I Have Put Away Childish Things

Diary entry for: 1-day,5-month,Year 26 (Neo-rationalist calendar). 08:36:15

All my life I've been bent out of shape. It's time to straighten out. A week ago I decided to undergo Selective Neural Depopulation. I'm going to have my secrets removed. A time comes when one has responsibilities, and must abandon the games and pleasures of one's youth. I'm not happy about having to do it, but then I guess no one ever is. However, in the end, I'm sure the benefits will make it all worthwhile.

Dominique carries my child. If I am honest I don't entirely know how I feel about this. It's too big a thing for one to feel unequivocally positive about. It's a change I cannot really imagine or understand and thus I view it with a degree of fear. But it seems to be what Dominique wants.

Or does she just play her part, like me? Saying and doing what is expected of her? Perhaps, like me, she is too afraid of what her partner will think if she speaks her true mind. Perhaps we are trapped, unable to get the result that we would really want, like players of the prisoner's dilemma? It doesn't matter anyway. There is nothing we can do since they banned abortion, and would we be happy to stop a life developing just for our own comforts?

I think Dominique will be relieved. I have always believed that, secretly, she didn't share my sexual interests, despite everything. The answer to this seeming conundrum is simple: Dominique loves me. She would do anything to make me happy. Never, not even for a second, have I doubted this improbable fact, that I am so loved by this beautiful, wonderful woman. It is the bedrock I have rebuilt my life upon. She has given me so much, it's time for me to start giving back.

I have made my appointment at the clinic today.

Diary entry for: 1-day,5-month,Year 26 (Neo-rationalist calendar). 18:53:48

So, it is done. How astounding that such a momentous change can be discussed in the morning, and undergone in time to return home and write a diary entry before the last meal of the day. I've not yet told Dominique. I will do that over dinner.

The clinic was completely surreal. When I took my seat in the waiting room, the others asked me what I 'was in for'. I told them selective-depop, but they wanted to know what my deviancy was. They all told me theirs. Of course there was the obligatory pedophile, various sexual deviances (one with a complex fetish about being a horse. Weird), some poetry addicts, the usual crowd. We had two old religious believers, you'd think after the Faith Wars and the subsequent banning of all religions, they'd be able to shake the old lies. But those lies are written deep, and have to be burned out.

Everyone wanted to talk about their deviancy, the thing that they've been hiding. It was like this was our last, only chance to be open about it; to say 'this is who I am!', and be accepted. We had one case of 'Snap!', a man with fantasies of being strangled, and a woman who'd gladly satisfy him. He said "Ironic, that we should meet each other now, isn't it?" and they made unhappy eyes at each other until their names were called.

The process itself: It's not physically painful, but at first it hurts more than I ever dared imagine. They have to map the areas of your brain that contain the 'wiring' for your deviancy. There's only one way to do this. They put you into an immersive environment where you can experience your heart's desire. That's the extent of their mastery of the brain. They can prod neurons with pinpoint accurate electric fields. They can make you see, hear, touch, taste, smell: anything. Anything you, or they, want. They asked me questions and gave me what I asked for. This false vision instilled by cold technology was the single most ecstatic experience of my life. Nothing else, nothing I'd shared with Dominique, or others, came close to that satisfaction I achieved in the hands of this machine.

I wonder how it was for the god-squad? What did they see? Their own ascension into heaven, sung up to glory by choirs of angels? What about those who don't believe in an afterlife, the reincarnation crowd? What do they get?

They told me the restraints were because they get the occasional epileptic fit, but it was a lie. The restraints are because, after you've experienced that, you scream that you've changed your mind, and rain curses down on their heads as they wheel you from one machine to another. Then they throw the switch, the machine hums, and it all starts to go away. You can feel it going, in some cases the memories, in some cases just how you feel about those sights and sounds. It may seem a small thing to you, to lose this, but imagine you were losing your memories of childhood, or your reaction to the face of your beloved, and let me tell you, it's the same thing. After all, why do you need your childhood memories? What are they but a sentimental attachment to things past? What use are they? And what is your reaction to the face of your lover, or to their body, but just another sexual kink?

And now, I'm not sure what I feel. Maybe I don't feel anything. The memories of how I felt, of what I wanted, of the things Dominique and I used to get up to, they seem so strange now. They're like the memories of an alien person, not me.

