Last night I watched Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (a damn fine movie... highly recommended by me) and, as I tend to do far too often, started thinking about its potential application in Shadowrun.

For those of you unfamiliar with the premise of the movie, there is a company (Lacuna, Inc) that offers the "focused erasure of troubling memories." It seems like such a company would a) be more than possible with existing SR tech (PAB units as well as the Alter Memory spell) and b) be rather incredibly profitable (people are always looking for ways to avoid having to personally deal with their problems).

This brings up (at least) a couple more questions... What would happen to a society that could collectively refuse to deal with (and, as a consequence, learn from) their mistakes and failures? How might such a procedure be abused in such a way as to not detract from its marketability? (it would be a little too obvious, for example, if everyone who underwent the procedure started compulsively buying Ares products... but what sorts of things might an unscrupulous practitioner of the procedure be able to get away with without raising suspicion?)

Please post your thoughts/comments.

"Uhhhmmm, I don't know why, but I have this overwhelming urge to go out and join the UB."

- theartthief

This could not happen in SR because society would collapse. Oh wait it's already 90% of the way there in 2063.

Hey, hey. C'mon, let's be fair now. We've all seen the rules in CC for messing with memories. A corporation like Lacuna would have to operate under the radar else it would face a severe pr0nging from everyone who feels that their activities challenge the status quo that keeps the 10% that keep society together in power.

And by 'everyone', I mean everyone. Shadowrunners may act like chaotic anarchists, but in the end they need the system intact to get the nuyen. Anything disrupts that system and you got a lot of angry runners.

Actually, I would think those in power would love a world of teenagers: they buy the most goods, they follow orders better than adults, they think as a group, they can hold jobs but never save, ect. Apathetic teenagers are the ideal national citizen. Obviously the process would be outlawed inside the corps...

I think it could be a damn good reason for why society collapsed in SR, much better than VITAS, Goblinisation, the Shiawase decision and so on. Since it effectively removes conscience, because people wont have to live with the guilt when they do something bad - everything would be someone elses fault. No one would worry about how their actions impact on others, because they could pop down the clinic and forget they were ever involved. A lot of people are already bad enough doing such things by justifying things to themselves because 'it's for the best' 'it was someone elses fault really', opening up that sociopathic mindset to everyone would be terrifying.

I would personally be bombing the company's offices and labs if it existed.

Hmm... a few things:

First, I dont think that the "implanting false memories of purchased consumable goods" thing would end up being a problem -- the company simply wouldnt ever get direct access to the patient's account. That seems like a sufficiently obvious thing to safeguard agains that noone would undergo the procedure if it was a possibility.

Other than that, how much would the companies charge for such a procedure? I'm thinking thousands of nuyen, which is something most people wouldnt be able to afford on a whim. Furthermore, this sort of thing would have to be available to the public for decades before it would impact society on a large scale, as the majority of society has already learned from a long lifetime of failures and mistakes.