"Makes sense. I'm especially interested in anything with anti-memetic properties that may not be wielding them purposefully - like, if there's anybody running around trying to talk to people who can't remember them afterwards, that would be ideal - but you know the field of options better than I do."

"Actually, there is someone in a very similar situation to that though it's somewhat reversed. One of our scientists lost the ability to see or observe that other people exist besides himself. He believes some sort of apocalypse occurred that killed everyone besides himself. We haven't been able to communicate with him. He's more likely to be the victim of an unknown memetic skip than a skip himself, but it's possible you could find something out about what caused his condition."

"That sounds really interesting, yes."

"I'll get you his files and I'll ask several of the researchers on stronger mnestics to see if they can identify any other cases similar to what you're talking about. Unfortunately, you won't be able to attempt to interact with him in person right now, but we do have video and other detailed records of his activities since this occurred. You may be able to find something we've missed."

"Sure, I'll be happy to try that. Is it a good idea for me to do this at home? I assume I can't work in the facility unofficially."

"Not the best idea. I won't try to stop you, but it does put your neighbors at increased risk. I do have this."

He pulls a key out of his pocket and lays it on a table.

"This is the house of anti-memetic researcher Arlene Presper. She committed suicide two months ago for reasons we are believe to be non-anomolous. Her house is isolated and has basic defenses yours doesn't. She also had a strict personal policy of leaving work at work, so she won't have intentionally brought home any skips that you could accidentally run into."

"None of her relatives will be there? What are the basic defenses?"

"None of her relatives remember she exists. Some anti-memetic beings are much less effective against computers than people, so she has a system designed to detect any intrusion. It has various levels of response, depending on the type of threat detected and how the inhabitants respond or fail to respond to its alarms. It also has a well stocked safe room. It might not be necessary for you, but we haven't completely tested the limits of your abilities and there are skips that can hurt you even if you see right through them."

Miranda nods. "Why don't her relatives remember her?"

"The same reason most people don't remember the anti-memetics division exists. Working with anti-memetics often makes you fall under the umbrella of things they prevent people from remembering. I thought the anti-memetics division already gave you their recruitment pitch. Did they not warn you about this?"

"No! Nobody told me that my family might forget I exist!"

"What would that even do to me? It seems like it would have side effects beyond being intrinsically horrible."

"We can give you and your immediately family low doses of mnestics. That's not guaranteed to work but it usually does and we have a decent idea of which skips cause the most extreme memory loss. I and the other O5 avoid interacting with those skips, which is why people are able to remember we exist. You could do the same.  It does tend to be  disorienting for relatives." 

He looks at Ned.

"If you don't take mnestics and if Dr. Kirsch does interact with the more dangerous antimemetic skips you would likely experience almost complete memory loss of the time in your life since you began dating, or before that, if you heavily interacted. I'm not aware of your personal history. You'd be able to remember a small assortment of some things, weeks where you went on solo trips for instance, or regular events that Dr. Kirsch was never involved in. It's usually quite debilitating. The Foundation has a general policy of faking the employees death and then using amnestics in these situations. If done correctly the family member can retain most of their memories and just lose the information of who exactly was in them. This is still disorienting but less obvious unless those memories are closely inspected and can sometimes be attributed to grief."

"Are the mnestics safe?"

"The lowest level ones are except for an increased risk of pancreatic cancer."

"That's weirdly specific. Increased how much?"

"Over the course of twenty years, users of class-W mnestics have a 6% chance of getting pancreatic cancer. I'm not actually aware of the chances of getting pancreatic cancer of an average member of the population. Class-W mnestics also cause temporary nausea of varying severity for an hour after taking them and increase frequency and intensity of nightmares."

"I can live without my pancreas if I have to."

He nods.

"I am sorry this wasn't brought up earlier."

"I'm getting the sense that I'm seeing several simultaneous deviations from what must look like a really good process on paper."

He sighs.

"Yes, you are. It's all rather embarrassing. This is an unusual situation but that really isn't an excuse in our line of work, we can't afford to be incompetent."

"Well, there's something to be said for screwing up in a situation that happens not to involve hostile forces instead of one that does."

"We definitely will be learning from this, what we decide we've learned is still very much up in the air." 

Miranda nods.

He nods at the key.

"Will you be wanting to stay in Dr. Presper's house?"