"That's ridiculous."  Even as I said it, I realized the CC was not prone to making ridiculous statements.

"I'm sure it must sound that way.  I'd like to hear your reasons for thinking otherwise."

I thought it over, and nodded.  "All right.  The human brain isn't like a computer.  It can't accept that much information that fast.  I lived that year.  Every day of it.  One of the things I recall most vividly is how long so many of the days were, either because I was working hard or because I didn't have anything to do. Life is like that.  I don't know how you think, what your perceptions of reality are like, but I know when a year's gone by.  I've lived for a hundred of them.  A hundred and one, now."  I sank back in my chair.  I hadn't realized I was getting so exercised about the matter.

He was nodding.  "This will get a little complicated.  Bear with me, I'll have to lay some groundwork.

"First, you're right, your brain is organized in a different way than mine is.  In my brain, 'memory' is just stored data, things that have been recorded and placed in the appropriate locations within the matrix of charge/no-charge devices I use for the purpose.  The human brain is neither so logically constructed nor organized.  Your brain contains redundancies I neither have nor need.  Data is stored in it by repetition or emphasis, and retrieved by associations, emotional linkages, sensory input, and other means that are still not completely understood, even by me.

"At least, that used to be the case.  But today, there are very few humans whose brains have not been augmented in greater or smaller ways.  Basically, only those with religious scruples or other irrational reasons resist the implantation of a wide variety of devices that owe their origin much more to the binary computer than to the protoplasmic neuron.  Some of these devices are hybrids.  Some are parallel processors.  Some lean more toward the biologic and are simply grown within and beside the existing neural network, but using the laws of electric or optical transmission with their correspondingly much higher speeds of propagation, rather than the slower biochemical regime that governs your natural brain.  Others are made outside the body and implanted shortly after birth.  All of them are essentially interfaces, between the human brain and my brain.  Without them, modern medicine would be impossible.  The benefits are so overwhelming that the drawbacks are seldom thought of, much less discussed."

He paused, lifting an eyebrow.  I was chewing over quite a few thoughts concerning drawbacks at that moment, but I decided not to speak.  I was too curious as to just where he was going with this.  He nodded, and continued.