“Thanks for the meal, guys,” I thanked the two doctors, taking the last bite of my second oatburger and realizing that they had yet to finish their first.
“I’m sure you’re starving after all that,” Colgate said, taking a bite of her own oatburger and swallowing it before continuing on. “You’ve been under in there for a few days.”
“We gave you enough nutrients to survive,” Dr. Whooves added in, popping a chip into his mouth and swallowing it in one crunch. “Although, I’m sure this isn’t much of an improvement.” He waved his hoof around the cafeteria they had all gone to after I got to talk with Bon Bon for a bit.
“Oh stop it,” Colgate said, giving Whooves a frown, “The Lab Cafeteria has great food.”
“Obviously you don’t understand how amazing fried food tastes,” Dr. Whooves playfully replied, taking another chip from his bag and tossing it into the air, catching it in his mouth before it hit the ground.
Dr. Colgate rolled her eyes before turning to Bon Bon and me. “So do you remember Bon Bon here?” she worriedly said.
“Of course!” I said, giving Bon Bon a small one-legged hug before taking a sip of my hayshake. “Bon Bon’s my best marefriend. I don’t think even a mind wipe would change that.” I gave a smile to the candy maker as she opened her mouth to speak.
“So, what are you guys going to try to do to get her memories back?” Bon Bon asked, her hooves sitting on the table and her bag of chips remaining exactly in the spot where Dr. Whooves had set them.
“We have a process for this actually, having had many problems with individual memory corruption,” Dr Colgate started. “When a subject loses a memory or memories, we have a manual override system in place so that we can go in and try to restore the memory ourselves. We literally step into the memory and let it play out, changing what we find wrong.”
“The thing that’s special about you though,” Dr. Whooves continued on, cutting off Colgate and popping another chip into his mouth, finishing the bag and throwing it lazily towards the garbage can missing by a mile, “is that none of your memories are corrupt, as of yet. Everything we have saved on MeRMIE is clean, but when we restore your memories, the virus has a chance to jump into it and change it around. The only one who’ll know the right from wrong is you and your hidden memories. That’s why we’d need to take you along on a relatively dangerous mission.”
He sat back letting the ideas sink in. “We need you to relive your memories and tell us what to change,” Colgate finished off.
“That doesn’t sound too bad,” I said, sucking down the last few drops of my hayshake and walking over to throw it and the bag Dr. Whooves threw earlier away. “When can we get started?”
“Immediately!” Dr. Whooves said, before turning to Bon Bon “Are you going to eat those?” Bon Bon rolled her eyes before pushing the bag to Whooves, who immediately tore into it, crunching away happily.
“But,” Colgate cut in before I could say anything, “there’s a possibility that you could die during the procedure.” I gasped and was about to ask how when Colgate answered that for me. “We have to send you essentially into your own mind, and if the virus corrupts the wrong thing, your brain could stop regulating vital functions.”
I sat for a second, only the crunching of Dr Whooves breaking the silence in the room. “If I don’t do this I won’t regain my memories?”
“We had hoped that seeing your friend would snap you back to normal,” Colgate said, crossing her hooves on the table in front of her, a somber expression on her face. “Obviously that has failed. At this point, I would say that your memories are probably not going to organically return. Either we reset them manually, or you live without them for the rest of your life.”
“Are you sure that I won’t get them back?”
“Lyra,” she said, glancing away “Not only will you not have any memories at all, but you might have your mind wiped by the virus every night. When you go to sleep tonight, if we don’t check what the virus is doing, it may infect and destroy your ‘backup’ stored in your brain. It might even eradicate vital bodily functions controlled by the brain.” She paused a moment, raising her hooves up to cover her mouth. “There’s a possibility of you dying in your sleep tonight if we leave the virus unchecked, so even if we didn’t do the procedure, you may be hospitalized for quite some time.”
“Then let’s get them back,” I said, getting up from the table, Bon Bon following me. “I’d rather die than never get to remember any of my past. I don’t want to have to relearn everything every day. I don’t care how dangerous it is.”
“Now there’s the spirit!” Dr Whooves gave a cheer, holding his chip bag up. Dumping the rest in his mouth he threw the bag lazily at the trashcan, missing once again. “No risk,” he managed to get out through a mouthful of crunchy potato chips which he swallowed, “No reward! Digital lobotomy here we go!”
“What?!” Bon Bon shouted as Colgate pressed her hoof against her head.
“Whooves, I thought we agreed not to refer to that procedure as a lobotomy?” Colgate said, shooting daggers into his eyes.
“Well, that’s what it is,” the doctor shrugged, walking out the double doors and back to the original room I had woken up in down the hall
“On a molecular level!” she complained, getting up from the table and following Whooves back. “Lobotomy paints the wrong light!”
Dr Whooves mocked Colgate with a wave of his hoof before opening the door to the lab. “There’s nothing to worry about, Bon Bon,” Dr. Whooves reassured the worried mare. “Your friend will be entirely safe with us, granted nothing completely goes wrong.”
“David!” Colgate screamed at Whooves.
“Which it won’t,” Whooves quickly added in, raising his hoof to assert his point, “Geeze, Colgate, lighten up.”
Colgate mumbled under her breath as she walked over to the machine and messed around with some dials, typing frantically with her magic on the keyboard that was attached to the main screen. “Okay,” she said, an image popping up on the screen. It looked to be some sort of timeline with years numbering from zero to twenty-three. Turning back to the three of us she began again, “This is an overall look of what the computer database has on your memories from birth until now. We think that the infection occurred during the initial copy of your memories, meaning that sometime in the memories from the early years is where the virus is initially located.”
