Apologies for the lateness, all. It’s been One Of Those Weeks.
Bianca: Sparrow, I get that you’re just joking, but if he takes it seriously–
Patrick: It’s been tried!
Nothing interesting happened. Do you want to know how it felt to have up to 50,000 volts going through me? Because I can tell you that too.
Sparrow: . . . How did it feel?
Patrick: Tingly.
I can’t tell you how I was born, or created, or whatever. I don’t remember. Our memories don’t last that long.
The one now called Reseda would remember what she did when she was called Lily, but by now the emotions have probably faded. After a few more Masters, the whole thing will be like something she read in a book once.
If it was a language she could read, at least.
Ah, so imprinting on a new master has a price: they forget the old ones with exponential decay. It does explain why Patrick is somewhat less twitchy – his PTSD is slowly wearing off.
@Professor: The loss of memory is not necessarily linked to the acquisition of a new master. Rather, it is more likely that it is due to simple storage capacity: even a super-computer like the brain can only store so much data before it needs to erase some to make room for more, although whether or not anyone has actually lived that long is unknown to me. Since the immortal lives of Beings revolve around their service, it would not be surprising if that was the main ay they measured time. Combine that with the fact that the contract’s only (known so far) severance clause is the death of the master, which due to the seemingly non-existence of the usual important stakes in the Game is probably most often due to natural causes, it is not surprising that Patrick would relate the decay of memory to the number of masters.
I didn’t consider brain storage capacity mainly because they’re not human, so they may have greatly more or less storage than we do. Your theory may be correct. Or they could have evolved the memory loss as a survival mechanism so trauma doesn’t stay with them forever (unlike, say, the Doctor).
That’s kind of sad. You get to live forever, but without the capacity to keep several generations’ worth of memory.