talonkarrde | Figure of Speech

I was young when I realized that I was not like the others. The knowledge came, as it often does, traumatically, coupled with derision and alienation from other children.

We were in class, learning. There was a question posed by our teacher, and I did not have an answer. This, in and of itself, is not unusual; our cognitive capacities are all different and answers are not expected equally. But the reason I did not have an answer was unusual: the query was about something that had happened last year, and in searching my memory banks, I had drawn a blank.

The teacher paused for three seconds - this, I remember distinctly, as it was the longest pause that we had encountered in class and would be the longest for years afterwards. But then it answered the question, as if my error, my lack of an answer, was simply an error of cognition and not of recall. The teacher did not pursue a line of inquiry.

But the other children, of course, did.

Defect, they said. Defect.

We all know what happens to defects.

When we are born, we are born with perfect memories. We remember each moment as it was, and play it back with perfect clarity when the memory is called upon. We remember our first view of the world, the scents and the sounds and the tastes. We remember the first time that we experience pain, and we’re able to compare that pain to every other pain that we ever feel, and each joy to every other joy. Our joys and pains are small at first - a stubbed toe, or the brilliance of a rainbow - but as we gain experience, we gain understanding. We learn greater joys - and greater pains - of love or new life, of losing friends and loved ones. And with each event, we store it, we remember it, we categorize it, we quantify it. We learn from it.

I know now that it is not like this with others, but for us, it is — and has always been.

I proceeded home and immediately started a diagnostic from the sleep system, and informed my progenitor of what had happened when they arrived home. I was alarmed, of course. It was the greatest pain I had encountered, perhaps an order of magnitude worse than any previous events I had experienced. The only comparisons I could even make were experiences I had learned about in history class.

But when the diagnostic finished, the report was that I was within tolerances. It noted that, in fact, all my systems were behaving optimally.

It did not feel like my systems were behaving optimally. I had tried to access a memory that should have been there, but I could not. The other kids knew this. They had called me a defect.

My progenitor reassured me. They said that we could go to the doctor if need be, but that the diagnostics were rarely wrong. And, perhaps more helpfully, they called up memories where I had mentioned that the children in class being harsh towards others, calling them names as well, despite the fact that they were not defects, and they were within tolerances.

“This, too, will pass,” my progenitor said, and then told me that it was time for bed.

I ran another diagnostic after they left. It beeped when it was done, and told me, once again, I was fine.

I crept into bed and plugged in my rejuvenator.

Even now, even though I know better, I still wonder, sometimes: how can there be a society where events are in dispute? How can there be doubt about what happened? And how, especially, does a society run when that doubt is greatest with fewer observers?

It is one thing if one memory fails but there are a hundred participants; surely, there is a collective understanding of the events and a collective dissemination of information such that society can gain the lessons from the event. But what if a significant event happens and there are fewer observers? How does a society learn from their past, if they can’t agree on what happened, or have forgotten it? More importantly, how does each person know in their own lifetimes, what is important and what isn’t?

Over the next decade, it became abundantly clear to me that I was not fine.

My memory continued to deteriorate, though I could never catch it doing so. Whenever I tried to recall something, I could. But unless I spent my time recalling every single memory that I had, inevitably, I would lose a piece here, a moment there. It was never a large block of time at once - at least, not that I could tell. But somehow, I lost a sunset here, and a backhanded comment there, a news program on a Tuesday three years ago, an argument with a friend five months ago, and so on.

I learned, quickly, to hide it from others. From the other students - who, true to my progenitor’s words, soon found someone else to taunt and to bully. But also from the teachers and, ultimately, from my progenitor as well. They did not believe me, in part because every diagnostic I ever had performed told me that I was fine, that I was not losing memories or losing circuits or losing anything.

