Memory Therapy, Part Iii

...Jack couldn’t believe such nonsense, said, “You’re not a shrink, you’re insane. I’ve been a farmer all my life, And no one has cut on my brain.” Johns handed him a new picture, it was Jack stretched on a table, a hole had been cut in his skull, with probes and wires it was full. Jack balked, his mind fighting the sight, he felt his anger grow again. “If this is true then you’re bastards— How could you do this to a man?!” Johns raised a hand, said, “Calm down Jack, this was not done to you by force. You {volunteered" to have it done, in full witness of all the courts.” He handed Jack another page confirming that this was the case, Jack stared at his own signature, utter shock now crossing his face. “That’s why they sent me was out here, Mason was a pupil of mine, when she told me that you’d come in I knew it was a matter of time. “You see, old you thought this a joke, thought all our techniques wouldn’t take, but you awoke another man, to be specific: Ben Mandrake. “He is a farmer, lives out west, a good man if ever there was, father, church-going, married long, he wanted to help a good cause. “See most criminals start off bad, no father, poverty, rough life, no knowledge of what good men are, since they never were raised up right. “That’s why so many just go back, they’ve only known anger and pain. Your mother was a meth junkie, you don’t even know your father’s name. “You were in juvie as a kid, spent more time behind bars then out, not the kind to know a good life, how to exist moral and proud. “So we blanked out your memory, Mandrake’s memories were put in, that’s why, for ten years, you’ve lived well, resisted temptation to sin. “But early trials were shaky, and we’ve noticed a minor trend, in one-in-one-hundred reprograms old memories come back again. “You’re not the first it’s happened to, that guy disassociated, he’s locked in an asylum now, he’ll probably be there ’till he’s dead. “The second guy who remembered found it easy just to fall back, preyed on children, locked up again, his cell-mate shanked him in the neck. “I guess that brings us back to you, and the memories in your brain, the process cannot be done twice, the mind could not withstand the strain. “Leaving us in this awkward spot, I have no doubt more will return, you’ll have two sets of thoughts in there, one saved you, one could make you burn. CONCLUDES IN PART IV.