I worry about what else they might have taken out. They told me they wouldn't do this, but I wonder. They could hide messages in the immersive media to trigger other things, so that they can find those and take them out too. When I think about it I can see hints of this in what I remember. Then again, if you look hard enough for a thing, you will generally find it. But it would make sense, wouldn't it? He's sent himself in here for 'Y', lets check him for 'X' and 'Z' while we're at it.

I don't feel any different though, except for the obvious things.

Diary entry for: 2-day,5-month,Year 26 (Neo-rationalist calendar). 11:01:05

Things are strained this morning. Dominique was - is - not happy. For a long time after I broke the news, she just stared at me with her mouth open. I, of course, immediately filled the silence with explanations of why what I'd done was great, and was going to change our lives for the better, and other such rot. Eventually she stopped me to ask: "Did you tell them about me?"

This made me angry, that she would think I was that stupid or disloyal. Sheltering someone with deviant alignments is the greater crime, and it can't be cured. There's nothing for them to find and zap in your brain, except perhaps your misplaced loyalty to that person. I wouldn't expose her to such danger, and she should know that.

She demanded my reasons. I would have thought them obvious: the risk of my being found out, the possible repercussions on her, and the child, and our respective families. If I hand myself in now, I get a full amnesty and no-one need ever know.

She said, "They've read your mind! They know everything now!" I told her it wasn't like that. But, she had a lot of good arguments to back the accusation. After all they can watch my mind light up like fireworks and conclude which centers in my brain are related to certain reactions. So, what's to stop them flashing the word 'wife' or some other suggestion into my head, and noting which brain-centers light up, which those link to, and what that might mean? I confess I hadn't thought of that, but I still think she's being paranoid.

This morning, things are very strained between us. When I went to kiss her before leaving for work, she flinched away from me. Small things like this hurt immensely. But I am sure Dominique will come around eventually, after all, this is all 'upside' for her. I expect she is just worried that my love for her will be diminished after the change.

Diary entry for: 4-day,5-month,Year 26 (Neo-rationalist calendar). 21:29:00

The change brings many new thoughts with it. I see things clearly now. While I appreciate Dominique's loyalty over the years I see how wrong that was. Who knows that I wasn't dangerous, as they say I was? Of course I thought I wasn't, but I'm hardly one to judge myself, am I? My thoughts at that time were no more objective than those of the drug addict who tells himself that he has his habit under control. It's been shown that people with my deviancy are statistically more likely to commit crimes against persons, particularly rape and murder, often together. If everyone who suffered from the condition underwent Neural Depop, then those lives previously wrecked or destroyed altogether would be saved. Is even one life a worthwhile price to pay so that a few people can keep their strange orientations? Even those of us who were sure that we would never commit such acts should submit ourselves to Neural Depop. That way those who will commit such acts will be swept up in the dragnet, and thus lives can be saved.

Consider the two believers that I met in the clinic. These people are in the grip of delusions that allow them to believe in ghosts, talking bushes-on-fire, reincarnation, crying statues, and other such nonsenses. For stuff like this, we had the Faith Wars, and slaughtered eight billion people. If religions had been banned earlier, and the believers forced into Neural Depop, all those lives would have been saved, and we would not now be a mere four billion clinging to a wrecked world. But no, we spent those lives to defend; what? Nonsense, fairy-tales.

Admittedly, population was a serious problem before the Faith Wars, but we would have figured it out somehow. I find the concept of trading human lives so that one can believe in fairies and pantheons of invisible, non-corporeal entities that there is no evidence of, utterly disgusting and degenerate. I'm sure my two friends from the clinic would agree, now.

I might look them up. One of them gave me his net-address. It will be interesting to compare notes on our progress.

Diary entry for: 8-day,5-month,Year 26 (Neo-rationalist calendar). 22:13:25

Carl and Simon are doing just fine. Neural Depop does have a one-hundred percent success rate, after all. Now that they are rid of their religious delusions, they are both happier than ever. I asked them if they had any difficulties with those who were close to them, wives, family, friends, who might still harbor their old belief systems. They said "No, no, nothing like that. Why? Do you?" I told them "No", of course, because I know how they think, now. They think like me, but without my knowledge and understanding of the life and love I have shared with Dominique. They cannot understand that she is a good person, despite everything. I cannot trust them with the knowledge of how things are between us.

Carl was almost in tears as he told me of the weight that has been lifted from his shoulders. For one thing, he no longer has to hate people. I still find this incredible, but basically his religion required him to hate, or at least be seriously disapproving of, large numbers of people who did not fit into the divine plan. Admittedly, some of these groups are on the list of proscribed orientations, but many of them are not. Many of them are just harmless subgroups of the citizenry. Carl says he always found this part of his belief difficult, now he is free of it. Honestly, I thought I was badly off with the stuff I'd got in my head, but this stuff fate lumbered poor Carl with, it's far worse. It's just sick, I can see where the wars came from.

