Mnemesis

Printer-friendly version

Mnemesis
by Ceri
Never underestimate the power of words.

Carter Brand considered it his vocation, an almost holy calling, to combat antisocial mnemes; although his role in the battle was relatively minor, he knew it to be vital. Scientists might identify malign mnemes, others develop counter-mnemes, and still more, pinpoint where and when they would be best used, but it was Carter’s skill in following their instructions that ensured success. He knew a little of the organisation’s history, its first attempts, and the disastrous results of releasing counter-mnemes indiscriminately — heads had rolled over Woodstock.

As a cog he was not always privy to the purpose of his missions, and the mneme he transported was sealed within a hypno-capsule that could only be opened at the instant of deployment, to prevent contamination by chaotic thought he could encounter. Of course, there was a suggestion that the chaos might originate in Carter’s brain, which rankled for someone who prided himself on the rightness of his thinking. Such was Carter’s opinion of this cerebral purity — after all, he gave himself a mnemema each morning — it often occurred to him, that it had an effect on the contact that surpassed that of the capsule’s payload. Putting aside a little of his pride, he did his best to look inconspicuous, now that the target was in sight.

Generally, the counter-mneme’s target presented few clues to his mission’s nature — strangers just as anonymous as Carter — but occasionally its objective was startlingly clear, and even less frequently, had his wholehearted approval. Scanning the crowded shopping precinct, Carter experienced the familiar mental click that identified his target, when his eye fell on what appeared, superficially, to be a particularly tall woman. It — Carter would not use a feminine pronoun — was in its thirties, smartly dressed and well groomed, but there was a tell-tale exaggeration of gait, that betrayed what lay beneath. In his opinion, a thin female veneer - however well applied - did not make someone a woman, no matter what the statute books said.

The organisation was not vindictive, had the travesty simply kept hidden, no action would have been taken, but ‘transgendered’ mnemes could not be allowed to proliferate in public spaces. This individual was bold, and no doubt had many contacts within what it would call its community; Carter’s counter-mneme would pass quickly to other cross-dressers, destroying the delusions they harboured, and cutting the risk to others of future infection. Days like these were when he heard his calling loudest, though it possibly meant destroying the subject’s life; Carter knew that he was protecting many thousands of normal people, from a sad, twisted existence.

Surreptitiously, he began to plot an interception course, which would bring him close enough to deploy the message hypnotically sealed in his mind. Carter did not control its triggering, which was done automatically when the necessary proximity was attained, but he had to ensure that his approach did nothing to alarm the target. Falling in, and out of step with those around him, Carter threaded a mazy route through the crowd, doing nothing to arouse suspicion, yet never taking his eye from the objective. The nearer he came to the travesty, the more its attempts to be female appalled him; surely it would be better to live in painful denial, than to flaunt ones depravity so overtly, and potentially transmit it to innocents.

“Excuse me mate,” a few short steps from the target, Carter was body checked by a man cutting obliquely across his path. Irritated by the obstruction, he quickly revised his course to bring him around again into position, and ignored the interloper’s stream of mumbled words. Carter’s work was far more important than any apology, but the stranger’s voice inexplicably arrested his attention. He turned too late to catch the speaker, who had drifted into the press of shoppers, and stopped dead in his tracks; as so often happens when one has a particular purpose, Carter’s mind had completely tuned out.

What had he been doing? Not that it mattered much anyhow; Carter had spotted a pretty sundress in a shop window, and the darlingest pair of strappy sandals. What sort of name was Carter anyway; Carmen, now that was a proper name...

up
44 users have voted.
If you liked this post, you can leave a comment and/or a kudos! Click the "Thumbs Up!" button above to leave a Kudos

Comments

Beware the counter-mneme!

