Strangers

80." Haltingly, reluctantly, she described the twenty-unit Tranquility Motel and Grille. Something about the place terrified her. Every muscle in her body went rigid.
        Pablo said, "So you stayed the night of July ninth at the motel. That was a Monday. All right, so now it's Monday, July ninth. You're just arriving at the motel. You haven't stayed there yet; you're just driving up to it… What time of the day is it?"
        She did not answer, and her tremors grew more pronounced, and when he asked again, she said, "I didn't arrive on Monday. F-Friday."
        Startled, Pablo said, "The previous Friday? You stayed at the Tranquility Motel from Friday, July sixth, through Monday, July ninth? Four nights at this small motel in the middle of nowhere?" He leaned forward in his chair, sensing that they had found the time when her mind had been tampered with. "Why would you want to stay so long?"
        In a slightly wooden voice, she said, "Because it was peaceful. I was on vacation, after all." Her strangely stilted voice became more flat and devoid of nuance with each word she spoke. "I needed to relax, you see, and this was a perfect place to relax."
        The old magician looked away from her, watched the faintly luminous snow slanting down through the dreary gray afternoon beyond the window, and carefully considered his next question. "You said this motel has no swimming pool. And the rooms you've described aren't luxurious. Not resort-style rooms for long-term visits. What on earth did you do for four days out there in the middle of nowhere, Ginger?"
        "Like I said, I relaxed. Just relaxed. Napped. Read a couple of books. Watched some TV. They have good TV even way out there on the plains because they've got their own little satellite receiver dish on the roof." Her manner of speech was now entirely altered, and she sounded as if she were reading from a script. "After two intense years at Stanford, I needed a few days of doing absolutely nothing."
        "What books did you read while at the motel?"
        " I… I don't remember." Her hands were still fisted, and she was still rigid. Fine pearly beads of sweat popped out along her hairline.
        " Ginger, you're there now, in the motel room, reading. Understand? You are reading whatever you were reading then. Now look at the title of the book and tell me what it is."
        "I… no… no title."
        "Every book has a title."
        "No title."
        "Because there really is no book - is there?" he said.
        "Yes. I just relaxed. Napped. Read a couple of books. Watched some TV," she said in a soft, dead, emotionless voice. "They have good TV even way out there on the plains because they've got their own little satellite receiver dish on the roof."
        "What TV shows did you watch?" Pablo asked.
        "News. Movies."
        "What movies?"
        She flinched. "I… don't remember."
        Pablo was quite sure that the reason she did not remember these things was precisely because she had never done them. She had been at that motel, all right, because she could describe it in minute detail, but she could not recall the books and the TV programs because she had never passed any of that time in those pursuits. Through clever post-hypnotic suggestions, she had been instructed to say that she had done those things, and she had actually been made to remember vaguely having done them, but they were merely artificial memories designed to cover what had really transpired at that motel. A specialist in brainwashing could insert false memories in a subject's mind, but even if he worked very hard at it and built an intricate web of interlocking details, he could not make the phony memories as convincing as real ones.
        Pablo said, "Where did you eat dinner each night?"
        "The Tranquility Grille. It's a small place, and it doesn't have much of a menu, but the food is reasonably good." That response was, once again, delivered in a flat and hollow voice.
        Pablo said, "What did you eat at the Tranquility Grille?"
        She hesitated. "I… I don't remember."
        "But you told me the food was good. How could you make that judgment if you don't remember what you ate?"
        "Uhhh… it's a small place, and it doesn't have much of a menu."
        The more insistently he pressed for details, the more tense she became. Her voice remained emotionless as she spewed out her programmed responses, but