Adrian Pell remembers murdering his wife. The problem is that she is still alive. The memory arrives with impossible clarity: what he did, how it felt, and the regret that followed. Forty-eight hours later, Detective Elise Carr is drawn into the aftermath of a warning that should have prevented a crime but may instead have helped create it. Her investigation leads to the remains of an abandoned neuroscience programme built around an extraordinary discovery: some people can experience the emotional consequences of a decision before they make it.
Guilt before betrayal. Grief before loss. Regret before violence. The researchers believed they had found a way to change human behaviour. They were wrong. As Elise follows the programme's former subjects, she finds lives distorted by memories of futures that have not happened, people trying desperately to avoid choices they already remember making, and a question that becomes more dangerous the closer she gets to answering it.
If you remember the consequences of an act before committing it, are you still free to choose?And if the future can be remembered, what happens when someone decides it deserves to happen?Before Regret is a psychological thriller about memory, responsibility and the terrifying possibility that knowing what comes next may not save us from it.
Adrian Pell remembers murdering his wife. The problem is that she is still alive. The memory arrives with impossible clarity: what he did, how it felt, and the regret that followed. Forty-eight hours later, Detective Elise Carr is drawn into the aftermath of a warning that should have prevented a crime but may instead have helped create it. Her investigation leads to the remains of an abandoned neuroscience programme built around an extraordinary discovery: some people can experience the emotional consequences of a decision before they make it.
Guilt before betrayal. Grief before loss. Regret before violence. The researchers believed they had found a way to change human behaviour. They were wrong. As Elise follows the programme's former subjects, she finds lives distorted by memories of futures that have not happened, people trying desperately to avoid choices they already remember making, and a question that becomes more dangerous the closer she gets to answering it.
If you remember the consequences of an act before committing it, are you still free to choose?And if the future can be remembered, what happens when someone decides it deserves to happen?Before Regret is a psychological thriller about memory, responsibility and the terrifying possibility that knowing what comes next may not save us from it.
