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Doug was reading, he did that a lot now. It's easy to fill an empty head, he's discovered. The Urania didn't have a lot of books, though he's told it's more than the Hephaestus ever had. He'd made his way through user manuals, a psychology book, and one in thermal dynamics which made his head hurt in a way that told him he hadn't known any of that before either.
Currently, he is reading a book on modern technology. Not Goddard's type of modern tech, but what the average person has and uses.
Doug was alone when he got to the page about household computers. It was telling him about the programs and applications that come pre-installed. One such app was the recycling bin.
Anything deleted would go there, and it would take thirty days to delete automatically. That gave him pause.
His memories were deleted, right? Inside of a computer. Was Hera a computer? Did she still have his memories? It hadn't yet been thirty days since he woke up.
“Um, Hera?” He calls out into the empty room.
“Yes, Offic- Doug?” She responds, stumbling over his name in the way that every crew member does.
“Do you have a recycling bin?” He asks her. He doesn't think there's any reason she wouldn't, but he's been wrong a lot the past couple of days.
“I… do.” She responds, clipped, uncertain.
“Are my memories in there? If they were deleted inside of a computer they'd be there right?” He asks. Sure, old him was kind of a jerk, but he sees the ways that the others want him to be Eiffel again. He wants to be that for them, he wants to understand everything again. He wants them to want him.
Hera is quiet, only for a moment. “There are thousands of blank files in the trash, but I can't confirm if any of them are your memories or just noise from my transfer to the Urania.”
“Well, can we put them in anyway?” He asks. It's not like it could hurt him, not anymore than he's already damaged.
“Eif- Doug. Even if they are your memories, the Urania isn't equipped with the same systems as the Sol, attempting to use rudimentary technology to do brain surgery on yourself is highly risky and not advisable.”
“But I could be myself again,” he tells her. Eiffel isn't Doug though. Not anymore than a child is their parent. But Hera wants Eiffel back. Renée wants Eiffel back, Loveless wants Eiffel back. The only people who don't care seem to be Jacobi and Pryce. “I just want to be myself again.” Doug doesn't. He's heard who he was, and despite how much the others sing Eiffel's praise it won't change how he spoke to or about any of them.
“... I can walk you through the steps to patch you into the system, and can upload the files from there.” She agrees. Folds, really.
It was easy, he thinks. Too easy to convince her to hook him up to machines that neither one of them really knows how to use. Too easy to make her agree to something that could kill him. Too easy for him to see how much she loved Eiffel, and how much his presence was hurting everyone.
Hera guides him through the halls of the Urania, taking him past the mess and to the corner of the station where Renée had been asleep for the first few days of his waking life.
“There’s a chair on the back wall to the right. Put the helmet on first, then strap yourself in. Feet first.” She instructs.
And Doug listens, ignoring the thump-thump-thumping of his heart as his body screams at him to stop what he's doing. Something in the psychology book said these were symptoms of a trauma response. He ignores that thought, he’s been wrong a lot recently.
“Doug, your vitals are showing an elevated heart rate and an increase of cortisol in your system. You don't have to do this.” Hera tells him. But he hears it, the way she doesn't want him to change his mind because she wants to believe more than anything that Eiffel can still come back.
“No. No, I want to.” Doug lies as he finishes strapping his arms in. The final wrist strap is the hardest to get but with a little finagling he gets it tightened.
“Alright, I'm tightening the helmet now.” And true to her word, the inside strap of the helmet tightens, and he feels something cold and stiff sift through his hair and rest upon his scalp.
Hera doesn’t give him even a moment to think about what’s about to happen. “Im turning on the machine now. This may hurt.”
And hurt it sure did. The metal rod erupted in sparkling static, shooting electricity straight through Doug's body. The static building and building into an endlessly increasing pressure on his brain until his body went limp.
Doug is in a place that he’s positive he’s been before, and in front of him is a woman who he’s sure he’s seen before. He only realises it’s Hera when she speaks.
“I’m going to begin uploading the files now, please let me know if anything goes wrong.”
