Schild’s Ladder

by Greg Egan

“What we’re doing isn’t all that unusual,” Darsono mused. “I think everyone lives in at least two time scales: one of them fast and immediate, and too detailed to retain in anything but outline; the other slow enough to be absorbed completely.

We think our memory has no gaps, we think we carry our entire past inside us, because we’re accustomed to looking back and seeing only sketches and highlights. But we all experience more than we remember.”