‘General Hospital’ (GH) spoilers finds that we all know that Franco Baldwin (Roger Howarth) now has the memories of 2012 Drew Cain (Billy Miller), but what we don’t know is… where did Franco go? Seriously, Dr. Arthur Cabot (Time Winters) didn’t elaborate on where the old memories go after the subject is rebooted. In the memory mapping experiment Did he bother saving essence of Franco to a flash drive too? One could only hope he did, seeing as he had plans to branch out the practice anyway to subjects who weren’t related. If he did, then it would just be a matter of getting the drive and its contents back into Franco and wiping the ‘Drew’ memories clean again, but here are some questions that only Cabot himself could answer.
‘General Hospital’ Spoilers: Where does the memories of the subject go?
Are the memories downloaded to a separate flash drive? Is there a whole memory bank filled with people’s memories that we don’t know about? Are there other subjects who went through what Franco did? Is that why Cabot wasn’t able to do anything besides experiments on twins? How did he find out that it wouldn’t work on subjects that weren’t related. That’s kind of disturbing to think about, if he possibly tried to expand the operation before and it didn’t work then there are possibly dozens of ‘people’ that only exist on flash drives now. Yike!
‘General Hospital’ Spoilers: Can the process be reversed?
If Franco is still ‘out there’ on a flash drive somewhere, is there a chance that the process could be reversed and that his memories could be ‘re-uploaded’? And can the subject go through such a procedure more than once without dire consequences? Considering how Cabot balked at the idea of putting someone as young as Cameron Webber (William Lipton) through it and said that he could be rendered a vegetable, then one questions that possibility. Also, there’s always the looming danger of ‘beginners luck’, maybe this memory mapping procedure worked just like it was supposed to, but if they tried it again perhaps Franco’s brain would not be as forgiving and maybe shut down on him, rendering him a vegetable or worse… dead. I’d say it doesn’t warrant thinking about but the fact of the matter is, it does.
‘General Hospital’ Spoilers: But where is Franco, specifically?
Where did the consciousness of Franco Baldwin go in this experiment? Was it simply ‘deleted’? Can you really do that to a human brain? Or is it just dormant, sleeping, comatose, as it were in the same body as Drew 2012’s consciousness? He said he would be back, but will he? Could there potentially be room in one body for two consciousnesses? I’m suddenly reminded of the movie ‘All of Me’ with Steve Martin and Lily Tomlin, would it be a situation something like that? And if Franco is no longer in his body and isn’t on a flash drive waiting to be reuploaded… where on earth is he?
Here’s an idea, and just hear me out – maybe, just maybe, when a person’s consciousness is deleted, it goes to the spiritual plane. Which would technically mean that he’s dead and on the same plane as say, Kiki Jerome. Now, I’m not entirely sure how you would get someone’s consciousness back from the spiritual realm or even if they’d want to come back (especially if they were on the good side of things), but Franco was technically only beginning his journey of redemption. He didn’t really get a chance to be the good person that he ended up wanting to be. So maybe he’s in, say, a level of purgatory.
General Hospital Spoilers: Kiki Jerome Makes Appearance
While he’s there, maybe he passes Kiki Jerome (Haley Erin) and maybe he’s the one that could get her to finally talk to Ava Jerome (Maura West) and give her some peace of mind. After all, he did really care about Kiki while she was alive, even Ava said that. It would stand to reason that if Franco isn’t going to be there for the time being that the least he could be doing is off trying to fix things so that the people on earth would have an easier time of it. Maybe there’s even some stuff he could do for Liz and Cam while on the spiritual plane as well. Since Oscar isn’t hanging around I think it safe to say he wouldn’t be encountering the teen on the other side, but ya never know!
‘General Hospital’ Spoilers: How to get him back?
This is when science is going to have to take a backseat and everyone’s going to have to suspend their disbelief for a bit. It seems that Dr. Cabot’s technology can only go so far and it is not known whether the process can work in reverse or not. Science seems to have its limits here. However… right now Port Charles is overrun with psychics! Psychics that can get in contact with the spiritual plane. Why not have one of them try and contact Franco? And while they’re at it, maybe some of them know of a way that they could get Franco back into the right body. Hey, if entire conciousnesses can be downloaded onto flash drives then it could happen! And that way Liz could have her hubby back!
But what would happen to Drew 2012? Well, if they can put one person’s consciousness back in the right body, who’s to say they couldn’t put Drew’s back as well? Then he’d have all his memories in tact and he could go on about his life unfettered. Would he possibly be court martialed for the info he knows? Yeah. But at least his life would be his own again. Could there be a scientific non-psychic solution to this whole thing? Quite possibly, but right now I think the storyline would actually make more sense if it took a supernatural turn. Guess we’ll just have to stay tuned!!!