Author: Nicholas Johnson

“But what if you didn’t have to experience that pain now? What if you already did?”
The doctor leaned forward, placing his elbows on the shiny glass desk, smiling with predatory teeth.
I tapped my knee and tried to avoid eye contact, angry at my therapist for suggesting this treatment.
“All pain is temporal,” he continued when I didn’t respond. “We get to decide when to deal with it. Why do you think people drink?”
I sensed I was about to fall into his trap, but I couldn’t find an escape route. “Uhmm…to get drunk, I guess.”
“Sure. But mostly they do it to shift when they experience pain. Feel a little better now, a little worse tomorrow.”
I rubbed my forehead and tried to process. I shrugged in acquiescence, unable to handle disappointing him.
“And this is the same,” he continued, leaning back into a perfectly ergonomic chair. “Life is simply choosing when to confront pain.”
“We eat junk food to feel better now but worse later,” I said, a little surprised with myself.
His smile could have jumpstarted a classic car. “Exactly! And here we use that simple concept, that pain is linked to time, to create a new method for processing. We call it temporal pain displacement, TPD. You currently deal with pain now or in the future. But,” he leaned forward to set the hook, “what if you already dealt with it in the past?”

*

The TPD implant changed my life. No anxiety, no depression. Somehow the thing convinced my mind that past physical pain was instead processed emotional angst. That broken leg when you fell off the swing? Getting laid off last week. That time you got hit by a baseball when the pitcher’s curve didn’t curve? Your cute coworker rejecting an offer to grab a drink.
“It’s Your Pain. Why not USE it?” The pamphlet sat alone on my coffee table—two days with the implant and my apartment had never been cleaner. Almost everybody I knew had the implant. Why wouldn’t they? It was like those weight loss shots that were controversial a century ago but were now used by basically everyone. TPD implants kept our minds as healthy as our eternally skinny bodies.
I mused which injury my brain had used to process the divorce. The car accident when I hydroplaned into that streetlight?
Despite the amazing relief, a question lingered at the back of my mind—was I going to run out? My childhood had been relatively cozy. Other than some sports injuries and a couple car wrecks, had I really suffered enough to sustain a lifetime of mental anguish?
I rose from my couch and started to panic.
It vanished.
Fuck! I thought, followed by relief. I must have just used some minor knee scrape as a kid or something. I flipped through the pamphlet but couldn’t find if pain can be used more than once. I sensed I was burning through past injuries as fast as I could worry about them. Pain is temporal, but is it finite?
I felt a momentary wave of envy, instantly cleansed, for those lucky bastards who had been severely injured as kids. Broken spines, fractured vertebrae. That would cover so much mental anguish!
I looked at my freshly cleaned window. Only the fourth floor. I would almost certainly survive a fall to the grass courtyard. I would probably break some bones! I would be able to immediately recover from like the next ten breakups!
My heart never felt lighter, my spirit never freer. I smiled like the doctor the whole way down.