The (reluctant) minister of extraterrestrial affairs looked down at the notepaper he'd folded up and shoved into his pocket earlier that morning. It was a simple message; a single sentence of five words. Your name is Gregory Charles. It didn't ring any bells.

Some people would have found comfort in the fact that the entire city was experiencing identical symptoms. The alleged Gregory Charles was not such a person. After all, in a few short minutes, he was going to have to stand in front of a TV camera and explain to the world that aliens existed and they'd apparently just oopsed a city.

With a sigh, he looked once more at his own status.

Name: None
Species: Human (β)
Class: Commoner (Level 1)
Soul Points: 0
Health: 15/15
Stamina: 15/15
Mana: 0/0
Strength: 9
Dexterity: 10
Endurance: 10
Intelligence: 12
Wisdom: 11
Charisma: 13
Skills: [Language: Common 1] [Language: English 10]
Traits: None
Titles: None

Last time, after the portal had closed, trying to view his status displayed a 'connection lost' error. This time, it hadn't.

Aside from some minor variations in stats, it was exactly the same as everyone else who had been affected. Even people who hadn't overheard a single word of the language of the strange, magical land had obtained the [Language: Common] skill at level one. And it wasn't just words on an impossible floating screen in front of him; he really did know a few words of the language. And not words he'd heard the locals speak, either. Rather, it was words you'd expect an infant to come out with, like 'mummy' and 'daddy'.

Hardly a fair trade for forgetting his name, he felt. The English speaker he'd been dealing with had said it was something that was supposed to suppress war, which made its apparent ability to manipulate memories at a whim all the more disturbing.

And again, there was an entire city in exactly the same situation. Presumably. Random sampling had so far failed to find any negatives within miles of the facility. Confirming exact numbers would take a lot longer, but if the effect reached the opposite side of the city, and included some smaller villages out in the other direction, they could be looking at two-hundred thousand... casualties? Casualties didn't sound quite right, but damned if he could think up a better word for it.

The only saving grace was that they knew the effect was limited to less than twenty miles. They'd found no affected individuals in the next city over.

A sudden burst of excitement came from one of the army grunts who'd been on the phone to his parents. "Hey, I got my name back! My dad telling me it was my name was enough to get my status to update. I can remember it properly now and everything!"

A stir ran through the assembled people, some of whom pulled out phones of their own. They weren't really supposed to have them, given the levels of secrecy this project had been under, but that had all been rather thoroughly blown already, so if people wanted to reassure family they were okay before the sensational headlines started, no-one was going to complain.

Unfortunately for the person allegedly called Gregory, his parents had died a couple of years previously. Maybe looking at his birth certificate would be enough? He filed it away under his list of things to try when the world stopped being quite so insane.

Of course, if the world stopped being so insane, he wouldn't be having this problem in the first place...

Dragging himself back to his feet, he left the group of soldiers and stepped outside, where a hastily assembled podium and camera had been set up. Leaning against a wall, with a face that looked like it hadn't seen sleep in a month, was Dr Harry Withermark, the cause of all this mess. Or perhaps that accolade should be given to whoever gave him the money to run this place?

Gregory paused to consider just how much money it was. Hadn't this place been around for a something like forty years? Why couldn't he have enough money to pay a bunch of eccentric researchers to have fun for a significant chunk of a century?

Not the same researchers, either. Dr Withermark wasn't old enough to have been working here forty years ago... Who started the place, and where were they now?

"Any idea what you're going to say?" asked Dr Withermark, interrupting Gregory's quest to find additional people to blame.

"Haven't a clue, but I've been assured that some very proficient speech writers are working on the problem. Anything you think needs to be said?"

"Well, if it was me talking, I think I'd start with 'sorry'."