Captain America Bucky Barnes Winter Soldier Steve Rogers Fan Fic - The Constant

Chapter Twenty-Seven: The Constant - Understanding the Mind Wipe

The Constant - Understanding the Mind Wipe

You study the doctor in front of you. He is patient, and that is a good thing. He can see you are lost and haven't a clue what he is talking about. Stefan has arranged for him to talk to you under the pretence that as the the patient's companion you need to know, and that as a nurse you need to understand. You want to understand. But this feels beyond your comprehension, and most doctors do not like to repeat themselves. Stefan knows this one is tolerant. It is why he chose him as the one to explain.

The doctor taps the table with his pen, and you can see him thinking.

"Okay." he says, grabbing a piece of paper. He draws the outline of a head with the brain nestled inside. "Lets see if I can simplify it." He is not being condescending, he knows how highly complex it is – even some physicians wouldn't understand.

He points out the different parts of the brain, paying special attention to one part in particular. "This is where we do our work."

He is one of the team bought in to perfect the mind wipe that they will be using on the Winter Soldier. You have gotten lost in the technicalities of it. You want to understand. You want to know what your patient will be going through.

"Thoughts, memories, everything we know and believe is stored in here. Imagine a space full of different shapes, different sizes, and each one is tethered with a piece of string to the central cortex. A bit like a bunch of mismatched balloons. Each shape is a memory, or a thought, or an action, something he has learnt, something he has memorised." He draws in a bunch of shapes attached by a thin thread of ink. "Okay. Now to us it is all muddled. We have to work out which pieces he needs to keep and which pieces need to go. No good getting rid of how he learnt to speak, but we don't want him remembering when he learnt to speak because we don't want him to remember his childhood. So the mind wipe is like a giant pair of scissors. We will cut away the memories and things we don't want him to retain and leave those he needs to keep to function."

"You destroy them?" you ask.

"Well that is a point of argument. Some of us believe it just disables them, others think it destroys them. It is one of those things that honestly we just don't know."

"So if we go with the theory they are untethered...then they are not lost and the patient could get them back?" you ask, and he looks at you.

"Yes and no. They will be untethered but once the string is cut it cannot re-tether itself. It is lost. Even if, for some reason, it did re-tether itself it would be out of context, a memory that has no beginning or end. The human brain is one of the most complex things on this earth and we just don't know enough about it."

You want to ask if Zola's serum could re-tether the string, but you decide not to. You don't want to put that thought into their minds.

Such a simple thing that they, in actual fact, have never considered.

The doctor continues. "So, we come along and get rid of the balloons that we do not want him to keep and his mind comes out as so. It is a very basic explanation of a mind wipe." He draws the shape of the brain again with the part they work on, and this time it has fewer tendrils with shapes attached to it.

"So - if I have got this right - you keep practical things like how to walk, talk, eat, sleep, and who he now is...but not who he was?"

The doctor nods and then adds: "We need to also keep more serious in depth learning such as his training with weapons, etcetera, as well as things such as the string with your name on it so he remembers you as his Constant," at this the doctor smiles.