“I can’t…I don’t even know where to begin. What does that mean? Riley, what — did you do this to me, erase my memories?”

“Me?! You called me here in the first place!” she cries, “Tell her, doc! It’s the truth!”

“You shouldn’t be too upset with your friend,” he says, gliding on his wheely stool from one end of the room toward a filing cabinet. ”Missss-ter Alexa Geiger Paige”, his voice trails off, plucking a manila folder from a stack before rolling back to hand it over. A medical chart scribed with notes from some procedure — this doctor’s chicken-scratch, no doubt.

But this one here — with my handwriting! “What does this mean,” I ask, “Informed consent?”

He taps the paper with the tail end of his pipe. “What you have in your hand there details the risks — and rewards, of selective memory suppression. Now if you would look alllll the way down toward the bottom of the form. Do you see it now?”

The name doesn’t match what I expected, but the shape of scribble says enough.