Page 8 of Her Final Hours
“And you will but we just need to deal with that leg of yours.”
“There’s nothing wrong with it.”
A nurse tried to convince an Alzheimer’s-stricken elderly lady in a nightgown to head back to her room. It pained him to see people growing old and losing their memory. He could only imagine what it would be like as his father slid into the void.
“Have you heard a word of what I just said?” Savannah asked, slowing her pace.
Distracted by the sweet old lady, he looked back at his supervisor. “Uh-huh. Found wandering in Westport. The girl doesn’t know who she is or where she came from or what happened.”
“Right. Now we assume she’s been drugged. We’re just waiting on the toxicology screening. No ID on her. We ran her through CODIS — nothing, we’ve taken her fingerprints and checked multiple places but it came up empty. Child services has no record. We’re going to check with dentists and get a photograph of her out there. Hopefully, social media might be able to help. She was partially clothed. A lot of bruising, mostly from restraints. Somehow, she must have managed to get them off her ankles. Oh, and there was fresh blood on her hands that didn’t appear to belong to her. We have patrols searching the railway for anyone injured. We estimate she is between fourteen and seventeen. Currently, the Sheriff’s Office is treating her as a runaway.”
“A runaway. So why are we here?”
“You’ll see.”
Just as she said that, they walked into a room where a doctor was conversing with another medical professional. He turned at the sound of them entering.
“Dr. Summers,” Savannah said.
“Ah, Lieutenant Legacy. Good timing.”
Savannah turned to Noah, introducing him. “This is Senior Investigator Noah Sutherland.”
“I’m familiar with you. I mean, I knew Luke. At least my daughter did. He assisted her after a break-in. He was kind. Sorry for your loss.”
It never got old hearing that but every time someone said it, he felt a pang inside.
The doc shook his hand and then asked them to follow him. As they walked, he continued to talk. “This is a very unusual incident.”
“That’s an understatement,” Savannah said.
“So, we got the initial results back from toxicology. I’m not sure how familiar you are with the use of drugs to alter cognition, mood, and memory?”
“Go on,” Savannah said.
“For instance, Ritalin and Modafinil are often used to enhance cognition, we then have mood enhancers like Prozac for those suffering from depression. There have been many studies conducted on memory modification. Soldiers coming back from war who are suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, extreme trauma, and so on. Well, there’s a drug called propranolol, it’s essentially a beta blocker that they have given to soldiers to dampen the memory so to speak. So that a memory doesn’t solidify as a long-term memory. It works to block the process of consolidation from the short to the long term. It was proven to wipe out the memory of a traumatic event. However, there exists a more powerful drug called ZIP which can affect the reconsolidation of memory. Basically, it can erase particular memories. That means every time we try to remember something, certain proteins come together in the brain and they put that memory together again.”
“You’re losing me,” Savannah said.
“Think of it like this. Your memory isn’t like a computerwhere once you have it stored, you can access it each time. Reconsolidation puts the memory back together and updates it based on your current way of thinking. So, in some ways that memory is always changing. That great night you experienced when you were twenty becomes something for better or worse, that fish you caught last year was this big, not that. Small details can be left out. You will misremember parts of the event.”
“Like childbirth,” Savannah added.
“Something like that. You might remember the good and forget the pain.”
He took them into a room and over to a computer where he showed them some stats, data, and images of the brain combined with various protein visuals. “The theory behind this is that the protein known as kinase M zeta, mostly commonly referred to as PKMzeta, is involved in the storing of long-term memories. However, when the drug ZIP is used, it inhibits the PKMzeta and blocks the memory from forming. If this is done to a person, that memory can essentially stop existing. A study was conducted on mice where a memory was formed by shocking them each time they went to a specific area. ZIP was given to some and not to others. Those who didn’t get it avoided the area where others were shocked, those who got it kept going back.”
“Even though it was harming them.”
“Exactly. The memory of what they experienced was gone. That’s how a particular memory can be erased. It didn’t erase the memory of where the area was, only what happened when they arrived at it.”
“And so this was used with PTSD. Was that the purpose?” Noah asked.
“That’s one application. The other is with addiction. Certain things can trigger the need for drugs. If you can erase that trigger…”
“They would no longer want the drug.”
He nodded. “You got it. DARPA has been using it with the military.”
