Three months after the transformation, Erin and I took our first steps into a new dimension. The transition was nothing like the chaotic dimensional jumping we'd experienced before. Now, it felt like walking through a doorway from one room of a vast house into another.
The world we entered was beautiful but troubled. It resembled Earth in many ways—blue skies, green forests, cities filled with people going about their daily lives. But there was something wrong with their memories. An entire generation had lost the ability to form new long-term memories, living in an eternal present that reset every few hours.
"It's like a whole planet with amnesia," Erin observed as we walked through the capital city. People moved with purpose, but their eyes held a constant confusion, as if they were perpetually trying to remember something just out of reach.
I reached out with my expanded consciousness, feeling the flow of memories around us. What I discovered was heartbreaking. Decades ago, this world had tried to eliminate painful memories entirely—trauma, loss, grief. They had succeeded too well, creating a technology that had accidentally severed their connection to the memory-forming process itself.
"They wanted to end suffering," I explained to Erin. "Instead, they ended growth. Without the ability to learn from their experiences, they're trapped in an endless cycle."
We found ourselves in a hospital where doctors struggled daily with patients they couldn't remember treating the day before. Families sat by bedsides, reintroducing themselves to loved ones who had forgotten them hours earlier.
A young doctor named Mira approached us. Like everyone else, she didn't remember us from our earlier conversation that morning, but something in her expression suggested a deeper recognition.
"Are you the ones?" she asked hesitantly. "The healers from between worlds? I... I can't remember clearly, but I think I've been waiting for you."
It was then I realized that deep memory—the kind that touched the soul rather than just the mind—could sometimes transcend even the most complete amnesia. Mira's heart remembered hope, even if her brain couldn't hold onto the details.
"We're here to help," I told her. "But not in the way you might expect. We're not going to fix your technology or reverse the damage. We're going to teach your world a different approach to memory altogether."
Over the following weeks, we worked with individuals rather than trying to solve the problem on a massive scale. I showed them how to access what I called "pattern memory"—the deeper rhythms of existence that operate below conscious recollection.
A mother learned to recognize her children not through remembered facts, but through the resonance of love that connected them across time. An artist discovered they could create masterpieces by tapping into the emotional memories stored in their hands and heart, even when their mind couldn't recall learning the techniques.
Mira became our first real success. Through guided meditation, I helped her access the memory patterns that existed in her DNA, in the quantum information that made up her cells. She began to remember not specific events, but the essence of her experiences—the compassion that had drawn her to medicine, the determination that kept her searching for answers.
"This is extraordinary," she said during one of our sessions. "I can't remember my first day of medical school, but I can feel the joy of deciding to help people. I can't recall specific patients, but I know the satisfaction of healing."
As word spread—in the way that important news always spreads, even in a world without lasting memory—more people came to learn about pattern memory. They couldn't retain our names or faces, but they could hold onto the feeling of possibility we represented.
Erin proved invaluable in this work. Her gift for connecting with people transcended their memory limitations. She taught children games that exercised their pattern recognition, showed adults how to build relationships based on present-moment authenticity rather than shared history.
"In some ways," she told me one evening as we watched the sunset from a hill overlooking the city, "this world has achieved something beautiful. They live completely in the now. They approach each moment with fresh eyes, without the weight of past grudges or preconceptions."
She was right. While we worked to restore some continuity to their experiences, we also learned from them. Their enforced mindfulness, their ability to see each day as a new beginning, had given them a kind of wisdom that many worlds lacked.
By the end of our stay, we hadn't "cured" their amnesia. Instead, we had helped them develop new ways of being human that didn't depend entirely on retained memories. They created art that captured emotions in permanent form, building a collective memory in their culture itself. They developed relationships based on genuine presence rather than shared history.
As we prepared to leave, Mira approached us one last time. As always, she didn't remember our previous conversations, but the recognition in her eyes was stronger now.
"I don't know who you are," she said, "but I know you've changed everything. I can feel it in the air, in the way people move, in the hope that's growing in our world. Thank you."
When we stepped back through the dimensional gateway, I felt a deep satisfaction. We hadn't imposed a solution from outside. We had helped a world discover its own unique path to wholeness.
"One down," Erin said with a smile, "infinity to go."
As we stood in the nexus between realities, I could see countless other worlds calling out for their own forms of healing. Each would require a different approach, a different understanding of what it meant to remember and to live.
The Memory Merchant had truly begun his greatest work.