Memory Wire

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1. Because of the monomolecular wires twined deep into his cerebral cortex, Raymond Keller’s memories often announced themselves as scents. He would smell dust and concrete and think, seconds later, of the water-rationed conduit suburb in which he had spent his childhood. Gasoline, he would think, and be back in his father’s oily garage, chain-lifting an antique internal combustion engine.

Tonight—standing in the kitchen of his Los Angeles apartment with a glass of water in his hand—he smelled the hot granular earth of a manioc field in Brazil, and knew the memory would be a bad one.

He put aside the glass with a deliberate motion and moved to the translucent outer wall of the living room. The sky beyond it was dark and starless; across the long bow of the harbor, the scattered lights of the boat barrios flickered.

The memory trick was one side effect of his Angel wiring. There were others, mostly minor. He had grown accustomed to it, or so he told himself. The biosynthetic wires grown under his skull were microscopic and immunosuppressive; in terms of tissue displacement or body weight, they hardly existed. But, Keller thought moodily, the body knows. Leiberman, the Network M.D., had told him so. “The imperial flesh,” Leiberman had said. “Poke it, it responds.”

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