Alright; here is chapter five of this. I hope you enjoy. Oh and, it's like one in the morning where I am and I haven't been sleeping well so if there are any mistakes then I profusely apologise now.

And one more thing; I don't actually know where Eli lived (which really irks me because Wikipedia has now failed me) so if anyone knows for definite could they please inform me, otherwise it's staying where I've put it.

Shorty McGee: Thank you and I hope you enjoy.

Tripod Gal: Thank you for the many compliments – they make all the hassle of searching for the blasted details worth it lol. I hope you enjoy this and will tell me of any inaccuracies and such. I'm finding that writing about Eli and Rush is fun and difficult in a way; I've got to stick to how they are in the show as well as add some things since I'm going AU with the whole 'family' thing. Anyway, enjoy.

And to anyone else; I hope you will enjoy reading this.

KaseyKC

Five

"One need not be a chamber to be haunted;

One need not be a house;

The brain has corridors surpassing

Material place." - Emily Dickinson; 'Time and Eternity'

Memory is considered, in terms of psychology, as being an organism's ability to store, retain and recall information. Traditionally the study of the memory originated in the fields of philosophy but during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century memory was placed within the paradigms of cognitive psychology. In the last few decades though, the study of memory has become one of the main pillars of a branch of science known as cognitive neuroscience; an interdisciplinary link between cognitive psychology and neuroscience.

In regards to the formation and retrieval of memories there are three main stage; they are as follows;

The encoding or registration of memory – receiving, processing and combining the received information

The storage of the information – the creation of a permanent record of the encoded information

The retrieval, recall or recollection of the information – calling back the stored information in response to something for use in a process or activity.

There are several types of memory; sensory memory, short-term memory and long-term memory. Sensory memory relates to the initial 200 – 500 milliseconds after an item is observed. The ability to look at an item and remember what it looks like with just a second of observation, or memorisation, is an example of sensory memory. With very short presentation, people often report that they can see more that what they can actually describe. There have been several experiments in regards to this ability; one of the first being an experiment conducted by George Sperling who used the 'partial report paradigm'. The experiment was this; subjects were presented with a grid of 12 letters, arranged into three rows of 4. After a brief presentation the subjects were then played either a high, medium or low tone that informed them which of the rows they were to describe.

Based on the partial report experiments, Sperling was able to show that the capacity of sensory memory was approximately 12 items, but that it degraded rather quickly; within a few hundred milliseconds. Because this form of memory degrades so rapidly the subjects would see the display but would be unable to report all of the items before they decayed.

This type of memory therefore cannot be prolonged via rehearsal.

Another type of memory; short-term memory, allows for the recall of a period of several seconds up to a minute without rehearsal; without practice. The capacity of short-term memory is also quite limited; George A. Miller, where he worked at Bell Laboratories, conducted experiments that showed that the store of short-term memory was 7±2 items. The current-day estimation for the capacity of short-term memory is lower; typically between 4-5 items, but it is also known that the memory capacity can be increased through a process called chunking.

This process is used most commonly when trying to recall a telephone number; a person will separate the number into chunks, or sections, thus allowing them to recall it more easily. Herbert Simon showed that the ideal size for chunking letters and numbers, whether they are meaningful or not, was three.

The short-term memory is believed to rely mostly upon an acoustic code for storing information and, to a lesser extent, a visual code. An experiment carried out by Conrad on a number of test subjects found that they had more difficulty recalling collections of words that were acoustically similar – if they sounded the same on one or more of their syllables; e.g. dog, hog, fog, bog, log.

There are however, some exceptions to this, where some individuals have been able to remember large amounts of information quickly and have been able to recall the information in seconds; this is what would be considered as being an eidetic memory.

The last type of memory is the long-term memory, which has a much larger capacity than that or the sensory and short-term memory. This means that the long-term memory can store larger quantities of information for a potentially unlimited duration; in some cases, a whole life span. This capacity can also reach an infinite level; for example, when given a random seven-digit number, one may remember it for only a few seconds before forgetting it, thus suggesting that it was stored in one's short-term memory. On the other hand, we can remember telephone numbers for many years through repetition; this information is then said to be stored in the long-term memory.

-SGU-FB-SGU-FB-

March 14th 1996

"Happy birthday to you!"

It was midday at their home in the suburbs of Colorado Springs and Maryann smiled widely at her twelve-year old son as he blew out the candles on his birthday cake; she felt like she was blessed to have such a gifted, wonderful son. She recalled all of the previous birthday parties she'd thrown for her son; she recalled how every time she bought him gifts he always looked put-out if they weren't technical. For such a young boy it confused her that he was so obsessed with technology but he loved it so she didn't argue with it; her husband on the other hand found it annoying that his son would rather spend his time on videogames instead of baseball and soccer.

She was just happy that her son was smiling; especially after what had happened recently. The atmosphere in the house was normally tense and stressed; the only difference today was because of the people and children that had been invited for Eli's birthday. But the tension was still there.

-SGU-FB-SGU-FB-

November 19th 1998

"I can't do this anymore! I just can't!" he shouted, his voice carrying anger and frustration. He turned away from her and grabbed the handle of the front door, "It's too much."

"But what about Eli? What about us?" she sobbed, reaching over and lightly grasping his arm in her frail grasp, "You can't just leave us like this."

"I'm sorry... but, I can't take this anymore. I need to get out of this while I still can," he said softly, looking away from her and shaking her hand off, he opened the front door, "I'm sorry Maryann."

And then he was gone; from their life.

-SGU-FB-SGU-FB-

They gently placed them down upon the ground, trying not to jostle them and wake them up; it would be another half-hour before the sleeping drug wore off but if they were disturbed too much they would awaken but would not be fully coherent. It would be an unnecessary waste of energy and a production of too much noise; and noise was bad.

They stood over the sleeping travellers for a few moments before silently leaving the small area they had placed them in; covering the entry with a thin piece of material so as to block out the false-light they had made to illuminate the tunnels.

The four travellers continued to slumber almost completely fitful bar one of them; who looked to be in the throes of a night terror. He was the pale skinned one who had been the first one to step through the ring; they all sent up prayers to the Celestial Beings asking for him to be well.

TBC....

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REVIEW!!

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I hope you enjoyed this and will please TELL me what you think because I've only had seven reviews and with all the effort I've put into this it's kind of upsetting me (must not cry, must not cry). I don't know when I'll be updating this again since I've got school again (now I'll cry) as well as some of my other fics.

KaseyKC