Wholesale memories
Memories en gros (Originally We Can Remember it for You Wholesale ) is a short story by the American science fiction writer Philip K. Dick . It first appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction in April 1966 and has since been featured in many short story collections. Memories en wholesal is one of Dick's classics and was used as a template for the film Total Recall from 1990 with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sharon Stone , directed by Paul Verhoeven . In 2012 a remake was produced with Total Recall , directed by Len Wiseman .
content
Douglas Quail's dearest wish is to visit Mars once in his life. As a poorly paid employee, however, he would never get the money he needed for the trip. That is why he is interested in the services of the company Endsinn AG : Their customers can choose experiences that Endsinn implants as false memories in their brain. In the case of a trip to Mars, a customer also receives a deceptively real plane ticket and souvenirs. The memory of ever having been to the company is also erased. To increase the thrill, Quail decides to travel to Mars as a secret agent.
When planting the desired memory, however, the Endinn employees encounter a problem: While the anesthetic was in place, Quail remembers that he had already been to Mars as a secret service agent. The staff therefore suspect that his memories were erased by the military. They agree not to overlay the real memory with a fake one and send Quail home.
There further memories of the Mars trip come back. This calls the police on the scene, which can apparently track Quail's thoughts through a mini-transmitter in his brain. Quail remembers being trained as a professional killer by the secret service and sent to Mars. There he committed a contract killing. The police want to get Quail out of the way to wipe out any knowledge of the crime. But the top agent manages to escape.
With the mind transmitter in mind, however, the police can locate it easily. Quail knows this and is beginning to negotiate with the government over this device. You make a deal: the government will refrain from wanting to liquidate Quail if the latter presents itself and uses a false reminder of final sense. This memory must be so strong that it overlays everything else. In their analysis, government psychiatrists come across a deep-seated, long-forgotten childhood fantasy of Quail: As a child, he watched an alien invasion and was so fascinated by his peacefulness and humanity that they suspended the invasion as long as he lived.
When planting the fake memories, however, the Endinn employees run into another problem: Everything they want to plant is already there. Apparently Quail experienced the invasion for real and saved mankind through his actions. Since the aliens canceled their invasion because of him, he can no longer be liquidated, otherwise a return of the invaders could not be ruled out.
literature
Philip K. Dick: memories in bulk . From the American by Clara Drechsler. In: All 118 SF stories in five volumes, Vol. 5: Black Box , Haffmans Verlag bei Zweausendeins, Frankfurt 2008, ISBN 978-3-86150-812-0 (Volume 5), ISBN 978-3-86150-803- 8 (entire cassette).