Brain Suppression

Inside the dorm.

Since his three roommates had gone on break and he was the only one left, he locked the door and began preparing to formulate the brain suppressant.

He cleared the computer desk, then set out beakers, test tubes, measuring cups, droppers, and other necessary lab equipment.

He took out a handheld spray bottle and poured in the Oxytech disinfectant he had bought from a chemical supply store—a silver-ion hydrogen peroxide disinfectant. It was a colorless, odorless, nontoxic, food-grade disinfectant.

He sprayed the Oxytech over the lab equipment and computer desk. This disinfectant was commonly used in chemical laboratories and could kill almost every kind of bacteria and virus.

After putting on gloves and a mask, Huang Xiuyuan began working. He weighed out the nine ingredients he needed, including the main ingredients, clonidine hydrochloride and gamma-aminobutyric acid, as well as the supplementary ingredients: glucose, sodium chloride, vitamin B3, purified water, and others.

He knew the initial formula for the brain suppressant inside out, because he had been one of the participants in the drug trials.

The drug's development had begun in 2033. During an experimental drug trial, researchers had accidentally discovered that mixing clonidine hydrochloride with gamma-aminobutyric acid suppressed brain activity.

In 2035, he had been invited to participate in the testing.

In fact, he knew of even better drugs, including a brain suppressant with a semi-permanent effect. Unfortunately, those drugs required complicated chemical reactions. He was in a foreign country now, and he had to be careful.

Following the optimal proportions, he mixed the ingredients together and prepared 300 milliliters of brain suppressant solution. Then he poured it into the glass reagent bottles he had purchased, dividing it into 10 milliliters per bottle.

He picked up a syringe, drew the brain suppressant from a reagent bottle, and went to the bathroom mirror. After feeling along his neck, he located the jugular vein.

He tried to recall the scene from his memories: a nurse administering an injection. Once he had found the jugular vein, he inserted the syringe needle into it.

His brows drew together slightly as he slowly pushed the brain suppressant from the syringe into the vein.

Injecting it into such a dangerous spot was a last resort. Once the brain suppressant entered the body, it had to reach the brain quickly to take effect.

If it circulated through the body for too long, the liver would metabolize it, and the blood-brain barrier would further weaken its effects.

He pressed a cotton swab against the spot that was still bleeding and picked up the disposable syringe and empty reagent bottle.

He sprayed some Oxytech into a mineral water bottle, making a diluted silver-ion hydrogen peroxide solution.

He drew up some of the solution with the syringe and injected it into a vaccine vial. He was destroying the evidence to prevent anyone from discovering anything.

The chance of that happening was slim, but the cautious Huang Xiuyuan wasn't about to let his guard down.

He put the other 29 bottles of brain suppressant and the remaining ingredients in the refrigerator. The suppressant would last him a month.

After throwing away the used syringe, empty reagent bottle, and other items, he felt the drug beginning to take effect. The jumble of memories in his mind gradually quieted.

The brain suppressant's effects lasted 30 to 36 hours when injected into the jugular vein, and tolerance developed after about 16 months.

After 16 months, each dose of 10 milliliters would last less than five hours, and its suppressive effect would become noticeably weaker.

Huang Xiuyuan knew all this, but he wasn't too worried. He was confident he could develop a second-generation brain suppressant within 16 months.

As the drug took effect, he felt his mind growing calmer.

He sat on his bed, resting his head against the pillow and leaning against the wall. He closed his eyes to relax. For the first time, his mind was calm. The chaotic memories no longer kept surfacing, and his various mental problems were temporarily suppressed as well.

But Huang Xiuyuan didn't let himself get carried away. Besides medication, Hyperthymesia could also be treated with an adjunctive method.

He seemed to be resting with his eyes closed, but in fact, he was constantly giving himself psychological suggestions, directing them at his own mind.

Thanks to his experience with memories from the future, he quickly reached the point where he could direct these suggestions as easily as moving his own arm.

Once he had completed the initial suggestions, he could move on to the next step.

Ordinary people's memories included insignificant memories, ordinary memories, and important memories. The brain's memory-regulating gene switch was the program responsible for handling them.

Based on how important each memory was to a person, the gene switch regulated itself, sorting memories into those to remember clearly, those to remember ordinarily, those to remember vaguely, and those to forget.

It was like a computer, with storage chips, a processor, and memory management.

In people with Hyperthymesia, the computer's scanner function had gone into overdrive, constantly stuffing data into the storage chips. The processor couldn't keep up, and the memory management system had frozen, too.

Fortunately, the human brain had enough storage capacity to hold all that information. At worst, it simply ran slowly and became disorganized.

If the human brain had as little memory as a computer, people with Hyperthymesia would definitely become vegetables.

The brain suppressant reduced memory retention—that is, the amount of incoming information—and lowered the overall activity of the brain.

Then, psychological suggestion could be used to reorganize the brain's memories.

That was what Huang Xiuyuan was doing now. He was forgetting or blurring trivial details of daily life, such as eating and using the bathroom, while sorting important memories into categories.

Cells responsible for forgetting in his brain released a specific kind of dopamine and began erasing insignificant memories. Ordinary memories were blurred, like high-definition images reduced to lower resolution.

For three days straight, he stayed in the dorm except to eat and shower, organizing his memories. After this initial sorting, nearly 60 percent of his memories had been erased, 30 percent blurred, and the remaining 10 percent—the most valuable memories—preserved.

Huang Xiuyuan had also created a rudimentary memory framework, based on technology from 2057.

In that era, people could use nan chips to establish a memory management system in their brains.

Although he had no nan chips in his brain, he could use psychological suggestion to create a crude memory management system himself.

Perhaps this was because his memories from the future already contained a memory management system, allowing him to inherit the ability by chance.

Using the memory management system, he divided the memory areas in his brain into emotional storage, instinct storage, daily storage, technology storage, pending storage, and trash-and-forget storage.

The purpose of pending storage was to keep memories from running out of control during a Hyperthymesia episode and overwhelming other regions of the brain.

Technology storage, meanwhile, used a mind-map format to reduce the accumulation of surface memories and arrange them in clearly defined layers.

This unexpected benefit led Huang Xiuyuan to adjust the brain suppressant's dosage again, diluting the drug to one-third of its original concentration.

Lowering the concentration would reduce tolerance and, he estimated, extend its effective period to around 24 months.

With his Hyperthymesia problem temporarily under control, Huang Xiuyuan stood by the dorm window. A layer of snow covered the lawn and oak trees nearby, and his gaze drifted into the distance.