Every shape had depth in this third dimension. This had to be where the data was stored. I reached up with my eyes and pulled the pieces toward me, allowing the lid to transect their cross sections – another revelation: I could push them away or pull them close. Each one was a unique building block, made up of thousands of layers. Every reflection was, in reality, a stack of wafer-thin units – like glimmers of the larger thought.

Eyes is gonna be so proud. I can just taste the nectar.

An asymmetrical gear-shaped reflection came next, and I quickly flipped it to the side in order to understand how many layers it had. Thousands probably, though it didn’t hold as many wafers as the crescent. I pulled the shape toward me, exposing a cross-section maybe halfway through it on the lid of the dredge. The layer itself was engraved, or etched, and still frustratingly unintelligible. The piece disappeared.

The edges of my brain were getting fuzzy.

Ignoring that, I took hold of a new piece – an easy semi-circle that looked like Ms Pacman, and selected a layer to examine. I counted three deep and set it across the lid, staring at its neon glow until it disappeared. Then, with the afterimage still fresh, I dismissed a handful of new shapes until I found the one that paired with the Pacman shape and scrolled to the third layer, then blinked the afterimage over it. A notion, a memory, a glimmer – suddenly unlocked.

A scene unfolded of a childhood. A mother as seen through the eyes of her son, sitting on the bank of a creek. The mother is holding something and speaking to the boy – to me, unsettlingly, as the child. It is as if I’m eavesdropping, but there is no sound beyond murmurs. This mother’s face is crystalline. Every muscle an expression of unconditional love. I swallowed hard, having to remind myself that she is gazing upon her son, not me. They peer together through a magnifying glass at something in the dirt – a group of pill bugs – and the moment passes for the two of them. The mother is not my mother. The child is not me.

The image fractures and dissolves like a frame of melting celluloid. Gasping, I scattered the incoming reflections to the side, breaking my trance, and called to be let out, wiping my tear-streaked face.

The lid opened. Eyes pulled me up and out, considered me. Gone is the Bloom of God.

My hands shook and my teeth chattered all the way back to the enclosure. Seeing the memory of another human being played before me like a home movie was terrifying. I was a trespasser to someone’s most sacred moments. An interloper of nostalgia.