The Man With No Memory

by Christopher Jackson-Ash

© Christopher Jackson-Ash

 
Bright light. It was the first thing he noticed, but he couldn’t describe it. It was the beginning of everything, like a big bang inside his head. Later he would realise it was the sunlight streaming through his window and burning through his closed eyelids. But then, when he opened his eyes for the first time, he had no comprehension of anything. He was like a newborn baby witnessing the world for the first time.  Worse than that, for a baby at least has memories of the womb.

No one knew what had happened to him. Yet they all agreed he was a healthy, perfect physical specimen of manhood with his mind wiped clean. No one claimed him. He had been on all of the news bulletins and in the papers. He’d been found almost drowned on the beach, so they assumed he’d fallen off a passing ship.

His empty mind was like blotting paper and knowledge was ink. No one knew what his native language had been so they taught him English. He took to it like an Irishman to Guinness. His thirst was unquenchable. He needed to sleep for only four hours each night. Two teams worked with him for eight hours each during the day. At night he was left to his own devices. He read voraciously, starting with ‘Janet and John’ and working his way up to Shakespeare. He gave up only on James Joyce.  He also repeatedly read the Bible. It was a Christian institution that reprogrammed him.

They told him to choose a name, so he chose Paul because he believed he had been converted from a path of wickedness and God had wiped his mind clean to give him a new start.

He couldn’t escape from sex, though they tried to shield him initially. His body worked as well as any man’s and he explored it like a horny teenager.  They had to teach him propriety after he embarrassed the old nun who was the night nurse with his self-pleasuring antics. He read the great romantic novels and knew about love and marriage. He understood love intellectually but could not relate to it on an emotional level. Perhaps it was like the way he felt when they served his favourite food. That intrigued him. Why did he enjoy some foods and dislike others? Had he felt the same way before his brain had been washed clean? They introduced him to television and he developed interests in certain sports and types of drama, but not others. Again, he asked himself why. He questioned his Doctor, but he brushed the queries aside. Paul didn’t know it but he had become a great experiment. Was it possible to take a man and program him to be a perfect citizen, free from sin?

Sarah had been on one of his teams. She was a pleasant-looking young woman, with a propensity to talk too much and laugh too loud. She was also incredibly lonely and she fell in love with the man she had helped to create. She sought the Doctor’s permission, who cleared it with the Bishop, before she began her romantic entrapment. The Bishop said they would make a handsome couple and complete the experiment.

Paul’s responses to Sarah’s advances were lukewarm at best. Sarah thought it was because Paul was still too naive to understand the game. Paul knew what the game was from his reading.  Unfortunately, he just didn’t fancy her. He didn’t fancy any woman for that matter. Not since the new male night nurse had started working on the team.

Sarah redoubled her efforts and eventually Paul felt obliged to tell her the truth. She was shocked by his sin and reported him to the Bishop. Paul lost his newfound home.

“How can you return to this sinful life, after you have been given a new chance by God?” The doctor asked him sadly as he packed his bags.

“I don’t know what evil I committed in my past life. I know that I must search for love in this one in the only way that is meaningful to me. God should be about love, not discrimination and hate. And God must have made me this way, because I can no more change my sexuality than the fact that I’m still left-handed.” Paul offered the Doctor his hand and then walked away.

The nurse was waiting at the bottom of the drive to take him to his new home.

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