Memory & Identity

Prompt: A researcher working alone in a remote lab makes a ground breaking discovery that oculd change the course of science forever. However, as they delve deeper into their experiments they begin to experience terrifying hallucinations and strange occurrences. Write about their descent into madness as they uncover the horrifying truth behind their discovery.

Entry: Dr. X had been working on studying trauma and the brain her whole professional career. She wanted to understand how personality and identity development are shaped by traumatic experiences, but this was still a fairly new field of study. How do you look at objective cause and effect for any single person’s life and then generalize that across groups of people? She felt the first place to start would be looking at memories, and finding a way to record a client’s visualization of memory to analyze at a later time. This led to the creation of her greatest achievement, and her ultimate demise.

She was able to use advancing virtual reality technology and new break throughs in hallucinogenic medical therapies to create an experience where clients can access previously subconscious parts of their memory and change the contents. This was intended to be a therapeutic intervention, only to be used by trained professionals, but in her hubris she dove too deep into her experiments and lost her grip on reality. As the story progresses, her narrative shifts from a combination of journal entries and VR accounts to JUST VR accounts, and it is unclear which are authentic memories, which are tampered with, and which are fully fictionalized. Maybe towards the end of the story there will start to be news articles mixed with the VR accounts and these will reflect a series of deranged crimes that mimic the events of Dr. X’s memory dives. And the story should end with her death (suicide maybe?) and the widespread commercial use of her invention lol. Fucking DARK.

• Some initial memories and journal entries to start the story:

  • Journal entry about her staying at work late to try to figure out how to access and record memories

  • Journal entry of when she makes her breakthrough

  • Virtual reality scene of a light memory - an early childhood birthday party maybe

  • Journal entry of her thoughts on how to use this technique and describing other early memories

  • Journal entry detailing when she realizes she can change memories and discovering the discrepancies in her notes and thoughts

    • Like time travel changing the future, but nothing has actually changed in the past. Only in her memory

  • Virtual reality scene of her intentionally changing a memory but something light. Maybe a time she went on a rollercoaster and hated it - change it to her loving it? And she notices more risk taking behavior in her daily life?

  • Journal entry about her reflecting on her intentionally changing her personality by changing her memories. Her brainstorming what she wants to change and how this could be used by others. Maybe some awareness of the dangers but she’s too excited to be cautious.

  • Virtual reality scene of a more serious memory - the death of a pet in a house fire after she was playing with matches as a kid (Pierre).

  • Virtual reality scene of the end of a friendship that she was responsible for ruining - taking her accountability out of the memory.

  • Virtual reality scene of a date rape at a party when she was a freshman in college. Changing the memory so she isn’t a victim, giving herself agency and choice in what happened that night.

  • Journal entry of her looking through past notes and being confused by the memories she no longer has / trying to make sense of the parts of her personality that have changed as a result.

  • Virtual reality scene of a BIG trauma. Father’s suicide? Changing the memory so he died by illness.

  • Journal entry of her realizing she fucked up and her personality has changed beyond what she is comfortable with. She has to go back to fix things, but she has no memory of the real traumas in her past, so she has to invent them according to what she understands from her notes. As a result, the traumas she creates for her memories are much worse than the reality of what she lived through.

    • Virtual reality scene of her intentionally starting the fire that killed Pierre

      • News article of a series of fires in her city

    • Virtual reality scene of a stranger raping her in a violent incident during college

      • News article of sexual crimes and murders

    • Virtual reality scene of her murdering her father

      • News article of her suicide

  • Story ends with a news article advertising the sale of an exciting new invention that allows one to change their memories through virtual reality exploration.