Wednesday, April 29, 2015

Perfect Recall

Warren Boyle III read voraciously.  By the time he had graduated from Regina Falls High School in Regina Falls, Montana, he had committed his family's entire sixteen-volume set of encyclopedias to memory.  He could quote any entry on command.  The local doctor didn't think Warren was a savant since he didn't have any kind of mental disability that usually went with savant territory.  "Maybe he's your run-of-the-mill prodigy," the doctor proclaimed.  "Or just has a real good memory."  The doctor was plainspoken.

Sam enlisted in the Army, and his superiors noticed that he could recite anything he read, from magazines to training manuals.  The shrink at the Army base thought that awareness of Warren's gift should be passed up the chain of command.  It was.

A year later, Sam was working for the CIA in the bowels of Langley, Virginia.  He did nothing but read everything put before him, although he was allowed to read for pleasure when he was off-duty.  He liked the mysteries of Mickey Spillane.  Ten years later, he'd read much of the material in the National Archives in Washington, and he'd done a pretty good job working his way through the Library of Congress.  In case of hackers or cyber attack by foreign governments, the United States had the ultimate backup disk: Warren Boyle III.

~William Hammett

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