#mememory

I am certain you've heard of "déjà vu"… the concept you're seeing or doing something that you've done once before.  An idea, a feeling… something inescapable that is trying to tell you this moment has already occurred.  You've already said these words or moved this way… even if you cannot recall where it ever happened before… even if it actually has never happened before.  That's déjà vu.

It comes from French, which you might have already guessed or known, and translated directly means "already seen".  Makes sense, right?  Well, I've got a related premise for you… It's called "même mémoire" which means "same memory" or, Americanized, "mememory" (pronounced: meme-mor-ree) because it's also related to meme's… little bits of culture or interaction passed on to others through non genetic means.

Genes and Memes… we rockin' Metal Gear Solid yet?  Good.

Mememory was a word originally coined, jointly, by corporations and the mirroids they created as a way to describe what in the original days was a much more common phenomena… a moment in which two or more mirroids were able to connect through the shared identical experience they'd been imbued with.

As perviously explained, mirroid brains initial configuration contains a number of base memories which are most often stored for language—including slang—as well as some human or animal interactions and basic bodily functions like walking or singing.  These memories can come from all animals, not just humans, and packaging them together can make a proper default template for any particular mirroid.

However, you may be able to jump ahead here and guess at some of the issues with this concept.  Namely, that it makes an individual non-unique.  The more reused, the more set, the more manufactured the origin of a mirroid's base memories, the harder it is for them to wrap their mind around being a functioning and fully formed individual.  Coupled with their recent history of mistreatment by human beings, it is not hard to believe that the more similar a mirroid is to another, the more likely they are to resent that similarity.

It can be difficult to impart this feeling to human beings for they cannot, under normal circumstances, experience a mememory.  Try it.  Try to imagine a shared event you've had with other people… say a yearly video game party.  You and your friends were there.  You all brought PC's or TV's and game consoles and you all played together.  "Isn't that the same memory?" you may be asking?  And, no, it is not.

On the most basic level, one of you was Player One while another Player Two.  One of you got up and went to the bathroom and missed another friend landing a sick 168 chain combo down Big Mountain in SSX3.  Whatever your experience was, even though you shared it with other people, they did not have the same exact memory as you did.  Their dislike of alcohol or your sneaking the last slice of pizza for yourself all made your own experience unique even though you all were a part of each other's memory.

But mirroids are instilled with other people's or other animal's memories to start with, because they are created fully grown.  And so that always means that, to start with, their memories have at least one other duplicate out there somewhere.  Furthermore, we're talking about production lines and corporations… and mass production has been in the human industrial mindset for centuries by the time 21XX rolls around.  This ends up boding ill for the first mirroids produced by someone other than Dr. Valentino, because corporations have long been problematic in one regard: people are people, and people are supposed to be unique… not cogs in a machine.

In hindsight, the mistake was quite obvious.  Dr. Valentino made the original six mirroids within the now accepted sexual spectrum… one male, one female, one heale, one shemale, and two herm.  Though, interestingly, the female mirroid was created as a transgender man, so while the group consisted of the now commonly accepted sexual configuration of mirroids, it was lacking in the female gender identity.

Taken a step further, the original six mirroids were also comprised of vastly body structures and sizes.  Vulgal was a Large sized wolf, while Xi was a Average sized humanoid more resembling an angel than a man.  With sizes ranging from Small to Large, and body types of biped and quadruped, each mirroid's shape, sexuality, gender identity, and dramatically different memory configurations made sure that each of the six were themselves unique to start with, but essentially guaranteed their opportunities to have unique and varied lives from each other.

And it is likely that Dr. Valentino's testing phases on her mirroids came across the concept of "Même Mémoire" as it would be unlikely to have been coincidentally avoided in the six mirroids the world discovered.  As the doctor's prior robot designs were all based upon wolves, the extra effort to make a smattering of different human-animal hybrid memories cannot be overlooked as exhausting and time consuming… work she likely spent years on just to make those six individuals.

The most egregious mememory culprits were companies during the various mirroid wars.  One company, focusing on building animal stock with human intelligence for instruction and direction, would have entire farm populations with identical histories.  Even without human intellect, this would have been confusing to the animals… because whose bone, whose owner, whose mate is this if not your own?  With more instinct comes more a fight to maintain what is yours and you, but when everyone around you is also you, who is it you're not supposed to fight for what is yours?

The famous WarTaurs of the third major conflict were themselves designed this way on purpose because it had been so time consuming to create just one with complete memories that fully functioned.  Initially, the hope was that by making fewer mirroids in this way that the problem could be avoided, but sadly that was not the case.  With few other WarTaurs to share experiences with, and the few that you could meet having your same experiences, WarTaurs—more than any other mirroid—were far more prone to suicide or Enlightenment procedures.

Essentially, their outward uniqueness forced their inner sameness to be a major note of stress and self-doubt.  It is also why so many of them found comfort in war… using their skills to build themselves a history of unique battle experiences.  Oppositely, other WarTaurs who were captured in war and modified against their wishes had traumatic POW experiences which, in an unfortunate twist, also made them unique compared to their same-run brothers and sisters.  And so, even though they may have been 'more damaged', they were also far less likely to end their lives due to mental anguish of not being unique.

As a result of the phenomena of "même mémoire", an interesting culture has become self-imposed by most mirroids.  Most mirroids go through a phase of being an "input junkie", often brought about by confirmation of a mememory experience, though not always.  In a desire to further differentiate themselves from one they interacted with, or even from their usual life experiences, they will seek out of force upon themselves unique experiences.  They will break their own comfort zone, confront a phobia, move to another city for a time, completely change their hairstyle or cloths, or any number of other sudden and dramatic changes to assure themselves that, going forward, they're having lives and experiences no one else has.

Mirroids, more than humans, have an understood cultural fear of being the same as someone else.  Moments such as arriving to a party wearing the same dress take on a whole other dynamic if the person wearing the counterpart thinks and act just like you do.  It's because of situations like these that, beyond their usual animal-like features, culturally make mirroids different than human beings even with their similarities.

See you in the Future, —Huntermun