Recursion

by Blake Crouch

“What’s more precious than our memories?” he asks. “They define us and form our identities.”

How does one define a “simple” memory anyway? Is there even such a thing when it comes to the human condition? Consider the albatross that landed on the platform during her run this morning. It’s a mere flicker of thought in her mind that will one day be cast out into that wasteland of oblivion where forgotten memories die. And yet it contains the smell of the sea. The white, wet feathers of the bird glistening in the early sun. The pounding of her heart from the exertion of the run. The cold slide of sweat down her sides and the burn of it in her eyes. Her wondering in that moment where the bird considered home in the unending sameness of the sea. When every memory contains a universe, what does simple even mean?

he thinks perhaps there’s a reason our memories are kept hazy and out of focus. Maybe their abstraction serves as an anesthetic, a buffer protecting us from the agony of time and all that it steals and erases.

“Our ancestors lived in the oceans. Because of how light travels through water versus air, their sensory volume—the region in which they could scan for prey—was limited to their motor volume—the region they could actually reach and interact with. What do you think the result of that might be?” She considers the question. “They could only react to immediate stimuli.” “OK. Now, what do you think happened when those fish finally crawled out of the ocean four hundred million years ago?” “Their sensory volume increased, since light travels farther in air than in seawater.” “Some evolutionary biologists believe this terrestrial disparity between motor and sensory volume set the stage for the evolution of consciousness. If we can see ahead, then we can think ahead; we can plan. And then we can envision the future, even if it doesn’t exist.”

She knows the pain of letting go of the promise of the chair. It isn’t just the disappointment of all the unrealized scientific and humanitarian uses to which it might be put under ideal conditions. It’s the realization that, as a deeply flawed species, we will never be ready to wield such power.

Some days, it feels like a river flowing past him. Others, like something he’s sliding down the surface of. Sometimes, it feels like it’s all already happened, and he’s just experiencing incremental slivers, moment to moment, his consciousness like the needle in the grooves of a record that already exists—beginning, middle, and end.

But on a night like this, of a restless mind and dreams of ghosts, time feels secondary to the true prime mover—memory. Perhaps memory is fundamental, the thing from which time emerges. The ache of the memory is gone, but he doesn’t begrudge its visitation. He’s lived long enough to know that the memory hurt because many years ago, in a dead timeline, he experienced a perfect moment.