[ WP ] Humans can now store and retrieve memories instantly with embedded hardware under the skin . Everyone 's memory is now essentially perfect . One day you suspect your memories are being altered .

`` But how can you be sure?'' 
 
 Jay turns his head, the aviators reflecting blue screens. Why the hell he wore them is anyone's guess -- the only light in the room came from his terminal monitors. How the hell does he see the keyboard? 
 
 `` Discontiguous memory addresses.'' He smiles, his teeth narrow and numerous. A pale hand snatches the mouse. The shadows deepen as one of the monitors go black. The blackness fills with rambling strings of numbers; hexidecimal. `` You have the Satori model six, right?'' 
 
 `` Yeah.'' 
 
 `` Which has?'' 
 
 `` 2048-bit memory addressing.'' I stuff my hands into my pockets. It's cold in here. 
 
 `` Yeah. Satori is coded in C3PO. Bare bones stuff. Right up against the machine code.'' C3PO. C, the third, with Pointer Optimization. Not as close to the machine as its predecessors, but closer than, say Artery, or SemaFour. 
 Jay reaches out to the number-infested screen. His finger caresses down, stopping halfway. `` Memories are stored contiguously. Forward-link, Back-Link, and all the links in between. Then you start getting the memory -- the juicy experience you and I call our history.'' He grins. Taps the screen. `` But this flink here... it goes nowhere.'' 
 
 I shrug. `` Null?'' 
 
 `` No,'' He shakes his head slowly, grinning wider. `` There ’ s an address. The address does n't exist. The kind of shit that would lead to blackouts, if accessed. An error.'' 
 
 `` But,'' I frown. `` It's a Satori.'' 
 
 Jay nods. `` Yeah man, I hear you. Japanese. Top notch. Satori do n't make mistakes like that. JS9, sure, but that's hobo crap. Satori... this kind of error would be a scandal, if it ever got out.'' 
 
 `` Is that the only one?'' 
 
 jay shook his head, his shock of hair wagging like a crest. Fingers dance on a black keyboard, and the monitor below the black one changes in hue. A map. A visual map of assembly. It sits against the sterile background like a sea urchin, needles piercing strings of hex. 
 
 Thousands of addresses. Tens of thousands. The Satori6 was a minefield. 
 
 `` How?'' My mouth is agape. I imagine this is how it feels to be diagnosed with cancer. To stare at the X-ray of your chest, to see the dark form inhabiting you like a parasite. Killing you. 
 
 `` You're lucky you have n't hit any of these.'' Jay moves the mouse, rotating the visual. God, there are so many. `` Blackouts are one thing. This many? It's likely that you would fall through. Error-handling can handle if it jumps into another void.'' 
 
 Fall through. To escape the saftey net, the programming inside your chip that carefully protects your neurons from rupturing. The GABA that dumbs you down. Without it your head lights up like a christmas tree, alive with an electrical storm. Then the neurons start killing themselves. Neurotoxicity. 
 
 `` How did this happen?'' 
 
 Jay becomes serious. `` I've seen stuff like this before.'' He leans forward, rotating the map with his hand. `` Coding a Satori is serious shit. The guys that do it are barely human, with the kind of brains they got to have.'' More keyboard presses. The map turns into an elaborate bargraph. `` The thing I noticed was the clean-up pattern.'' 
 
 `` Clean-up pattern?'' My palms are clammy inside my pockets. I wonder if its possible to stop thinking. With every thought that crosses my mind, my brain could try to page into the Satori. It could walk across one of those blackholes of an address, a hidden claymore. I try to calm myself down, but the opposite happens -- my mind races. 
 
 `` Yeah. A lot of the addresses in the links match up okay. But the false addresses are n't there. At least... not in an accessible way. The data is there.'' He reaches up then to rub his nose. `` But there is n't anyway to access it. Someone was cleaning up those links.'' 
 
 My heart starts to pound. How long has it been like this? Days? Weeks? 
 
 `` I've seen rootkits do this, to hide their presence in kernel memory.'' Jay reaches up then, and removes his aviators. Stark blue eyes stare out at me. `` I did n't think that kind of thing was possible on a Satori.'' 
 
 Rootkit. My mind has cancer. Intelligent, viral cancer. And someone put it there. 
 
 Jay watches me as I push fingers through my hair, my breath starting to shudder. 

