Gamma Knife

I begin this diary as a way to process my emotions and provide some context for any readers who might come across this after my death. I am writing this on stone paper. Anything digital is out because I don’t want this memoir to be deleted like my family was.

I am Olga Kaminsky. I was born and raised in Arcadia. For Earthers, that’s in the northern plains of Mars. If that place stirs something in your brain, that’s because it’s a ruin of corpsicles and frozen vegetation now.

I remember this moment like yesterday. I was twenty years old, a physics student at Sagan University, when the meteorites fell. They blew open Arcadia’s protective membrane. The forests and farms froze in minutes. My parents were caught in the open. With so little time to get to the pressure shelters, they suffocated. I was forced to watch it all on television.

The official line was rebel extremists trying to disrupt Martian food exports. But the blunt fact of the matter is, planetary defense and asteroid redirecting is the Empire’s responsibility. If any organization in the solar system is capable of moving asteroids and targeting locations so precisely with meteorites, it’s them.

I know this is really a punishment for the strike over unjust working conditions. Mars is the agricultural center of the solar system, and the colonies there know their collective power. The planet is a powder keg waiting to blow. The Empire would do anything, including false flag attacks, to keep Mars quiet.

---

The only thing I have left of Arcadia is a platinum heart-shaped locket. It contains holograms of my family and home. Every time I look at it, I see my father’s dopey grin, my mother’s knowing look, the dapple of sunlight through Arcadia’s boreal forests under the transparent plastic canopy. And my heart hardens.

I suppose I should talk about him now. The guy who’s convinced - fanatically so - that an alien object is on its way here to kill us all and we have to band together to repel it. Even if it takes a dictatorship spanning the solar system. As far as I’m concerned, this is the oldest trick in the book. Seize and maintain power by exploiting fear of an unknown invader. It’s kind of sad to see that we haven’t overgrown this pattern of thought, but here we are.

Felix Magnusson, you’re going down. Even if I have to join the Empire.

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Dear Diary, I apologize for neglecting you for so long. The good news is that I’ve finally joined a rebel cell. We are preparing ourselves to infiltrate the Empire, and it’s quite a lot of work to ensure airtight covers. That’s why I can’t give too much detail about ourselves in these pages.

Our biggest threat isn’t the Empire’s troops, or even their space forces. It’s the Department of Psychological Operations. Most civilians believe the DPO is a tiny, benign organization, solely responsible for deprogramming cult members and conspiracy theorists, but they are far bigger and more shadowy than their official appearance. This misdirection suits their interests just fine. They not only control the official media, they feed fake stories to private media outlets to discredit anyone who accuses the Empire of wrongdoing. That’s just one of the jobs we’ve caught them doing.

They might also be capable of mindwiping.

That last part is just conjecture, but we do have circumstantial evidence. Fellow operatives have been captured by them, and released as completely different people. It’s how they destroyed the local network on Titan. We’ve had to learn to limit our contact with other cells to prevent DPO compromising too much of the network.

Hold on. My cell leader just told me to get rid of you. You’re a liability, he said, but the knowledge that I can write in you, even if it isn’t very often, is probably the only thing keeping me sane. In any case, I will keep my updates as infrequent as possible.

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What the hell.

I don’t remember owning a diary, yet someone with my exact same name and home colony is claiming that she’s out to kill our Leader. The handwriting is mine, the style and turns of phrase are all mine…

This must be from the rebel operation I was rescued from. If so, why did the DPO let me keep it? I need to talk with someone, but I don’t know who to trust about this yet.

Olga 2, please go away.

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Had a tearful and cathartic conversation with my political officer.

Despite my earlier impression, he’s very understanding. This diary is indeed a leftover from the mindwipe the rebels performed on me after my capture. It isn’t a figment of my imagination, it’s a physical object that they gave me to complete the illusion they were trying to create. They have been doing this to select individuals and planting false memories, which is extremely illegal. From my previous diary entries and other evidence, their goal was apparently to assassinate our Leader and every single one in the line of succession with his own troops. Even if they couldn’t pull this off, they probably succeeded in stealing some of our military secrets and caused chaos that we don’t know about yet.

