Direct Memory

Beta-test Application Cover Letter

I am watching my daughter roll around in the sunlight. She has a rainbow over her face, reflected from a trinket that hangs in the window. Every colour of the spectrum dances across her head as she lolls back and forth on the floor. Her eyes are closed against the brightness. Her mouth opens wide with implacable laughter. The floor is a disaster of toys and dust bunnies, and spilled juice. I’ve stopped attempting to keep things tidy. She’s having fun for the moment, and that is enough.

I know, deep down, that this is the sort of moment I’ll look back on and smile at. However, for now, I am overstimulated and I am miserable. I know that there is a well of joy here that I’m missing, wandering past with my eyes down, focussed on the way forward. I know I am looking for crumbs of happiness elsewhere when there is a full buffet of it laughing loudly on the living room floor. This is magic I don’t currently have the wherewithal to appreciate. I am too exhausted. I need to lie down. What I wouldn’t give to lie down, by myself. I just wish memories felt like memories at the moment.

These are my reasons for applying to enroll in your beta test. The technology you are developing sounds like something I’ve been looking for my entire life. I hope that as a father desperately trying not to wish away time, I can offer a unique perspective. I look forward to hearing from you soon and hopefully helping to test your system.

• Herman

 

Day 1 with the Direct Memory system

She’s made a mess again, but she’s being sweet today. She has recently taken to Halloween-style renditions of classical music. We’ve been listening to them all morning. As I pour more coffee, I can see her once again standing in the sun’s warmth as it streams into the living room. She is dancing, or at least swaying and twirling. She has no sense of bashfulness. Her movements are insane and amazing. We’re currently on a version of Debussy’s Clair de Lune, but with a cartoonish werewolf howling in the background. Now seems like a good chance to give Direct Memory an initial try.

I adjust the knob to +20 years and confirm my choice.

Suddenly, I have a second set of stimuli to process, another distinct collection of feelings to go through. She has left home. I haven’t seen her for over a year. I can feel a deep, aching loneliness in the pit of my stomach. The house seems so quiet, and so clean. The sun still beams down onto the hardwood floorboards, which have cracked and separated over time. And yet, they also haven’t.

She is also still there, this new reality stacked on top of the original. I can see her in the same spot in front of the window. I can see her swaying to Debussy. The edges of her blur slightly with her movement. Two layers of the world at once. Onion-skinned. I’ve moved ahead twenty years. She has both aged and left, but also miraculously stayed with me, unchanged. Both worlds just as they are, but I can see and feel both, twice as much, all at once. She hums along. I miss her, and I can feel it in my stomach. But she is right there. I am in the room. The howling wolf sings the last of its melody. I am displaced, in two places.

She turns to me and clumsily fumbles out some words, “Daddy, I want that one again”. I don’t respond at first. I’m still not confident that I am really there. She stares at me and stops swaying. I catch myself and smile at her, nodding, starting the song over again. The howling grates on my nerves a little less. It’s a small price to pay. I walk into the sunlight with her and close my eyes against the brightness. We both sway, uninhibited, arms wildly twirling through the air with the music.

 

Day 8 with the Direct Memory system

We are playing airplane. We’ve stolen every cushion from every sofa and chair in the house, and we’ve lined the floor with them. It’s like a playhouse at one of those children’s restaurants you rent for a birthday. I’m on my back with my arms and legs above me. My daughter is lying on her stomach, propped up by my hands and feet, holding out her arms like Superwoman. She laughs loudly as she struggles to find her balance on my wobbly limbs.

I get curious about the future. I crank the system forward 40 years and confirm my choice. It gives me a brief warning, but I quickly dismiss it without reading. Immediately, I feel pain in my knees and lightning arcing up my lower back. She is still a child, propped up on my legs, but I experience it both as it is, and as though she’s the weight of an adult, as though my body has aged. I scramble to dial the system back 10 years, which dulls the pain. She somehow doesn’t seem to notice any of this. I am doubled. She remains singular. She continues flying, shouting, “Doo do-do doooooo!”

