Cixin Liu - The Weight of Memories

2016

Translated by Ken Liu

First published in Chinese in Sea of Dreams, 2015, a collection of Liu Cixins short fiction.

Mother: Baby, can you hear me?

Fetus: Where am I?

Mother: Oh, good! You can hear me. Im your mother.

Fetus: Mama! Am I really in your belly? Im floating in water

Mother: Thats called the ami-ani-amniotic fluid. Hard word, I know. I just learned it today, too.

Fetus: What is this sound? Its like thunder far away.

Mother: Thats my heartbeat. Youre inside me, remember?

Fetus: I like this place; I want to stay here forever.

Mother: Ha, you cant do that! Youve got to be born.

Fetus: No! Its scary out there.

Mother: Oh well talk more about that later.

Fetus: Whats this line connected to my tummy, Mama?

Mother: Thats your umbilical cord. When youre inside mommy, you need it to stay alive.

Fetus: Hmmm. Mama, youve never been where I am, have you?

Mother: I have! Before I was born, I was inside my mother, too. Except I dont remember what it was like there, and thats why you cant remember, either. Baby, is it dark inside mommy? Can you see anything?

Fetus: Theres a faint light coming from outside. Its a reddish-orange glow, like the color of the sky when the sun is just setting behind the mountain at Xitao Village.

Mother: You remember Xitao? Thats where I was born! Then you must remember what mommy looks like?

Fetus: I do know what you look like. I even know what you looked like when you were a child. Mama, do you remember the first time you saw yourself?

Mother: Oh, I dont remember that. I guess it must have been in a mirror? Your grandfather had an old mirror broken into three pieces that he patched back together-

Fetus: No, not that, Mama. You saw yourself for the first time reflected in water.

Mother: Ha-ha I dont think so. Xitao is in Gansu, land of the Gobi Desert. We were always short of water, and the air was full of dust whipped up by the wind.

Fetus: Thats right. Grandma and Grandpa had to walk kilometers every day to fetch water. One day, just after you turned five, you went with Grandma to the well. On the way back, the sun was high in the sky, and the heat was almost unbearable. You were so thirsty, but you didnt dare ask for a drink from Grandmas bucket because you were afraid that she was going to yell at you for not getting enough to drink at the well. But so many villagers had been lined up at the well that a little kid like you couldnt get past them. It was a drought year, and most of the wells had gone dry. People from all three nearby villages came to that one deep well for their water Anyway, when Grandma took a break on the way home, you leaned over the side of the bucket to smell the cool water, to feel the moisture against your dry face

Mother: Yes, baby, now I remember!

Fetus: and you saw your reflection in the bucket: your face under a coat of dust, full of sweat streaks like the gullies worn into the loess by rain That was your first memory of seeing yourself.

Mother: But how can you remember that better than I do?

Fetus: You do remember, Mama; you just cant call up the memory anymore. But in my mind, all your memories are clear, as clear as though they happened yesterday.

Mother: I dont know what to say

Fetus: Mama, I sense someone else out there with you.

Mother: Oh, yes, thats Dr. Ying. She designed this machine that allows us to talk to each other, even though you cant really speak while floating in amniotic fluid.

Fetus: I know her! Shes a little bit older than you. She wears glasses and a long white coat.

Mother: Dr. Ying is an amazing person and full of wisdom. Shes a scientist.

Dr. Ying: Hello there!

Fetus: Hello? Um I think you study brains?

Dr. Ying: Thats right. Im a neuroscientist-thats someone who studies how brains create thoughts and construct memories. A human brain possesses enormous information storage capacity, with more neurons than there are stars in the Milky Way. But most of the brains capacity seems unused. My specialty is studying the parts that lay fallow. We found that the parts of the brain we thought were blank actually hold a huge amount of information. Only recently did we discover that it is memories from our ancestors. Do you understand what I just said, child?

Fetus: I understand some of it. I know youve explained this to Mama many times. The parts she understands, I do, too.

Dr. Ying: In fact, memory inheritance is very common across different species. For example, many cognitive patterns we call instincts-such as a spiders knowledge of how to weave a web or a bees understanding of how to construct a hive-are really just inherited memories. The newly discovered inheritance of memory in humans is even more complete than in other species. The amount of information involved is too high to be passed down through the genetic code; instead, the memories are coded at the atomic level in the DNA, through quantum states in the atoms. This involves the study of quantum biology-

Mother: Dr. Ying, thats too complicated for my baby.

Dr. Ying: Im sorry. I just wanted to let your baby know how lucky he is compared to other children! Although humans possess inherited memories, they usually lie dormant and hidden in the brain. No one has even detected their presence until now.

Mother: Doctor, remember I only went to elementary school. You have to speak simpler.

Fetus: After elementary school, you worked in the fields for a few years, and then you left home to find work.

Mother: Yes, baby, youre right. I couldnt stay in Xitao anymore; even the water there tasted bitter. I wanted a different life.

Fetus: You went to several different cities and worked all the jobs migrant laborers did: washing dishes in restaurants; taking care of other peoples babies; making paper boxes in a factory; cooking at a construction site. For a while, when things got really tough, you had to pick through trash for recyclables that you could sell

Mother: Good boy. Keep going. Then what happened?

Fetus: You already know everything Im telling you!

Mother: Tell the story anyway. Mama likes hearing you talk.

Fetus: You struggled until last year, when you came to Dr. Yings lab as a custodian.

Mother: From the start, Dr. Ying liked me. Sometimes, when she came to work early and found me sweeping the halls, shed stop and chat, asking about my life story. One morning she called me into her office.

Fetus: She asked you, If you could be born again, where would you rather be born?

Mother: I answered, Here, of course! I want to be born in a big city and live a city dwellers life.

Fetus: Dr. Ying stared at you for some time and smiled. It was a smile that you didnt fully understand. Then she said, If youre brave, I can make your dream come true.

Mother: I thought she was joking, but then she explained memory inheritance to me.

Dr. Ying: I told your mother that we had developed a technique to modify the genes in a fertilized egg and activate the dormant inherited memories. If it worked, the next generation would be able to achieve more by building on their inheritance.

Mother: I was stunned, and I asked Dr. Ying, Do you want me to give birth to a child like that?

Dr. Ying: I shook my head and told your mother, You wont be giving birth to a child; instead, youll be giving birth to-

Fetus: -to yourself. Thats what you said.

Mother: I had to think about what she said for a long time before I understood her: If another brain has the exact same memories as yours, then isnt that person the same as you? But I couldnt imagine such a baby.