He grits his teeth and reminds himself that his colleagues deal with this stuff—actually with stuff worse than this—every day. His boss takes the mnestic he's on right now twice a day, and has for the past decade. He should not complain.

...he recalls something his instructor told him on his first day. He remembers this because the man had the same initials as him. Simon Lee was his name. He said that an Antimemetics Division agent is as good on their first day as they're ever going to be. And he was hired by the Antimemetics Division, so he must be good enough.

He grits his teeth and tries to think through what physical motions his wrist and hand went through when writing on the second piece of paper.

There were definitely several letters. Two or three of them, probably. Some curved lines some straight lines.

But which.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

What number did he write on the third piece of paper. The meaning of the number is immaterial. It is just a number. It either had curved lines or it didn't. If it didn't, it must've been 1 or 4 or 7 (his 7 is all angular). Probably. If it wasn't 11.

He didn't have to pick up his pen.

Okay so that rules out 4 and 5 and 7 and all numbers greater than 9.

Was it a 0 or a 1? Or some other number less than 10?

He just ruled out all numbers greater than 9 so it was, presumably, a number of 9 or less, if mathematics itself is intact and he wrote a number (and he is the sort of person who would've written a number, instead of not writing something or putting "marmalade".)

...let's reason backwards about this. It must be either 0 or 1. If it were 2 or more, or if Quinn had talked to anyone other than a single individual, then... probably... he would just be remembering one number less than what he initially wrote. Right? Probably. He's also got a separate notebook into which he's been writing his thoughts whenever he can't do his task (all Antimemetics Division agents have notebooks), so he writes that down there, too. Maybe his reasoning is suspect. And maybe he's wrong about what this anomaly does and it would just be throwing errors to fuck with him—no, that doesn't fit. He thinks. So, either 0 or 1.

Assuming that reasoning is correct, which relies on this anomaly working the way he feels like it must work rather than knowing for sure, but assuming that reasoning is correct, then either Quinn talked to a person, or she talked to something that wasn't a person, or she didn't talk to anyone.

Would he have done anything differently in those three situations? ...no, because that'd have broken protocol. Unless it looked like some kind of danger that could reach him through the video footage, in which case he'd have called in an emergency. And yet here he is, not having called in an emergency, so that bounds how terrified he must've been.

He can't remember the movement of his hands in detail, but he can remember that he didn't lift his pen from the paper to write the number, so it's not completely erasing itself from his consciousness and leaving no evidence. It's just... carving out a very specific exception.

Well. The point of this experiment is not, actually, so that Leon knows what's up. It's to determine the nature of this anomaly. And he's determining it alright. He definitely cannot remember what he actually wrote. So he will Do His Best and then stop.

Quinn herself is not watching the experiment, even though she wants to. She's already been exposed to the anomaly, for one, and for two, this might expose her more to it, and it would contaminate experimental data. Not to mention that, if it's dangerous, she wants fewer, not more, infection vectors. Plus, she's really very busy.

And there are more steps to the experimental protocol.

A second operative needs to read the first paper and transcribe its contents to a second piece of paper. Can they do that?

Yeah, they can do that. It's all right there.

Now can they write, on a separate piece of paper, from memory, what was written on that first piece?

They start losing it at that step. They may retain more or fewer tidbits depending on how they're thinking about it.

Is the knowledge that the anomaly may or may not have been a guy the only knowledge that is lost, or is any other knowledge also gone? Is it also gone if it's stored in digital media? How about audio media? Can a sentient AI do better at retaining- actually never mind on that last one, C-levels are not approving that for a small harmless anomaly that hasn't done anything, they just always want to know whether AI can deal with stuff or not.

Media is happy to hold whatever is put into it unchanged. Different people lose different amounts of stuff but more the more they beat their heads against it; "somebody got pineapple juice" is relatively easy to retain, so probably whoever got pineapple juice is not their anomaly?

But they do retain knowledge that they are all working on the same anomaly and there is only one anomaly (even if the anomaly might be zero or more guys)? Can they discuss the anomaly while watching the video? How much does discussing the anomaly while watching the video help? And how about over multiple watches?

If they've got the video on they are fully able to talk about it and how it is the thing they are all working on! If anybody takes a bathroom break or checks their phone or doodles a cat in a margin they might come back not quite clear on any of this. Retention does not improve at all with repetition, it might actually get worse as they exhaust more angles that might have let them see the negative space.

There are different people who are supposed to hold different amounts of negative space, and they're not all working together. They're professionals, here.

Eventually, a report is submitted. The report states that, while reading the report, it will be possible and not at all difficult to reason about its contents, but the moment you are distracted from them you will forget the most important details. They have jargon for this kind of situation; it's not the first time they've run into it, although it's the first time one has been so resistant to normal doses of mnestics. They expect a class X would beat this but would be overkill; either a higher dose of the W they've been on or a stronger subtype of it would probably suffice. They deem the anomaly probably safe, but it should be taken in for investigation of possible other effects.

The report is read and analysed. Quinn had short-term amnestics ready in case she decided she'd need them, as the report suggested that those would be enough to wipe most of the cumulative effect of interaction with the anomaly.

...so. It looks to all appearances to be Some Guy. They've pulled up more surveillance and managed to figure out where this guy lives. There is a very thorough report of his current living conditions, but finding anything about his history is proving a lot more difficult.

And she could maybe just ask.

Sunshine is nervous about this, but she's the one in charge, here, not it, and she reassures it that she will not feed it any memories about This Guy.

Does it need to be her? No, it doesn't. But she's got the slack, the Antimemetics Division is the largest individual division in the Organization, and she's curious. She is still, at heart, a field op.

So, since she's going to forget about this guy once she's done with her plan and preparations, she writes herself a plan for what to do that she can just follow: go to this address, play this recording, then do what the recording says.

She closes her eyes, takes a deep breath, then reads the next report on her stack.

...she forgot something. She was in the middle of a train of thought and she forgot what it was.

But she's also got her left thumb between her middle and ring fingers, which is her own signal for when she shouldn't worry about that feeling for the next half hour. So she's not going to worry about that feeling for the next hour, read the report, send followup emails, and read the next report.

...the next report isn't a report. It's instructions to herself. It says that she should go to a specific address and then listen to a recording on her mobile phone.

She presses the button on her desk phone to talk to her secretary. "Did I tell you a pass code?"

"Yes, ma'am. The passcode is Moonbeam."