"Twenty-two years ago my mother vanished. We had not spoken in two years prior, as I was undergoing graduate training and had little time or interest in maintaining a relationship. Her disappearance was brought to my attention by a peer at the university, when, upon striking up a casual conversation about family, he refused to acknowledge that my mother existed, or had even ever existed. He had known her for years. He and I were childhood playmates. My mother had arranged things. Either he was lying, or there was some other factor."
"I proceeded to
"The investigation began with interrogating those I knew to have had associations with my mother. I spoke with childhood neighbors, shopkeepers, fellow librarians, students, and birds. They all provided the same nervous answer: that they had never known this 'Mildred Index', that they were positive that she had never existed, and that it was both foolish and dangerous to be asking questions about people who never existed. No explanations were given as to how to reconcile the entirety of my existence with their narratives, and that is usually where the conversations
"I gave up. I was getting nowhere, and it was starting to become impossible.
1. Sometimes, people disappear.
2. And with them, all record of their existence.
3. People who discuss, acknowledge, or interrogate these facts tend to disappear as well.
Factums one and two were self-evident from my personal experience. However, I had spent some time years ago investigating my mother's disappearance. If it were true, why had I not also disappeared? Perhaps, did my giving up in lieu of my pursuit of my PhD shield me from this unseen force? Had my indifference saved me? Perhaps this was not the effect he described, but merely a mimicry of it perpetuated by a third actor."
"This was the catalyst to the development of what I would come to call: THE PROTOCOLS FOR THE INVESTIGATION OF MEMETICALLY DEFENDED CONSPIRACIES. It called for a two-pronged approach to the observation of the unobservable: one institutional and one psychosomatic, both formed in the interest of self-preservation under the duress of conspiratorial powers beyond the realm of traditional investigation.
The first of these, the institutional, was initiated with the formation of the The Waking Eye - a student-led cult devoted to the study of other cults within the city - a Stand Alone Complex of sorts. I personally printed the very first issue and subsequently trained the first batch of student editors to continue its influence after my speedy departure. The cult itself would come to mimic various conspiracies in the interest of its own defense: anonymity, a de-centralized power structure, and the undertaking a misinformation campaigns (particularly targeted at authority figures and student tattle-tales).
Physical issues of the Waking Eye would contain built-in defenses to ensure that a) counterfeit issues could be identified and disregarded, and b) information would be dispersed to those whom it was intended to reach, and no others. Issues contained self-destructing runes and mind-wipe spells upon random pages, which would disintegrate the material upon reveal in order to ensure that only those initiated with the cult (and having received the proper decryption key) would be able to read the text in full. Additionally, they were to be hidden in places only students would accidentally find: stuffed inside tomes of uncommon mathematics, placed in the cracks of classroom desks, or hidden behind unused lockers. Never the same place twice, never following observable patterns. The students were good at this. It has proven a resilient institution.
The second of these was a meditative technique I had developed that was derived from the martial arts school of the Illuminating Fist. Monks of a sufficient skill in this tradition would learn to master their immune systems and their minds in the defense of their autonomy. It is difficult to perform, required the utmost of physical and mental discipline. And yet, success in the technique is difficult to ascertain, as it involves the voluntary forgetfulness of particular chosen memories of the subject.
This technique cannot be described on paper. It is too
FALSE MEMORY GENERATION. TERMINAL MIGRAINES. HANGOVER-LIKE SYMPTOMS. COMA. STROKE. UNINTENDED AMNESIA. PERMANENT INTELLIGENCE LOSS. MULTIPLE SPLIT PERSONALITY DISORDER. SUICIDAL DEPRESSION. SCHIZOPHRENIC CHAKRA FILAMENTATION. TOTAL MEMORY COLLAPSE SYNDROME.
In addition, the subject may become vulnerable to possession and suggestion for a period of 24 Hours, and acquire anxiety and eating disorders."
Hints are those physical items which you leave on your person in the event of a memory wipe to subconsciously remind you of that which you chose to forgot for your own safety. They can be any object that you imagine: small notes, seemingly-inconsequential items such as tops or chess pieces, architecture, body positions, or time of day. It is key that these items do not elude to that which you intend to forget directly, as that would put you immediately at risk of memetic infection once again. Instead, they must provide a trail, or the beginning of an idea.
In the moments after the forgetfulness technique is used, one must be vigorous with physical or mental note-taking. What was the time of day? Where were you? What was on your person? Who is around you? Every detail could be a potential clue, and a single missed aspect could ruin years of revelations and investigations. As a Librarian and an aficionado of mystery novellas, this has come relatively easily to me, though the first few instances were wrought with disaster that wasted years of work. Again, rigorous mental discipline is required."
REPORT
"The conspiracy of the disappearance of my mother runs deeper than I could have imagined. Recently, I delved in the Library-Within-All-Libraries in search of the Sheol Computer - that which contains information on the lives and deaths of everyone in existence. The Library had recently become militarized, though the training of my mother had come through for me. I was able to slip through enemy lines undetected, and found the computer heavily guarded. I decided to wait and observe.
Fortuitous, then, that I came upon a group of foreign mercenaries. After feigning death upon a nearby dissection table, I kidnapped the smallest of them, a light gnome, for interrogation. To my surprise, they were actually looking for me, and not the library's secrets. I told them that answers would need to wait until my mission to access the Sheol Computer was complete, in hopes that I could coerce their cooperation. The gnome told me that she knew my mother. I was shocked. In over twenty five years nobody had ever mentioned my mother, and here came this foreigner, not only speaking openly about her, but actually having MET her. In person. I was suspicious, up until the point where she told me things about my mother that nobody else could possibly know. She even had a letter, a physical letter from my mother! A kind of time capsule from her to me. Suddenly, everything I had done until this point felt vindicated, and I broke down into tears. SHE WAS REAL. MY MOTHER WAS A REAL PERSON. SHE EXISTED.
Yet, my mission remained. With a diversion created by the foreigners I finally obtained access to the Sheol Computer. I typed in my mother's name: MILDRED INDEX.
-> MILDRED INDEX: DATA NOT FOUND
-> DEATH: DATA NOT FOUND
-> STATUS: PROVIDENCE
There was my answer in one word: Providence. Her very existence had been entirely erased, even the nature of her death, and that one word was all that was left of her. Providence.
We left the Library, easier getting out than in. Went to a Bar. For their own safety, I taught the gnome how forget as I do. She was a monk of the school of the Illuminating Fist, too. It's safer than leaving them with even the partial knowledge they've obtained. I told the rest to take some amnesiatic drugs.
I left myself the clues I would need, and then I forgot everything."
