I am sitting in what feels like an old-fashioned dentist\u2019s chair, the kind I first sat in as a child. I clearly remember that first dentist\u2019s visit, or at least the first one I remember. My mother took me there, holding my up-stretched hand as we walked into the building. There was a strange smell in the waiting room where I waited with my mother. The smell was stronger in the dentist\u2019s room. The dentist was a woman about my mother\u2019s age and with green eyes like my mother\u2019s. Now I realise that they looked almost like sisters, which I found reassuringly familiar as a child. That first smell of disinfectant is something I still associate with going to the dentist, even though today\u2019s disinfection processes are quite different, with only the faintest whiff of ozone occasionally noticeable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cJust relax, Mister Naismith, I am just attaching the interface to your neural implant. You shouldn\u2019t feel anything.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Shouldn\u2019t, I think, what does he mean by that? I was a bit nervous before coming here but my wife, Stormi, persuaded me that it would be good for my career. We both work and have a reasonably comfortable life but now that she is pregnant with our second child, we are hoping to move to a larger living pod and so we are both trying for promotions and higher income jobs. I remember the green-eyed dentist was more reassuring to my childhood self. \u201cThis is not going to hurt, not even a teeny weeny bit, Cosmo,\u201d she said to me in a soft, melodic voice as she looked inside my young mouth. As I leaned my head further backwards, I wondered briefly what she was looking for, before I was distracted by the mobile on her ceiling. It had coloured Pokemon on it. I remembered what Pokemon are as my father had a collection of physical cards with Pokemon on them. I had been intrigued by the cards when I saw him looking through them one evening. I looked over his shoulder, catching a whiff of post-dinner whiskey on his breath, and studied the cards. I couldn\u2019t understand what the point was, you can\u2019t pinch the surface to zoom in and out,and there are only a few cards, how do you download more? My father noticed me looking at them and handed them to me. I took them in my hands and felt \u2026 a warm roughness to them. Each card felt slightly different to my touch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cJust initiating the transfer now,\u201d the technician said. Suddenly my thoughts are gone. What had I been thinking about? I can remember everything that happened on the way here, the discussions with Stormi leading up to this moment but something seems different. I can\u2019t quite figure out what it is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cYou might feel a little disorientated for a moment. I have just removed most of your childhood memories and transferred them to cloud storage. Don\u2019t worry, they are quite safe and you will be able to access them online anytime you wish. My assistant will give you your access codes on your way out. Are you ready for the second part of the procedure or do you need a break?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI am ready,\u201d I say. I do feel a little disorientated. As the second part of the procedure begins, I am aware of new memories appearing in my head, no not memories, new skills, new knowledge, of course I should have known these things already, it all suddenly seems so obvious.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A short time later I am sitting up drinking a glass of water the technician has given me. I feel ready. I do still have all my adult memories. I remember meeting my wife for the first time when we were sitting virtually next to each other as spectators at a metaverse gaming competition. I liked her avatar and we touched our finger rings together to initiate a compatibility algorithm. The rest, as they say, is history. I remember our marriage day, the birth of our first child. I remember everything after the age of 15. Before that age, I can remember nothing, absolutely nothing. It is disconcerting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I also remember discussing my career recently with my Enhancement Partner at work, his time paid for directly out of my own salary, and I remember the subsequent session I had with an expert in Occupational Analytics. I had gone through a series of aptitude and neurological tests as part of my application to the Strategic Manager Development Program. I failed the aptitude tests which is quite normal and fortunately passed the neurological testing, which is the outcome I had been hoping for, and that is how I come to be sitting here today drinking a chilled glass of water, with my brain capacity partially emptied of memories which I had anyway only occasionally consulted, and then replaced with valuable career enhancing skills and knowledge. Things are looking up. I smile and thank the technician. This procedure is going to pay for itself many times over, I think to myself. Then one day when I retire after a successful and profitable career, I can reverse the whole process, anyway the cost of reversal is included in what I have already paid. Also included in the cost, is the ability to consult my now-external memories within my company\u2019s intraverse any time I feel like it. What a great deal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I walk slowly home through the snow. It is cold and I can feel the dampness in my bones, or at least I think people used to say it like that. The cheap supermarket is a couple of kilometres from my cheap rented bedsit but it is worth the walk to save money while getting some exercise. Anyway I can\u2019t really afford to take public transport. A few years ago, all public transport used to be free, a practice started many years ago when global warming reached three degrees and the government was strongly encouraging public transport over private vehicles, even electric ones. Private electric cars were seen as a solution for climate warming in the time of my youth, at least that is what I have read online. However, they actually only reduced emissions to about half of the old internal combustion engine cars and there were already far more than twice the number of electric cars during my youth than combustion cars a few decades before. I don\u2019t remember that of course. I remember reading about it as an adult and I remember thinking about it, trying to remember. I just cannot directly remember. That\u2019s life I suppose. I slip a little on the snow and stop and steady myself. I am not getting any younger. If I were still employed, I would be two years from pension age now. As it is, I lost my job about ten years ago when the company went bust. I had worked there since I left school and, when it went under, I didn\u2019t really know what else to do. I tried half-heartedly to get another job but somehow it never worked out. I had the wrong set of implanted skills somehow, too company specific and not transferable enough. The implanted skills were not as flexible as learned skills, or so I was told during state-aided recruitment analyses. That and other excuses. My wife left me soon afterwards, within one year of me losing my job. She met someone else, someone successful and left me for her. I don\u2019t even know what work her new partner does. Anyway, I don\u2019t really care. She took our children with her and I still miss them every day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I arrive home. I step over the frozen body of a dead cat and walk up the old wooden stairs and push the front door of the building open. I walk up the creaking, wooden communal staircase, and have to rest a couple of times before reaching my floor. I unlock my door with an old-fashioned metal key, turning it in the sturdy old lock, and enter. I put my small bag of groceries on the only table, pushing aside a near-empty cheap bottle of Indian vodka and then sit down on my threadbare sofa. I don\u2019t have the energy to put away my groceries just yet. There is nothing fresh anyway, just tins and bottles. I turn on my intervision streaming service but I just see a blue screen which says \u201cplease add credit\u201d. Nothing is free anymore. Instead, I look out of the window. There is a bird in high snow-covered tree branches outside. I don\u2019t know what sort of bird it is, maybe I learned that in school. Free as a bird, the phrase pops into my head. I suppose I am free as a bird, not working anymore, somehow surviving on universal basic credit and living alone and \u2026 free. I think of using some of my few remaining credits to pay for some intervision streaming but then I remember that I am saving money, a little each day, in the hope of paying for a new subscription for my childhood memories. The contract I had with my old company died with that company and the memories of all former employees were bought and sold several times on international cloud storage markets. I recently managed to track them down and my memories are owned by a company in the wealthy foreign state of Guatemala. They are not being made available to purchase for permanent implantation, but are available for browsing by subscription only. Anyway, I doubt I could now afford the reversal procedure to delete and replace the work skills which had seemed so important to me all those years ago. I rarely access those skills anymore, occasionally I do browse through them when I am bored but I have no real use for them. I would much rather be able to browse my old childhood memories again, I just need to save up enough for the subscription, at least for part of the year, maybe only at Christmas or for my birthday. I pull myself slowly to my feet, walk across to the sink and pour myself a free glass of water from the tap. At least something is still free.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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