The New James Bond (ON HOLD)

Chapter 2: A New Arrival

I awoke slowly, dazed, wondering if this was what waking up with a hangover felt like. The intense grogginess could have really convinced me that it was.

Confusion filled my mind as I opened my eyes and absorbed my surroundings. Understanding followed.

I was in my dorm room, with my roommate contently snoring in his own bed.

Goddammit, I can’t believe I had that dream again, I thought, forcing myself out of bed.

Remembering dreams was a rare thing for me. So for me to remember this dream from before last semester….it was weird. I didn’t tell anyone about it. Didn’t think I needed to. I started to wonder whether I should…

Hopefully, a walk around campus would help clear my mind before class. My watch told me that it was only 8 AM. With my first class being at 10 AM, I thought I had plenty of time.

The good thing about FDU Metro was that there was plenty of space for a walk.

I planned on walking to the library and back. When I stepped outside, however, I felt the back of my head sting when a breezed blew by.

Damn, did I hit my head on the wall without noticing it?, I thought.

It brought my attention back to that dream. I hit my head back in that vault…

Just a dream, I thought. I’m letting this freak me out way more than I need it to.

As I walked, I thought.

The dream was pretty fascinating, by all accounts. I couldn’t deny that I thought it would be pretty awesome to be some kind of super secret agent.

And the name I had in that dream….Agent 007 the Second. It was a mouthful, but it had a nice ring to it.

I could make a movie outta that, I thought, laughing to myself.

Thinking of different ways to make a good story out of the dream, I remembered.

Crap. I gotta find an article for that psych paper, I thought.

I was already on my way to the library, so it didn’t take long to walk inside and find a free computer.

Ok…an article about something we covered in class. What would I look for?, I thought.

The first thing that popped into my head was memory. I had a bad habit of forgetting small things, like where I left my room key. Maybe there’s an article about how that works, and how I might be able to deal with it.

“Memory loss” would be a good term to start with. A search, refined to fit the requirements of the assignment, didn’t turn up anything interesting.

After scrolling to the fifth page, I saw a link titled, “Hacking the Human Computer: How memory storage can be copied, moved, and deleted”.

Well this looks like something worth writing about, I thought.

Every article included an abstract, to give whoever happened to be reading it the basics of what the study conducted was about. The abstract for this one read:

“Scientists across various fields, including neurologists and psychologists, have been studying the various factors that contribute to the great process known as memory. How the human brain retains and recalls information is analogous to computers. Developments in neurotechonolgy have the potential to bring the analogy to life. One top concern regards the ethics of computerizing human memories. Can memory be altered, copied, or even completely deleted, as if it were never there?”