There Is No Antimemetics Division

While waiting outside the office of a man named Mahlo, a 49-year-old woman named Marie Quinn asks a receptionist named Rowland what she did last Christmas. Rowland reminds Quinn that they’ve had this conversation twice already.

Mahlo is a chief officer, which makes Quinn anxious, and she fidgets with her lighter. She gets a phone reminder to take medication. Shortly after, Mahlo’s previous meeting (with Organization executives) ends. Quinn recognizes one of the executives as Reinhardt, the director of the Organization’s German bureau. Five minutes later, an assistant in his twenties invites Quinn into Mahlo’s office.

Mahlo is the director of the Organization’s United Kingdom and Ireland (UKI) bureau. When Quinn asks why Mahlo summoned her, his young assistant points a gun at her head. Mahlo looks through Quinn’s file and indicates that she has clearance to areas that either don’t exist or no longer exist. He accuses her of being a spy, indicating that his assistant, Levene, noticed the inconsistencies in Quinn’s record.

Quinn reminds Mahlo that she’s the chief officer of the Antimemetics Division. Levene denies that such a division exists, which Quinn explains is the nature of her work. Whereas memetics studies ideas that naturally spread from one mind to another, antimemetics studies ideas that resist dissemination. What makes these ideas dangerous is their capacity to consume other vulnerable ideas, like dreams, secrets, lies, and even the concept of another person. When Mahlo asks Quinn for proof of her work, she cites U-0055 in the database. Levene repeatedly denies Quinn’s claims as false. However, Mahlo shows Levene that the U-0055 file exists. When Levene deems it a forgery, Quinn asks him if he’s new at the Organization.

The U-0055 file was written by Dr. Edward Hix, who died under circumstances that Quinn claims would infect Mahlo and Levene if they learned more about them. The reason Quinn can remember the Antimemetics Division but Mahlo can’t is that she uses “mnestic” drugs to retain ideas that naturally resist retention. She shows them the Class W maintenance drug that she uses. Mahlo realizes that the reason Quinn has come is that he missed a dose, and Quinn is there to remind him of all the information he has failed to retain. Once Mahlo takes the drug, he’ll retain the knowledge that U-0055 is an antimeme whose weakness is evident due to its partial visibility in their database. At least 58 more Unknowns exist that have greater antimemetic capabilities, including the two that are with them in the room. Quinn explains that she has an invisible symbiotic Unknown that feeds on her memories, designated U-4987. The other Unknown is Levene, whom Quinn shoots in the chest. Quinn used U-4987 against Levene to maneuver his gun into her bag without his knowledge.

Quinn suspects that Levene is responsible for Mahlo’s missed dose. The organizational chart, as well as the absence of any wearable credentials, proves that Levene doesn’t exist. Mahlo is concerned about the vulnerability of his office. Quinn reassures him that this is part of her division’s purview. She plans to study Levene’s corpse to understand how an abstract entity like him gained concrete form.

Junior Researcher Simon Lee is exhausted on his first day working for the Organization at a facility known as UO Wyeleigh. During his lunch hour, he sits apart from his colleagues and browses the Unknown database to read various entries.

Lee is confused when he sees an executive in the cafeteria, considering that UO Wyeleigh is a working site. The executive introduces himself as Adrian Gage. Lee introduces himself and tells Gage that he’s from New York. Gage observes that Lee is tense, prompting Lee to open up about his overwhelming introductory session. When Gage asks Lee where he’s from, Lee can no longer remember the answer. Gage comments that Lee is starting to lose his knowledge, beginning with his secondary language skills. He knows that Lee spent his education trying to fill his mind with different branches of knowledge.

Concerned, Lee steps away from Gage and warns his instructor, Dr. Bretton, that he may be interacting with an Unknown. No one pays him any attention. Gage pursues Lee, telling him that he would have been assigned to study antimemes. Lee doesn’t know what antimemes are. He descends to the lowest level he can access in the facility, reasoning that he can sequester Gage there rather than setting him loose in the world. He suspects that Gage is a pest on the site, consuming various people and removing them from living memory. While in the elevator, Lee looks up Gage in the database to confirm his theory, using the alphanumeric equivalents of the letters in Gage’s name to draw the file for U-7175. The file confirms that anyone who perceives U-7175 can no longer be perceived by other Organization members. The file directs Lee to lab WY-B08-703 to find a way to defeat Gage.

