HRVST Ch. 23: The Harvest of Memory
Without memory, there is no story, and if there is no story, there can be no history
It is fitting the goddess of memory was the mother of the muses of the arts.
Mnemosyne, last of the Titans, born of Gaia and Uranos, Earth mother and Sky father, was mother of the nine muses of the arts of memory, of epic tales, poetry, music and lyrics, hymns, dance, comedy, tragedy, astronomy, and history.
In the underworld, in Hades, she held court over the river Lethe, and the departed would drank from the river’s waters, stripping them memory of their past lives before they were reincarnated and returned reborn to the world of mortals.
Reciters of the Illiad and Odyssey invoked the power of her grace in the epics’ early lines, so that they could recount their tales in total.
Without memory, there is no story, and if there is no story, there can be no history.
Luna, South Aitken Basin, Hyperion, inside “The Grace”
His breathing slowed.
He was on his knees in front of the crypt, his forehead and right hand pressing against the cool metal plaque, his left hand gripping the upper front edge of its matte finish.
She was crouched next to him on his left, her left hand was his chest, to help prop him up. She felt his heartbeat. Her right hand kneaded the back of his neck between her thumb and fingers. It seemed a thing to do but it was all new, having a body outside the Verse.
As he started to push himself up off and stand in front of the stone, she stood up too.
She moved her left hand to find out if she had a heartbeat too. This wasn’t like the Verse.
The whole time, she couldn’t describe it and her reflex was to connect and find ways to understand. Silence, aside from their movements and breathing. She was cut off from the Verse. She wasn’t multi-rendered in multi-instances in an unreal reality. She was here and now, only. This was real reality.
The palm of his hands were on top of the stone’s matte dark finish, Alberto took in a deep breath, held it a moment, exhaled. Then said, “I am responsible, I am accountable. I decide.”
He noticed something etched on the stone, and he ran the fingers of his right hand over the grooves. It was an octagon with 4 lines that cut over the points, the vertices of the octagon, forming 8 “slices”, and then 3 round dots in a row, cutting across the middle of the octagon.
“This was one of my mother’s games. We played games like this, we read, we were outdoors, the real outdoors of Earth. She told me stories.”
“This sign was a game?”
“Shisima. The source of water. The source.”
“You said you’re responsible. Accountable. And you said that you ‘decide’. Decide what?”
Turning to Zephyr, "You restored a part of me, my active working memory on the Verse as ‘Alberto’, serving as a sentient ledger of the SC.
I was a construct modeled on Albert Necker, my carbon model, made in a machine,” as he touched the crypt’s plaque, “but here was the first oldest part of me, the original, born. My mother, Grace.”
Zephyr, nudged past that tiny revulsion she had earlier but still shook her head a little. The man standing in front of her was alien to everything she knew about contracts and carbons.
“I’ve never seen this ever, never met anyone who was both made and born.
I knew there were contracts, who were written, based on carbon models. And contracts who created other contracts. There are registries, but most don’t know who their carbon models were. It was always based on the carbon world transcribed but not completely in the Verse. There were carbons who traveled through avat-faces but this, this….” She dropped her right hand from her chest and feeling her heart-beat, to point at the plaque on Alberto’s crypt.
Zephyr sat down on the long bench facing the crypts. Grace and her son, who was now alive and standing before her.
“Until a moment ago, before we walked into this room, I still thought I was in the Verse, or another one like it. Even when I met the man who you called father. So many questions. But right now, just tell me what do you mean by ‘responsible’? You still haven’t told me what you mean by that.”
Alberto sat down next to Zephyr but not too close, he understood she was scared.
He pressed a hand against the wood of the bench and tapped it, “This place is real. I had a mother and I was born. I was a carbon. And I died. Now, I’m sitting in this place, holding your hand because you’re here too,” as Albert gave a light squeeze to Zephyr’s hand, “with a body made by my father in this place, made of nanos and organics, a collection of who I was when I was born and who I became when I was made.”
“And what about me? Am I the same?” Zephyr asked as she squeezed Albert’s hand back too, “Was I born, made, and remade? Will it happen to me too, some moment that I’ll feel sick and I’ll someone I used to be?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know how many are out there, like me. I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe. But I do know one thing, now. I’m the one who made and sent you that packet, so that you could help me. I partitioned my mind. I made myself forget, so that when I left, they wouldn’t find me. I thought that by doing that, I could delay my father, what he was doing.”
“What is your father doing?”
“For years, he was working on something, something unimaginable. To pull energy from the Sun and send it anywhere. There are nuclear power plants and more powering everything, including the Verse. He wanted to take it to a whole new level.
He wanted to transform the system, including the Verse. The energy to do anything, everything. Transform every place in the System, whole worlds. For years, he prepared, in the quiet of the moon, to unleash the power of the gods.
Something went wrong, and that’s when I had had enough. They can’t go on, the SC, my father, without a sentient ledger to keep things running. That was my leverage.
I made a plan to break my mind into pieces and scatter myself in the Verse but leave a breadcrumb trail for me, you, and others who could help me stop my father. You would take me to “The Grey”, the Grey Verse, where no-one would find us for awhile.
I thought in case things went wrong I could transfer important memories to someone else for safe keeping”
“You mean me, that migration to me before we left Miami-Marseilles on the uplink.”
“I guessed wrong about how much time I had. When you and I were being chased, I didn’t know who from.”
“Did you know we were coming here?”
“No, I didn’t know that I was even a human, born, until now. It’s been buried for so long inside me. I just knew all that was left was the upload, all the way up the well to Luna, who I thought my carbon model was, my father. He’s going to do it again.”
“This octagon must have been important.” Zephyr looked again at the octagon on the crypt.
“Two players each begin with 3 pieces and they move them around, looking for a way to line them up, and take the middle, the center. I’ve been playing this game, it was there and now I remember how I knew it. My father’s work, that’s his game. Mine has been to stop him.”
“So, I was one of your pieces. I was just a piece in a game. That’s all this was. A game.”
Zephyr got up from the bench, and began to walk out of the room.
“You’re more than that. Yes, you were one of three. You weren’t just a piece in a game. None of you were. Without you, we can’t stop him.”
“Who are the other two pieces?”
“One is on Earth, keeping an eye on someone my father used for his plans. The other is on his way here, looking for me but by now I hope he’s found out that I’m not the threat.”
“Did your father know this was going to happen? Us coming here and you remembering?”
“I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. And I don’t think my mother wanted this for me either. He won’t expect that I’m going to stop him. Let’s go.”
They walked out of the deep chamber underneath the “Sea of Memory”, and hiked the spiral trail. Alberto had a faraway look at times. Zephyr did her best to take in the Grace Forest, so that she could remember it in every way she could.
Lexica AI art prompt
realistic detailed face portrait of a beautiful futuristic priestess in opulent alien ritual armor by alphonse mucha, ayami kojima, amano, greg hildebrandt, and mark brooks, female, feminine, art nouveau, cyberpunk, neo - gothic, gothic, character concept design