Free The Weight of Memories by Cixin Liu Page B

yours, then isn’t that person the same as you? But I couldn’t imagine such a baby.
    Dr. Ying: I explained to her that it wouldn’t be a baby at all, but an adult in the body of a baby. They’d be able to talk as soon as they were born—or, as we’ve now seen with you, actually before birth; they’d be able to walk and achieve other milestones far faster than ordinary babies; and because they already possessed all the knowledge and experience of an adult, they’d be twenty-plus years ahead of other children developmentally. Of course, we couldn’t be sure that they’d be prodigies, but their descendants would certainly be, because the inherited memories would accumulate generation after generation. After a few generations, memory inheritance would lead to unimaginable miracles! This would be a transformative leap in human civilization, and you, as the pioneering mother in this great endeavor, would be remembered throughout all history.
    Mother: And that was how I came to have you, baby.
    Fetus: But we don’t know who my father is.
    Dr. Ying: For technical reasons, we had to resort to in vitro fertilization. The sperm donor requested that his identity be kept secret, and your mother agreed. In reality, child, his identity isn’t important. Compared to the fathers of other children, your father’s contribution to your life is insignificant, because all your memories are inherited from your mother. We do have the technology to activate the inherited memories of both parents, but out of caution we chose to activate only those from your mother. We don’t know the consequences of having two people’s memories simultaneously active in a single mind.
    Mother (heaving a long sigh) : You don’t know the consequences of activating just my memories either.
    Dr. Ying (after a long silence) : That’s true. We don’t know.
    Mother: Dr. Ying, I have a question I’ve never dared to ask.… You are also young and childless; why didn’t you have a baby like mine?
    Fetus: Auntie Ying, Mama thinks you’re very selfish.
    Mother: Don’t say that, baby.
    Dr. Ying: No, your child is right. It’s fair that you think that; I really am selfish. At the beginning, I did think about having a baby with inherited memories myself, but something gave me pause: We were baffled by the dormant nature of memory inheritance in humans. What was the point of such memories if they weren’t used? Additional research revealed that they were akin to the appendix, an evolutionary vestige. The distant ancestors of modern humans clearly possessed inherited memories that were activated, but over time, such memories became suppressed. We couldn’t explain why evolution would favor the loss of such an important advantage. But nature always has its reasons. There must be some danger that caused these memories to be shut off.
    Mother: I don’t blame you for being wary, Dr. Ying. But I participated in this experiment willingly. I want to be born a second time.
    Dr. Ying: But you won’t be. From what we know now, you are pregnant not with yourself but a child, a child with all your memories.
    Fetus: I agree, Mama. I’m not you, but I can feel that all my memories came from your brain. The only real memories I have are the waters that surround me, your heartbeat, and the faint reddish-orange glow from outside.
    Dr. Ying: We made a terrible mistake in thinking that replicating memories was sufficient to replicate a person. A self is composed of many things besides memories, things that cannot be replicated. A person’s memories are like a book, and different readers will experience different feelings. It’s a terrible thing to allow an unborn child to read such a heavy, bleak book.
    Mother: It’s true. I like this city, but the city of my memories seems to terrify my baby.
    Fetus: The city is frightening! Everything outside is scary, Mama. I don’t want