One negative note: Since I told Dominique, our bed has been a frozen territory. This might be due to many things, fear that lovemaking might injure the life growing inside her, fear that I might no longer find her sexually attractive, given such a change in my basic makeup, or perhaps I am being punished for taking action without consulting her. I'm sure we will get over this. It's not that I need the sex. I mean, if she's uncomfortable, I'm not some brute that going to demand his 'conjugal rights'. But I just need to know that this isn't the manifestation of an emotional wall being erected between us.

Diary entry for: 11-day,5-month,Year 26 (Neo-rationalist calendar). 01:13:25

So, I am awake at 1 am. I challenged Dominique on her attitude, bed-wise. The response I got shocked me. She said she couldn't really handle the idea of sex without the thing. I suggested that we should try anyway. She suggested that I should try playing the games we used to play, as she didn't see why she was the one who had to get less than they wanted out of the deal. Needless to say, I was disgusted by the idea. I felt simply terrible. I apologized for having infected her with my deviancy. She denied this, insisting she'd always had it. Sweet Dominique, she cannot bring herself to blame me for anything, no matter how obviously it is my fault. She claimed it was the thing that had pulled us together, back in the day. This is ridiculous, how could she possibly have known? One doesn't wear such things on one's sleeve, after all. She said she'd been delighted to find someone who was into the same thing as her, that it was an answer to her prayers.

I found this offhand reference to a religious world-view amusing, and maybe somewhat revealing. If Dominique could see Carl and Simon, and how the treatment has freed them, enlightened them, I'm sure she'd run to undergo neural depop herself. Indeed, if she did, it would solve all our problems I think.

But, we fought. Dominique can be stubborn and irrational sometimes, especially at times like these when she is actually defending me, in a round-about way.

Fortunately I see things clearly now. I am freed from the complex emotional confusion that clouds my beloved's mind. Neural depop is the best thing that ever happened to me, I'm amazed it took me so long to submit myself to it. I was like someone who refuses to see a doctor when he's ill. They told me at the clinic that they can do a 'full spectrum checkup and purge'. This amounts to checking me for all dangerous and prohibited (which is two ways of saying the same thing) proclivities. For instance, it is an established fact that people with a liking for certain genres and forms of old art have a greater likelihood of committing suicide. Principally we are talking poetry and anything associated with surrealist, romantic, or 'gothic' culture. Who knows what time-bombs I may have lurking in my head? Now, I can have that stuff cleaned right out. After all, what decent father would risk being forever yanked from the bosom of his family because of his reaction to a poem?

Needless to say, I shall not be telling Dominique of this. In her current state of mind, she would react poorly. But after some months, when all this is distant, what will it matter to her if I went to the clinic once, or multiple times? Time blurs such distinctions.

Diary entry for: 15-day,5-month,Year 26 (Neo-rationalist calendar). 23:22:58

A funny thing happened. Carl and Simon turned up for a full-spectrum at the same time as me! We had a laugh about 'great minds think alike'. So, now I'm clean and sober, guaranteed free of all negative baggage, and with a certificate to prove it. They say that this will help me at work. I never knew this, but apparently there is a 'fast track' for those of us who have undergone full-spectrum audit. It's just common sense really. After all, would you want to trust someone with a head-full of crazy ideas and urges with running a nuclear reactor or a bank? Apparently full-spectrum has been obligatory in certain posts of the military for some time. This is a good thing to hear. I wouldn't want some suicidally depressed gothic with a pocket full of Russian poetry to have their finger on the big button, nor yet one of those weirdo religious types who is secretly wishing for Armageddon.

Apparently they don't apply it to the 'grunts'. The people who have to do the face-to face killing. Full spectrum makes them less effective at their job. No surprise there, the job requires a certain brutishness after all.

I've never felt so good in my life.

Diary entry for: 20-day,5-month,Year 26 (Neo-rationalist calendar). 00:12:01

Another wee-small-hours entry. I am troubled about Dominique. It hurts me to see her like this. I caught her crying in secret recently. That's not right, if there is a problem, it should be bought out into the open. I know that pregnancy causes wild mood-swings, but you have to believe me, dear diary, when I say that I know Dominique well enough to know that this is something more. She asked me recently if she could trust me. I told her "of course", but she just kept looking at my face as though searching for something. I think she may be coming apart, emotionally, maybe even mentally.

