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The up- and downloads of memories became some kind of routine. I don’t feel much during an upload. It is just making a copy. A small headache and after an hour I’m back to normal. The memories I got downloaded have a bigger influence on me. I have seen the simple images of objects by now, but the complete experiences of stories, I don’t know how to call them, have sometimes a huge impact on me.  Sometimes they make me very cheerful, but once in a while I don’t know how to deal with them. Sometimes I become already afraid during the download when I notice it’s a story. They become more and more complicated. Fortunately I can consult the psychologists, because otherwise I would sometimes loose my mind. I feel trusted when I tell them what the memories do to me. It relieves me when I talk about my (?) memories. Although these memories aren’t my own, afterwards I experience them as if they are. The memories become familiar. So I remember some of the memories. It sounds strange, but I think that you know what I mean. They seem to be mine! I shall try to explain what I mean by the memory I’ve got downloaded last week:

I was on a sailing boat with a couple of friends. We did a boat-delivery and sailed across the Atlantic Ocean from the Azores towards Great Britain. There wasn’t a breath of wind, dead calm. The Ocean’s water looked like a mirror. The wind didn’t seem to be coming back and we became bored. We had already been swimming, and I came up with the idea to inflate the rubber boat and to go rowing. The current would keep me in the neighbourhood of the sailing boat. After a couple of rounds around the boat I rowed a bit further away. It was very warm. Hardly a cloud in sight. When I looked back at the boat, the mothership, at the first time, it all looked peaceful. The big sails hung down the mast as quiet white shapes. Still no breath of wind. I rowed a bit further and lay down in the boat to turn on my back and enjoyed the silence. I heard the soft murmurs of air bubbles around me. They came above from the deep ocean and spattered against the rubber boat. Suddenly I realized where I was and I turned around. I could only see the top of the mast from the sailing boat at the horizon. I got scared, scared to death. I suddenly thought: “There are four kilometers of water underneath me and eight kilometers of air above me. And I am between those two elements!” I felt like a little piece of dust, so small, so worthless between heaven and earth. I thought about my girlfriend and my one and a half year old son and I thought of my four friends in the sailing boat. I Had To Go Back! I don’t want to stay here, all alone! I broke out in a cold sweat and I started to row. Harder and harder, deep strokes in the ocean’s water, till I could see more of the mothership. I was soaked with sweat. The sun, the heat and most of all the fear. When I eventually got back on board, there was a cup of tea waiting for me. I felt home again, but that feeling of insignificance I shall never forget.

Every time I think back to this memory, I feel that fear again. And I wonder who it was, who was so scared. Was it me, or the person who really experienced this? Or the both of us. It is all very confusing for me. I don’t want this. Maybe I’ll have to stay busy with developing and let them get this @#$%!*&-chip out of my temporary lobe……. And go home, to Elgin.

find out how it was for Rosanne

find out how Adrian experienced this later