Does the subject of a memory change when flooding in Freemarket?

Question

In the game Freemarket, you have the ability to flood/bleed memories between characters. The only time this becomes ambiguous is when a memory is a first-person memory.

Here's an example. Pretend my name is Mike. Let's say I have a memory that Bob gifted me(Mike) a quadrostar somoflange when I visited his workshop. Now I successfully flood this memory to Joe. Does Joe remember Bob gifting the somoflange to himself(Joe), or does Joe remember Bob gifting the somoflange to me(Mike)?

To get even crazier, what if I flood the memory to Bob? Does Bob remember him gifting the somoflange to himself(Bob)?

Answer 1

Self in memories is remembered as Me/myself/I and not by individual. That's the correction I saw during the playtests, at least.

So, if flooding or bleeding, the relevant component is what gets replaced.

In your example, Mikes's memory would have been "Bob gave the quadrostar somoflange to me when I visited Bob's workshop." If you flood the whole thing to Bob, he just gets the whole thing exact. So he'd remember Bob giving him the quadrostar somoflange when he visited Bob's workshop.

Later, I flood just a new bit... and subtract "mike" from a rather meaningless memory I bled from another guy, to put it in place of "Bob"... and THEN bob will remember Mike giving bob the thing.

Answer 2

The Memories chapter of the Operations Manual breaks memories down into component parts called concepts: person, place, object, group, and action. The person component, however, refers explicitly to a person other than the memory's author. Concepts are fixed, and "author" is a kind of unspecified open slot, so Joe would indeed remember Bob giving Joe the somoflange. In your second example, Bob could indeed occupy the person slot as well as being the (unspecified, variable) new "author" of the memory. Superusers are encouraged elsewhere in the chapter to be as amusing with this sort of thing as they wish.

Floods and bleeds can sometimes be partial, moving only some of a memory's three or more concepts. In both cases, the memory's new owner can fill in the missing slots. This can create yet more strangeness, including the strange loops you describe.

Answer 3

You are always the "I" in a memory and all memories start with "I remember..." even if not expressly written as such.