I recently burned our private stash of pornography (to think, I used to call it 'erotica'. Now I see it for what it is!). It made a pretty fire. It was all hard-copy, of course. You can't keep anything secret in digital form. All the world's twistedness still lives on ancient, dog-eared paper, but we are slowly finding it and clearing it out. Amazingly, some of this stuff was once considered art.

Quite a bit of the stash was missing. Obviously, there can only be one person responsible for this. I cannot guess at her motives. The continued presence of this stuff in our home endangers us. Well, endangers her anyway. I must confront her over this, but right now I am too tired of conflicts and confrontations.

Diary entry for: 22-day,5-month,Year 26 (Neo-rationalist calendar). 00:50:25

So, I had another big row with Dominique. I suggested that she would be happier if she went for a full-spectrum, and got her problems cleared out. She insists that she doesn't want to have 'her mind castrated'. Things are unbearably tense between us. I wonder what influence this might be having upon the baby? All this rowing and emotional turmoil must be effecting it.

I do not know what is wrong with Dominique. I cannot grasp why she would endanger everything for the sake of a few dodgy sex-games. I see now how deeply and powerfully I have infected her with my own sickness.

There is, of course, something I can do about this situation. I'm troubled by the ethics of the idea, but could it not be argued that I have caused this problem, and it is up to me to repair it?

Fortunately I'm not alone in this turmoil. I have Carl and Simon. I'm sure that if we put our 'great minds' (Ha! But we do think alike!) together on this problem, that we will be able to arrive at a solution.

Diary entry for: 25-day,5-month,Year 26 (Neo-rationalist calendar). 00:45:56

Saw Carl and Simon today. Turns out that we are all in much the same boat. Ita, Carl's wife, is more infected with religion than he. Simon's wife, Jenni, has this secret fantasy about being executed by hanging. Simon has always been uncomfortable with that. I would be too. Oh, and she has a stash of old poetry, most of it dating back to before the Faith Wars, so there you go, there's that link, clear as day.

The more I learn, the less strange my deviancy seems compared to those of others, and yet it's undeniable that I was potentially dangerous. Well then, how much more so these other people? Simon's wife may only be a danger to herself, I suppose, but that's bad enough, isn't it? It shames me, shames all of us I'm sure, to think that we've stood aside and not had the strength to lift a finger to help those we claim to love get the treatment they need.

And think of the children. Carl and Ita have none, but he's thinking of it, certainly. Simon already has a 1-year-old, this being the spur that finally drove him to be rid of his problems. What if we (and by 'we' I mean all of us parents; husbands and wives both) passed on our sicknesses to our offspring? I'm sure if Jenni one day found her teenage daughter had taken an overdose of nihilist poetry, and hanged herself from the light fitting of her bedroom, she'd give anything to be able to go back and get her deviancies cleared out. But then it will be too late. The time to act is now, not after one has been faced with the irreparable consequences. If we clean ourselves out now, then hopefully our children will never pick up any kinks and twists, and will never have to go for neural depop themselves.

It's time for Carl, Simon, and I to start doing the right thing, to live up to our responsibilities and do what's right by our spouses. Today, we've made a pact of mutual support.

Diary entry for: 28-day,5-month,Year 26 (Neo-rationalist calendar). 09:52:47

They came for Dominique today. It was awful, we had to chase her around the house, and she screamed and fought, accused me of betraying her. I was shaking and in tears by the end. They had to drug her to calm her, like putting a knock-out dart into a tigress before you can give her medication. The metaphor isn't an idle one, we've all got the claw marks to prove it.

Carl probably has it even worse, with his wife calling down curses from on high. I dread to think what Simon's would have done if she'd gotten wind of what we planned. It's just a good thing that we moved fast, before she could do herself any harm. Those strange ideas of hers are a great danger.

Now all I can do is wait. In a few hours, my Dominique will be returned to me, clean and pure, and all shall be well. Once she's had the depop, she'll understand. Like me, she'll come to be disgusted at the sickness she used to harbor in her head, and she'll be shocked at the risks she allowed herself to take for it. Surely she will be grateful for what I've done for her, after all, no one ever wants to go back to the way they were once they've had the operation. We'll live and love, and everything will be perfect, like it was before.

Only better.

Colum is from Birmingham, England, but does NOT have the accent. He's been published in Daily Science Fiction, Hub magazine, Cossmass Infinities, Jupiter magazine and is forthcoming in Bards and Sages.