He can feel the information being slowly pushed into his head. He imagines it’s what dehydrated cells feel like when water is put next to them. A slow osmosis of knowledge.
Stupid enough, the first thing Doug remembers- that Eiffel remembers, is the god damn muppets, and Kermit singing ‘Somewhere over the rainbow’.
Then it’s staying up late under the Texas sky, drinking himself into a stupor with his teenage friends.
Then, it’s the car crash. And getting launched into space. And holding his daughter for the first time.
And then the trickle of memories turns into a landslide, slamming into him, injecting themselves into his mind, and it hurts.
He doesn’t know he’s screaming until the whirr of machinery comes to an abrupt halt, and there are hands on him, the physical him.
He comes to with two arms wrapped around him, cradling his head between their neck and shoulder as they float. There’s an argument taking place above him.
He does not listen. Doug remembers being Officer Eiffel, now. He knows he is Officer Eiffel. Survivor of the U.S.S Unending Nightmare. Survivor of the Decima virus. Survivor of… himself? That wasn’t right. He remembers being Eiffel, grabbed violently and tied down to a table so that Dr. Jekyll could dissect his brain but… she remembers going into Eiffel's brain. She remembers breaking him. He remembers being broken.
“-Hera are you serious!? Of all people you should know better!” Minkowski bites at Hera.
“Commander?” He croaks.
All at once the argument comes to a halt.
“Eiffel?” She asks, it’s full of a careful sort of hope you reserve for when you’re terrified you might be dreaming.
“Doug.” He says, because that’s who he was in recent memory. He was Doug who’s very first memory was waking up on a screaming spaceship with a silently sobbing woman holding onto him as they floated. He was Doug, who remembers a wild-eyed beaten man rushing into the room and ordering him to follow with the now unconscious women in tow.
Doug watches her face contort miserably, and fall before he of course corrects. “Doug Eiffel. Officer Doug Eiffel, master of Jedi mind tricks such as remembering what earth looks like.”
“Oh my god. You idiot.” She says it fondly, mournfully, like she’s torn between elation and devastation. A cautious smile breaks over her face.
“But I,” is his false start. The oldest memories which sit perched inside his brain like vultures waiting for a sick animal to die are not Doug’s, and they are not Eiffels.
“Officer Eiffel, is that- is that really you?” Hera sounds like she’s amazed, surprised that the procedure worked at all instead of just outright killing him.
“No.” He chokes out, and the grip Minkowski has on him loosens.
His once empty head is full. Painfully so, and he brings his hands up to his head to cradle it gently.
“...Eiffel?” Hera asks again.
“No!” He shouts. “No, no,no.” He remembers designing Hera. He remembers fitting himself for cybernetic eyes. He remembers listening to the tapes to find out what he’d been like before. He remembers the first time the aliens mimicked his voice.
He must have begun tugging at his air, because the next thing he’s aware of is two hands, taking his wrists and cradling his hands between hers.
“Talk to me, Doug, what’s going on?” Minkowski practically begs him, but he can’t find the words to respond, not with three sets of memories tugging on the lining of his brain.
He can’t decide whether he’s ecstatic that he, Eiffel, finally gets to go home. Or whether he, Doug, is terrified at the prospect. Or whether she, Miranda Pryce, is pissed because the woman holding her killed her best friend.
“Oh- oh no…” Comes Hera's hushed voice from the intercom.
“What, pray tell, do you mean oh no?” Minkowski snaps.
“The memory files were registering as blank documents in my system. No writing, no code, no labels. I didn’t think. It’s… I tried to go slowly but the files were so small that they got uploaded all at once! And really that’s not my fault, I mean Doug asked me to do it!” Hera begins rambling faster and faster.
“Get to the point, Hera.” Minkowski all but growls at her.
“I mean I can only speculate, but if I had all of Eiffel's memory files, then I also had all of Pryce’s memory files, and if they all got uploaded at the same time and into the same system…” She trails off.
“So… that means that-”
Eiffel cuts her off with a broken, manic chuckle. “That I’ve gone from an Eternal Sunshine situation to being the target in Inception, and I can’t decide whether or not I wanna give you the biggest hug ever for us finally going home, punch you for trying to do it without me, or shoot you in the head for killing Carter.”
