Brain Inhibition

Inside the dormitory.

Since his three roommates were away for the holidays, he was the only one left. After locking the door, he began preparing to mix the brain inhibitor.

He cleared off his computer desk and placed the beakers, test tubes, graduated cylinders, droppers, and other necessary laboratory equipment onto the surface.

He took out a handheld sprayer and filled it with Octenisept (a silver ion-hydrogen peroxide composite disinfectant) purchased from a chemical reagent store; it was a colorless, odorless, and non-toxic food-grade disinfectant.

He sprayed the Octenisept over the lab equipment and the computer desk. This disinfectant was a common staple in many chemistry labs and could kill almost all bacteria and viruses.

Donning gloves and a mask, Huang Xiuyuan began his work. He carefully weighed out the nine required materials, including the main ingredients—clonidine hydrochloride and γ-aminobutyric acid—as well as the excipients: glucose, sodium chloride, vitamin B3, and purified water.

He knew the first-generation formula for the brain inhibitor like the back of his hand, as he had been one of the test subjects for the drug.

The development of this drug originated in 2033, when researchers accidentally discovered during a drug trial that a mixture of clonidine hydrochloride and γ-aminobutyric acid produced an inhibitory effect on the brain.

In 2035, he was invited to participate in the testing.

In truth, he held formulas for even better drugs in his mind, including brain inhibitors with semi-permanent effects. Unfortunately, those required complex chemical reactions, and since he was currently in a foreign land, he had to be cautious and discreet.

Following the optimal ratio, he mixed the ingredients together to produce 300 milliliters of the brain inhibitor solution, then used the glass reagent bottles he had purchased to divide it into 10-milliliter doses.

He picked up a syringe, drew the brain inhibitor from a reagent bottle, and walked to the bathroom mirror. He touched his neck to locate his jugular vein.

Struggling to recall the memory of the nurses performing the procedure on him, he pinpointed the location of the jugular vein and inserted the needle.

His brows furrowed slightly as he slowly pushed the brain inhibitor from the syringe into his jugular vein.

Choosing such a dangerous injection site was a matter of necessity; once the brain inhibitor entered the body, it had to reach the brain as quickly as possible to be effective.

If it circulated in the body for too long, the drug's efficacy would be severely weakened by liver metabolism and the presence of the blood-brain barrier.

He pressed a cotton swab against the bleeding site and picked up the disposable syringe and the empty reagent bottle.

He sprayed some Octenisept into a mineral water bottle to create a diluted silver ion-hydrogen peroxide solution.

He used the syringe to draw up this solution and injected it into the vaccine bottle. His goal was to destroy any traces to prevent anyone from discovering anything.

Although the possibility was slim, the cautious Huang Xiuyuan did not let his guard down.

He placed the other 29 bottles of brain inhibitor and the remaining raw materials into the refrigerator. These doses would be enough to last him for a month.

After disposing of the used syringe and empty reagent bottle, he felt the drug begin to take effect. The chaotic jumble of memories in his mind gradually quieted down.

The brain inhibitor administered via jugular injection could maintain its effect for 30 to 36 hours, with a drug tolerance threshold of about 16 months.

After 16 months, the duration of the effect would drop to less than 5 hours per dose (10 milliliters), and the inhibitory effect would significantly deteriorate.

Huang Xiuyuan, being well aware of this, was not overly worried, as he was confident he could develop a second-generation brain inhibitor within the 16-month window.

As the drug took hold, he felt his brain becoming increasingly calm.

He sat on his bed, leaning against the wall with his head on a pillow, and closed his eyes to rest. At this moment, his brain had attained an unprecedented level of tranquility; the constant influx of chaotic memories had ceased, and many of his mental issues were temporarily suppressed.

However, Huang Xiuyuan did not get carried away. Beyond medication, there was an auxiliary treatment method for hyperthymesia.

While he appeared to be resting with his eyes closed, he was actually performing psychological suggestion—directing it toward his own brain.

Thanks to the experience from his future memories, his ability to perform self-suggestion quickly reached a point where he could command his mind with ease.

Once the initial psychological suggestion was complete, he could proceed to the next step.

In the memory of an ordinary person, there are trivial memories, ordinary memories, and important memories. The brain's memory-regulating gene keys are the programs responsible for processing these.

Depending on how much importance a person places on these memories, the memory-regulating gene keys self-regulate, categorizing them into key memories, ordinary memories, blurred memories, and forgotten ones.

It is much like a computer, which has storage chips, processing chips, and memory management.

The condition of a hyperthymesia patient is like a computer scanner running at an explosive rate, constantly stuffing data into the storage chips until the processing chip cannot keep up and the memory management system crashes.

Fortunately, the human brain's storage capacity is large enough to hold all this information; the result is merely system lag and confusion.

If the human brain had the same memory capacity as a computer, a hyperthymesia patient would surely become a vegetable.

The effect of the brain inhibitor is to suppress the input of information and lower the overall activity level of the brain.

Then, through psychological suggestion, the brain's memories can be reorganized.

This was exactly what Huang Xiuyuan was doing: forgetting or blurring the trivialities of daily life—eating, drinking, and bodily functions—while categorizing the important memories.

The forgetting cells in his brain secreted specific dopamine to begin erasing those trivial memories, while the ordinary memories were blurred, much like reducing the resolution of a high-definition image.

For three consecutive days, he stayed in his dorm, only leaving to eat or shower, as he organized his memories. After this initial cleanup, nearly 60% of his memories were erased, 30% were blurred, and the remaining 10% of essential memories were prioritized and preserved.

Furthermore, Huang Xiuyuan had preliminarily completed a memory framework—a technique from the year 2057.

In that era, people could use nano-chip assistance to form a memory management system within their brains.

Although he lacked a nano-chip, he was able to use psychological suggestion to self-construct a crude memory management system.

Perhaps this was because the memory management system already existed within his future memories, allowing him to inherit this ability by a stroke of luck.

Through this memory management system, he divided his brain's memory regions into an emotional storage area, an instinct storage area, a daily storage area, a technology storage area, a pending storage area, and a trash/forgetting area.

The purpose of the pending storage area was to prevent runaway memories from impacting other brain regions during a hyperthymesia episode.

The technology storage area utilized a mind-mapping storage method, reducing the accumulation of surface-level memories and allowing them to be distributed in clear, hierarchical layers.

Due to this unexpected windfall, Huang Xiuyuan readjusted the dosage of his brain inhibitor, diluting the drug concentration to only one-third of the original.

The benefit of lowering the concentration was a reduction in drug tolerance, which he estimated would extend the effective period to about 24 months.

Having temporarily solved the problem of his hyperthymesia, Huang Xiuyuan stood by the dormitory window. The lawn and oak trees in the distance were covered in a layer of snow, and his gaze drifted off into a daze.