The Substance: aria

Aria is contained in an eyedropper. Once taken any memory you’ve ever had is available to you all over again. Not a memory like you have experienced it before, but the actual event itself-completely renewed: playing in front of you as though you were experiencing it for the first time. One problem with aria is that the memories remembered are not all good. In fact, aria guarantees at least a portion of terrible memories. In fact there is a recent rash of deaths under the influence of aria. These deaths are called: Memory Deaths. The Memory Technicians (un-official researchers of aria) attribute these deaths to the possibility (probability) of the remembrance of “The Fall”, while using aria. It is a paradox, since aria was conceived as a way of escaping into memories and forgetting “The Fall”(this is not the official reason that aria was conceived, but this is why it is used on the streets). But the most important attribute of aria is not that the drug allows you to have a good or a bad memory, but something else: aria allows you to remember the future. The Memory Technicians have a theory that aria was conceived by the government right after “The Fall”. They believe that the government was fine-tuning some interrogation aid. They (the government) thought that aria would prompt certain kinds of memories, and then they thought that they could coerce certain kinds of testimonies with these memories. The government could torture certain foreign nationals, force confessions from these people. And the confessions would be freely signed, because the memories would be true: therefore capturing those responsible for “The Fall” and creating security.

But as with all substances, aria got pushed onto the streets. It is now widely used and has turned a large sector of the population into Memory Addicts. The major distributor of the substance is a cartel known only as The Empire.

Labels: The Empire