Amnesia: A Wild Wacky Ride

One of the men added, "Don't you remember any of this?"

Stacy and Helen shook their heads. They were both playing their parts to the hilt, they wanted to make sure that no one here had any doubts that the dememorizer had done its job. "I don't remember anything, not even who I am," Stacy told them. "Neither do I," Helen chimed in.

"It's the amnesia plague, it must be," Mike said with shock and a touch of fear. "I think we should get you two to the nearest Emergency room. You're going to need a lot of help now that you, you know, have the 'condition'," he said, his voice filled with compassion. Stacy was amazed and impressed at how well Mike was playing his part as an innocent knight in shining armor. If she really had lost her memory she would never have suspected that he was the man who had stolen if from her. And even though she knew better, she couldn't help but feel attracted toward the man. He was quite handsome (in a Robert Redford sort-of-way). But then again, did she really know better? After all, one of two things was going on here. Either the dememorizer was broken and Mike didn't know it, or he had knowingly pretended to use it on them so that they could escape from the clutches of the Conspiracy to continue on with their efforts to expose it.

Whatever the truth of the matter though, Stacy and Helen agreed to go with Mike and got into his car. As they drove to the hospital, Stacy leaned back and thought about everything that had happened to her in the last twenty four hours. She could hardly believe most of it.

Nielson offered to go with her to the rendezvous but Stacy decided to go it alone; she didn't want to scare off whoever it was that had sent the message. When she got to the coffee shop though, she was disappointed to find a man waiting for her who was obviously a mentally disturbed conspiracy nut. He was dressed like a Man In Black and he told her that the government was covering up the true cause of the amnesia plague. He also said that the the truth behind it made the Roswell Crash look insignificant. Stacy didn't believe a word he was saying of course, but when he told her that the government had wiped her memory when she was riding the subway she was forced to reconsider what he was saying. According to the man, who's name she later found out was Paul, her snooping had gotten her very close to the Conspiracy that controlled the amnesia plague. That's why they decided to erase her memory. They used a device called the dememorizer. What Paul wanted now was Stacy's research. He hoped that Stacy had left enough of it behind that he and his group could expose the Conspiracy with it.

Still uncertain if she could believe what Paul was saying, Stacy decided that she'd check her notes and only if they corroborated Paul's story would she share them with him. But when she returned to K-NEWS she found that her office had been gone through and all of her notes had been taken. In the vain hope of finding something useful, she rechecked her computer and found a zip file that seemed to be connected to the amnesia story. She made a disk copy of it and went back to the coffee shop. She gave the disk to Paul but then discovered that Dave Nielson had followed her. Paul was convinced that Nielson was a part of the Conspiracy and that the two of them needed to seperate. He gave Stacy an address where they could meet at later. He then left and Nielson confronted Stacy. He said that he had followed her because he was concerned for her safety. Stacy wanted to trust him but was afraid to. There were just too many unknowns here. For one thing, it was clear that someone at the studio was working for the Conspiracy. After Nielson left the coffee shop though, there was no more doubt about who that someone was. Stacy discovered that the note with the address Paul had given her was gone and that meant that Dave Nielson was working for the bad guys.

Without knowing where to meet Paul at, Stacy decided to stay put in the coffee shop. Paul had told her that if anything went wrong someone from his group would stop by there. And in time another man did show up. He was a gaunt man, dressed just like Paul had been and whose name oddly enough was also Paul. Stacy told him that Nielson had taken the address info from her, so this second Paul decided to take her to an alternative safe house and from there contact the first Paul. They were picked up by a car driven by a woman who was also dressed in the rather conspicous and slightly ludicrous MIB style. But they soon realized that they were being followed and while attempting to lose the tail they ended up in a car crash. Paul and Stacy escaped, but they had to leave the woman behind. They finally made it on foot to the alternative safe house but only to discover that Dave Nielson was waiting for them there. Nielson killed Paul when the man tried to attack him. But Nielson in turn was killed when the first Paul arrived, catching Nielson by surprise.

Paul then searched Nielson for a copy of Stacy's disk. The one he had been given at the coffee shop had been a fake. He surmised that Nielson had somehow switched it for the real one back at K-NEWS. Luckily, the original disk was hidden in Nielson's car and they quickly found it. They then drove to an abandoned warehouse. Helen, a cryptographer, was waiting for them there. Her job was to break the access code that zipped the files on the disk. Stacy of course could not remember what the password was. As Helen worked, Stacy asked Paul why Nielson hadn't just erased her hard drives in the first place. If he had, then there would be no disk and the secrets of the Conspiracy would be safe. Paul answered that the Conspiracy felt threatened by his group because they didn't know who they were or what they wanted. Nielson had kept Stacy's research intact just in case she ever made it back to K-NEWS. If she did he wanted to use her as bait to catch Paul's mysterious group. Since everyone knew that she was working on the amnesia story it was possible Paul's group would contact her. But it was also reasonable to assume that if the Conspiracy wiped out the results of Stacy's investigation along with her memory that Paul's group would find out about it and decide not to contact her. And although it seemed like a long shot based on a lot of 'what ifs' Nielson's gambit had in fact succeeded.

When Helen finally gained access to the disk they discovered a long list of data files. Since it would take time to look them all over, Stacy decided to get some much needed rest in an adjoining room. But the sound of gun fire rousted her from her sleep. She rushed to the computer room and found Paul dead. Helen told her that an intruder had caught them by surprise and had killed Paul. Helen had returned fire and scared him off, but he would soon be back and with reinforcements. Helen then grabbed together all of her stuff and pulled Stacy along with her as she sought to escape from the warehouse as quickly as possible. But as they hurried down a side street they were ambushed by Mike and his men. Mike, it turned out, had once fought side-by-side with Paul and Paul and Helen and the rest of them against the Conspiracy. But now he worked side-by-side with the enemy and was helping them catch all those that had once been his friends.

And now here Stacy was, in the back seat of Mike's car, on her way to the Emergency room. Mike's two henchmen believed that she and Helen were victims of the dememorizer and therefore were no longer threats to the Conspiracy and could be let go at the hospital without a second thought. But what did Mike think? Did he know their amnesia was just an act? And if so, what did that mean? Whose side was Mike on? Or was he just as fooled as the other two? But if that was the case, once he discovered that his dememorizer wasn't functioning correctly the hunt would begin anew and Stacy would be on the run again. And if what Helen had said was true, that there might not be anyone left in Paul's secret group that they could go to for help, then she would be completely on her own.

Soon they pulled up to a hospital and Mike helped Stacy and Helen out of the car. Helen's bag, the one with all of the things she had salvaged from the warehouse including the disk, was not handed back to her. And she didn't ask for it since she supposedly had forgotten that it was even hers. "I'd ask you ladies for your phone numbers," Mike smiled at them, "but I guess that's out of the quesion. Well I hope everything works out for you two." And then he gave them each a kiss on the cheek. Getting back in the car, Mike waved and drove off.

1. Stacy and Helen try to figure out what to do next
2. Stacy is astonished to discover that when Mike kissed her he had slipped her the all important disk

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