“We’re not sure of this, though,” Dr Whooves added in, shrugging a bit. “The best course of action would be to load up the memories in chronological order and see where everything starts to go astray. Sound like a plan?”
“Sure,” I confidently said. “These memories won’t be too…” I paused, a thought crossing my mind, “intimate, will they?” I rubbed my front left hoof with the right one, blushing a bit.
“You already told us which areas to avoid when you signed all the paperwork, so you should be alright, dear,” Colgate assured me.
“Otherwise, it’s nothing we haven’t seen before!” Dr Whooves perked up, typing out a few things into the computer to make it zoom into the more recent years as he got an angry glare from his superior. “Besides, we don’t have literally every memory stored on here. We only compile major events, and from those your brain can make connections to earlier things. It’s like putting a puzzle together really.”
“Alright,” I said, sighing. “So how do you intend to follow me along on this trip inside my own mind?”
“With these beauties!” Dr Whooves unhooked two helmets that I had thought been part of the control panel. “MeRMIE PORTS, Personal Overly Refined Transfer System!”
“Oh Celestia he’s named that too,” Colgate mumbled to me and Bon Bon before speaking up. “Yes, those helmets will allow us access to the interface of your subconscious, where you were before we woke you up. Essentially we’ll exist as projections and be able to freely talk with you during the process.”
“Will they hurt me? How do they work?” I asked, nervous not only for my own well being but theirs as well.
“With science!” Dr Whooves blurted out.
“With magic,” Dr Colgate said almost immediately afterwards.
“With scientific magic!”
“We’re not entirely at liberty to give out details, Lyra,” Colgate finished as Whooves turned back to mess with the computer some more. “But rest assured, they’re completely safe. I’ve used them myself many times. Now are you ready to get started? Every moment we wait, the virus will work its way through your mind.”
I nodded as Colgate turned to Bon Bon. “Unfortunately, because of legal reasons and technical issues, we can’t take you along. You can come back in a few hours to see if we’ve made any progress, but… I have to ask you to leave.”
Bon Bon looked over at me and gave me a quick hug before turning back to Colgate. “You keep her safe in there,” she sternly said with a bit of a tear in her eye. “I don’t want to lose my best friend,”
“We’ll do as much as we can,” Colgate told Bon Bon before escorting her out of the room. The machinery around me started to whirr and clink as Dr. Whooves kept typing into the computer what seemed like gibberish to me.
“What are you doing?” I asked, trying to make sense of what he was typing in. The random words and phrases accompanied by the results the screen spat back out overwhelmed me a bit.
“I’m preparing the system to do a cranial transfer,” he replied, typing away furiously. Looking back, he saw my confused face as the lines flew past. “It’s a lot of commands that just get the pod set up and the helmets working. Sorry if I offended you with any comments earlier. I just try to keep everyone’s spirits up.”
“It’s alright,” I said, giving him a small smile. “I’d hate to be the bearer of bad news too. So what exactly do you need me to do?”
“Well, it’s pretty simple actually. You’re going to need to get back in that pod and we’ll hook you up to the computer, here.” He paused a moment, looking away for a moment. “It feels so weird explaining this to you again. Anyway, you actually don’t have to do too much. Just get in the pod and put on the breathing mask. We let the chemicals and Colgate’s magic knock you out before we start the transfer. We can actually start now. Colgate won’t be too long.”
“Alright,” I said, trotting over to the metallic pod and placing my front hooves over the edge. Giving a swift push I lept over the side of the pod and swung my legs inside. I sat down as Dr. Whooves walked over next to me. He reached over me and grabbed a mask from the other side of the pod and gave me a nod before affixing it on my face. I felt a small movement of air from the tube, and fresh cool air seeped into my nose and lungs.
“Colgate!” I heard him say when he stepped away. “Lyra’s in the chamber, and we’re just about to start ‘er up.”
“Good,” Colgate replied before reappearing from the side. “I’m going to start up the sleeping spell and turn on the machine,” she continued, flipping a switch on the side causing the whole pod to vibrate, the warm current blowing on my head once more. A magical energy seemed to accompany the warm air. Lyra felt relaxed as the juxtaposed cool air she was breathing mixed with the warm current gliding through her mane. She closed her eyes, imagining she was lying on a hill under the summer sun, watching the sunset.
“Lyra,” I heard Colgate’s voice calmly say beside me. “I’m going to start the spell.” Suddenly, I could distinctly smelled the scent of fresh daisies enter my nose. Opening my eyes, I saw Colgate standing over me, reaching a hoof into the pod to rest on mine. “Do me a favor and count backwards from five in your head for me.”
Giving a squeeze with my hoof, I gave the doctor a smile, not sure if she could see it under the breathing mask on my face. Closing my eyes, I started to count. “Five,” I whispered to myself as I felt Colgate lift her hoof back up. The air around me seemed to get heavier, my body completely being pushed down into the soft metallic surface of the pod. My limbs felt limp, and I assumed that the spell was starting to take hold of me.
“Four,” I said, my mind reeling and spinning above me, my consciousness starting to seriously fade. The drugs and magic were hitting my system hard and I could feel the edges of my vision start to darken.
“Three,” I accidentally mumbled the world in front of me sloshing around as if the entire building was on a boat. I blinked once trying to stabilize my vision, but the motion only seemed to disorient everything further. I didn’t feel nauseous like I thought I would, but I could barely understand what was going on.
“Two,” my mind consciously said as the blackness enveloped my vision anI finally shut my eyes. “One,” I said as I finally lost my grip on consciousness. I was falling.