Dark Mist - Chapter 3

Jack recalls...

It was late autumn in 1981 my military lab was awash with notes, bottles of samples and an abundance of equipment. I had finalised the project I had been working on for the last two and half years and was now ready to promote to the ‘powers that be’. I had been tasked with developing a vaccine against gases to protect soldiers in the field having volunteered for the detail myself. My ulterior motive however was to find something that would really help the service personnel. Having being a soldier for many years and as a secondary role a medical researcher, I had once battled my personal demons of the battlefield. The images of comrades that had fallen in embroiled conflicts around the world haunted me. I needed to forget. They needed to be fully eradicated. If I was suffering, goodness knows how many more were experiencing the same.

The primary goal was to give the soldiers a tonic in a quantity enough to blank a certain aspect of the cerebral cortex, the hippocampus which is located at the fold of the temporal lobe. This controls the long term memory. To erase the memories they had accumulated in war the quantity had to be absolutely accurate. Too little would have no effect. Too much could result in devastation.

I had to test the solution on a human subject, someone who had experienced combat and survived the trauma of warfare. A volunteer would be too hard to find in such a short space of time not mention keeping it hush, hush. The obvious choice would be me. It was late in the evening and I had been working for the last fifteen hours straight with very little rest bite. Being tired, hungry and with fatigue creeping in I needed to push on before fell asleep on my feet. At about two thirty in the morning I decided that it was time.

Strapping myself around the stomach to a cold steel lab table, mainly to prevent a fall should I lose consciousness, I prepared to commence the experiment. There was no-one in the labs at this time of the day so I wouldn’t be disturbed. This brought a risk, if this did go badly wrong there wasn’t anyone to revive me. At my side I had a silver kidney dish, which contained a syringe, a tourniquet and alcohol soaked swabs. Quickly before I changed my mind I wrapped the tourniquet around my left arm, within a minute I had a good vein. With one of the swabs I rubbed the vein, took a deep breath and pushed the tip of the needle through the skin in the same action depressed the plunger. Then nothing seemed to happen.

I must have passed out, as the next I knew I felt the presence of someone nearby. Damn, I needed to keep this under wraps, trying to move I realised that I was still strapped to table. The cold air in the lab had settled on my body over the hours I was lay there. Noticing the fact that the cold had affected me the unknown person approached with a woollen blanket, unable to identify who it was my vision was blurred.
My mind was still working, well my rational thought process in any case, but who was in the lab. Turning my head to the right I noticed Norman one of the lab assistants undoing the strapping from the base of the table. Looking at me he said, “You okay Jack?”

Dry throat, bad headache and body freezing, I replied, “Never better.” But then I thought, was I really okay, I couldn’t think, I needed something. A scent wafted into the lab, a rich scent, what was it? I knew what it was I just couldn’t remember the name of it. Norman had released me from my rigid state and asked,
“Please tell me you didn’t do what I think you did?”

“Why what do you think I did. No don’t answer that.” Of course he knew, he had worked with me long enough.

“It had to be tested Norm, I needed to be sure it worked, I couldn’t subject newly traumatised troops to something that wasn’t trialled on humans”.

That smell again, I asked Norman what it was. With an expression which suggested that Norman thought I was joking he dismissed the comment. I pushed for an answer as I was getting quite anxious and frustrated that I could not put my finger on it.

“From your serious tone, can I take it you are now aware that your sense of smell is working, but not your memory? It’s your morning coffee freshly percolated as usual”, Norman said.

“Five sugars please”, I gestured to the coffee pot. As Norman handed a cup of the dark liquid I took deep intake of the caffeine fumes.
We discussed the previous night’s events he asked, “Why didn’t you ask me to assist you?”

“I didn’t want to implicate you with the hierarchy, especially if I didn’t come through this.” He looked disappointed but added, “How long will it be before we will know the results of your testing?”

“I would anticipate it being reasonably quick, a day or so I guess. The thing that bothers me is I was unable to recognise the sent of the coffee.”
He thought for a moment then said, “I bet it was just tiredness, you were working for a long time yesterday and the day before and the week before that.”

“You could be right, yeah. Yeah that’s gotta’ be it.” It didn’t sound convincing but it kind of made sense.

Jack stopped. Milo was transfixed at this point, wanting to know more he asked, “Jack, Jack what’s up? Jack come on man carry on.” Jack was leaning forward on his chair he was staring at his hands. They were shaking. He rubbed them against each other in an attempt to stop them.

“Look, if this is too much for you we can talk about some other time?” Jack lifted his head, his eyes burned into Milo’s sending shivers down his spine. For what seemed like an hour Jack finally spoke, “Sorry Milo I was miles away, what did you say?”
Milo managed to speak, “I was asking whether you were okay? You were a trance or something.”

“Yeah,” Jack sighed. “My hands, they have never shaken before. Where was I?” Milo distracted from the story troubled to think, before he could offer a synopsis Jack stepped in, “Oh yes, I remember.” Jack’s mood now upbeat, he continued...


It was about a week later when I tested the effects of my experiment. I tried to think of my most recent mission and the aftermath that ensued. All I could remember is the reason for the mission, which was to provide a security escort for a diplomat to a delegation meeting in the middle of Beirut. Why on earth they would hold a damn meeting in such a hostile place beats me, but I was there for a secondary reason. Should there be an attack on the principle I could provide emergency medical assistance. Long story short, I remembered the mission up to a point then nothing further. I could not remember how the mission progressed or more importantly how it ended. Success, its worked.

My concoction had erased the parts that of the memory associated with trauma, everything remained intact. It worked for me however how would it work for other soldiers. The problem was, I was short on time I had to give my experiment to the money men.

I came out of the meeting room shortly after 2pm. Norman was seated in the corridor waiting for me to give him the news. My head was down as I walked slowly towards him, “Well, how did it go?” He was anxious, sitting on the edge of his seat like a child waiting for a present.

In a glum voice to begin with I said, “We, er... We did it.” My face lit up with a huge smile. Norman mirrored my expression, jumped to his feet and shaking my hand vigorously said, “That’s great news Jack, is it going to be used soon?”
“They are trialling it with immediate effect with a platoon that are about to be deployed, seventeen in total.”

At that time we I had no idea of the side effects, when asked I kept it vague. I merely indicated that they were very limited, slight nausea and headaches. Of course that was limited to me. The big effects were not evident till much later. Following the initial trials however I was cut from the programme, well re-assigned as I was officially told. I was back in the battlefield patching up soldiers, the ones that could be patched up anyway.
It was five years or more after the experiment when I was on leave, a much needed break. I was in the local coffee shop sipping my morning wake up beverage when the daily newspapers arrived. I saw the headline and my heart dropped.

FIFTEEN DIE IN MILITARY ACCIDENT

I remember thinking ‘accident’, not bloody likely. As I read further into how the fifteen had died the details scared me. They were killed in an apparent training accident, all had died from bullet wounds to the head, some accident. I suddenly felt really ill when I read the part that named the soldiers. They were the platoon that took my solution, although two were not on the list. Why were they not on the list? I needed some answers, real answers not the bureaucratic bullshit that the public see, but inside info. There was only one person that could give me those kind of answers, I just hope he was still alive.