You may have seen me on the storefront. I am the one whose quote runs above the others. I said, three years ago, that my productivity was up 340% and that I no longer dreamed. Both halves of that quote are still true. The dreaming half is the one that gets attention. The productivity half is, in 2046, simply how I work.
I am writing this longer testimony because the storefront quote was, by design, short. It was a quote. It was meant to be read in three seconds and remembered for a week. This text is meant to be read at a desk, by someone considering memory editing, who wants to know what it is actually like. The Bureau asked me to write it; I said yes; here we are.
Why I Chose Memory Editing
I chose memory editing for the same reason most citizens at my tier choose memory editing: I had specific content I did not want to carry forward. The Bureau has asked me whether I will name the content. I will not. The content was not unusual. It was the kind of content most people of my generation are, by 2043, carrying. I had decided I did not want to carry it. I had the budget to act on the decision. I acted.
The procedure took longer than I expected. The decision took longer than the procedure. The decision took two years. I had consultations with three Compliance Officers. I had four pre-procedure interviews. I had a six-month waiting period after the final approval. The framework around memory editing is, by design, slow. I appreciate this now. I did not appreciate it at the time.
What the Procedure Was Actually Like
The procedure itself was uneventful in a way that surprised me. I had expected something. I do not know what. I had imagined, I think, that there would be a moment in which I knew the editing was happening — a sensation, a flash, a perceptible change. There was not. The procedure took ninety minutes. I was awake for it. I was, by every measurement available to me, calm throughout. I left and got a sandwich.
The first week was unremarkable. I had been told, in the pre-procedure interviews, that the edits would settle gradually. They did. By the end of the first week I could no longer recall the specific incidents I had targeted. By the end of the second week I could no longer recall having targeted them. I could remember, in the abstract, that I had had memory editing. I could not, by the second week, generate the specific feeling I had originally been editing for.
Three Years Later
I am writing this in 2046. I had the procedure in 2043. The arrangement has held. The content I edited is, today, blank to me — not in the way that distant memories become foggy, but in a structural way. There is a placeholder where the content used to be. I know the placeholder exists. I cannot access what is behind it.
The placeholder is itself an interesting feature. The Office had not, in the pre-procedure interviews, described it in detail. I have come to think of it as the most honest aspect of the procedure: it tells me, daily, that I once had something there. It does not, however, tell me what.
Three years on, my life is by every available measurement better. The productivity statistic in my original quote remains accurate. I sleep well. I no longer dream — that part is unrelated to the editing; I had previously installed Dream Suppression. I have, in three years, not regretted the procedure. I have also, in three years, not been able to evaluate whether I should have. The two facts are, I am aware, connected.
What I Would Tell Someone Considering Memory Editing
Four things, ordered by how often I have, in the past three years, found myself wanting to say them to someone considering the procedure:
- Be specific about what you are editing. Vague editing requests produce vague outcomes. The Office will, on review, ask you to be more specific than you initially want to be. They are, in this, helping you. Comply.
- Take the waiting period seriously. The six-month post-approval window felt punishing at the time. It was, in retrospect, the most useful part of the process. Two of the candidates I knew during my own waiting period reversed their decision in that window. Both, I believe, were right to.
- Tell at least one person. I told my partner. I told two close friends. None of them tried to talk me out of it; all of them, in subtle ways, helped me confirm I knew what I was doing. The people who go through editing alone are, by Compliance reporting, more likely to report post-procedure regret.
- The placeholder is part of the procedure, not a failure of it. The blank space you will carry is not a glitch. It is the procedure working correctly. Some citizens spend years trying to recover what is behind the placeholder. The Office, in my experience, will discourage this. I think they are right.
Continue your enrollment. Citizens considering memory products generally — not editing specifically — are referred to the cross-cluster memory tier list. Citizens whose curiosity about memory editing is driven by a specific candidate edit are referred to the Withdrawal Diaries; the diaries cover a category of post-edit experience not addressed here.