Page 176 of Every Almost

Maren caught Charlie looking and the shimmer dimmed immediately. "Sorry, I can just read the logs normally if you prefer."

"Why would I 'prefer' that?" Charlie asked, utterly confused by the statement. "Whatever you just did was... amazing! What was that?"

Maren turned to face Charlie fully. When she did, her eyes flickered again.

"That," she said, "is my brain filing this conversation."

Charlie blinked. "You did it again? Right now?"

Maren nodded gently. "Yeah. Everything I see, hear, and feel gets captured and then put in my memory, permanently. It's not like I have a 'good memory.' It's fully permanent. For instance, Charlie Wickett from Shelbyville, Indiana, United States, who went to California Institute of Technology and worked at Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, CA."

Charlie's eyes wouldn't blink. Maren laughed softly. "I remember every word you've said to me since the day you landed in Borran's kitchen, in chronological order, with full context,including what you were wearing and even what the room smelled like."

"That's..." Charlie searched for the word. "You can remember all of that? Including what you just read on those shuttle reports? Exactly?" Charlie was still reaching. "Every reading?"

Maren's eyes fell to her lap and her whole demeanor shifts. "It makes some people feel uncomfortable."

Charlie sat up in her chair. "Maren, it makes me want to hire you as my accomplice to every activity I ever have in my whole life!" And she meant it.

Charlie's hands went up to her head, where she held her forehead. "That's incredible! Don't dim that on my account. Seriously. Ever."

Something shifted in Maren's posture. Her shimmer returned, brighter this time, and held.

"The original atmospheric composition was 78.2% nitrogen, 18.4% oxygen, 2.1% argon, and 1.3% trace elements including elevated krypton from the moon's volcanic vents," Maren said, without looking at the screen. "The adjusted gradient you programmed tapered the temperature change across 4.7 minutes instead of the standard 2.2. The Gliders' membrane response was 0.3 degrees behind real-time, which is why you extended the window."

Charlie stared at her. "I'm going to need something to write with and get that all down. But you got all that from a glance during the rescue?"

"I got all that from standing near the shuttle bay door for eleven seconds."

"Maren."

"Yes?"

"You're terrifying. And I mean that as the highest compliment I could give."

A small smile touched Maren's lips. "Depending on what I'm doing, the intensity can change. Right now it's gentle because we're talking and I'm cataloguing at a normal pace. But when I'm learning something new, processing and diving deep into the material, it gets brighter and stays lit while I'm working through it." She paused. "There are times, sometimes, especially when a memory has weight to it, it can carry color."

"Color?" Charlie asked, her voice in awe.

"Usually warm tones for the good ones. Cooler for..." She trailed off and her shimmer dimmed for just a moment before returning. "The memories to erase if you could."

That made Charlie go quiet, because she heard what Maren wasn't saying.

"You can't erase any of it," Charlie said gently.

"No," Maren responded quietly. "Every conversation I've ever had, I remember word for word. Every face I've seen, even just once. Every language I've heard spoken, even yours, I could learn it in a day if I needed to by just listening." The shimmer flickered, and Charlie watched as something softer moved through. "Every mistake I've ever made. Every loss or moment of grief, remains exactly as vivid as the day it happened. It never fades or dulls. It's just... there. All of it. Always."

"Maren," Charlie whispered.

"It's okay." Maren said it so quickly, Charlie wasn't sure if it was for her benefit or Maren's. "As a species, Noethans learn to manage it. As children, we learn forgiveness before we even learn math. We've learned that when you can't forget, you have to get very intentional about what you choose to carry forward." She looked over at Charlie. "I can't control what I remember. But I can control what I dwell on. That's the whole practice. Choosing the warm tones."

Charlie looked at Maren's eyes. "For what it's worth," she said, "I'm glad you're filing this one."

Maren's shimmer brightened. Warm tones.

"Me too, Charlie."

Later that day, Cael had reassigned Charlie from work she was engaged in doing, work she was good at and that mattered, to a cargo bay inventory in the aft section. It was busy-work and they both knew it. Charlie knew already, even as a human on a Coalition space vessel, that this was the kind of task you gave a first-week apprentice, not the engineer who'd solved the Aetherfin pressurization in eleven minutes.