Alfred Bester describes future with no Death Penalty or Prisons
Last Updated on June 8, 2020 by
American writer Alfred Bester in his novel “Man with no face” describes future when mankind became merciful enough to abolish prisons and death penalty.
People of future take away the criminal”s memory, and in this way the personality which committed the crime is wiped out. Such a person has to live anew, with no past. The writer could hardly imagine that his fantasies would be implemented in Russia even before the beginning of the third millennium.
On June 5, 2000 “Vzglyad” (Outlook) TV program broadcast sensational news: in Kaluga region four people with no memories of their past, had been found. These people could not remember anything: their names, relatives, places of residency or work.
One of them was “in luck”: after the TV program broadcast, his wife and mother identified him. But after returning to his family, this man could remember nothing. He recognized nobody.
Another man with lost memory hardly avoided death: he was walking along the railroad while the train was approaching.
New life for this man started in the police station in the city of Novosibirsk. He had neither personal belongings nor ID. ìÃwever, people with no memory did not lose professional skills. “Sergey” (this name was given to him by doctors) said to a local newspaper reporter that he could do computer programmer”s work and develop software in any language, he also had proficiency in English. The man said he did not know the city of Novosibirsk and had no idea how he had arrived in the city.
Psychiatrists said that in all other parameters Sergey”s health was perfect.
Another man started his new life on the bench in the park of city Kharkov, Ukraine. He had no ID. Ukrainian police said that “Ivan” (the name the policemen gave to the man) arrived in Kharkov by Moscow-Crimea train. The man did not speak the Ukrainian language, and had a 100-rouble bill in his pocket. Because of this, the policemen decided he was Russian. He could not answer the questions where he was from and what his name was. Ukrainian policemen decided to send Ivan to Moscow.
The chief of the hospital where Ivan was having medical examination, discovered that the man knew computers very well. The hospital chief”s friend, a computer programmer, said that Ivan knew computers much better than he did. Moreover, it was discovered that Ivan had been working in Germany for some time.
Unfortunately, the police had no interest to the man after handing him to doctors, and hospital chief”s friend told the local TV reporter about the man. The reporter showed Ivan in a TV program. Two days later Ivan disappeared.
Similar incident took place in Canada in September 2001: Montreal police detained a tramp who had lost the memory of his past life and knew only … the Ukrainian language. This man had good knowledge of computers as well.
These are people> whose memory was blocked. Today medicine knows two ways of affecting memory: using drugs and using technical tools. There is one more method – traumatizing the head, but the found man had no traumas.
Scientists has been searching for the ways to improve memory for a long time, but since 1970s another need aroused – making people forget their past because of the “Vietnam syndrome”. Ten years later similar work started being done in the USSR because of the “Afghan syndrome”. There was a need to block the memory of the veterans of those wars. Speaking in medical terms, there was a need of liquidating the centers of overexcitation in one”s brain, otherwise this person could commit crimes. Both the USA and the Soviet Union conducted these works secretly. However, there is information that special medication for these purposes was successfully developed. So-called “memory substance” was discovered in the brain. After this substance taken from the brain of the rat trained to pass the labyrinth, was injected to another rat, that rat was also able to pass the labyrinth.
Unfortunately, in recent years many secret research projects have been either made public or sold abroad. After the state stopped funding such projects, mafia started sponsoring a number of them. Probably mafia obtained the medicine for blocking memory.
Most of the people with no memory are high class specialists on computers. Everybody remembers Russian man named Levin who stole several million dollars from the US bank while sitting at the computer in his apartment. The men with no memory could be used by some criminal groups for similar purposes, including gaining extremely valuable information. After the job was completed, injection was made to the man, and in this way the criminals got rid both of the eye-witness and of the need to pay him for his job. In this way, the idea of American fantasy writer has been implemented in contemporary Russia.
I carefully monitored TV program “Wait for me” about people who disappeared or who is looking for somebody. Not only computer programmers, but people of some other interesting professions were among the men with no memory from this TV program.
There was paratrooper, marine, doctor, truck driver, chemist- pharmacist. Certain circles need people of these professions.
For every case, I marked on the map the place where another man with no memory had been found. I discovered that Moscow was the center for “producing” such men. All the men with no memory shown in the TV program were found in Moscow suburbs, near electric train stations. Probably these men were put into electric trains when they were affected by some narcotics or soporific medication, and later the men regained consciousness.
Two groups of such men were released in 2000 and 2002 ÖÃÄÑ. We can only guess what kind of job the paratrooper and the Marine could do.
Valentin Psalomshikov, Doctor of Physics and Mathematics
Source: NGN