Turning from the broadcast, Zo'or questions Da'an about humanity's gratifyingly positive response to the Mneme project. Zo'or recommends accelerating the project schedule and announces that he will take over supervision of the project. Offering only token resistance, Da'an agrees and goes to make the arrangements, much to the surprise of Sandoval, who has been passively observing the exchange. Zo'or instructs Sandoval to increase his surveillance of the strangely compliant Da'an.
In a waiting room, Liam offers his condolences to Darren Voorhees' girlfriend Giselle. When questioned about the circumstances of Voorhees' death, she says Voorhees had one to many drinks at a party at a club called the Chesapeake, where he was promptly discovered dead on the men's room floor.
Liam tries to find out whether she knew any of the other victims, but her link calendar chimes to remind her of a scheduled manicure and she only offers a token negative answer. A man appears in the hallway. Giselle offers Liam her card, then leaves with this new arrival.
We can remember it for you ... retail
Later, Liam accompanies Da'an to a reception at the Mneme facility. Seeing Sandoval lurking in the crowd, Da'an walks over and asks whether the FBI agent would like Da'an's schedule sent directly to his office. Sandoval protests that he is merely representing Zo'or's interests in the project, a joint venture between the Taelons and Doors International.
Their discussion is cut short by the introduction of Renee Palmer, director of Doors' efforts with the Taelons and secret Resistance leader. She gushes over Mneme, then introduces Washington, D.C., mayor Carter DuBois and his wife, who will apparently be our guinea pigs this evening. After some brief remarks, the mayor takes his place in a Mneme chair and Dr. Soryama instructs him to "think of a specific memory" from his past. The machine, Soryama says, will do the rest.
As all parties look on, a technician touches a control panel. The headset of the Mneme chair begins emitting a field of lights that play across the mayor's face. He starts to relive a passionate encounter with a platinum blonde who viewers will immediately recognize as not being his wife.
Under the watchful eye of his wife and the crowd, he then returns to reality, mops his brow and rises from the chair, claiming to have relived hitting the winning home run in the 1979 MetroLeague championships when he was 13 years old. The crowd applauds.
When Liam asks Da'an how Mneme works, the alien explains that "the human brain stores memory chemically, in the long-term potentiation center." Coincidentally, the technology functions by stimulating the same neurotransmitters found in Darren Voorhees' brain.
Sandoval interrupts their discussion to escort Da'an to meet the press. As they depart, Liam contacts Detective Sherman via global to indicate that he is making headway on the case.
Waiting for my man
Liam then tracks down Voorhees' girlfriend Giselle at a bar to point out that friends say the couple actually left the Chesapeake party early. She denies having anything to do with the death. Liam asks her about Mneme, suggesting that Voorhees tried it, but something went wrong. He persuades Giselle to tell him what really happened.
As it turns out, Darren wanted to try out a "new rush" and so the couple went to meet a dealer named Gavin Frost in an alley. Darren tried Frost's wares first, but never returned.
Liam quickly finds the alley in question, which is currently occupied by three men conducting some kind of business in a truck trailer. In the shadows, Liam diverts the guard, then fires a surveillance device at the truck that penetrates the metal exterior and allows him to see one of Gavin's customers enjoying an ecstatic Mneme vision.
At the Flat Planet Café, Augur's "silent" partner, Dr. Julianne Belman (Majel Barrett Roddenberry), is making his life difficult. He mutters "Divest it or lose it. Divest it or lose it," as Liam and Renee enter and compliment him on the bar's new Majel-friendly décor.
Liam and Renee have yet another of their clandestine chats as he fills her in on how Mneme has already hit the black market. She scoffs at the notion that anyone could get bootleg Mneme through her security, and even when faced with recorded proof of Gavin's back-alley setup she is not particularly helpful.
However, Renee remains unwilling to accept that the technology, which all her testing indicated was perfectly safe, is responsible for these deaths. Returning to work, she confronts a crowd of media and Mayor DuBois, who presents her with a temporary restraining order to shut down Mneme research.
When DuBois accuses "Taelon profiteers" like Renee of bypassing government safety regulations, she responds that Mneme received fast-track FDA approval and reminds the mayor that he tried Mneme for himself.
Inside the Doors' offices, Soryama apologizes for the media and mayoral ambush. Renee sets him to work tracking the whereabouts of all Mneme equipment. Liam calls and tells Renee to meet him at the upscale Chesapeake Club, where she coincidentally happens to be a lifetime member. He tells her to wear blue.
Stepping out with my baby
Liam, looking like a spiky-haired reject from a Gap ad, sees Renee arrive wearing a dazzling gray dress. The pair engage in light banter, pretending to be on a date while Liam shakes Renee down for cash to offer the Mneme bootlegger.
Back in the alley, Liam and Renee follow Gavin to his truck. Liam enters first, while Renee waits in the alley with the guard. Gavin makes his sales pitch and Liam pays for the "e-ticket ride," apparent street slang for the memory works.
Overhead, a Taelon shuttle appears and begins a landing approach. Gavin hears the commotion and exits the truck, leaving Liam in the Mneme chair. By the time he gets up and peers out the door, he can see Gavin chatting familiarly with Sandoval.
He calls Renee, who has taken cover behind some convenient rubbish, and asks her to sneak into the truck and drive it out of the alley. She does so, but Sandoval grabs onto the rear door, only to receive a boot to the head from Liam for his efforts. The dazed FBI agent manages to get off a skrill blast, blasting the truck before it drives out of range and destroying the Mneme rig.
