Memory Revisions

Memory is more story than science. My instructor wrote that on the wall during my first day of class. Not a screen or a projection, he actually wrote it down, with a squeaky green marker on a big whiteboard. Scanning, scrubbing, shaping—technically you could train anyone with a good grasp on mathematics and a decent memory how to do it. Sit them at a console, give them a vessel, and run them through the motions. No harder than driver’s ed, really.

When I did my technical, the tools were already chimp-simple, and they’ve only gotten simpler since then. But memory is more story than science, and story is the problematic part for most revisers.

Even after technical, I get fresh graduates coming in here who think memory is putty to play with. They load up their first vessel and want to see what kinds of shapes they can twist it into. If the vessel contains a sunset walk on the beach, it isn’t enough for them to deepen the magentas in the sky and turn up the crashing of the waves. They want to program dolphins leaping out of the surf, spatter borealis rays all over the sky, and make light bugs paint the bearer’s name in cursive with their flight patterns.

Last year, a new hire was working on a vessel—a badly degraded high school baseball game from a couple decades ago. In the ninth inning, the bearer hits one right at the shortstop, but he bobbles the catch and drops the ball. The bearer gets the single and advances a runner to second. The next hitter strikes out, then the following hitter bounces one into the gap, the runner on second comes in to score, and the bearer’s team wins the game.

The new kid’s revision moved the bearer down the batting order. Instead of tied, they come into the ninth down two runs. He steps into the box with two outs and runners on the corners. The pitcher fills the count thanks to a questionable second-strike call by a shifty-looking umpire. The crowd starts chanting the bearer’s name and stamping their feet. A slippery breaking ball glides toward the plate, but time snails. The bearer strangles the bat as he swings, and the ball sails gracefully through the sky before reaching a vanishing point somewhere over the fence and above the centerfield lights. He casually jogs the bases before his teammates carry him off the field on their shoulders. The game is for the state championship now.

This revision failed the integration test handily. That wasn’t so surprising, really. Nearly all first revisions failed integration. The new kid did three more passes, reigning in some of the more extravagant details, but the revision still wouldn’t integrate. The tests suggested we weren’t even in the ballpark. 

That’s how the vessel wound up on my desk. I stripped the memory back to the starting point and then made two simple revisions. Firstly, the shortstop doesn’t bobble the catch—the ball sails just a few inches above his outstretched glove and drops just between him and the second baseman.

Secondly, the bearer’s father is at the game now. He’s sitting in the fifth row of the bleachers along the first baseline, absent-mindedly swiping around on a cellphone. As the bearer reaches first, he looks to the stands. His father looks up from his screen briefly, sees his son on base, and gives him a gentle nod of acknowledgement before turning his head back to his phone.

My version got our highest integration score of the quarter. I got my third Mnemosyne award for that one. The polished chrome trophies sit like alien triplets on a shelf behind my desk.

* * *

Memory isn’t clay, it’s rubber. My instructor wrote that on the wall during my first day of class. Not a screen or a projection but a big blackboard, with yellow chalk that scraped like scrap metal, flinging off shrapnel while he wrote. You can bend memory around, you can guide it, but there’s a particular shape that it wants to be. If you try to bend it too far out of shape, it snaps back twice as hard.

Just like the shape tools, integration tests have gotten better over time. Punishment for non-compliance has gotten harsher, too. In my fifteen years in the industry, our company hasn’t had a single vessel rejected after reintroduction. 

While I was a student, I worked part-time in a closure clinic. One of our patients was a man who had lost his wife at forty-five and was desperate to hold on to her. What was supposed to be a routine reinforcement procedure had been botched by a careless reviser and a faulty integration test. Now this man was haunted by dupe memories. Every moment he’d spent with his wife he recalls twice—one memory in which she has blue eyes and one in which she has green eyes.

We studied dupes in class, but I don’t know if I can ever grasp the experience. Reading words on top of other words or hearing overlapping sounds echoing through other sounds. The human brain isn’t capable of resolving the competing information. The head counsellor at the clinic called it “irreconcilable unreality”—when a patient has memories that contradict one another, the patient can experience feelings of panic, alienation, or confusion. 

At first, the widower was instructed to carry a picture of his green-eyed wife—or was it the blue-eyed one?—in a locket around his neck to use as a grounding tool. Whenever he started to feel his grasp slipping, he was supposed to open the locket, look at her picture, and anchor. Though this strategy was considered the clinical best practice for the condition, our patient had an unexpected reaction. The locket calmed the patient’s confusion but replaced it with one of abject sadness. I sat with him once as he broke down in our waiting room, slamming the locket shut and then prying it open again, over and over.

