Personal Journal of Kurlund. Universe 117. Entry 27.

It might be the mind-altering drugs talking, but I’ve spent five hours in bed thinking about how I remember my past. I feel that writing out my thoughts will empty my brain and I can finally fall asleep.

It didn’t take long after we conquered aging that we realized the limitations of the capacity of our brains, especially with memory. Without our neural implants, there is no way we’d be able to make it through one iteration of the universe, let alone dozens. The upgrade to our minds allowed for the accurate storage of sensory data from our experiences, including recalled events from our biological brains. All one had to do was focus on a memory and it would be copied and saved.

I remember being awestruck about how vivid my memories had become after receiving my implants. I can still remember the warm look of my mother’s face and sound of my father’s bellowing laughter. Without the implants, that information would have been lost to me eons ago. For that at least, I am deeply grateful. But though I can see and hear my parents with supreme clarity, the emotion that used to accompany those memories has dulled. Not that I feel my emotions themselves have waned. I can still be brought to tears from joy or sorrow and explode with rage, but my memories from long ago, although clear, seem so far away and almost unfamiliar. I can see my mother's face, but no longer think of her as someone close to me. She is more of a stranger than those I walk by in the hall that I can’t even name.

Is this simply due to the passing of time? Or is it that my memory no longer lives in my biological self, but within the implants placed inside of me?