Micro-fiction 082 – Genetic Memory (Echo series)

A session between a psychotherapist and her patient takes a strange turn, as she digs deep into the unconscious mind of humankind…

In a loft apartment in Cadiz, its tall, majestic windows facing out to the gentle waves of the Atlantic, Kahina, has just returned from a conference of psychotherapists in New Istanbul. It left her with much to think about while listening to the gentle rippling tones of her current patient, Luz, an alert young man whose weekly visits rarely tested her skills. Kahina had been well trained but her studies of genetic memory have brought rare insights into the human mind, expanding on the Jungian concept of collective unconscious into a more considered form of genetic memory, and that brought with it, some celebrity. Her initial interest in Luz was that he displayed some particularly pronounced symptoms of the phenomenon for which she had become recognised.

“Doctor!” Luz voice interrupted Kahina’s musings, he had leaned forward in the chair and stared at the distracted face in front of him.

“I’ve asked you not to call me that.” Kahina shuffled in her seat, rolling her shoulders a little, a habit her mother had failed to remove from her behavioural repertoire.

“Ah, sorry, you’re only the top European Psychotherapist, and I can’t even call you by your qualification.”

“You know it’s not that simple.”

“Okay, okay, but you weren’t listening.”

“Sorry,” she raised her hands, and stretched them, “I nearly called off this session, I flew back late last night, so my head’s not quite in the game.”

“A bit like mine then.” Luz smiled, his eyes flirting with the view, wondering if the secret of Tahina’s success was the calming spectacle of these windows, the blue seas that drifted out to distant clouds.

“I don’t think so,” Tahina looked at her patient, “do you really want to continue with these sessions?”

“Oh, well, it was my choice at first, you know that.”

“Yes, but I’m not sure we’re progressing any more.”

“But I have felt much less anxious, so it must be doing some good.”

“Are you sure? I don’t think we’ve discussed anything new in the past couple of months.”

“Are you trying to get rid of me?” Luz laughed.

“No, no, but there’s always a natural limit to what’s possible in a course of treatments. I think we might have reached it, that’s all.” She shrugged, her eyes too caught by the views through the window.

“Well I still think we’re working through the revelation that I’m not the only one who has these strange dreams of spinning rocks in space.”

“That is true; at the conference we had a discussion about it.”

“You mean, you used my case in your presentation?”

“Oh, nothing to worry about, it was entirely objective, no names, no dates.”

“No, no, that’s cool. So, others have had the same sort of dream?”

“Not exactly, but there does seem to be a pattern where not only do many different patients have conscious dreams of events they simply cannot know, but those dreams might actually complement to each other.” She paused. “It doesn’t make sense when I say it out loud.”

“Oh, so spinning rocks in the empty matter between galaxies doesn’t sound completely mad then?”

“I’ve never said it was.”

“No, but I have. Every time I see anything in the air spinning, a football, or a firework, or just water from a fountain, it makes me really tense.”

“Yes, others at the conference reported a whole range of dreams, each one on its own seemingly disconnected, but as we heard more, we began to feel they were part of a bigger jigsaw puzzle: patients who dreamt of stars beyond our galaxy, spinning close to a star, the heat intensity not burning them up, or the cold of deep space, meteors falling from the sky, or the weirdest, a slowly turning gigantic being, a woman, like a goddess, or an empress, her face frozen in a grimace, but some sense of life deep within.”

“Oh, I’ve had that. Everyone I know has had that.”

“You didn’t say.”

“Well, if everyone’s had it, then it’s not unusual enough to book a visit to a therapist!”

“I suppose not, but if ‘everyone’s had it’ that’s quite significant.”

“What, a sort of mass hallucination?”

“Huh, maybe, but think about it, we don’t know enough about the unconscious mind, but what we do know is that it contains thoughts, feelings and actions buried deep, usually from early childhood.”

“And you’ve taught me that by bringing them out and discussing them, helps resolve any malign or unwanted influence over them.”

“Something like that, it’s more that a bad experience endured when you’re too young to deal with it can return when you’re older and affect how you behave without you realising it.”

“Like when I overreact to shrimps?”

“Trivially, yes, they make you angry and disgusted when you see them because you’re triggered by your father’s anger when he made you eat them when you were young.”

“Hm, when we discussed that I didn’t even remember the incident, but it’s true I no longer have the same response when I see shrimps in the market.”

“But what if there were deeper incidents buried?” Kahina drummed her fingers on the pad and pencil on table by her side, “What if there were something inside humans that really was like genetic memory within migrating birds, remembering where to go each year?”

“But you said that was probably because they followed the lead of the others in the flock.”

“Yes, but at the conference we saw some research which had traced solo flights, not just those within a pack, and butterflies who migrate from Canada to Mexico on a journey so long it takes three generations of butterflies to complete.”

“So they must know where they’re going.”

“Genetic memory.” Kahina nodded, and continued. “What if we have it too?”

“So you think my weird space dream is part of a genetic memory pool which all humans have inherited.”

“Well, not all, but many, if what I heard at the conference is even remotely true.”

“So, my recurring dream of the spinning rock, and the huge face within, is connected to the other dreams, the stars, the dark space—“

“And, I didn’t mention this, other dreams involve people looking up all the time, lifting upwards with their arms, climbing onto tall objects and trying to reach up.”

“Wow.” Luz rubbed the back of his head, “it’s a good thing you were all therapists.”

They laughed. “Come, we should finish the session now.” Both smiled. Luz leaned back and closed his eyes for a moment.

“What’s that?” A low rumble penetrated their consciousness.

The pencil on the desk shook, rattling its agitation.

Luz and Kahina both stood up, as the sound grew, rushing at them. They heard screams from the apartments below, and glass breaking. They looked outside and found the sea, once calm now churning, but then a hand appeared on the ledge of the window outside, and another, as a one of Kahina’s neighbour’s clambered upwards, his wide-eyed face fixed determinedly above, as he clumsily lifted his limbs. The hands of another, and another joined, and Kahina saw Luz seem to struggle against an impulse that moved his own limbs.

“Are you–?”

“I – can’t –“ Luz staggered to the window, the daylight obscured now by more people scrambling upwards. Enraged, he pulled at the latch and thrust the window open, knocking people away from the ledge, their cries disappearing below.

“Stop!” Kahina shouted at Luz. She ran over and tried to pull him away, but he shoved harder, and fell out, with Kahina grabbing at his clothes, trying to stop him plunging to the ground he swayed helplessly. She looked down, and saw a wriggling mass of people climbing jerkily up the apartment block, clambering over each other. The rumble all around reared up to become a whirlwind of sound, and forced her to look upwards to see a huge meteor burst through the clouds and within seconds crash into the Atlantic.

Everyone turned, all the people climbing looked behind them at the gigantic waves now unfurling, heading towards Cadiz, but through and beyond a vast mound shook itself loose of the ocean, a cavernous, frothing maw bellowing with a rage that found an answer in the people watching who keened and cried into the storm.

“What the Hell is going on?” Luz shouted, still half-swinging out of the window,  Kanina clinging to his shirt.

“You tell me!” She replied angrily.

“What?! You think it’s my unconscious mind?”

Luz looked into Kahina’s anxious eyes as she said, “Well it’s not mine!”

[End]