BP#11: We Can Remember it for You Wholesale

In “We Can Remember it for You Wholesale,” the main character is Douglas Quail who is determined to see Mars. His wife, Kirsten, thinks he is just obsessed with the idea and honestly seems sick of him talking about it every day. Douglas ends up at Rekal Incorporated, a company with the ability to feed their customers any memory of their choosing and provide them with tangible proof of the trip or experience. After his appointment, it turns out that Douglas already went to Mars on a mission for Interplan as a professional assassin. When the Interplan cops realize that Douglas is beginning to remember everything about the mission, they try to kill him but are too slow for him because he has had five years of experience. After pleading for another false-memory template, they finally agreed to give him that.

Unfortunately, this still didn’t work for him because the odds were that the second memory they tried implanting in him was actually another real memory that he actually went through. Afterwards, the Inteplan officer who was present was advised not to kill Douglas because then the invasion would come back to Earth.

I think that after this, the Interplan officer contacts their head officer for a plan for what happens next since they can’t get rid of Douglas. Douglas might beg again for another chance to alter his memory and the Interplan will trick him into thinking that they are taking him to a more advanced company. Before Douglas can figure it out, they lock him into a room where he can be observed by Interplan officers and Mr. McClane to study how they can keep him out of the way without killing him and risking the return of the invasion.

After weeks of frustration, Douglas finds an opportunity to attack one of the officers while they’re bringing him lunch and breaks out of the organization. Since he was secluded for a significant amount of time, he had enough time to establish an escape plan without thinking about it and risking the officers finding out about it. He eventually escapes and runs away from organization and lives his life in hiding, in a never ending state of paranoia because he’s constantly thinking about how they are hearing his every thought.