He chose—not with courage but with the foolish assurance of curiosity. He typed his first memory into the field as if it were a coin: the sound of his grandmother humming as she threaded prayer beads, a melody that had once stitched him together in the dark. His memory pulsed as he pressed send; on the screen, the line glowed and then vanished.

The answer came in a line that seemed to rise from beneath the prose itself: "A memory for a memory. A name for a name. One forgotten thing restored, one current thing dimmed."