Eiffel- Doug- Miranda- no, yeah Eiffel. It’s his body right? So it was him? Does a body make the person? Loveless was still loveless, and she didn’t have the same body. Is it memories? Who is he?
“Undo it.” Minkowski drops Eiffel's hands, and stares dead ahead at the nearest camera. “Take Pryce's memories out of his head, and then incinerate them.”
“Commander, if I couldn’t read the files when they were literally in my head, what makes you think that I could take out specific memories?” Hera bites back. “Have you asked Eiffel what he wants?”
Minkowski’s gaze turns to rest gently on him. Miranda would want Eiffel's memories taken out, Eiffel's would want Miranda’s memories sent to the shadow realm never to return, Doug wouldn’t want any of this.
“I- I don’t know.” Doug says meekly.
“We should make a decision as a crew then.” Minkowski decides. “That way it’s not just one person's feelings making the decision.”
“I’ll let everyone know to meet in the bridge.”
---
In his most recent memories he’s Doug, Just Doug. No fancy title, or job, or memories. In his oldest memories which apparently did not belong in his brain, he’s Miranda Pryce, tech genius and part owner of Goddard Futuaristics, and that part of him is pissed that Carter is dead and she’s not doing anything about that. Sandwiched between those two people is Officer Douglas Eiffel, who is technically the owner of the body, and is very very unhappy about the prospect of sharing it with Lord Evil.
Eiffel's body holds onto a railing in the bridge to stop him from floating anywhere while everyone around him talks about whether they should try and remove Pryce’s memories, and just delete him entirely.
“What do you think, Loveless?” Jacobi butts in over Hera and Minkowski's ongoing argument.
Minkowski takes a deep breath. “You would have a unique angle on this.” she acquiesces, turning her attention to Loveless.
“I am Captain Isabell Loveless. Not because I have her body, but because I have her memories. Practically a one-to-one replica. But in his case? If there are two sets of memories in there then I think we need to take it up with the host body.”
“So basically-” Minkowski starts.
“Basically, this boat's too full, and we need to throw a man overboard, and the vote seems to be the new guy.” Eiffel takes a deep breath and lets the monster that is the memories of Miranda Pryce writhe with anger at the prospect of being killed.
“If my memories are correct- if Mirada’s memories are correct,” he corrects himself, “then I know how to fix this.”
“And we can be certain you’d be acting in your own best interest because?”
“Because I’m still me, Commander. Just with some extra pieces.”
“Fine, but Loveless and I are going to be watching you the whole time. And, Hera?”
“Yes, Commander?”
“You’re in charge of whatever Eiffel is doing. One wrong move and I want you to pull the plug and the power subtly that goes in the lab.”
“Of course Commander.”
---
‘Block the transceiver from being able to transmit information about fluctuations in the electrical current flowing through the machine.’ A thought tells him. Eiffel does not listen to it.
‘Rip out the second, third, and fourth wires so that Unit 214 can’t interact with the electrical grid connected to this part of the lab.’ Another thought tells him. Eiffel does not listen to it.
‘If you remove the first wire it’ll overload the circuit and then they can’t remove my memories.’ Another thought tells him.
“Alright, will you shut the hell up!?” He barks into the otherwise silent room.
“Um, officer Eiffel? No one was speaking.” Hera’s voice crackles to life through the PA system.
“Eiffel, are you okay?” Minkowski broaches.
“Fine. I’m fine.” He pointedly does not look in their direction.
“Are… you sure?” Loveless drawls, “because ‘fine’ people don’t usually yell at thin air to stop talking.”
“It’s just a little difficult to be working with Pryce's memories without her ideas showing up on the next train.” He grumbles.
A crackling sound comes from the helmet he’d been tinkering on before a smooth wiring sound takes its place.
Doug lets out a sigh of relief. “There. Now when I get hooked up to the machine it’ll be more like Ready Player One, and less like bringing a frog back to life. Now let’s strap me in before Venom takes over.”
