The Memory of a Goldfish

The concept of collective unconscious, commonly known as "Genetic Memory," is still mostly theoretical, but we see evidence of it in the animal kingdom, especially in fish.

This was the premise of Emma Rhamon's doctoral thesis and she was so excited about spending this week at the Jenks Aquarium in Oklahoma, putting her theories to the test. It was a chilly October morning and a surprisingly strong wind was blowing across the Arkansas River near the Aquarium as Emma parked in the staff lot where she had been assigned a temporary pass. Emma reached back into her car for a hooded sweater before loading up with all the bags and boxes she could juggle at once.

She tried not to feel silly as she awkwardly pulled the door open with a couple of fingers while inching her toe into the opening and then wiggling her hips into position to hold the door ajar.

"I got it!" a voice cried out behind her and the weight of the door disappeared so suddenly that she had to take a step backward to maintain her balance. The precarious load of equipment and papers shifted dangerously, but to her relief, nothing toppled.

Well, almost nothing. She cringed as her coffee cup hit the ground with a splash, and she felt the wet warmth of a grande latte splash across her shoes and up her left calf.

"Thanks." she said flatly.

"Oh, gosh, I didn't mean...I was trying to...I'm so sorry about that!" The voice fumbled through several words in an attempt at an apology.

Emma didn't turn, she was focused on keeping everything balanced, she also knew her face wouldn't be able to match her words as she said, "No worries, accidents happen." She entered and continued along a hallway to the empty room she'd been assigned as her workspace for the week. Once she set down her load, she turned to the doorway, but "Mr. Helpful" was nowhere to be seen. That was probably his best decision thus far this morning.

Emma set to work assembling her equipment and organizing her notes. She put in her earbuds and turned up her 90's pop music playlist. She lost herself in the details of her project. Emma's mom always called this her "freaky focus," she could be so intensely focused on one thing that she had been known to walk right into a wall or take a bite of a pencil eraser in one hand instead the apple in her other hand. She lost all track of time and wouldn't eat or sleep if someone didn't intervene. Still, she had her best ideas and did her best work when she was able to "freaky focus."

This morning she wasn't going to have that chance. Emma was nodding along to the beat of a classic Destiny's Child ballad and rapidly scanning through data in her log when a heavy hand fell on her shoulder. She jumped like a sleeping cat doused with ice water and spun around.

"Whoa, hey, didn't mean to scare you." The guy before her chuckled nervously. He had his hands up in a non-threatening surrender, one hand held a keycard on a lanyard, and the other held a cup of coffee. "You didn't go by the administrator's office to get your access card, so I figured I'd bring it to you. I owed you a cup of coffee anyway."

She could see his lips moving, but in her ears she heard, "Say my name, say my name. You actin' kinda shady, Ain't callin' me baby..." Emma pulled her earbuds out and said, "Huh?"

"Uh...I brought you another cup of coffee, and I have your access pass from Ms Williamson." He smiled and handed them to her.

"Oh, thanks." Emma set the coffee on the desk and put the card and the lanyard in the pocket of her sweater. "What do you mean, 'another' cup?"

"Well, I helped you spill your first one, so I figured I owed you." he shrugged and grinned appeasingly. "You're Dr. Ramen, right?" He asked

"Not quite," she replied.

"Oh?"

"Not a doctor, and not a noodle soup."

"Gotcha." He said with a casual wink.

"It's pronounced 'Rah-moan,' like the band."

"Okay, Dr. Ramone, er...not doctor."

"Emma is fine."

"Okay, Emma, I'm Josh, nice to meet you."

Emma raised her hand in a nice-to-meet-you-bye-now gesture as she sat back down and adjusted her ear buds once more. Josh didn't leave. She put the earbuds on the desk, "Yes? Is there something else?"

"Do you mind explaining your research? I'm really interested in generational memory. Like, how do salmon just know how to get back to the place where they were born to spawn and die?"

Emma sighed, this was her weakness and the one thing that could shatter her focus: talking about her research and her theories.

"Right, well, that's where we start. Evidence of DNA memory is easier to see in fish and birds than anywhere else. There is evidence in mammals, but the disruption of their ecosystems has made it more difficult." He nodded and took a seat across from her without any invitation.

"Okay..." she said torn between annoyance at Josh and her passion for the subject. As always, science won out. "Right so, let's start with your example: Salmon. We know that they are able to sense the changing seasons, the breeding season coming, and so on. What I am working on is how distinct their shared memories of landmarks and geography are."

