I came across an old story of mine that I'd written a decade ago. The main joke of the story is that a mother is telling her children about how she met their father online. The majority of memories the mother has all have to do with really funny links he sent her, a music download that she loved, etc. - and because of these superficial details she fell in love with the father. Reading it today, it's hardly a dystopian story; it's simply a realistic story about how people actually meet.
I was really interested in this ability for others to create virtual memories for us. In "The Cartographers" I explore this through Adam Woods, and the company he works for, which produces virtual memories that people can beam into their consciousness. While the technology is sci-fi, the story is also a metaphor for the way love relationships create memories in our minds.
When I wrote the story ["The Cartographers"], I'd just gone through a breakup with a woman I'd loved dearly. Without this other person in my life, the memories we'd shared often felt like phantoms. Who was this person I once loved? Did she still really exist? The answer, on a metaphysical level, was that this person didn't still exist. She'd gone on to become a different person, an individual with new hopes and dreams which no longer involved me.
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Richard Courant Mathematician