{"id":2306,"date":"2022-01-07T22:19:06","date_gmt":"2022-01-07T22:19:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/?p=2306"},"modified":"2022-02-12T12:45:12","modified_gmt":"2022-02-12T12:45:12","slug":"the-roots-of-our-memories-by-joel-armstrong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/?p=2306","title":{"rendered":"The Roots of our Memories by Joel Armstrong"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong><em>The Roots of our Memories<\/em><\/strong> by Joel Armstrong (<em>Asimov\u2019s Science Fiction<\/em>, January-February 2022) takes place in a strange graveyard of the future, where the memories of the dead can be accessed:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-style-default is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>That morning I\u2019m overseeing a burial. It\u2019s 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\u2019s exposed the roots and fungal mycelia needed to wire the body into the cemetery network. The things done to the body aren\u2019t for the family to see, so we\u2019re 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\u2019ve gotten to know him well over the years. I can never decide if it\u2019s 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\u2019s brain stem and arteries. He asks how my daughter likes second grade; I ask if his wife\u2019s finally found a new job. Liam injects probiotic and anticoagulant cocktails to encourage clean sap circulation, and then we seal the casket. He\u2019ll return in a few days to make sure the insertion takes, but after that most corpses only need a yearly checkup.&nbsp; p. 82<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>Into the narrator\u2019s world comes Pamela, a young woman who initially wants to search her father\u2019s memories but, when she is told they are embargoed for a year after death, decides instead to ask for access to her grandmother\u2019s.<br>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\u2019s 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\u2019s memories will be lost).<br>At the end of the tale Pamela is more forthcoming with the narrator, and she tells him about her grandmother and the old woman\u2019s attitude to life. There is no big reveal here, but it\u2019s an engagingly strange and quietly effective piece.<br>*** (Good). 4,600 words.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Roots of our Memories by Joel Armstrong (Asimov\u2019s 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\u2019m overseeing a burial. It\u2019s going to be a scorcher, another record year, the meteorologists keep saying. For now a moist warmth [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[611],"tags":[539,24,4,613,612,614,12],"class_list":["post-2306","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-joel-armstrong","tag-539","tag-3-2","tag-asimovs-sf","tag-graveyard","tag-joel-armstrong","tag-memories-of-the-dead","tag-short-story"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2306","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2306"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2306\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2752,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2306\/revisions\/2752"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}