Playing airplane as a 70-year-old, I understand immediately. There is a finite period that we can do this, that my body can handle it, that it will be fun, that she’ll even want to. But the understanding disappears as soon as I turn Direct Memory off. I still default to exhaustion. I’d have to always live a second life, permanently looking backward, just to fully appreciate the first one. Direct Memory serves only to remind me how often I forget to remember.

As I get lost in thought, the airplane topples over. We fall onto the couch cushions, and my daughter bounces away. We laugh. She shouts, “Again!”

 

Day 12 with the Direct Memory system

It’s been a very bad weekend. Some days, I just can’t do it. Some days, the mind-numbing repetition is too much. I spend every second wishing away the next. I spend the whole day desperately waiting for the hour between when she falls asleep and when I do. That golden hour, that time to do whatever shape-of-nothing I choose. When I can’t shake this feeling, I get upset with myself. I spiral and spiral. All while she dresses me in princess clothes and braids my hair.

A lazy Sunday is never a lazy Sunday. It is water torture. It is an ultramarathon. On these bad days, nothing compares to sitting in your own living room, comfortable yet overstimulated, suppressing the urge to run. Hating yourself for entertaining the thought. Some weekends are 48 full hours of waiting for a five-minute break and never getting it. Trapped under the weight of all the things you ever wanted.

I tried to use Direct Memory to snap out of this afternoon. It only made me more frustrated. I hated seeing myself from a distance—acting so outwardly selfless and inwardly selfish all at once. I hated the gulf between the two. I put the tech aside and gritted my teeth. Hopefully, tomorrow will be a better day.

 

Day 20 with the Direct Memory system

During bedtime, I was reading a book about a character with headgear braces. I did a goofy, lisp-y voice when I read the speech bubbles. I don’t think my daughter had a clue why I was doing that voice specifically, but she lost her mind. She laughed and laughed. She laughed so hard that she had to get out from under the covers just so that she could stand up, just so that she could fall over laughing again. And all that made me laugh so hard too. And for a few minutes, I didn’t think about how long bedtime was going to take tonight. I didn’t think about collapsing onto the sofa afterward. We just laughed very hard.

And once we ran out of laughter, I went back to reading the book—to finish the story. But my daughter stopped me. She grabbed both sides of my face in her hands. She gave me a long look over. And she said, “Dad, I loooove you!” And before I could say it back, she pulled my head in and squeezed it so tight until I told her it was going to pop off. And then she said, “OK, do the voice again.” And I did. And we finished the book.

I experienced that bedtime at every interval the system would allow—one year from now, five years, ten, twenty, thirty, forty. I did every single one. And it only got better each time. The further away I went, the more joy I felt.

 

Final Thoughts After 30 Days With the Direct Memory System

I don’t really know how to sum up my experience with your technology. It is a very potent reminder that the present is more special than it often seems. I’m short-sighted. I often need that reminder. We will both get older. My strength will go. We’ll laugh together less. Experiencing life in real time and simultaneously from a distance, it hurts, but it shocks me into grace.

However, Direct Memory has to pull me out of a moment in order to put me properly back into it. It is a shortcut to a place I should already be.

At breakfast, my daughter said to me, “Remember last night when I fell over laughing?” I said that I did. She said that it was awesome. She asked me when the last time I did that was. I said I didn’t know. Then she said, “Dads don’t fall over laughing very much.” I agreed. I tried to explain that dads sometimes have a lot on their minds. That we sometimes forget to laugh so hard. She said, “Yup, that’s adult life. But I still like kid life.” She asked if we could do that book with the voice again tonight. I said we could.

Thank you for allowing me to participate. It is truly remarkable technology. Respectfully, I decline your offer of an ongoing subscription to the service. All the best in your business and your lives.

• Herman