“I can’t erase them.”

* * *

Memory is reality. My instructor wrote that on the wall during my first day of class. Not a screen or a projection, but a big sheet of tinted black glass with a slick white pen that glided across the surface like a spaceship in the sky. If you remember something, that means it happened. More than that, when something happens, it changes you. We do follow-ups with friends and family after reintroduction so we can monitor for potential rejections. More often than not, they report increased happiness, energy, sometimes slightly shifted tastes or habits. 

I once revised a woman’s memory of her senior prom to include her crush holding her about four inches closer to his body during the slow dance, and her family reported significant improvements to her self-esteem. She applied for a promotion at work the very next week and got it. The boy whose father nodded to him at his baseball game became more nurturing and patient in his relationships with his children and grandchildren. 

Wait, why did we do follow-ups on that job already? Sometimes the changes are more subtle, but it is rare for anyone involved to be unsatisfied with the process. When did I deliver that vessel again? Memory is reality, so if you don’t remember something, it didn’t happen.

Our easiest jobs are simple scrubs—instead of turning you down for a date, you just never asked her. It’s easier to make someone forget than it is to make someone remember, but the more interconnected memories are attached to the initial sequence, the harder it is to scrub while still integrating. If you try to pull the wrong memory—or pull the right one too hard—all the adjacent memories start falling like dominoes. 

I read a case study in school about a woman who was bullied relentlessly in the first grade. They tried to scrub the bullying out, but in the process, she forgot how to read and write. The revisers tried to re-integrate new memories to replace her lost capacities, but with each new revision, things got . . . messier. This was before the regulations. Most of the vessels we reject now are risky domino jobs like that—someone wants to forget something painful, but it’s just too close to the rest of their memories.

* * *

Memory is a treasure. My wife wrote that . . . somewhere . . . sometime. Not on a screen or a projection, but on a piece of paper in flowing cursive. She said handwriting was a forgotten art—that no one remembered how to hold a pen to a page and then let the world move beneath it. She wrote a lot of things on that piece of paper. Curls of blue ink (green ink?) unspooling themselves on lined notebook paper (was it lined?) and trailing off into periods. Full stops, she called them.

She pinned (taped?) the letter on the living room wall (bedroom door? set on the kitchen table? No, it was on the wall, but which wall?). Swirly green ink recounting ten years of unreal memories—paragraphs of things I didn’t say, hadn’t seen, didn’t know. If you remember something, it happened. But it’s easier to make someone forget than it is to make someone remember. My counsellor at the closure clinic wrote that on a brown postcard (grey postcard?) and he put it in my wallet. I’m supposed to read it again . . . sometime. I think I’m supposed to have another appointment at the clinic, but I’m bad at remembering those sorts of things. My wife usually schedules my appointments for me. Why isn’t my wife scheduling my appointments anymore? 

Memory is weakness. My coach wrote that on the wall in our locker room with spray paint, bloody red viscera splashing off the tile with each sweep of the can. If you remember something, then it happened. And if something happened, then it changed you. It can only change you if you remember it. 

I remember one game sophomore year (junior year? If I was playing short it was probably junior). We were tied in the bottom of the ninth and some kid clipped an easy one at me, but I dropped the catch. Fumbled an easy double play and we lost the State championship game. Coach told me to forget about it. Coach told me to forget about everything, but I couldn’t.

* * *

Memory is fragile. Someone said that to me, somewhere. I forget who. I remember two men leading me away from my office, and I had a green plastic tote (a white banker’s box?) in my arms with three identical metal figurines—trophies, I think—inside. They clanked together with every step I took. Where is my lanyard? What’s in this box? Memory isn’t clay, it’s rubber. You can bend it, guide it, but there’s a particular shape it wants to be in. Are these men security guards? If you try to bend it too far out of shape, it snaps back into place twice as hard. 

When I was in high school, I was an All-State shortstop (All-County?) until I dropped a catch. All my senior season I kept thinking of that catch. Every time a ball came my way I froze. If you remember something, it happened, but if you keep remembering it, then it keeps happening. It’s easier to make someone forget than it is to make them remember, usually. The security guards lead me out into a parking lot and there’s a taxi waiting for me. 

“Can you at least call my wife to pick me up?”

One of the security guards takes the box out of my arms and stows it in the trunk of the taxi. The other spreads his arms and gives me the tightest of hugs. 

“Take care of yourself, okay, champ?”

Why isn’t my wife picking me up?

The other security guard passes a brown postcard to the driver through the window. I get in the backseat, close the door, and the taxi starts to move. 

Someone told me once that if you don’t remember something, it didn’t happen.