In the Future

     A man had killed his wife and her lover. He had done it in the classic style, right there in the matrimonial bed where he had discovered them enjoying their blood sport. The case was not adjudicated in the usual manner, for it was discovered that the man had complete belief in his innocence, indeed he was innocent, as he had used neurotech to excise not only all memory of the murder, but all memories of his wife involving her lover. He had curtailed the story, substituting a narrative which ended the day before he had discovered his wife had a lover (the day he had murdered them).  He had used a bootleg Chinese program. So he knew nothing of his wife's murder. Such innocence is a social problem. Forensic neurologists testified that they had discovered the tell-tale signs of erasure throughout the man's brain. At that point in history, such erasures were not yet done in a seamless manner, neurologically speaking. For those who specialized in such work, there would be traces they could search for and find. The technology used left its own little markers and such bootleg technology rarely came without some largely harmless spam serving the political agenda of the country which had manufactured it. You might see some political shifts in the individual as well. They might be a walking billboard defending that foreign country's interests. That part of the investigation sometimes yielded very funny stories. There was even a television program about that. It was a humorous show. You had to be careful with what you bought on the street and used on your brain. Murderer X had actually moved to a new city, started a new job, deliberately lost most of his friends and acquaintances. He didn't like the feelings they aroused in him, how they looked at him as a guilty man and attempted to make him feel like a guilty man. Because most of them knew he was guilty; the facts were pretty bald. He had established a new life and it wasn't a bad one. He had just distanced himself from his family and friends because he didn't like the cognitive dissonance that came with this set of people. In due course, he was found guilty and sentenced to have his memory restored. The false end of the narrative he had contrived was removed and the truth was re-ingrained. He would be tested for cognitive revisitations of the murder while in prison. If the process (call it guilt or self-punishment) showed signs of lessening over the years (and this often happened with inmates) his mind would be wiped, retooled, and the memories of his love for his wife would be "freshened" to bring a new and revitalized sense of loss much closer to the surface. If the murderer in question lacked guilt, there was a special process whereby it could be successfully simulated. So even sociopaths were no longer immune from corrosive regret. Also, the diminishing pain of the punitive sense of being imprisoned (after five years or so, the mind adjusts) would be "fixed," refreshed at the same time. In the future, one could not "get used" to prison. Prison did not allow this to happen. The way some might touch up the grey in their hair, the State could now touch up the pain in the conscience of its prisoners.. It was a great help and a great pleasure to those involved in doing the work of the fatherland, with the rare exception of those few nervous nellies who suffered pangs of conscience, who might still believe the rank doctrine of the autonomy of the human mind. But these were soon themselves corrected through the miracle of neurotech, if they wished to remain in their well-paying jobs. Most exercised this option and were fine literally overnight.



---after Foucault