Catmachine

We’ve all been there. You're halfway through a biscuit, perhaps as part of a tea break. Then someone knocks at the door or the phone rings and you put the biscuit down somewhere so you can deal with this new crisis. You get distracted. By the time you've got back to your routine you've forgotten where you put the biscuit. It was a spur of the moment abandonment—stored only in the Very Short Term Memory. You retrace your steps. No sign. It's not anywhere near where you were sitting nor is it next to your cup of tea. Part of you is trying to insist that it doesn't matter. It's only (half a) biscuit. You've got a whole packet of the things in the kitchen. But that's not the point . You are not concerned with the material loss of a few grams of pastry and sugar. You are concerned because there is an unfinished process in your brain. Whatever part of you that tracks progress is in an uncompleted state, taking up memory space it can only free up by completing...

"The first thing to realize about parallel universes is that they are not parallel. It is also important to realize that they are not, strictly speaking, universes either." — Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless I have been reading about The Mandela Effect. This is a name for collective false memory whereby a significant amount of people will swear blind that something in the past was one way whereas in actual fact it was another and furthermore there's written, photographic and filmed proof. The most likely explanation for this is that misconceptions which lead to a false memory of something are common misconceptions and that people susceptible will develop similar false memories, which they can then reminisce with each other about thereby strengthening them. A more outlandish theory—and much more interesting from a fantasy point of view—is that the people remembering things differently are now living in a different parallel universe from the one in which the memory was first...