Scraps of memory clung to the dendrites of our children’s brains, like tufts of wool snagged on a barbed wire fence—as if the sheep of all our sleepless nights throughout THAT WAR had escaped through the neuronic fields of our minds to manifest in these false mementos, borne by our offspring.

It should have come as no surprise that they were encoded at birth, inherited from us along with the colour of their eyes and hair, and yet this truth alluded us. The inversion at work in our children had convinced us that this too pertained to a reversal; these memories were ours, but the mirroring of effects of ANSEX reproduction had scrambled them into nonsense.

We were on the right tracks, but our mistake was in not following those tracks to their natural destination—we failed to realise the effect extended all the way down the line to the terminus of the unconscious mind; these false memories were scraps of our id and of the submerged portion of our ego; dream-stuff which had never surfaced into the purview our consciousness.

I would like to be able to say that I was the one to make this discovery, but that would not be strictly true—there were, I believe, two others that came to this conclusion before me; the Doctor, and his son, Rotcod. At best, I can claim parallel thinking—that I came to this realisation independent of any external influence, ignorant of any pre-extant research.

It had been three weeks since the search parties left the Empty Bowl to look for the missing children and with two thirds of our colony absent, things had grown quieter—tense, as if we awaited the coming of a great storm. There was a forced jollity in our interactions, as if both our hopes and our fears manifested in the smiles we wore when we greeted each other, the pitch and thrust of our voices at our nightly gatherings, even the manner in which we walked, heads held high as if nothing could touch us.

My child and I conversed a great deal in this time and, out of mutual interest, we conversed mostly about their memories, for we shared a studious side to our personalities which wished to uncover truth wherever it lay concealed or obscured.

“I remember crawling through an air-duct,” said my child.

At this time, they were still in the process of choosing a name, though for convenience—and in solidarity with their missing compatriots—they had temporarily settled on Ragde as a moniker.

“?dael tcud-ria eht did erehW” I said.

We often conversed like this, Ragde in Forwardspeak and I in kaepskcaB. It kept us honest, for though we had both grown fluent in each other’s language, we were not so familiar as to become complacent in our speech—it forced us to pick our words carefully, so that our meaning was not lost in translation.

“To a garden, I think,” said Ragde. “A green place with trees and grass and flowerbeds.”

I nodded encouragingly—we had no equivalent at the Empty Bowl, save maybe the primitive hydroponics where we grew much of our food and I was sure the word must be the vestige of a linguistic memory; a fragment of neural connective tissue passed to Ragde intact despite the idiosyncrasies of Ansex reproduction.

“It was night and a stiff breeze was blowing through the garden,” Ragde continued. “I could hear the swaying of the trees and the rustling of the bushes and I was afraid.”

“?diarfa uoy erew yhW” I said.

“Because I thought the trees were talking to me,” they replied.

It was this that brought the realisation of the memory’s origin into my mind, fully formed, and I sat for a moment, in awe of the complexity of my child’s neuronic make-up—of the convoluted labyrinth of their brain.

“Did I say something wrong?” said Ragde, always eager to learn from mistakes of grammar and pronunciation.

“.nik ruoy dna uoy fo shtrib eht ecnis noitareneg ym ta gniwang neeb sah that noitseuq a ot rewsna eht dedivorp tsuj evah uoy ,yrartnoc eht nO” I said. “,dlihc ym ,oN”

“And what is that?”

“?taht yb naem I tahw wonk uoy od—devil I erehw raen ertnec gnippohs a saw ereht ,dlihc llams a saw I nehW .dah evah I that smaerd fo seiromem era yeht ,daetsnI” I said. “,stneve efil laer fo seiromem ton era yeht ,rehtar ,ro ,lla ta seiromem ton era sruoy fo seiromem esehT”

They nodded.

“.llacer ton od I ,dias ti tahw hguoht—em ot kaeps dna ediw htuom sti nepo dluow tI .ertnec gnippohs eht morf eert citsalp eht fo ecaf eht eb dluow ereht dna refinoc eht fo knurt eht ta kool ot nrut dluow I .seramthgin otni smaerd fo noitisnart eht sedecerp that dnik eht fo ,regnad fo noitinomerp a evah dluow I—raef htiw emocrevo eb dluow I ,refinoc eht fo yponac tnargarf eht htaeneb ,wodahs ni deduorhs ,egassap ymoolg that nI .doots refinoc egral a erehw ,dehs s’rehtaf ym dniheb aera eht ot htap eht nwod ,nedrag eht otni repeed nur dluow I .gniyaws ot seert eht gnittes ,nedrag eht hguorht gnihsur emoc dluow dniw taerg a dna nwal eht otno tuo klaw dluow I .thgin ta emoh doohdlihc ym fo nedrag eht ni flesym dnif dluow I smaerd ym ni llacer I”

.ti tuoba seramthgin evah dluow I ,sraey lareves rof ,dna—ti diova ot ertnec gnippohs eht hguorht setuor evitanretla dnif ot evah dluow stnerap ym—ti raen tnew ew revenehw laciretsyh emoceb dluow dna dlihc a saw I nehw eert siht fo deifirret saw I ,demohtaf reven evah I snosaer roF .kaeps dna efil ot emoc dluow ti ,ti otni nioc a detresni uoy fi dna—stnerap rieht htiw gnippohs tuo nerdlihc rof noisrevid fo tros a—knurt sti no ecaf gnilims taerg a htiw eert citsalp egral a saw ereht ertnec gnippohs siht tA”

Just as I concluded my story, we heard the trumpeting of the carnyx, announcing the return of one of the search parties. Together we rushed outside, joining the other colonists on the topmost lip of the Empty Bowl, ready to greet our compatriots.