New York, 2068. Two detectives from the Municipal Investigations Department catch the death of a Helix employee. The scene looks arranged, the corporation moves too fast, and someone is trying to close the case before anything becomes clear.

Helix Systems learned to work inside the reconsolidation window and sells it as a procedure called Fragmentation.

Memory is not stored as a recording. Every time you recall something, your brain reconstructs the memory, and for a few hours it stays unstable. In that window the patient is made to relive the moment they want to forget, and the memory is blocked from writing itself back. Licensed, regulated, and presented as therapy that works better than therapy. Why learn to live with pain when the pain can simply not be there?

One of the detectives has been through it three times. Under corporate NDA, and he doesn't know what it is he doesn't remember. The other has been fighting his own problems by taking himself apart.

Fragmentation has a side effect Helix doesn't publish. The mind cannot tolerate emptiness. Where memory was removed, the brain quietly fills the space with false detail, anything to keep entropy down. Convincingly enough that the patient never notices the difference.

Near-future noir grounded in real neuroscience and cognitive research. For readers of psychological thrillers and intelligent science fiction about the anatomy of memory.

Would you erase your worst pain, if the price were who you are?