Gage catches the elevator, prompting Lee to throw his phone at him. This deters Gage’s movement. Lee escapes into the basement level 8 and accesses lab 703. He uses the computer terminal, which opens up to U-7175’s file. The file explains how Gage isolates his prey using an antimemetic field and consumes them within 15 to 120 minutes of first contact. Because he can’t seek help from others, Lee must read through the research that past targets have compiled on U-7175. The research is disorganized, making it difficult to read. All the entries reveal methods that ultimately failed to defeat Gage. Lee initially believes that confronting Gage with physical weapons is impossible, but then remembers that he managed to affect Gage by throwing his phone. Lee concludes that because the phone was a repository of information, information can be contained and weaponized against Gage. After recording his plan in the research log, Lee braids network cables into a chain, which he attaches to a hard-drive array, converting them into a makeshift morning star. The weapon proves effective in knocking Gage down.

Afterward, Quinn debriefs Lee. He realizes that Gage consumed the memories of his work experience, making him think it’s his first day at the Organization. In truth, Lee has been working at UO Wyeleigh for more than 10 years already. Quinn attributes Lee’s success to muscle memory: He relied on scientific instincts to devise a solution. Moreover, this isn’t the first time that Lee has confronted an antimemetic Unknown. He’ll recover his memory in a month.

Quinn reveals that Lee is an instructor who briefs junior antimemetics researchers during their first year on the site. She orders Lee to reorganize and complete the file on U-7175 while he’s in recovery. However, she anticipates that Gage will return, as “[i]t takes a lot to kill an idea” (36).

A woman wakes up Andrew Hilton, a man in his nineties, and asks if he remembers her. They’re on Hilton’s sailboat, which is out on a lake. The woman has just administered a syringe to Hilton. Hilton recognizes her as Marie Sheridan, forgetting that her married name is Quinn.

Quinn informs Hilton that the syringe she administered will rapidly reverse his aging process. This is to honor an agreement Hilton made upon his retirement from the Organization. The text reveals that Hilton founded the Antimemetics Division. His memories are crucial in addressing a larger, unspecified threat. Quinn asks Hilton about the year 1976.

The aging reversal takes effect, allowing Hilton to reclaim his memories with clarity. In 1976, he founded the Antimemetics Division and developed the first mnestic drugs. The Division’s original intent was to investigate the origins of human memory gaps, but when this uncovered the existence of antimemetic Unknowns, Hilton set out to catalogue them for the Organization. One day, he experienced extensive memory loss that erased the memories of his life before the founding of Antimemetics. Working with Ed Hix, Hilton theorized that a prior incarnation of the Antimemetics Division existed before 1976, of which Hilton was the only survivor. Whatever destroyed the Division’s precursor also consumed its concept. Quinn confirms this and emphasizes that her questions concern the destruction of the Division’s precursor. Hilton asks to reverse his aging further so that he can recollect the answer.

The novel presents a file explaining that the serum Quinn administered to Hilton is a Class X mnestic drug. Any dose of the drug that reverses aging beyond 18 months is considered lethal because of the rapid re-aging process that occurs after the drug wears off.

After a second dose, Hilton has regressed to the age when he was a desk operative. He explains that the precursor to the Antimemetics Division was a World War II-era project of the British Army called the Ideational Research Establishment, more commonly referred to as the Unthinkables. Its original objective was to eradicate Nazism as a concept. After four years of research, the group developed a bomb, though they didn’t understand its precise effects. During their test, the bomb eradicated all memories of its creation and use. This restarted the development process, which the Unthinkables pieced together from the gaps in time. By the end of the war, they had developed a second memory bomb, which they kept in storage.

Quinn is skeptical of Hilton’s story because of the implication that antimemetic research applications began as early as the 1940s, leaving a long gap between the development of the first bomb and the founding of the Antimemetics Division. She soon realizes that the second bomb was detonated, causing Hilton to forget the existence of the Unthinkables. Hilton explains that in the 1950s, a cult in Ojai, California, gained massive influence around the US, acquiring the support of various public figures to advance its cause. During this crisis, the Organization acquired the Unthinkables and deployed the bomb against the cult. From then on, the Unthinkables were refocused toward antimemetic Unknown research.

