Memory unit, somewhere between the ports of reason and south of confusion, with no parallels of longitude and latitude to mark the spot exactly, you will find the memory unit. Passports are not required. Patients wandering aimlessly like broken toys, lifeless limp ragdolls. Minds, like pieces of broken glass, once whole, now shattered, that peer through narrow openings to a different reality, outside their encased prison walls from which there is no escape. There are no visible horizons. Awareness, shrunk to the size of a quarter, extending out only several inches and getting smaller. Meaningless communications. Childlike gibberish, with thoughts stuck in first gear. Brain in malfunction mode. No exit, except death, that will come, but slowly. Living corpses. Erased memories never again to be recalled. Lives, sputtering, flickering out like dying florescent bulbs. Dementia, a malevolent thief that does not discriminate who robs the recesses of the mind. Frayed wires. Lost connections. Irreversible, irreparable. “Do I know you?” “I’m your husband, Roy.” “No. Do I know you?” Eventually sleep and the confusion stops for a while. Nursing staff in multicolored uniforms, talking, laughing over the word salad and garbled phrases of their patients, who remain slumped over in chairs with vacant stares and who make muffled pleas: “I’m lost. Can anybody help me find my way back home?” In space, nobody can hear you scream.
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