Common Misconception
The layman tends to think that the CVI grants unlimited knowledge, or perhaps automatic recall. That, having once taken a high school chemistry class, an Implant can spill out atomic radii and rates of decay at a moments notice.
It doesnt work like that. Its like this:
In eleventh grade, you took Chemistry. It was taught by Mr. Stern, who you hated, but you didnt really mind because it was first block and you were usually asleep. The boy in front of you, whose name may or may not have been Jonathan, had a crush on the girl in back of you (whose name, you remember without prompting, was Mary Ann), and sneaking looks at the notes he passed her was far more interesting than how Kelvin temperature related to Celsius.
Today, one of the scientists working on ways to improve the longevity of skrills has sent you a memo filled with words like silicon carbide and iron III oxide. You suppose that you must have done an assignment on this once, undoubtedly with your girlfriend, so you think.
You think back, trying to feel the textbook, a little lighter than you always complained of it being, the pages slightly waxy, scribbles in the margins telling you to go to page 296, sixty-two, 135, eventually leading you to a vaguely obscene limerick. You think of your girlfriends house, that always smelled like one too many animals and had fuzzy pink coverings in the bathroom, and youre taken into the memory.
But you havent remembered it quite right, and instead of questioning the scientist about the effects of pH on skrills, you find yourself comparing Lenins New Economic Plan to Maos Great Leap Forward. You have mixed up eleventh grade Chemistry with tenth grade History, when your girlfriend was still just your best friend and her house smelled of two too many cats, because the black one with white paws, who hissed at your girlfriends mother but always rubbed against your shin, was still alive.
When you finally sort your way through to the appropriate year and the appropriate class and the appropriate assignment, you find yourself in that house again, and your girlfriends mother brings snacks, juice and cookies. You kiss her, lightly, on the cheekyour girlfriend, not her motherand see the stain the grape juice leaves, and suddenly you miss Dee Dee terribly, because it was her house that always smelled of animals and baking.
And then you go past that, through your textbook, and you find the excerpt about silicon carbide, and suddenly youre talking to the scientist again. You forget all about Dee Dee, and your Motivational Imperative makes sure you dont think of her again until three weeks later, when Major Kincaid says something that makes you want quote <u>A Midsummer Nights Dream</u>, which you read at Dee Dees house, acting out all the parts with kissing.
-end
The layman tends to think that the CVI grants unlimited knowledge, or perhaps automatic recall. That, having once taken a high school chemistry class, an Implant can spill out atomic radii and rates of decay at a moments notice.
It doesnt work like that. Its like this:
In eleventh grade, you took Chemistry. It was taught by Mr. Stern, who you hated, but you didnt really mind because it was first block and you were usually asleep. The boy in front of you, whose name may or may not have been Jonathan, had a crush on the girl in back of you (whose name, you remember without prompting, was Mary Ann), and sneaking looks at the notes he passed her was far more interesting than how Kelvin temperature related to Celsius.
Today, one of the scientists working on ways to improve the longevity of skrills has sent you a memo filled with words like silicon carbide and iron III oxide. You suppose that you must have done an assignment on this once, undoubtedly with your girlfriend, so you think.
You think back, trying to feel the textbook, a little lighter than you always complained of it being, the pages slightly waxy, scribbles in the margins telling you to go to page 296, sixty-two, 135, eventually leading you to a vaguely obscene limerick. You think of your girlfriends house, that always smelled like one too many animals and had fuzzy pink coverings in the bathroom, and youre taken into the memory.
But you havent remembered it quite right, and instead of questioning the scientist about the effects of pH on skrills, you find yourself comparing Lenins New Economic Plan to Maos Great Leap Forward. You have mixed up eleventh grade Chemistry with tenth grade History, when your girlfriend was still just your best friend and her house smelled of two too many cats, because the black one with white paws, who hissed at your girlfriends mother but always rubbed against your shin, was still alive.
When you finally sort your way through to the appropriate year and the appropriate class and the appropriate assignment, you find yourself in that house again, and your girlfriends mother brings snacks, juice and cookies. You kiss her, lightly, on the cheekyour girlfriend, not her motherand see the stain the grape juice leaves, and suddenly you miss Dee Dee terribly, because it was her house that always smelled of animals and baking.
And then you go past that, through your textbook, and you find the excerpt about silicon carbide, and suddenly youre talking to the scientist again. You forget all about Dee Dee, and your Motivational Imperative makes sure you dont think of her again until three weeks later, when Major Kincaid says something that makes you want quote <u>A Midsummer Nights Dream</u>, which you read at Dee Dees house, acting out all the parts with kissing.
-end
