Memory Alteration

Once it was clear that he was going to get better, I started poking around inside his mind.

His power was insidious; he could create memories, although the less likely they were, the more likely the target would be to resist them. If I was to create a memory of him encountering a blue unicorn, that was likely to be examined. The farther back the memory was, the harder it would be, because I'd have to change other memories. If he'd seen a blue unicorn, it was the kind of thing he'd have expected himself to think about a lot. He might have had conversations with people, worried that he was going crazy, or tried to make excuses for it. If those memories were missing, then he might wonder why he'd taken a blue unicorn so cavalierly.

The memory I was implanting in him was stumbling in the dark, hitting his head and falling down in the hallway outside the file room. I erased the memory of his having detected my thoughts, and replaced it with a memory of checking in on the prisoners.

The funny thing was that if he had seen what I was trying to do, he'd have volunteered.

***

Nightmares