The Roots of our Memories by Joel Armstrong (Asimov’s Science Fiction, January-February 2022) takes place in a strange graveyard of the future, where the memories of the dead can be accessed:
That morning I’m overseeing a burial. It’s going to be a scorcher, another record year, the meteorologists keep saying. For now a moist warmth hangs from the hemlock trees, the sky a foggy, rainless gray. I meet the cranial arborist at the open grave, where he’s exposed the roots and fungal mycelia needed to wire the body into the cemetery network. The things done to the body aren’t for the family to see, so we’re the only two present as we remove the corpse from the portable cryofridge and place it in the steel casket. Liam performs most of our corporeal insertions, and I’ve gotten to know him well over the years. I can never decide if it’s sacrilegious or fitting that we end up talking about family while he treats the roots with chemical binder and makes the incisions to thread the mycelia into the body’s brain stem and arteries. He asks how my daughter likes second grade; I ask if his wife’s finally found a new job. Liam injects probiotic and anticoagulant cocktails to encourage clean sap circulation, and then we seal the casket. He’ll return in a few days to make sure the insertion takes, but after that most corpses only need a yearly checkup. p. 82
Into the narrator’s world comes Pamela, a young woman who initially wants to search her father’s memories but, when she is told they are embargoed for a year after death, decides instead to ask for access to her grandmother’s.
The rest of the story is a slow burn which sees Pamela, to the surprise of the archivist, repeatedly return to use the computers to access her grandmother’s memories. During these visits she is very tight-lipped about what she is learning, but nevertheless develops a growing friendship with the narrator and the regular researchers. We also learn about climate change effects which have caused an insect infestation threat to the hemlock trees that power the network (and if the trees die, her father’s memories will be lost).
At the end of the tale Pamela is more forthcoming with the narrator, and she tells him about her grandmother and the old woman’s attitude to life. There is no big reveal here, but it’s an engagingly strange and quietly effective piece.
*** (Good). 4,600 words.