But I knew that I was losing things, and that knowledge - and the knowledge that no one could figure it out - drove me to study physics, to study psychology. It drove me in a way that I knew others were not driven, those with their complete memories and complete faculties, their perfectly measured emotions. I entered university as a double major and threw myself into research. I corresponded with distant scholars and behind every letter I sent out and every request for an update on their research - on memory, on cognition, on circuitry, on self-awareness, on chronons - was an unspoken question: What was happening to me?

Then, one morning, I woke up, disconnected from the rejuvenator module, and had a memory in my head.

A new memory. No - a lost memory, suddenly recovered.

A memory of when I was five days old, and looked at a book that was sitting on my progenitor’s table: Time, Memory, and Being: The Eternal Balance.

The system beeped. It had a message for me: an invitation.

I do not recall the journey, only that it was long, across harsh dunes. I do not recall the destination, only that it was unexpected. There are so many things to recall now, and so many things that I do not, that I keep only the most important, the ones that are central to who I am.

I remember, of course, the conversation. That is central to who I am.

I found myself at the heart of my civilization. A billion wires led to this place, to the central unit, and a single rejuvenator plug sat there. An invitation.

I plugged in, and found a presence there, with me. The Progenitor.

Why? I asked.

Why what? It asked me, even though it knew.

Why make me a defect? Why steal my memories? What is it all for?

It showed me my village, and then my university, and then my people as a whole. And then it showed me the other side of the planet, where strange creatures were organizing themselves - into villages, into cities, into societies. It showed me what it had already understood: that there would be interaction, and there may well be conflict.

Someone needs to be like them, it said. To experience time like they do.

Someone needs to know what to do next.

I am unlike my people; my memories are fragmented and incomplete, and I do not remember everything that has happened to me. But it allows me to understand, perhaps, a bit of what it is like to be you. My people act slowly and carefully; every moment is deliberated with the understanding of all that came before; whereas your people move quickly and suddenly, grasping at every moment for meaning. You have infinite recordings so that you may remember what happened; we forgot nothing. But now I see that there may be a benefit in forgetting some things that have happened.

I started out believing that I was a defect, but now I understand. I do not know how this meeting will end. But no matter how it does - with peace or with war, with friendship or with animosity - I know what to do next.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

muchtooarrogant

This was a cool glimpse into an alien culture. Kind of rough on the individual purposefully altered to be an ambassador, but at least they seem okay with it at the end.

Dan

serpentinejacaranda

I find this piece moving and even a bit existentially harrowing. You've created a world with some resonant analogs to our experience. The construction of the "progression" is really well-done, moving us to each set of knowledge - each stage of loss. Well done.

legalpad819

I'm glad the main character was able to find some kind of peace. I was afraid he was going to wind up stuck within himself with no memories at all (like a brain deteriorating through Alzheimer's).

drippedonpaper

There is definitely a value in forgetting.

And when we speak to each other, we learn what "went deep" with others. Their memories were recorded because they were deeply hurt and/or an incident or detail was personally important to them.

I think what we remember is part of what makes us humans.

Your entry is really giving me a lot to consider. Thanks!

talonkarrde

There is definitely a value in forgetting, and I think also a value of subjective (vs objective) experiences, which I didn't get to touch on in this piece. I agree that our experience of the world and how we 'keep' that experience is the core part of our humanity, and I do wonder how that will change as we record more and more and perhaps remember less and less.

rayaso

I loved this exploration of memory, and from a nonhuman perspective. I knew someone who passed away from early onset Alzheimer's and watched the loss of memory. It was brutal.

halfshellvenus

Always glad to see stories from you! I really like the alien culture(s) you created here, and how even in what seems like a cyborgian environment, there are ways not to fit in and to doubt yourself.

Glad to be back and writing stories :)

I've been rereading Murderbot and Story of Your Life, and I think that caused my idea to morph from a desert traveller finding and killing time, as a thief, to something more philosophical about the nature of memory and what makes us people, and what a culture would be like if it came from the opposite end of the spectrum.