1n1REzE

Peter Watts 136 Blindsight
know what I mean."
"I thought this was the gift of happiness. Why—"
She laid a fingertip across my lips. "Believe it or not, Cyggers,
people sometimes choose to ignore even good memories. Like,
say, if they enjoyed something they didn't think they should. Or—"
she kissed my forehead— "if they don't think they deserve to be
happy."
"So we're going for—"
"Potluck. You can never tell 'til you get a bite. Close your
eyes."
A soft hum started up somewhere between my ears. Chelsea's
voice led me on through the darkness. "Now keep in mind,
memories aren't historical archives. They're—improvisations,
really. A lot of the stuff you associate with a particular event
might be factually wrong, no matter how clearly you remember it.
The brain has a funny habit of building composites. Inserting
details after the fact. But that's not to say your memories aren't
true, okay They're an honest reflection of how you saw the
world, and every one of them went into shaping how you see it.
But they're not photographs. More like impressionist paintings.
Okay"
"Okay."
"Ah," she said. "There's something."
"What"
"Functional cluster. Getting a lot of low-level use but not enough
to intrude into conscious awareness. Let's just see what happens
when we—"
And I was ten years old, and I was home early and I'd just let
myself into the kitchen and the smell of burned butter and garlic
hung in the air. Dad and Helen were fighting in the next room.
The flip-top on our kitchen-catcher had been left up, which was
sometimes enough to get Helen going all by itself. But they were
fighting about something else; Helen only wanted what was best
for all of us but Dad said there were limits and this was not the
way to go about it. And Helen said you don't know what it's like
you hardly ever even see him and then I knew they were fighting
about me. Which in and of itself was nothing unusual.