I just love the premise of this story. The idea of an organization dedicated to the control of mneme infections is just so neat! The ending, where the main character is body-checked, started me wondering if there might be more than one organization working with mnemes. :)

~~~ ten minutes pass ~~~

Y'know ... this story seems to be working like a mneme. I pretty much expected to read it, enjoy it for a moment, then move on, but something about this tale is getting my imagination stirred up. I've been thinking about there being more than one organization and came up with a couple of names.

The first one is COMA, which stands for Centralized Organization for Mneme Administration. The other is MORF, which stands for Mneme Obfuscation and Redirection Federation. I realize they can't be used, since the story is already written and all, but I thought I'd share them anyway just for the fun of it. :)

mnemes within mnemes

Have you worked out yet which orgnisation I'm working for?

Who is Ceri working for?

I'm not entirely sure yet, but my instincts suggest you're running a lone-wolf operation or perhaps are a member of one of the organizations that hasn't been identified yet. ;)

I could tell you

but I have this message you need to hear first...

Be afraid...

[ FNORD ]

If you can't read the bracketed text above, consider yourself lucky.
If you can read it, it's probably already too late.

Be afraid... or at least mildly amused. ;)

If you're really curious (and willing to take a chance), just double-click in the space between the brackets to see the mystery word.

Beautiful Plumage!

erin's picture

That's why the parrot died, he was pining for the fnords of home. :)

Hugs,
Erin

= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.

= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.

do I detect

kristina l s's picture

perhaps a pinch of tongue in cheekness, a hint of sarcasm a touch of... humour! Gasp, really Ceri, don't you know this is serious business this writing thing. Besides now I've read this and mentally tried to pronounce those m words I've got the bloody Sesame St thing stuck in my head, you'll pay for this.....

Kristina

mneme wars

laika's picture

A totally fresh idea is a rare thing in science fiction. While this world you've created might have ancedents and inspirations, it doesn't follow any of the instantly recognizeable formula that most of us who dabble in SF are content to reshuffle and recombine slightly into some quasi-clever configuration. To me this actually seems like something new under the sun. It is a magnificently paranoid vision of the world (one that'll give Scientology a run for its money!), rendering literal and material the hidden war that is going on around us, those memes/mnemes (?) that we unwittingly shuck back and forth like rhinoviruses, which shape and color how we imagine the world, making society one thing or another. They seem to spring up out of nowhere, some parthanogenesis of all our minds rubbing together- but sometimes they are often every bit as engineered and packaged as you've painted here. Brewed up in secret vats under the Eagle Forum, tucked stealthily into some innocuous-seeming vector; a whisper in an alley, a "catchy" pop song designed to get stuck in your head with the tenacity of a wood tick, or quite often spritzed forth in aerosol form by some talking head on your favorite news channel.

My dad incidently was one of the casualties of meme research back during the Cold War, one of those guinea pigs they exposed to live memes at the Dugway proving grounds- after which we couldn't get him to shut up about water floridation's threat to our "precious bodily fluids"...

I did want to know the exact structure of the mneme Carter was carrying (I can handle it, I've had my shots) but I guess it's just as well you didn't put it out there...
~~~hugs, Laika

"Tenser," said the Tensor.

erin's picture

Very original and true science fiction. Memes are related to earworms, I think, (let's have 47 choruses of "Mickey") or perhaps to deadly jokes.

Oliver Wendell Holmes' Height of the Ridiculous

Monty Python's Killer Joke.

Wouldn't a deadly joke be a Mnemesis? :)

Hugs,
Erin

= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.

= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.

mnemes schmnemes

I confess that 'mnemes' are in fact 'memes', but I had a cleverish title to start with so added the 'n' to use it :)

It was written this morning, and reading it back it does owe quite a bit to some of Arthur C Clarke's 'Tales From the White Hart', where characters' pomposity was turned against them by their own inventions, and jokey explanation given for actual events... it's an ambition of mine to come up with a title as good as 'The Defenestration of Ermintrude Inch' (that or 'White Fang Goes Dingo')

Huh?

Ummm... what exactly is going on here? This almost sounds like a rumour that a conservative christian church would spread xD I mean what in the world? All of a sudden the guy is not a guy anymore? It doesn't work like that xD You've definitely confused me Ceri, good job* ... *though most would say that's not much of an accomplishment, Chelsea gets confused easily T_T*

 

    I just got to be me :D

 

I know who I am, I am me, and I like me ^^
Transgender, Gamer, Little, Princess, Therian and proud :D

memes are like thingies...

A meme is supposed to be a sort of viral idea, like "something in the air" that people pick up on or could pass to one another. You "catch" a meme, and it can change your way of looking at the world and yourself.

I guess memes represent an attempt to explain how similar ideas pop up in different places... it isn't that an IDEA was current, but that some little doohickey or thingy gave birth to the idea.

What Ceri did was to make memes into a sort of engineered tool of social change. So Carter is a person who releases these viral ideas that make people over. Carter detests cross-dressers, and he has a meme that will "fix" them. Before he can do it, though, someone passes him the cross-dressing meme.

Thingies!

laika's picture

An excellent summary of Meme Theory, Kaliegh, except for one small point.
Technically memes aren't "in the air" but reside in the invisible aether
(otherwise they couldn't travel through space). Any good up-to-date
phrenology chart will show where the meme receptors are,
that they get into the brain through...
~~hugs, Laika

And if that doesn't work ...

erin's picture

... get a bigger hammer!

Hugs,
Erin

= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.

= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.

Expansion

terrynaut's picture

I'd like to see this story expanded. You've got a good idea here. :)

- Terry (tired from too much hugging)

Mnemorable

joannebarbarella's picture

Who do you work for? Mnot for mne.
Actually, an Sf writer mnamed John Barnes has written several books about memes which on one hearing can change the way a person thinks, and in his futures have taken over the minds of humanity and created a kind of hive mind or commonality, forcing the uninfected to hide out away from the mass of mankind.
But I like yours better and mnow I'm going to try on those gorgeous shoes,
Mny,Mny,
Joanne

Mnice, Interesting Diversion

Can we expect "On Her Mnown Petard" to start up again mnanytime soon? Or, are you still spending lots of time on the mnthrone?

