What Isn't Remembered

FUTURES WHAT ISN’T REMEMBERED How to be alone. BY HIROMI GOTO When she speaks with her own kind they are like Butoh dancers. Their shared net- JACEY he laptop is whirring. Somewhere works streaming, their vacant faces some- inside the machine, the little man has times contorting, a single word dropping turned on the fan to cool down the from their lips like a small sculpture from Tengine. Outside, the rain falls in slow heavy an ancient civilization. strands. The day is saturated and it’s not even I know I’ve made myself a curiosity, but noon. The rusty eavestrough, filled with I don’t regret my choices. I sleep very well years of debris, just pours a steady stream at night. out of a crack onto the concrete below. The You won’t need to sleep anymore, Corona persistent splatter sounds like someone is explained. frying a dozen eggs in a cast-iron frying pan. I love sleeping. My stomach groans. The fried-egg splatter of rain has mor- “There, there,” I pat my stomach as if it’s an phed into the sizzling of French fries. What I old dog. “Some day. Some day.” wouldn’t do for some fries! No one’s allowed Gerry Rafferty dead 50 years ago today — to eat them any more; no health benefits for I input Baker Street and the soft blue-purple the Glory Of All People. A lot of things have glow around his ’70s face, the croon of the no benefits. sax riff, bring a surge of tears to my eyes. His If you augment, Corona said, the last time beautiful voice tinged with wabi sabi, and his she visited, you can enjoy French fries all you last drink always the very last one. The year he like. You won’t be able to tell the difference. died, high definition was the rage. I prefer the Experience is neurotransmissions. If you soft focus of memory’s natural erosion. augment you can have all your pleasures, but I opted out long ago on expanding my per- none of the consequences. She even man- sonal hard drive. I don’t regret my choice. It’s aged a semblance of a smile. actually meant a monthly allowance owing Delete the undesirable data, they said, eyes My daughter, I love you more than French to my disability: my function capability vacant as their augmented minds streamed fries. I love you more than sleeping, I love is rated so low that if I were a fetus, I’d be far more than my grey matter could ever you more than Right Down the Line. But I quickly modified or humanely disconnected imagine. will not augment. before the end of the first trimester. Hah! Dear children — what worlds your eyes Corona modified my old laptop, buffer- The children feel shame about my status. have seen, your mortal mother will never ing it against the overload of data it would Have they deleted their memories of me? comprehend. And I am okay with that. never be able to access. The buffer functions It’s several years since Corona last visited. I When was Baker Street released? 1978 … like a beaver dam, so just a thin trickle can think it’s been several years. I don’t keep a Sniff ’n’ the Tears, Cat Stevens, all those bal- reach me, to keep me company in my chosen journal. No one needs a calendar anymore lads. The old heart squeezes with a sweet isolation. because it’s in their head. People used to tell bruise pain. Fleeting, like a first good wine. My body is old. I still enjoy my sleep, but the overwrought, the neurotic ones that. Whatever happened to me in 1978, all I it’s been a very long time since I’ve eaten “It’s all in your head!” Now it’s digitally true. have left is this whiff of something slightly French fries. Hahahahahaaaa! bitter, but indescribably sweet. A forgetting My friends have all gone, downloaded The wellness monitor bleats from the ceil- remembered in an ephemeral language. into Glory. But I will not. I’ve left my brain ing. Capable of detecting CO, natural gas, There is a qualitative difference between to the Morbid Anatomy Library and Cabi- even ‘excessive’ testosterone, it’s a sound of deleting and forgetting. net where my mindvelt can only be experi- concern. A reminder. A warning. If I had a What about all those important things enced by the visitor as a discrete and fleeting shotgun I’d blast it to pieces. that were lost? asked Corona, who was download. It will be set up to work only if If my children don’t remember me, am I always logical, even before augmentation she has turned off all of her other networks. still a mother? became the basic. Countless languages I want to leave a trace of what it once felt like Their neural networks are connected to gone extinct. Genetic code of plants, ani- to be alone. everyone, everything. Filters exist but they mal, fungi, microbes. Corona always spoke I hope that the cabinet where my brain will are cosmetic. Secrets are deemed asocial; slowly, as if I couldn’t keep up. Mind, she be housed is labelled with a small card. Let only the suspect has anything to hide, so the probably had terabytes of streaming data them write with a fountain pen on antique Glory Of All People imprints as soon as data while she spoke to me in complete sentences. paper, at least 100 lbs, matte finish. neurons are activated. My children accused Data can be lost, corrupted. Systems Forget. ■ me of being asocial — a technophobe Neo- fail, crash, empires tumble, civilizations dis- Nostalgic Luddite. appear. Hiromi Goto has won the Tiptree, Sunburst Dear children — technology did not NATURE.COM That’s why we have and Carl Brandon Parallax Award among frighten me. What I didn’t want to lose Follow Futures on the Glory, but we must others. Her dark fantasy novel, Darkest were my own brain’s idiosyncratic ways of Facebook at: always back up, Corona Light, will be published in spring 2012 with forgetting. go.nature.com/mtoodm said gently. Penguin Canada. www.hiromigoto.com. 562 | NATURE | VOL 479 | 24 NOVEMBER 2011 © 2011 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved.

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