The image stayed with him off the train and past the tourists, students, homeless and was forgotten as he tapped his identification card at the library turnstile. Sanna was at the desk. ―Hi, sorry…
―There’s a seminar meeting at the lower level classroom number fourteen that, well, requires someone to set up the smart board.
―Should I…
―I think it’s already in progress.
Down the stairs, the door was open, ―And so I intend to measure the selectivity of memories based on a series of, um, surveys of…
―Excuse me, I’m sorry, you needed someone to, uh, help with the smart board? ―Yes, that will be fine. I don’t think Lauren absolutely requires one for this proposal, is that accurate, Ms. Obst?
―I mean, I prepared some visual thing… But it’s fine I can just…
―Just fix it up at your leisure.
―Sure. I’ll be, excuse me, I just need to get over…
―Should I, like, keep going?
―Yes, go on.
―Okay, well I’m planning to measure the selectivity of memory by means of surveys of essentially, like, self-classification among volunteers aged eighteen to thirty-five. To see how, well, or what certain demographics and professions or focus groups neurologically are connected to, um, choosing to remember.
A hand raised, ―But isn’t that more social psych based anyway like how…
―Like the notion of someone quote deciding end-quote what to remember based on preconditions of narcissism or…
―I don’t really think narcissism is a measurable variable though really so…
―Oh, you don’t think that? What, then, was the entire point of the semester spent on personality and…
―Just excuse me there, I need to get behind you please just for a…
―No, but what do you mean about preconditions affecting the predecision on how some person is going to remember something as an example of social…
―He’s just trying to say that measurable influences are not really neurologically based in a way that supports a…
―I mean, what exactly is the quote thesis, or I mean, even hypothesis of the quote thesis end…
―It’s a measure of personality through basic knowledge of neuroscientific factors…
―Well, not, um, exact…
―I mean, I see how it could work, like as a kind of lighter take on an approach to…
―Or rather because we are measuring this more through a method of cognition, I wonder, how do you think it is applicable based on what we know of hippocampal memory form…
―Actually, though, that’s a point that I was just going to get to that…
―I just don’t understand what you mean about selectivity, as in how do you know what someone is going to, like, select when…
―It appears to be, like, hold on…
―Because there is a simple commensurate solution to how I think I can…
―I think I know what you’re going…
―She’s going to say she wants to use an MRI, I think…
―I mean just, hold on, it should be working fine if you want to hook up a laptop or something to…
―But then how are you going to be sure about other factors outside of the fact like that the MRI is so loud could be having an effect on how the person might be hearing and stuff like…
―A simple control variable of repetition inside and out could pretty much account for anything too…
―Keep in mind, because, as it is as a kind of quote lighter…
―Hold on, I, Jesus Christ will you all just, just let her, like, speak for a fucking second. The room was silent. ―She’s, like, she knows what she wants to say more than… I don’t know. I mean she knows what she is more you know what she is trying to, like, do.
―Very well, then, Lauren, er, Ms. Obst, why don’t you…
―I mean you’re all acting like motherfuckers. The, the smart board works, it took, like, two seconds, like she could maybe show her visual or I don’t know.
―Is that what you want, Lauren? Would you like to show your visual?
―I, it doesn’t really matter.
―Well then feel free to carry on. Looking to Alex, ―Thank you for fixing the smart board.
―It wasn’t even broken.
―Thank you.
She looked at him, then to the pile of papers before her.
―I was just trying to…
―Thank you. She heard his footsteps fade and her name, ―Lauren. Please, why don’t you carry on.
―Well I was trying to get to the point about how we instill memories, and how it would be fairly easy to record, like, what is lighting up and where, and how that’s related to, like, certain phenotypal categories of, like, she could feel herself drifting away from the comprehension of her own language. Her own point, shaken by the um of the crowd, seemed to evaporate in a space a few feet behind her own receptive field. ―Like, she repeated, and flipped through the notebook opened before her.
―I think I know what she means, like how…
―Why don’t you let her talk then…
―Why…
―Whoa, wait a second, wait, then aren’t you by interrupting me continuing the system of interrupting her so in that case creating an entirely moot…
―Don’t we let Ms. Obst try to carry on with her, er, her words on this matter.
―I’m sorry, it’s just I have this, like, there’s the problem, I get it, with classification but that we have the access to certain, like, observational pathways to deduce how these memories might be pulled and then, like, using a survey to go along with it, but there is this thing I read about how certain things might like replace the reality. Like almost like roots spreading, or how a garden could like grow from a seed is how the theory was trying to describe it, like as a center of selectivity of the singular item that gets remembered and the false memories, or forgotten elements that are replaced, replacing it. I, flipping through the papers now radiating from the center of her section of workspace around the rectangular table, sliding across one another, disassembling a sense of hierarchy in favor of unbridled commonality ―seem to have possibly misplace, I mean, I’m sorry you guys, um professor, I mean Dr., um, Gri, Stri...
―Doctor will do just fine for now, Lauren, why don’t we just come back to you next week. Keep up the good work. And, to another student across the table, ―why don’t you give us a feel for your research aspirations, Wilson.
―Gladly, shuffling his chair a bit. ―As you all know, there is a quote accepted understanding end-quote in that certain psychoactive drugs are responsible for long term losses of function in parts of the memory-oriented cortex, affecting, many times, motor function of those habitually involved individuals. However, I’m interested in how reintroduction of similarly chemically constructed psychoactive drugs in persons who have not been exposed to such influences in five or more years may potentially be utilized in order to restore those quote muscle-memory functions through a series of sessions focusing all brain attention on those issues, thereby experimentally restoring pathways that may have been compromised through the shortcut of, raising his index and middle fingers in exaggerated, twice-pulsing curls, ―tripping…