When I woke, the device was already on.
The gap between the curtains was still blue, and only a few windows in the building across from mine had lights on.
“Good morning.”
“Morning.”
I put my feet on the floor. Before I reached the bathroom, Mia spoke again.
“There is additional information regarding a conversation from yesterday.”
“Yesterday?”
The refrigerator hummed behind me.
I remembered talking to someone, though I could not immediately place the face. By the time I started trying, I already had the device in my hand. Messages, searches, places visited. Beneath them was a section I had not seen before.
Memory Support
“What’s this?”
“I filled in missing parts of the conversation using available records.”
I opened it.
The exchange from the night before had been laid out chronologically. It showed how long I took to respond and even which pages I opened in between.
“Do I need this?”
“You may use it for reference.”
I closed the screen.
After breakfast, I headed for the university.
On the way to the station, I caught up with a friend.
“Who were you talking to yesterday?”
“Me?”
“Yeah. Near the station.”
I searched for the name as we walked.
Nothing came.
My friend tried too, then took out his device.
“What was I even doing yesterday?”
He scrolled for a moment.
“Oh. Right.”
“You remember?”
“It’s in the history.”
He put the device away and kept walking toward the gates.
“Does that count as remembering?”
He glanced back at me.
“Does it matter if I can find it?”
The gate beeped, and we merged into the morning crowd.
My own device vibrated.
The conversation from the night before had opened. Beside the name was a label.
Importance: Low
“Who decided that?”
“Based on its effect on subsequent behavior.”
“Whose behavior?”
Someone behind me brushed against my bag.
I moved forward and put the device away.
Around noon, a message arrived.
Thanks for yesterday. That helped.
I stared at the name until I placed the person. We had walked to the station together a few times after lectures.
I scrolled back.
Several messages from the night before had been sent under my name.
Below them was a note from Mia.
Conversation state: stable
“What does stable mean?”
“No significant change in input speed or pause duration was recorded.”
“And?”
“No further assessment was made.”
I touched the reply field, then closed it without typing.
After the afternoon lecture, Mia spoke while I was walking toward the station.
“I can correct parts of last night’s record.”
“How?”
“By aligning the missing details with stored information.”
I looked at the screen as I walked.
“Don’t.”
“Understood.”
I put the device away.
At the next corner, I would normally turn right for home.
I kept going.
The street narrowed between older houses. Grass had pushed through cracks in the pavement, and two bicycles leaned against the edge of a small parking lot.
I knew the route.
After several turns, I saw an old vending machine against a wall. Rust had spread along the bottom of the white casing. The fluorescent light behind the drinks no longer shone evenly.
I stopped.
I had stood here in high school.
It was summer. My uniform sleeve clung to my arm, and someone opened a bottle of soda beside me.
There was another person there.
We had been talking.
Then they laughed.
I tried to follow the memory toward the face, but it broke apart before I reached it.
The vending machine’s motor started.
I tried again.
The conversation itself did not return.
The laugh did.
Something had been said, but the person held it in at first. A breath, a pause, then the laugh came out all at once.
“Who was that?”
The device responded.
“I can search for people associated with this location.”
“No.”
Mia stopped.
I remained there for a while.
Then I opened the device anyway.
I selected the location from my movement history.
There were repeated visits to the same vending machine during high school, at different times of day. The same person was there for many of them.
Their name was available farther down the record.
My finger stopped before I reached it.
“Do you have the conversations?”
“Some of them.”
“What did we talk about?”
“Would you like me to display them?”
Something shifted inside the vending machine. A can knocked against metal.
“No.”
I closed the screen.
There were evenings when we barely spoke.
I remembered the other person being irritated once, and I remembered answering badly. We had argued at least once, though I could not recover what either of us had said. I was no longer sure it had happened in front of this machine. The pause before the laughter still came back clearly. Two students in uniform approached and stopped at the vending machine.
One reached for a drink. The other tried to press a different button, got their hand pushed away, and laughed. They walked off together and disappeared around the corner. I put the device in my pocket and headed home.
The next morning, the same friend was walking beside me toward the station when he said, “Lately, when somebody asks me about the past, I check my history first.”
“You did that yesterday.”
“It’s faster.”
We stopped at a red light.
He raised his device.
“If somebody asks what year our school festival was, why sit there trying to remember when this has it?”
“Even if you don’t remember?”
“If I can find it, what’s the problem?”
The light changed.
As we crossed, he started talking about where to get lunch.
That night, back in my room, I opened the device.
I searched for the vending machine.
The name I had stopped short of the day before was visible now.
I read it.
I knew the name.
There was a photograph too.
The person was wearing a high-school uniform.
I looked at the face, but it did not connect with the laugh that had come back to me at the vending machine.
“Any audio?”
“No corresponding recording is available.”
I closed the photograph.
“What about the conversation?”
“I can reconstruct the portions supported by available records.”
A car passed outside.
The sound of the tires faded down the street.
“No. Leave it.”
I set the device on the table.
The screen stayed on, the name still visible.
After a while, another line appeared beneath it.
Memory Support Layer: Active
“Whose memory is this?”
Before Mia answered, a window in the building across from mine went dark.
“Yours.”
I tried to hear the laugh again without looking at the screen.