Twenty-one years ago

Eleven hit the mat.

“Again.”

Eleven got to his feet, a little sore but not seriously hurt, and came at Jacobs again.

“Good,” Jacobs commented as he blocked a kick Eleven tried to drive into his knee.

Eleven pressed the attack, striking at Jacobs’ feet and legs.

“Using my greater size against me, attacking me where it’s difficult to block. Very good.” Then he moved his hands lightning fast, and Eleven hit the mat once more.

“Again.”

This went on for an hour and a half. Afterward, Eleven’s whole body hurt, his breath came in gasps, and he was drenched with sweat. Jacobs breathing was perhaps a little heavy.

“You’re good for a kid with no training,” Jacobs said. “Excellent economy of movement, good strategic thinking, no hesitation in your attacks. I can definitely teach you. We will start learning some basics tomorrow. Now normally, you would be learning Japanese vocab right about now but before you can do that, there’s some other skills you gotta learn.”

“What kind of skills?” Eleven asked, a distant hope that it wasn’t more fighting flickering through the pure physical exhaustion that was neither distant nor ephemeral.

“The kind that help you remember stuff. You need to learn to memorize and recall large quantities of information, but also to process complicated information very quickly. I gotta warn ya, this stuff takes a lot of time and it’s time we ain’t got. You’re gonna need to work on it during any free time you get. Even then you will be behind the others. This shit takes years to master, but you can catch them up if you work hard.”

Eleven nodded.

And so they began. Jacobs started by explaining some basic memory techniques. He taught Eleven how to turn facts into mental pictures and link those pictures together in his mind. After that, they worked on using a story to remember a group of facts and building a mind palace. All of that seemed simple enough. Not all particularly easy, but Eleven figured it was something he could do if he worked at it. He told Jacobs as much.

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“Memory is the easy bit,” he replied. “Anyone can learn to build a mind palace and store memories in it. The hard part is splitting your mind so that you can both file information into your mind palace and retrieve it without conscious thought. Then, you’ll be able to recall whatever you need to know for the situation without having to know specifically what that is or focus your attention on recalling it.”

Eleven processed that for a moment. And found that he had no idea what Jacobs was talking about.

“Huh?” he said.

“That pretty much sums it up.” Jacobs laughed. “Okay, think of it this way. When you see a dog, you don’t think ‘that thing has four legs and fur and it barks, therefore it is a dog', right? You just know what a dog is. It’s kind of like that, but with all the information you have stored in your mind palace. Instead of you mentally walking through your mind palace and finding the piece of information you want, you just know it. You’ve gotta, like, automate your mind palace. Move it into your subconscious so that it becomes your regular memory.”

“And you can do that?” Eleven asked, still not sure he understood.

“Nope.” He smirked. “That’s probably why I’m so crap at explaining it, eh? This kind of thinking ain’t natural. You have to start young to learn it, greater neuroplasticity and all that. To be honest, you’re already getting a bit long in the tooth for learning it, so I’m much too old.” He noticed Eleven’s look of skepticism and added, “But not to worry, I know the theory well enough. I should be able to guide you through it.”

Eleven spent the rest of the day practicing how to segment his mind, which involved a lot of visualization, practicing different ways of thinking, and strenuous memory exercises while working out difficult math problems. It wasn’t easy, but Eleven found he had something of a knack for it. His emotions were already compartmentalized, so walling off another part of his mind and setting it to a task felt, if not natural, then at least not wholly alien.

“You did good today,” Jacobs said as he left him for the day. “We will pick up again tomorrow after breakfast and I will start teaching you what you need to know. Remember to practice using your mind palace and do your compartmentalization exercises.”

Eleven did as he was instructed, though he was so tired that he was asleep almost as soon as his head hit the pillow. For the next thirteen days after that, Jacobs taught Eleven basic vocab in six different languages, a little programming, introductory chemistry, engineering, how to dissect with a scalpel and fight with a knife, how to drive, and enough martial arts that he wouldn’t get himself killed when he started training with the others. When the other candidates were learning psychology or basic knowledge, Eleven worked on the memory techniques that allowed the candidates to take on and retain so much information.

During his free time, Eleven worked on trying to automate his mind palace. He progressed faster than Jacobs expected and would sometimes return to his mind palace to find new information that he hadn’t consciously stored there. Even with his natural talent, it would be years before Eleven became proficient enough to use it reliably, but he would one day master the ability to segment his mind like few who have ever lived.