Severance Procedure

Severance Procedure
Type	Medical Procedure
Effects	Two separate identities in the same body

The Severance Procedure is a neuro-surgical procedure pioneered by Lumon Industries which serves to partition a person's memories into two streams of consciousness, effectively resulting in two people sharing the same body. This effect is mediated by a small chip inserted deep within the patient's brain, which controls which identity is "awake" at any given time and prevents either identity from accessing the other's memories. Those who have undergone this procedure are known as the Severed.

History

Severance technology was invented by Harmony Cobel at some point before or during her time at the Lumon Branch 501 facility. However, the credit for its invention would go to Jame Eagan.

According to Irving Bailiff, Lumon has only used Severed workspaces for the past twelve years; however, a comment by Burt Goodman's husband Fields suggests that Lumon may have been using Severance for longer than this.

The Whole Mind Collective opposes the use of Severance, and are pushing for legislature to ban the procedure. Another unknown group also opposes Severance, described by Petey Kilmer as different from the WMC and actually intending to "do something about it." Asal Reghabi may be a member of this group.

Severance Chip Function

While it is currently unclear exactly how Severance chips work, they are stated by Asal Reghabi to interact with the five types of brain waves (alpha, beta, delta, theta, and gamma) in order to generate the "barrier" separating a person's Severed personas.

Severance chips exhibit several different modes or settings, only some of which have currently been shown; these settings are named as follows:

1. Beehive - function unknown
2. Branch Transfer - function unknown
3. Clean Slate - function unknown
4. Elephant - function unknown
5. Freeze Frame - function unknown
6. Goldfish - function unknown
7. Glasgow - prevents a person's Innie identity from activating while the person is in an area designated for Severed personnel; also referred to as a "Glasgow Block".
8. Lullaby - function unknown
9. Open House - function unknown
10. Overtime - activates a person's Innie identity outside of areas designated for Severed personnel; also referred to as the "Overtime Contingency".

Applications

The most common use-case of Severance seen thus far is in Lumon's Severed employees, who have voluntarily undergone the procedure in order to separate their private and professional lives, generally in the name of achieving a "work-life balance." These employees work on specially-designated "Severed Floors" within Lumon facilities, wherein their workplace identity (referred to as an "Innie") is active while they remain on the floor. Upon leaving the floor, their original personality (referred to as an "Outie") is reactivated. Outies do not remember anything that takes place while their Innies are active, and vice versa; however, Innies do retain memories of basic human functions, such as how to read, speak and write, as well as general knowledge about the world, mannerisms, and various other topics not directly related to their outside lives.

Severance seems to be in the early stages of civilian use, as seen with Gabby Arteta, who chose to become Severed so as to avoid experiencing the trauma of childbirth.

The procedure is not limited to one Innie consciousness per person. The Testing Floor of the Lumon Branch 501 facility contains numerous rooms in which at least twenty-four Innies of test subject Gemma Scout are repeatedly subjected to a recreation of a specific mundane but unpleasant scenarios; this may hint at Lumon exploring other potential applications for Severance.

Reintegration

The two severed brain waves appearing on an oscilator

Reintegration is an experimental medical operation that acts as a way to completely reverse the effects of the Severance Procedure and recombine the two divergent sets of memories into one. Reintegration was created by Asal Reghabi, a former Lumon Industries surgeon who performed the operations to implant the severance microchip. The only two people to have ever been reintegrated are Peter Kilmer and Mark Scout, though only partially on the latter.

Procedure

Mark Scout undergoing reintegration with Asal Reghabi

The Reintegration operation involves syncing the two divergent brain waves of a severed mind, with both innie and outie waves having five brain wave frequencies; delta, theta, alpha, beta, and gamma. While monitoring the waves with cymatics on a chladni plate, the operator will ask a series of questions meant to act as memory triggers to assist the transition. The questions consist of both generic personal ones and some taken directly from the Lumon Industries orientation training manual. The operator will make additional adjustments to the wave forms to identify the dominant half of the memories. It appears that multiple sessions such as this are necessary to achieve full reintegration, carefully spaced out over time.

Once the brain waves are synced, a "waiting period" follows as the patient slowly reintegrates and gradually gains more memories. During this time, the patient must stick to a specialized diet of medicine and assorted pills to reduce/prevent the effects of reintegration sickness. As time passes, the patient begins to experience increasingly powerful hallucinations in Outie and Innie form, sometimes becoming so disorienting that they flash forward through time into different spaces.

"Flooding"

Reghabi floods Mark's chip

"Flooding" is a procedure that involves surgically inserting an unknown fluid into the area of the brain around the chip, acting as an accelerant for the otherwise slow reintegration process. It is achieved by making an incision at the back of the skull to reach the pre-existing hole drilled into the parietal bone during the initial chip surgery, before a needle is inserted into the amygdala and the "flood fluid" is released.

When successfully "flooded," the patient feels the effects almost immediately, starting with an intense vibrating sensation in the head, then flashes of the many severed memories. Quick head movements are dangerous and can cause sharp pains in the brain, while consistent movement can overwhelm the patient and cause them to suffer a seizure. A symptom of an approaching seizure is loss of motor functions, notably seen in hand twitching.

Side Effects

Reintegration sickness

Reintegration sickness is a poorly-understood ailment that begins to effect a reintegrated individual if they fail to follow post-operation instructions and take the recommended medicines. The sickness is caused by the mismatched relativity of severed memories and the sheer mental stress of suddenly having two different lives melded together into one brain.

Known effects of the sickness include intense headaches, nosebleeds, disassociation, and mental 'glitches' of the individual's consciousness that send them back and forth between both sets of memories, causing confusion in the person as they could be (from their perspective) on the severed floor one moment, then come to their senses in the real world without having actually left where they originally were. Though unconfirmed, it is implied that the Innie and Outie of one suffering from reintegration sickness are able to see each other via hallucinations, as briefly shown in the only person known to have suffered from the sickness: Petey Kilmer.

Result

Mark flashing back to his first day on the severed floor in casual clothing

If performed safely and correctly, the end result of reintegration is "full synaptic recoupling," the complete merger of Innie and Outie memories into one collective. The severance threshold barriers are presumably useless against a fully reintegrated person, as Petey was able to remain undected for two weeks while still returning to work every day, allowing him to map out the severed floor.

Reintegration presents a difficult dilemma for both sides of a severed person however. The procedure combines the shared memories, feelings, fears, and quirks into one, but this leads to the creation of a third personality that is all of their traits together, a new 'hybrid' person so to speak. This unfortunately means that the Innie and Outie, in order to complete the process, would essentially cease to exist and lose their own autonomy and identity, as the third 'hybrid' personality replaces both of them.

Notes and Trivia

• The exact date when the severance procedure was first invented is unspecified.
  • In The We We Are, Jame Eagan mentions showing the original severance chip prototype to Helena when she was a child.
  • In Attila, a list of severed employees that Mr. Drummond finds in Irving's house states that one severed Lumon employee named Andrew Baseman underwent the severance procedure as early as June 2008. In that same episode, Irving Bailiff recalls that the first severed office opened twelve years ago, which Burt Goodman confirms is correct, however, Cecil Fields insists that Burt was working with Lumon as far back as twenty years ago, which Burt tries to play off as Fields having a faulty memory.