I wish

I've spent less time on the throne than Edward VIII, and it's got me worried sick. I'm going to try to see my GP this morning... without going into all the gory detail it feels like there's a physical obstruction, but there's always a chance that it's neurological, in which case the MS symptom I fear most seems to be happening. My brother was diagnosed 15 years before I was, so I've seen how bad it can be... he has 'primary progressive' MS while I have the lesser 'relapse remission' version of the condition, but there's always a dread when something stops working that it won't come back.

I was feeling a bit sorry for myself

this morning when I wrote this, but I had a chat with the doctor and feel a lot better. She gave me another, slightly longer term treatment, and worked out how to define the cause; dietary changes, side effects from other medication I take, and maybe MS. The latter is apparently less of a problem now as there are quite effective treatments, so that put my mind at rest.

On a far more positive note I managed to find a dealer who had two near mint trios in the Royal Albert pattern I've started collecting, and they didn't cost the Earth :)

What always works for me ...

... is a good bike ride to the extent that I find bib shorts something of an embarrassment at times :) That and my vegetarian diet, perhaps, seems to be very effective. MS needn't be a barrier to cycling; a friend of mine suffers and remains a hard rider. Of course that may not be an option for you and you may not wish to emulate Cathy (or her creator).

I'm a great fan of Professor Dawkins and he mentions the concept of memes in his books. They seem to be a reasonable hypothesis for the continuation of otherwise inexplicable behaviour. Now whether they could be transmitted instantly and directly is another matter and quite a frightening concept. I could end up in a church ... or even a mosque - gulp!

Great story and great idea but concentrate on getting better.

Geoff

slightly huge sigh of relief

well, without saying anything too graphic I appear to be on the mend already, and have added a couple of hundred words to OHOP this evening - fingers crossed.

I've not been on a bike for at least 15 years, I think the last time was a drunken dash across Kinsale, but I have thought about cycling to and from work. I already walk it when the weather's fine in the summer, and have worked out a route that's all on the flat. It turns four miles into five, but does run along the river, past a medieval church and through two parks. The only obstacle I can see would be my occasional losses of balance... a chap in work has agreed to loan me a bike, if we'd only get a week of good weather I'd take him up on the offer.

Mnemesis Follows A Premise Set Out In The Dune Series

Where a courier could take a message to a target. I like this idea of changing a person's orientation, but would they not need to have some predisposition to the switch for it to work?
May Your Light Forever Shine

    Stanman
May Your Light Forever Shine

Prediposition

I did give this some thought. What I came up with is for the tg target, the meme wouldn't necessarily obliterate the desire to be as she was, but to work against it using other drives, like self-disgust or fear of reprisal. Carter's conversion may seem a bit pat, but it's often said that the most homophobic men act so to mask homosexual urges in themselves... a meme against such a transphobic would not have to create a need, but help bring it to the surface.

The story does leave a lot unanswered or very subtly implied. Memes would be created for individuals, or small groups of people with similar backgrounds and attitudes; who creates them, how do they avoid contamination of the meme and themselves, how do they select targets. I fudged all that by making Carter a very low level operative, a delivery boy essentially.

I have half an idea for a revision where the target is not tg, but an environmentalist, which may allow scope to open it all up.

Meme manipulation ideas in science fiction literature

I think Asimov's Foundation stories are the most obvious example of organized manipulations of memes already being written about. Asimov called it manipulating "psychohistory". Different name, and not entirely the same thing, but it seems from here that organizations to manipulate, halt, or spread, memes falls within the field of psychohistory. There are even earlier examples of similar ideas used in SF, but this would be the classic one.

Oh, and Delaney's...is it Babel-17? A few of Delaney's early novels were classics that included this kind of idea. He is an amazing genius.

M.A. Foster's Morphodite and it's two sequels, Transformer and Preserver also assume meme manipulation as a fundamental plot point. Cross television's The Prisoner with a good TG transformation story as well as meme manipulation, for the starting point. And a few other ideas besides. Very recommended reading, especially if you want good SF with some TG included.

Annie
"Choose your leaders
with wisdom and forethought."
-the beginning of Octavia Butler's poem, Parable of the Talents

reality control

Hi Ceri,
fabulous story.
I love its witty quirkiness, and was interested you said it was inspired by an Arthur C Clarke story. It reminded me very much of the Greg Egan story "The Infinite Assassin", but the TG twist is delightful, and I will have to look into your Arthur C Clarke reference.
Thanks for the great ideas and the cool writing.
XX
AD

Mnemesis

I did not see this when it came out, but it is an interesting
plot concept. Very interesting indeed.

Thank you,
Sarah Lynn