Author:
M.J. Swenson has been writing stories since elementary school and earned a B.A. in Creative Writing from the University of St. Thomas, Minnesota. Besides writing and reading, M.J. also enjoys playing music and video games.

The wind ruffled the red and orange leaves of the half-wire trees, and strangers walked on either side of Lysandra, keeping their heads down, never once casting a glance at her. A perfect day for masquerading. If only every day could be as perfect as this one.

Lysandra’s skirts swished around her ankles, and she held them up just slightly with her hands as she ran. She parted the crowds on the street with hardly a motion, and no one even looked up to wonder why she ran when they didn’t. The wind rushed through her long auburn hair, catching it on the breeze just as it caught those leaves on the trees around her, real or not.

The wind did not rush through her hair when she sat in the window back at her father’s house—the screen blocked it. And her father’s servants seemed to think it was unbecoming of her to stare dreamily out the window in the first place.

Rewriting Memory

"In the beginning," he said, "Memory Recoding - it was intended for medical use. Those memories that would give you nightmares and drive you crazy - the doctors didn't have any cure for them. Someone finally did enough research to figure out that you could sense memories if you had the right technology."


"But just the technology alone can't touch memories," Lysandra said.


"That's right." He ran a hand through his hair. "They needed to train people who had the talent to reach for memories."


He shrugged. "It became a different kind of skill. The kind that... transcended the boundaries of technology. The first man to do it also taught several students. A few of them even started Memory Recoder schools."


"I'm guessing you went to a Memory Recoder school," Lysandra conjectured. "You seem to know a lot about Memory Recoding and how it started."


"You don't have to go to a school to learn things like that," Cale pointed out.


Chapter 19