Back at the Flat Planet, Augur enjoys a chuckle at the idea of Sandoval as an electronic dope dealer until Liam reminds him that the dead bodies that keep turning up have raised the stakes. Augur despairs of learning anything from the skrilled remains of the bootleg equipment, but agrees to give it a try for the intellectual challenge.
At the Chesapeake Club, Sandoval assaults Gavin, then takes him to task for the deaths caused by his bootleg Mneme. Unrepentant, Gavin brushes off Sandoval's concerns, pointing out that "thrill junkies don't file lawsuits." Sandoval doesn't agree, but lets the matter go for the time being.
(Don't you) forget about me
Back at the Mneme facility, a technician tests one of the chairs while Renee examines one of the Mneme components. She calls Augur and shares her suspicion that someone is stealing Mneme chairs piece by piece to construct the bootleg units. He asks her to gather the serial numbers from the skrilled remains in his possession.
As it turns out, the parts are being stolen from facilities all over the world. The only part she can't account for is a disk that she claims it has nothing to do with Mneme.
Liam decides that the best way to find out what the disk does is to take the memory ride for himself. Over Renee's protests, he straps himself into the skrill-damaged chair and allows Augur to hook him up.
Unfortunately, what Liam actually relives is the same battle scene that killed Darren Voorhees. As the memories become more intense, Liam's pain increases and he begins to scream, prompting Augur to shut down the chair.
Liam describes his trip down simulated memory lane, recalling saving someone named Keller and stepping on a land mine. As he comes back to himself, Liam tells Augur and Renee that the memories came from a soldier who fought in the Battle of Kashmir during the S.I. War -- in short, the disk contains someone else's memories.
Renee declares that Sandoval must be stopped, but Augur is dubious that the "fireproof" Sandoval can be held accountable for such a bizarre crime. As a compromise, Liam suggests starting a step down on the criminal food chain with Gavin Frost.
However, Sandoval has already begun cleaning up after himself and we next see Frost being zipped into a body bag by paramedics.
Back in her office, Renee runs the serial numbers of the bootleg Mneme components through her computer looking for a link connecting the parts. The common denominator is that all the parts in question were requisitioned by a clerk named Sanchez. Renee decides she'd better "have a little chat with Ms. Sanchez."
Liam discusses Mneme with Da'an, accusing the Taelon of knowing that it could be used to let people experience other people's memories. Da'an agrees that this is a possible application of the technology, but is confused -- he had assumed humanity wants to evolve toward Commonality, which includes a certain unification of past experiences.
Liam argues that memory isn't something that should be shared, asserting that individuality is more important.
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing
Zo'or meets with Mayor DuBois in an attempt to "make friends," pointing out that while the Mayor claims he relived a baseball game, it wasn't actually the case. Sandoval shows him a Mneme disk. Not a man to argue once he's been set up, DuBois tells Zo'or to name his terms.
However, in an apparent sting-within-stings, Da'an then bursts in to "commend" Zo'or on the use to which he put the Mneme project, spoiling the entire blackmail attempt or at least the mood.
In a parallel scene, Renee accuses Soryama about his involvement with the bootleg Mneme machines. He denies knowing anything about it until Renee reveals that Sanchez gave him up. At this news, his tone changes, but he still acts like he has the upper hand.
He shows her a disk containing a record of her Mneme experiences recorded during an early project test. Renee is in check.
A long, strange trip
As Augur works on the remains of the bootleg Mneme rig and Liam field-strips his sidearm, a global chirps. The two men bicker over who should take the call, and the loser, Liam, is forced ease himself out of his chair and onto the floor and begins using his arms to propel his ... legless ... body across the room--
It's a dream. Liam awakens to the sound of his global chirping in the dark.
Liam and Renee get together to confront Soryama at the Mneme facility. As the enter the Mneme control room, something triggers a storm of energy that races through the room in tendrils stretching from ceiling to floor.
Struck by a stray tendril, Liam relives his accelerated maturation process and the death of his mother, then experiences the traumatic battle from the S.I. War again. Also caught in the storm of enhanced memories, Renee experiences a brief scene from her girlhood, followed by an automobile accident.
Liam draws his gun and aims it at a control panel, but an explosion knocks him to the ground before he can fire. Crawling to retrieve the weapon, he flashes back and forth between memory and reality. He recovers his gun, fires at the panel, and the energy storm stops.
Unfortunately, Soryama was in a Mneme chair during the outburst and the resulting sensory overload has killed him.
Sandoval arrives on the scene to check on his handiwork. He blames the bootleg operation on Soryama and maintains deniability by claiming he was gathering evidence on the rogue Mneme organization. Liam and Renee console themselves with the cold comfort of knowing that Sandoval's out of the stolen memory business.
Zo'or and Sandoval discuss Da'an's recent tractability and the usefulness of Mneme. Noting the Taelon need to ensure a steady supply of pliable human troops in their war with the Jaridians, Zo'or claims that the Companions must understand how humanity thinks and feels.
He dismisses Sandoval, holds up a disk, and announces, "Renee Palmer, show me your fears." He inserts the disk in a console, and relives the same memories Renee experienced during the Mneme storm. The process briefly makes Zo'or's eyes look human, but they quickly revert to the slit-pupil state common to Taelons.
Meanwhile, Liam is wrapping up some business of his own. At an Army hospital, a soldier escorts him, in dress uniform, to a lounge, where he introduces himself to a "Lieutenant McKee." Liam tells McKee he "heard" about his exploits during the S.I. War and asks what happened to Keller. Keller survived, so there's nothing left to do but give McKee back his memories -- in the form of the Mneme disk -- and salutes the man, who returns the salute from his wheelchair.
advertisement
