She turned to him after the third table and the fifth hat. “You have went silent again, Ian Page. I know mortality is a trait seen as normal for the human race here, but throughout the universe it isn’t that way. Billions of sentients from across the universe have paid for or been rewarded with the ability of consistent cellular repair. But even that comes with problems. You see, the human mind is much like one of your computers. It has amazing processing power but its storage space has limits. The cells of the brain may stay stable, but their capacity doesn’t grow. Once you reach about three hundred forgetfulness sets in without a proper memory extension.”
“Memory extension?”
Phoebe pushed the blue braids away from the back of her neck. A tiny piece of metal barely showed against her skin, just to the left of her spine. A casual glance might take it as a strange piercing, but it was clearly embedded deeper than that.
“Your world is already beginning to explore the melding of man and machine. I would think a memory storage upgrade wouldn’t be all that surprising to you.”
“I—I guess I’m not really sure what to think. But I wonder if you’re describing what’s wrong with me. Could I be so old I’ve developed some kind of complete memory loss?”
“It doesn’t really work that way,” Phoebe said. “Memories simply fade over time. Most people rarely remember more than a few snippets of their childhood by the time they’re forty. As time comes between the reality and the memory, the memory fades. But it is the distant memory that fades, not the near one. A thousand year old without a memory extension will remember the last couple hundred years alright, but he may have forgotten his first love, his first marriage or even all of his first five hundred years. It all depends on the individual. If you are truly old, your memory might suffer from some degradation, but your current loss of your past is not due to this.”
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