Hilton interrupts his recollection upon recognizing Quinn. He’s impressed that Quinn is now Antimemetics Chief, having anticipated that she was fit for their line of work. Quinn indicates, however, that she has always considered leaving the Organization but remains because of the addictive thrill it gives her to save other people’s lives. She reminds him then that she’s married to a man named Adam, who doesn’t work for the Organization.

Hilton continues his recollection, remembering that he became an Organization field agent. He recalls different colleagues, which makes Quinn worry that he’s in the wrong part of his life to recall the information she needs. Hilton tells her then that an Unknown exists that the Organization hasn’t yet catalogued, which he calls “[t]he escapee.” This Unknown possesses the capacity for mutual knowledge, allowing it to know anything about anyone who learns that it exists. When the escapee attacked the Unthinkables, the group destroyed itself to prevent it from spreading. Quinn suddenly realizes that this means the Unknown is aware of their conversation, which Hilton confirms.

Quinn panics about her vulnerability on the boat, as she has no backup. An Unknown begins to emerge from Hilton’s head. Hilton tells her that a third antimemetic bomb is stored in an unused engineering lab at Wyeleigh. Containing this Unknown is impossible, so the best course of action is to restart the Division’s death and rebirth cycle. He tries to identify the Unknown using the number five, but by then, its spiderlike legs break through his head. Quinn shoots Hilton down, but the Unknown continues to control his corpse.

The Unknown rocks Hilton’s boat and then pulls it into the air. Quinn administers amnestic drugs to herself to forget the Unknown’s existence, even though she knows the health risks of mixing them with the mnestic drugs already in her system. She leaps off the boat and resurfaces in the water, having forgotten how she got there.

Quinn returns home to recover in Adam’s company. It’s difficult for her to refrain from working, as the gaps in her memory disturb her. When she returns to the office, she tries to reconstruct the intelligence around her missing day by using material evidence. The effort exhausts her, as long-term mnestic drug use has begun to affect her endocrine system. The Division’s Hazardous Response Teams head, Geoff Ives, visits Quinn to share his unit’s report on the lake incident. They responded to an emergency beacon that was triggered when Quinn jumped into the water. Based on the signal code, someone other than Quinn triggered the beacon to save her. Quinn doesn’t know who it was, but she implies that she must have had a reason to meet Hilton without additional support. Quinn points out that neither she nor Ives can say anything about the Division’s origins.

A file describes an Unknown designated U-2256. The file is full of redactions, especially toward the latter half of the document. It indicates that at the time of its writing, U-2256 is an extinct Unknown.

U-2256 is a “gigafauna” species known as Cryptomorpha gigantes. Its antimemetic capabilities were an evolutionary trait that developed to allow it to evade predators. At the time of its existence, it was the largest species of organism inhabiting the Earth. U-2256 was seaborne and was known to have a symbiont fauna designated U-2256-E, informally known as “germs.” The germs possessed an observable level of sentient ability.

Residents of the Polynesian island of Takalu’i were the first-known community capable of perceiving U-2256, because they consumed a mnestic substance called kāketou. The Takalu’ians believed that U-2256 organisms were protective spirits who warded off storms. In the 1990s, the Organization determined that kāketou resembled a Class W mnestic drug compound. This allowed the Organization to observe and study U-2256.

Observation units discovered that U-2256 had a natural corrosion effect, making it difficult for people to remember it consistently. Recordings of this Unknown similarly vary in their detail based on the complexity of the medium, pencil-based records being the strongest in terms of corrosion resistance. Throughout the 1990s, the species experienced a sharp population decline arising from various factors. In 2002, an attempt to suppress U-2256’s antimemetic capabilities and photograph a specimen resulted in the creature’s instant death, suggesting that direct observation was harmful to the species. The Organization connected this discovery to the population decline and theorized that its attempts to study U-2256 were driving the species to endangerment. By 2003, the Organization stepped down its efforts to study the species. By 2006, the last-known member of the species died.

However, the Unknown’s antimemetic corrosive effect continued to impact the Organization’s paper records. All Organization records on U-2256 are predicted to become fully redacted within several years.