You only get to add one memory to the DNA strand that gets copied into the next species of life. The species that comes after humanity. When the heaps of trash overtake us, when the nuclear fallout inseminates cancers that are too powerful to fight. When the fat hand breaks the last brittle rib.
The sky will become too red. We will squeeze ourselves under wool blankets. We will burn. We will freeze. We will hold each other tightly and think of the good times as our flesh thins and thins.
The waves inside us will pass through our skin. The waves that made us more than sacks of meat. The waves that drew us to each other, that buzzed when our hands touched for the first time. The waves that crashed when your boss asked you to do something unethical, and you did. The waves that created your Grand Canyon, that wrought you with pain, that taught you time, that gave you one special gift that was just yours and said, “this is your way back home.”
Your collected memories, your instincts, the instructions given to you from everything that came before you, even the slugs. Your DNA strands are blown into entropy, snapped like a string of pearls in space.
And one of those strands reaches muscle, and pulses into it like lightning. What will it be? What will you give to the new brain, after you? Knowing what waves do. Knowing what individuals do, what packs do, what society does, what nations do. What will you bequeath it?
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