St Anselm's Senior Common Room, Late Afternoon
Outside, rain had surrendered to a weak and uncertain sunlight. The common room had settled into that comfortable hour in which conversation became slower and teacups accumulated unnoticed.
Professor Quillibrace sat reading.
Miss Elowen Stray was writing quietly.
Mr Blottisham entered carrying three books and wearing an expression of exceptional confidence.
He placed the books triumphantly upon the table.
"There."
Quillibrace looked up cautiously.
"I distrust that tone."
Blottisham ignored him.
"I have solved our recent difficulties."
"Indeed."
"Time disappeared. Then the self disappeared."
He nodded gravely.
"But memory remains entirely secure."
Miss Stray looked interested.
"In what sense?"
Blottisham tapped the books.
"Libraries."
A silence followed.
Quillibrace closed his book very slowly.
Blottisham continued.
"The thing is obvious. Experiences happen. They leave records inside us. Later we retrieve them. Simple."
Quillibrace looked toward the ceiling briefly, as though consulting powers beyond ordinary academic procedure.
"I see."
Blottisham sat down, pleased with himself.
"The mind is essentially a filing system."
Quillibrace removed his spectacles.
"Mr Blottisham."
"Yes?"
"Has anyone ever informed you that confidence and accuracy are not the same phenomenon?"
Blottisham frowned.
Miss Stray leaned forward.
"We do speak this way."
"Of course we do," said Blottisham.
"We store memories."
"Yes."
"We retrieve memories."
"Precisely."
"We lose memories."
Blottisham spread his hands.
"Exactly."
Quillibrace folded his own.
"And so the inherited picture begins to emerge."
He spoke carefully.
"Experiences create internal records."
Blottisham nodded.
"The records are stored somewhere."
"Yes."
"Remembering retrieves these records."
"Exactly."
"And successful remembering reproduces the original experience accurately."
Blottisham looked delighted.
"I knew there was a reason I came here."
Quillibrace sighed softly.
Miss Stray frowned slightly.
"It does sound natural."
"Very natural."
Quillibrace nodded.
"Which is often where the danger begins."
Blottisham looked suspicious.
"Oh no."
Quillibrace continued.
"Where exactly are memories stored?"
Blottisham pointed immediately at his head.
"The brain."
"Certainly the brain matters."
Blottisham relaxed.
"Good."
"Damage to particular structures can alter memory profoundly."
"Excellent."
"But identifying involvement does not automatically explain storage."
Blottisham paused.
"...what?"
Quillibrace gestured toward the books.
"A library is not explained merely by identifying shelves."
Miss Stray nodded.
"And a song is not explained merely by identifying speakers."
Blottisham looked uncomfortable.
Quillibrace continued quietly.
"And memory itself behaves rather strangely for a storage system."
Blottisham frowned.
"In what way?"
"Memories change."
"Only small details."
"Details disappear."
"Oh."
"New details emerge."
"Oh."
"The same event may be remembered differently years later."
Blottisham shifted in his chair.
"Well..."
"Two people often remember the same occasion quite differently."
"Oh dear."
"And your own memories alter across contexts."
Blottisham stared at the books on the table as though they had personally betrayed him.
Miss Stray was writing rapidly.
"So if memory were merely retrieval..."
She looked up.
"...why would the stored object keep changing?"
Quillibrace smiled faintly.
"Precisely."
Blottisham looked troubled.
"So what are you saying?"
Quillibrace leaned back.
"When we remember, we do not ordinarily re-enter a preserved past."
Silence.
"We remember from somewhere."
Miss Stray looked thoughtful.
"From the present."
"Quite."
"Current concerns, emotions, relationships, contexts..."
"...all shape what becomes meaningful."
Blottisham stared into the middle distance.
"So the past doesn't simply arrive intact."
"No."
"The remembering itself is active."
Quillibrace nodded.
"The supposedly stored object begins to look rather less like a thing hidden somewhere."
"And more like an ongoing process of construal."
"Exactly."
Blottisham looked alarmed.
"You cannot remove memory as well."
"No one has removed memory."
Quillibrace reached for his tea.
"Photographs remain."
Blottisham relaxed slightly.
"Good."
"Diaries remain."
"Excellent."
"Records remain."
Blottisham sighed with relief.
"But perhaps memories were never objects sitting in an internal archive."
The relief vanished immediately.
Miss Stray looked down at her notes.
"So remembering becomes something we do."
"Yes."
"Not something we find."
Quillibrace smiled faintly.
Rain had resumed outside.
Blottisham stared into the fire with the expression of a man reviewing several decades of assumptions.
Finally he spoke.
"I have had a troubling thought."
Quillibrace looked up.
"I had anticipated as much."
Blottisham frowned.
"If memories are not sitting somewhere inside me..."
He looked around uneasily.
"...what exactly have I been spending all these years trying to remember where I left?"
Quillibrace considered this for a moment.
"Your spectacles, Mr Blottisham."
A pause.
"They remain lost by entirely conventional means."
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