bcifi

“Normally a guy in your situation would be way more broken up over a breakup.” The bartender poured him another drink (only his second), then slid yet another pair of drinks toward two women at the end of the bar.

“Yeah, I would be. I’d really miss her. I was heartbroken. Couldn’t sleep. Whined to friends and bartenders. The emotional impact of those memories was overwhelming.”

“That’s natural after a 12-year marriage. Maybe you should try that Better Recollections service.”

He chuckled wryly. “That’s why she dumped me. I used it, she didn’t. We couldn’t relate anymore.”

“Maybe you should find someone else,” replied the underpaid bartender. “Those two chicks at the end of the bar keep looking at you and smiling. And drinking. You might try them for a whirlwind nomance.”

“Nah, no longer interested. That breakup motivated me. I made this invention that reduces the emotional impact of memories. I remember everything, but it doesn’t bug me anymore.”

“So it is like Better Recollections?”

“My invention is a similar idea, but it works in near real-time. It’s like an antidepressant that works almost instantly, just a delay of a few seconds. Not just memories but any feelings you don’t want.”

“Wow. Well, that’ll be $600 for those beers.”

“Six hundred bucks for two beers? Fuck you!” His eyes glazed over briefly. “Oh. Uh. Yeah. Here you go.” He paid, stood up, and banged his knee on a nearby table. He grabbed his knee in pain and swore. Then his eyes glazed over again and he limped out with a smile. 

Author Commentary

This is my first short-short sequel. It’s a follow-up to “Better Recollections.” You can find other commentary under that story. I also just wrote another short-short about memory revision here.

When I taught Cognitive Science 17 at UCSD, I always had one lecture about medications, including antidepressants. Then (and still today), antidepressants like Prozac or Paxil usually require weeks to start working. They treat general depression, not sadness or other feelings elicited by specific events or experiences.

And that lecture always mentioned the prospect of a fast-acting or even real-time antidepressant. Would that really be a good thing? Don’t we need negative emotions sometimes to learn, grow, motivate, and appreciate the good times? What if people start to rob banks or commit other nastiness because they no longer feel bad afterward?

It could also cause a lot of other problems for your emotional and motivational systems. Why work? Seek new friends or relationships? Improve your home? Write new BCI-fi? Get dressed? Brush your teeth? Leave bed in the morning? Get up to use the bathroom? In the worst case, you’d just stop eating and drinking (or even breathing) because nothing bothers you. In this short-short, the protagonist doesn’t care about meeting two new women, getting scammed by a bartender, or banging his knee.

Hence the title. It sounds like “Be Calming,” but “becalming” is when a ship can’t move because it has no wind.

So, no. Overall, I’d be afraid of a drug, device, or other technology that artificially counteracts *any* negative emotion in real-time without some penalty like a hangover. I wouldn’t want it for me nor anyone. Much ado about no fling.

A (near) real-time system like this might be much more helpful if you could somehow tag which experiences to de-intensify. Could you artificially de-intensify only truly damaging/aberrant negative emotions, like fear of flying or snakes? This is a common goal for mental health professionals, friends, and even bartenders.

Realism

Again, please see Better Recollections for other comments on realism.

Hope

Up to you. Right now, people get over heartbreak with new love, time, distraction, and friends – and/or they never get over it. 

“Memories are meant to fade, Lenny. They’re designed that way for a reason.”

–Angela Bassett, Strange Days.

Edit History

I wrote this in November 2024.

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