Iawake from surgery screaming, my hands pressed against the sides of my face, unable to open my eyes. The nurses try to unlock my body from its rigid position, startled by my reaction to what had been a common foot procedure. They are unaware that while my body is sitting in the present, my mind is experiencing a past that I don’t dare open my eyes and see. The emergence from anesthesia has left my brain stranded in a moment 10 years prior: a surgery that had gone horribly wrong—my severance procedure.

“Severance” has taken on new meaning since an Apple TV science fiction series of the same name premiered in 2022 . The term refers to the operation in which the white-collar workers at the mysterious Lumon Industries have their brains surgically split between two distinct personalities:

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