He told me to take it easy for the next few weeks, because the process of memory reintegration can create more new false memories than normal, as the brain tries to make sense of what’s happening. It’s like growing scar tissue around a deep wound - it will never return to its original state.

I offered to turn this diary in. He told me to keep it, as a reminder.

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I feel guilty and dirty just writing in this diary, but it turns out my political officer was wise to tell me to continue. It’s actually pretty therapeutic to write there - my thoughts are more ordered afterwards and I can make sense of more things. For instance, I can now remember the supply ship I was on when they attacked and boarded it, the Lloyd Fredenhall.

Now that I’ve gotten some distance from what happened, I can go back and see what my mindwiped self wrote, if she even wrote it at all, without feeling the urge to puke. It’s disturbing how good the rebels are at this. I see myself too well in their version of Olga, as if my life had taken a darker turn at a pivotal moment in my childhood.

Here’s why I’m sure that the rebels mindwiped me. Olga 2 claims the Empire was responsible for Arcadia’s destruction, but she provides no evidence, only allegations and speculations disguised as conviction. It’s only a diary, so maybe I should cut her some slack there, if it weren’t for the rebels’ recorded confession.

I suppose I should feel an overwhelming desire for revenge for what they did to my family and colony and to me. But years of the Empire’s discipline has ironed that out of me. I’m not interested in revenge as much as justice. And revenge would just corrode the sense of unity our Leader has been trying to promote across our species.

They are to be pitied. They are terrified. Terrified of a united humanity no longer held back by petty divisions. They fear the greatness we are capable of. They resort to mindwiping out of weakness. Much like suicide bombing in the 20th and 21st centuries, it’s a method only guerrillas and terrorists use.

It will be my pleasure to help the Empire defeat them.

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I had an unsettling insight when studying for my entrance exams for the fusion engineering department. A single subatomic particle, when annihilated with its antiparticle, releases exactly two gamma rays. The wavelength and therefore energy of these rays depends on the mass of the original particles.

The mindwipe process requires the use of targeted gamma rays to destroy individual neurons. This method is called the gamma knife. It was originally invented as a noninvasive way to treat brain tumors. Since neurons are much smaller than tumors, a greater degree of fine control is probably required for mindwiping. The number and energy of gamma rays is crucial. Too much will completely scramble the patient’s web of memories. Too little and the false-memory neurons don’t get destroyed at all.

I never was able to get information on how precise this technology is, but if the Department of Psychological Operations was able to restore so much of my memory, they would have had to remove the false memories first and then introduce new neurons with the real memories from my backup scan, all without disrupting too much of my brain.

This requires an order of magnitude more precision and control than destroying brain tumors.

Here’s my thought process:

Matter-antimatter annihilation is a much more granular and controllable source of gamma rays than radioactive decay or electromagnetic methods.

And all the antimatter manufacturers are nationalized.

Could we actually be the ones who are maliciously mindwiping, not the rebels? Could the DPO be using its legal operation as a cover for illegal acts?

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I failed the particle physics entrance exam.

The surprising part is, I’m not even upset about it. I’m more upset that I can’t stop thinking about that revelation I had. The fact that it bothers me so much seems to imply that there are still false memories in my head, or memories I haven’t categorized yet. Even worse, I have no idea where these false memories came from - the rebels, the DPO, or myself.

I can feel my locket weighing on my neck. It’s the one constant across my true and false memories. I grow more and more certain that I must find out the truth, if it can be found out at all. Even if it means abandoning my dream of being a fusion engineer.

The only way to do that is to join the DPO.

If Olga 2 ever existed at all, I owe it to her.

They only take the most dedicated applicants, and nobody’s talking about their entrance tests. Would they take someone who’s already been mindwiped? Would I be an experienced asset to them, or damaged goods, or a treason risk?

There’s only one way to find out.

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They said I can apply. And with my experience and qualifications, I’m likely to get in.

This will have to be my last entry. I cannot risk this diary falling into DPO’s hands if they turn out to be the ones supplying false memories.

If they indeed are, how do you beat an enemy that can edit your own reality?

I might have to do this on the fly. Best not to put any ideas in this diary.

Olga Kaminsky, signing off.