"So, like maps?"

"Well, sort of, but it actually goes much deeper. I theorize that the changing history of the oceans could potentially be locked away in the memories of fish. Imagine! If we could find a way to unlock their memories and link them, we could trace back the changes, the whole history of our planet!"

"Mmm hmm..." Josh responded doubtfully.

"How much do you know about dream sequencing and the advances we are making toward recording and sharing dreams?" His blank look was enough of an answer that she continued, "Well, the technology is in the final phases of R&D." She reached into a box and pulled out what appeared to be a VR headset. "I got permission from the university to incorporate a prototype into my research. The helmet is worn by the subject and casts the images from the dream onto a screen. It is recorded for playback. In the early phases, the subject was placed in a sensory deprivation tank."

"Like with water?"

"Exactly! The saline water of a sensory deprivation tank was designed to heighten the subject's experience and increase the strength of the 'dream wave' to make it easier to tune in to the dreams. It did those things, but it also linked dreamers through the conductivity of the high-saline water."

"They were able to share dreams?"

"Not quite. More like the emotions and tone of their dreams kind of synced up. Although there is some evidence that there are certain people who are candidates for co-dreaming, but that will require a lot more study. In fish, I'm not looking for dreams. I hypothesize that the conductivity of seawater and a modified version of the dream sequencer will provide us with evidence of generational memories in residents of our oceans. This will allow us to view and chronicle their shared, generational memories."

"Cool." Josh replied without much enthusiasm as he stood. "So, that's why you're here then."

"Yes! Yes, it's very cool!" Emma insisted "Many of the fish in this aquarium, in land-locked Oklahoma, have never even seen an ocean. For some of them, we would have to go back generations to find an ancestor that lived wild in the oceans of our planet." Emma could hear her voice getting louder with irritation. Josh was inching toward the door.

"Okay, cool." he repeated, "Well, let me know if you need anything." He ducked out the door and was gone.

Emma pulled her glasses off and rubbed her eyes. She knew most people had no interest in her research. She had practiced answering the polite "What are you studying?" question simply, but it was always hard to just say: "Fish." She returned the dream sequencer to its box and carefully pulled out her creation. The device was based on the dream sequencer, she had designed it to float on the surface and collect the electromagnetic pulses sent out by fish nearby, it was connected by a long cord to a computer so she could record and analyze the data.

For the first 24 hours, Emma left the device in a display that contained a school composed of only one type of fish. She eagerly recorded the data and used this data as the baseline for her research. Every day for a week, she recorded activity in a variety of aquatic environments, always being careful to only include fish that had been hatched in captivity.

Meanwhile, she scanned through her data and wrote several algorithms to look for signs of the DNA memory, she was seeking. As the week drew to a close, Emma was becoming increasingly frustrated and desperate to find anything. She was willing to accept that the scope of her theory was wrong, but it had to be impossible that the data wasn't demonstrating any connectivity or signs of hereditary knowledge in any situations or combinations.

She went over and over the data, but it was all so unimpressive, if she didn't know better she would have thought her device had been recording an aquarium with no life at all.

On the final day, she loaded up all her equipment and research without a trace of the excitement or optimism she had arrived with. As she took the final box to her car, Josh said something, but she didn't even turn, she just allowed the door to slam behind her.

Josh shrugged and turned back to his task. He had been trying several unsuccessful methods to contain a pair of octopuses in their tank, but regardless of whether they were separated or together, they got up to mischief every night. He had nicknamed them Heckle and Jeckle, and it almost seemed like they were enjoying thwarting him.

They were enjoying it. Heckle settled to the bottom of her tank and watched Josh secure Jeckle in a separate tank across the room. She knew she could undo all the things he was doing to lock up her partner in crime, and she was looking forward to the fun game of finding whichever tank had the cord dangling out of it tonight. The cord led to a little floating thing and kept the tanks from locking properly. The two troublemakers could slip into the tanks and snack on a few fish while playing with the floating thing. This had become their favorite game and the challenge of escaping from Josh's feeble attempts to contain them only made it more interesting.

Emma's device couldn't collect any usable data because it was being sabotaged every night by the most clever minds in the aquarium, and she had never even considered consulting them.

As she drove the 16 hours back to the university, Emma blasted the soothing tones of a favorite 90's boy band and tried to leave her failed theories and her disappointment behind her in Oklahoma.

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