Form MEX-7: Exemption Review – Case 4,847

The file arrived at 11:23. Standard routing. No flags on the system.

Daniel opened it in the order it had come, as per procedure, and began with the supporting documentation. Applicant name: Margaret Reeves. He stopped. Looked at the window. Looked back. He wrote reviewed in the margin and continued.

Date of birth: 14th March 1958. NHS number. Next of kin: Daniel Reeves. He underlined nothing. He moved on.

The memory itself was classified as a Prolonged Grief Construct, sub-type Spousal. Duration: thirty-one years of accumulated associative material. The Hazard Assessment team had scored it a 74, which sat just above the threshold for mandatory review. Someone had attached a handwritten note to the back of the file. He recognised his mother’s handwriting. He did not read handwritten notes. They were not part of the process.

He moved to Section 4: Grounds for Exemption.

The applicant states that the retained memory constitutes a core component of personal identity and that removal would result in significant psychological disruption.

They all said that. He wrote noted in the margin.

The applicant further states that she does not wish to stop remembering her husband. She states that the remembering is the point.

Daniel looked at this for a moment. Then he looked at the window. The car park. A pigeon standing in a puddle.

He turned back to the form. There were four grounds for exemption and she had established none of them clearly. His job was not to establish them for her. His job was to assess what was there.

He picked up his pen. In the box marked DECISION he wrote Approved: Grounds of Exceptional Personal Continuity which was a category he had just invented, which did not exist, which would be queried by his supervisor on Thursday.

He closed the file. He sat for a moment with his hands flat on the desk.

Then he opened the handwritten note, which he had already decided he would not read, and read it anyway. It was short. It said: I just want to keep him. That’s all. I just want to him. He folded it precisely and put it in his inside pocket, which was also not part of the process.

Then he moved to the next file, because there were always more files, and his coffee had gone cold, and outside the pigeon had not moved at all.