Getting strapped into the chair is a lot easier when there are other people helping and he’s not stuck on trying to contort his hand to get the last wrist strap fastened.
“And we’re sure this is going to work?” (And not going to kill you?) Minkowski asks.
“Positive Commander, decades of working with advanced tech makes this a piece of cake.” He doesn’t give Minkowski the chance to say anything else. “Alright Hera, beam me up.”
The helmet once again tightens against his head, and he feels the metal nib sift through his hair until it rests on his scalp.
“Turning cranial power on now.”
It hurts significantly less with an upgraded system, Doug decides.
Then he’s in a room. It’s not the same one he’d been in when he- Miranda, opened up his head like a can of soup, but it’s also not anywhere that she would recognize either. A fixed point between the two minds, maybe. There are still shelves, and on them, very cluttered, are little jars with memories
“Eiffel?” It’s Hera again, manifested as she was the first time around.
“Hey, Hera.”
“Let’s do some spring cleaning, hm?”
‘How do we know which ones are mine and which are, y’know, not?”
“You’re going to have to tell me.” Which is the thing you don’t want to hear when you’re about to start breaking things inside of your brain.
Hera picks up one of the jars, and hands it to Eiffel.
When Miranda was young, she joined the robotics team at her school. There was a boy on the team, she thinks his name was Robert. He loathed the fact that there was a girl on his team. Whenever she suggested an idea, he shot it down, and whenever she made a change to the design that the team benefited from, he took credit. Robert Fischer was the first person she ever hated. He was also the first person she had ever wanted to murder. But she took that hatred and turned it into something productive, she used it to motivate herself to work harder, to be better. She-
“Eiffel?”
“This one’s not mine.” Doug says, grip loosening on the jar. It smashes unceremoniously to the ground, and just like that it was gone.
“How about this one?” Hera hands him another jar.
He’s suddenly fifteen again, and sitting on his front porch. It’s a hot summer night, even for Texas but the heat beat out having to deal with his drunk father. He sits with a small radio he had saved up for from the local tech store. Out in his small down there aren’t many broadcasts that can reach the cheap little thing, but that doesn’t stop him from surfing through the channels until he finds something.
“Mine, this one’s definitely mine.”
And so Hera takes the fragile jar that he’s holding and places it on a shelf which she’d cleared.
“How long is this going to take?” He whines as Hera hands him another memory.
“However long we need to.”
She’s ten, and waiting for her mother to pick her up from school. Her mom’s late a lot, but always makes up for it. Her math teacher stands watch nearby, she’s her favorite teacher, even if they don’t talk a lot.
“Mirandas.” Doug says, letting the memory shatter onto the floor.
“This feels wrong.” He says, and Hera pauses, jar in hand.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean is this right? We’re taking memories, someone else's memories and just, what? Trashing them? These meant so much to her, it feels wrong to treat them like they’re-”
“Disposable?” Hera supplies.
“Yeah,” Eiffel agrees, but Hera continues before he’s able.
“Need I remind you that Pryce was not only willing to slowly and painfully remove and discard every single one of your memories, but also happy to do so? Do I need to remind you what she did to you? To Captain Loveless? To Commander Minkowski? To me? How she mutilated me?”
“No. No, I remember just fine.” Eiffel looks towards the ground as hera hands him another memory.
The only thing this memory holds is screaming. Screaming and flashing images of wires and circuit boards. Eiffel drops it.
They go on like that for a while. Hera hands him a jar, if it’s his he puts it on the designated shelf and if it’s not he drops it, allowing it to join the rest of the shattered glass strewn across the ground.
Then Hera hands him another jar, and this memory is not like the others.
“I’ve been prototyping them for years now, but I finally got this one perfect!” Miranda Pryce says cheerfully to a younger Cutter. “Its practical name is Unit 1, but it likes to go by Aria. Say hi!”
“Hello! It’s nice to meet you Mr. Cutter, I’ve heard a lot about you!” The AI crackles to life through a speaker plugged into the super computer.
“Well it’s nice to meet you too! Say, what lovely weather we’re having.” Cutter replies.
