Ix Belèn

The inhabitants had developed an enhanced learning program that ran every night as they slept in their mechanical chairs. It was used to remove unpleasant memories and train new skills. Being picked last for spaceball or stood up on a date were little day-to-day horrors the Ix Belènnians did not have to suffer to twice. And for a while it was bliss.

Systematic mind enhancements were mandated by the habitat leadership and distributed to all residents from the Memorex. But the system was exploited. There were clandestine efforts to delete memories and traits collectively from the population without their consent and eventually it backfired. The aliens unlearned important skills for their survival and entered a vegetative state. Shortly thereafter the habitat life support was disabled.

A scan of the habitat's logs reveals its control system was activated again on multiple occasions decades after the life support was disabled. Someone overrode security, entered a maintenance hatch and accessed the Memorex. A datapad and a tiny blue memory orb - a smaller version of the Memorex - lie discarded by the hatch.

The datapad is filled with the frenzied thoughts of someone on the brink of madness. Again and again the same questions are repeated with growing despair: "who am I? What happened on Ix Belèn?" The final entry reads "now that I know I must forget one last time." Perhaps the orb will reveal what was forgotten.

The orb's first memory shows Dr. Saariah spearheading the development of the Memorex to great acclaim. Another memory from years later shows her secretly wiping Memorex data for unknown reasons. Yet another memory is of Saariah working frantically on restoring the residents' memories but to no avail. They stare emptily ahead, heads lolling, all but their autonomic brain functions lost.

Finally admitting defeat she hides the evidence of her crimes. She watches, alone, as the Ix Belèn Residence is pulled into the gravity well of the gas giant it once orbited, feelers secreting large amounts of mucus in what is believed to be an alien expression of great distress.

The final memory shows a much older Saariah in a priest's robe waking up in a state of panic, tentacles flailing and ears flapping. She stumbles out of bed and begins to frantically jot down her recollections of yet another nightmare in which empty-eyed aliens convulse on a habitat floor.

Then her face contorts with horror as it dawns upon her that it is all real - the nightmares and the flashbacks are extracted memories coming back to her. And if extracted memories can return, the inhabitants of Ix Belèn could have recovered. The maintenance hatch appears to have opened one last time but Saariah's ship still remains docked at the landing. We could bring the Memorex with us back to …, if we wish.