listening… If… If anyone is coming, I think you need to cause a distraction. Maybe I could slip out somehow, and bring Oren! And if there’s any way to put the shuttle system on the fritz, that would also be great. What happened was this: Oren and I climbed into the shuttle, and it chugged along the tracks within the walls of this Heartless Compound. Oren barely said a word. Once, when the track seemed to hitch, he cracked, “Hey, maybe we’re lucky and this thing’ll get stuck.” But then it kept moving, and he fell silent again. When it ground to a stop and the door slid open, we were in another plain, medical-smelling room — like latex gloves and rubbing alcohol. One of those brain-sucking modified extractors sat in the middle of the room. Shiny steel carts beside it carried surgical tools and extractor maintenance tools, all jumbled together. The woman in the purple scrubs was there, hunching over a counter and writing furiously onto a yellow notepad. The way she was sitting, with her body twisted to the side and her legs tangled across each other on the stool, it made me think of a student working on their thesis in the library late at night. She just held up a finger for us to wait and kept writing. Oren gave me a confused shrug, so we climbed out and stood there to wait. While she was writing, a regular sliding door whispered open, and three more Heartless entered. Two of them were what I expected, with dull scrubs and the odd smattering of scars across their hands and arms. The other wasn’t. He carried himself differently, more like a businessman than a mad scientist. His dark hair was meticulously slicked back, and he wore a regular button-up shirt and trousers instead of scrubs. He was a little taller than average, square-shouldered, just on the verge of being thick-set. The part that bothered me was his expression. Something about it was vacant, but I couldn’t put my finger on what. He seemed aware, not like he was sleepwalking. He folded his hands to wait for the woman in the purple scrubs to finish, and he was attentive. But I still got the feeling that I was looking at a moving manikin instead of a full, real person. Beside me, I realized that Oren had gone stock-still, staring at the man with the slicked hair like someone who’s trying to remember a dream. I touched his arm and whispered, “Do you know him?” Oren shook his head slowly. The woman in the purple scrubs clicked her pen shut and pushed back the notepad, unwinding herself from the stool. “Get started with him.” She flicked a hand toward Oren. “I’ll join you in a bit.” The two Heartless in scrubs took Oren by the arms and led him into the next room, and as he went, I saw his hands shaking. The man with the slicked-back hair went with them. “What are you going to do with him?” I asked. “Checking.” The purple scrubs woman extended her hand for me to shake, smiling. “This is how they do it out there, isn’t it?” It took me a few seconds to work up the courage to shake her hand. She didn’t stab me, or try to crush my hand. She just shook it. “You can call me Ms. Robes,” she said. “I chose that name. Something to do with Robespierre and removing brains. What do you call yourself?” “Mary,” I whispered. She cupped a hand behind her ear. “What?” I cleared my throat. “Mary.” “Magdalene, mother of Jesus, Curie, Antionette? Or bloody?” I blinked. “What?” “Mary’s. Which Mary are you?” I struggled to find something to say. “You can decide later.” She flipped to a new page of the notepad and curled up around it, using the only stool in the room. “Have a seat.” I glanced over to the modified extractor. It was the only other thing that had a seat, but I did not want to come anywhere near it. “It’s just a chair until I turn it on,” Ms. Robes said. That didn’t make me feel better. I clenched and unclenched my fists a few times, and then I managed to take a few steps toward it, turn around, and sit right on the edge of the seat. It felt like the machine was hovering behind me, waiting for me to get too close so it could snap me up like a trap. Ms. Robes flicked her long, brown ponytail over her shoulder and slid open a cabinet drawer, settling a tablet on her hand. “What do you make of this?” She activated the holo display, and a floating diagram of a brain lit up in the air before her. She scooted the stool closer to me, its feet grinding across the cement floor. Patchwork patterns of neuron firing lit up across the brain, and I studied it for a moment. “That’s… a brain producing inspiration,” I said. “Probably seeing something emotional, judging by the… activity in the insular cortex and the amygdala.” “Good.” She switched to another diagram. “Now?” I watched it again. Neuron firing washed across the brain, but not nearly as much, especially not in the insular cortex. “It’s producing inspiration for something else. Something that didn’t affect them as much.” “Wrong.” She pulled up both diagrams side by side, and they spun between us. “That’s the same brain, reading the same thing. What’s the difference?” My mind raced. I hated being put on the spot like that. Give me a term paper anyday, just don’t ask me a question and expect me to figure out the answer while I’m being watched! I looked back and forth between them, trying to note the specific differences in the neuron firing patterns. “There’s less overall activity in the second one, but especially not in the amygdala and insular cortex. That means they’re not experiencing as much emotion about what they’re seeing the second time.” “And?” she said. “And… that might be because the emotional effect relies on surprise. A twist ending that you can see coming when you read it again.” “No. Try again.” I squeezed my knees. Think, think, think, what else could cause this? I kept studying the brains, and finally I noticed another difference. “There’s less activity in the hippocampus in the second one,” I said. “Which means the first one may have connected significantly to the subject’s memory, but the second time it didn’t. Did they forget…” Ms. Robes eyebrows drifted upward, as if she’d made a connection. I made the same connection a few seconds later. “Did you remove memories from the second one?” I asked. She clicked her pen and scribbled down notes. “That makes sense. The artwork may have resembled a place or person from the subject’s past, but imprecise extraction causing memory loss eliminated the artwork’s connection to the subject, causing it to have a diminished effect. It stands to reason that the reverse would be true.” “The reverse?” “Isolating those memories and transplanting them will result in a first-time effect every time this artwork is viewed.” “But… but memories aren’t that stable! How can you take them out and switch them around without damaging them?” She looked up at me like I was stupid. “They do get altered in the process. It’s a natural effect.” What had happened to Oren’s memories? Had they been stitched into and ripped out of peoples’ heads over and over? Even if we somehow got them back, how would he know if they were his real memories? Her wrist indicator bleeped, and she tilted her wrist to check the message, sighing. “Incompetence. Don’t move.” Sliding the tablet back into the drawer, she passed through the sliding doors into the neighboring room, where they’d taken Oren. I immediately hopped up and took out the tablet. The screen still held her slightly greasy fingerprints, some of which I thought might be the passcode. She hadn’t touched the screen very much after unlocking it a minute ago. It took a couple tries, but I got it open. I didn’t have the guts to look at very much, since she could walk back in the room any second, but I was able to pull up the active staff roster and their assignment locations. This place is built like a power plant, with only a few places where personnel are supposed to go. As far as I can tell, there are a lot of labs, storage, and some security posts, but not much else. In the middle is a big knot of automated chambers, which I think are the Think Tanks. I put the tablet away quickly, but surely that’s enough information for someone to do something! Ms. Robes, or whoever she is, hasn’t come back yet, and I’m starting to wonder if something is going wrong over there with Oren.