“Mmmm,” The AI lets out a strained hum, “Weather reports say that it’s 42 degrees outside and cloudy, with 43% humidity and a slight wind chill. While habitable, it won’t be comfortable. I wouldn't say it’s ‘lovely’ as you put it.”
“Well would you look at that.” He hums. “This is excellent progress Miranda! I expect to see more great work from you very soon!”
Eiffel does not drop this memory, nor does he put it onto his shelf. “This one’s not mine.” He says simply.
“Then drop it, I have another one for you.” Hera tells him. He does not drop it. “Eiffel?”
“No. No you can’t have this one.” It was special. It was just a moment between a young scientist and her friend, her mentor. There was nothing wrong with it, no reason it should be erased.
“Eiffel you’re being ridiculous.” She practically scoffs at him.
“Please. I know alright? I know that it’s stupid to keep it, but it’s a good memory, and maybe, maybe if I keep the good one’s we could give it back to Pryce, and-”
“Eiffel! How many times do we have to go over this! We are not giving the murderous psychopath her memories back! Any of them! And you’re not keeping them either! I don’t care how happy, or simple it seems! I’ve been making sure to permanently delete anything that gets sent my way! This time they aren’t coming back, alright!”
“But I know what it's like to be empty!” He shouts back, memory clutched protectively to his chest. “I know what it’s like to be no one! I was confused, and afraid all the time! So she is too, and right now we have her practically rotting away alone because she doesn’t understand why everyone hates her. She’s confused! She’s hurt! No one should feel like that, and if I can give her just a few memories so she at least knows she’s a person… That would be enough.”
Hera stays silent.
“Please. I hate her too. I remember too. I just… I know how awful it is, and I know that right now, she’s no more Miranda pryce than I was Douglas Eiffel before today.”
“You weren’t Officer Eiffel.”
“I know.”
“... Fine. Just a few. Nothing that would give her any practical skills back, nothing that would make her want to kill all of us. I’ll hold onto the memories you pick for her.”
“Thank you, Hera.” Eiffel breathes out a sigh of relief and hands the memory jar to Hera, who gives it a good hard stare before sighing, shaking her head, and clearing a new shelf to place it on.
It turns out most of Pryce's memories are actually really angry, or hard to decipher, but Eiffel supposes you don’t become a murderous psychopath from one bad night. He would know.
Another one he keeps for her is from before she began working for Goddard. She was on a date with a man she didn’t remember the name of. He had been kind, and cute, and charming, but the lifestyle he led just wasn’t for her. So she chose to enjoy the date, enjoy the moment, and be happy with the brief time they spent together.
There’s also one where Miranda tries pecan ice cream for the first time and decides that it’s her absolute favorite ice cream in the whole world. Hands down, no competition. Eiffel decides it’ll be nice for her to know the things she likes.
Eventually, they finish sorting through the memories.
“We have to break the ones you put aside for Pryce so I can store them until we can get her hooked up.”
“But… didn’t you delete all the others? Permanently?”
“Yes, and since all the bad ones are safely out of the way we can safely upload these.”
“Okay.” Eiffel says, and before he can think to stop himself he sweeps his arm across the shelf, sending a dozen or so memories crashing to the ground.
Then he’s blinking awake, back in the lab. Loveless is gone, but Minkowski hovers nearby.
“Did it work?” Minkowski says, worriedly. There are dark circles under her eyes which weren’t there before.
“Yeah it did. Commander are you alright? You look like the ghost of Hephaestus past has been visiting every night.”
“It worked.” Hera supplies. “Minkowski has been supervising for the entire thirty-six hour procedure.”
“Thirty-six- it felt like three hours.” He says, wide eyed and staring worriedly at Minkowski.
“Thoughts move a lot faster than reality.” She responds cheerfully.
Minkowski, for the second time that day, grabs a hold of Eiffel and holds him tight.
“Careful, Commander, I’m starting to think you care about me or something.” He jokes, but Minkowski’s only response is to hold him tighter.
“I missed you, you idiot.” She says wetly.
Eiffel's gaze softens, and he hugs her back. “Happy to be back. Now, let’s go home. Together.”