As I previously mentioned to the Grand Regent, my experiences in mental collection are quite limited. Aside from a few mandatory refreshers regularly imposed by our Grand Scribe Order during major seminars, I've had little practice in this exercise. By the way, I think this is something that you should know: the seminars are nothing but pretexts for drinking sprees and other merry activities, even though all the Great Scribes make an appearance during the day, but with a thick tongue, an overwhelming desire to sleep, headaches by the dozen, and a pious wish that could be verbalized as 'never again'. A vow broken as soon as the day ends, where everyone meets at the bar and thinks, well, perhaps one can cure the ailment with more of the same. I thought it was important to clarify this for you, dear readers, because many of you are paying for these seminars with your taxes, and that irritates me. Just know that this just a mere example, and I hope our new Grand Regent will correct this aspect of the Grand Regency that I despise.

That being said, and even though these seminars are essentially playgrounds for adults, it's important to know that during these, we, the Grand Scribes, are informed of one crucial thing. The mind of a Grand Regent is unparalleled. While it's up to us to undertake this rather intrusive exercise, if the Grand Regent consents, the experience is indeed quite unique.
The memory of a person is perceived by the Grand Scribe who accesses it as a simultaneity of snapshots of life into which he delves. Choosing a memorial event—with the consent of said person—it then envelops the explorer, obscuring his senses, which are overwhelmed by those of the explored. The Grand Scribe is then able to unravel this event, freeze it, or even reverse it.

But it's a complete mess to find the right memory, the right era, as some people's memories can be very poorly organized, or even confused. Sometimes it's just impossible to recall a specific memory, or to recall it in a form that's vastly altered (a fact observed during practical work sessions that take place on some mornings during these famous seminars).

It's not easy, and it requires constant concentration.

However, the representation of a Grand Regent's memory is much more refined, more elegant than a maelstrom of events whose jumbled stacking might sometimes disconcert novices. Indeed, what I perceived was entirely different.

I saw what seemed to be a pale sky, cloudless, a dead landscape obscured by thick fog through which pierced a tree of light, of a light blue, so clear it almost neared white. It was luminous, but not blinding, for, I was here only in spirit, accompanied by an agape Robert Grognon, both of us with mental pink slippers on our mental feet, surrounded by this thick mist that seemed to dance with our ankles only to forget them immediately afterward and thus resume its mysterious path as fluffy as its thickness.

"What is this thing?" stammered Robert Grognon.

"Your memory, Grand Regent."

"We said 'Robert'," he sighed almost absentmindedly, eyes still fixed on the tree of his memory.

"Yes, my apologies. This is your memory, Robert."

"How is that possible?"

"It's... It's just how it is. The Great Archives list the cases of mental collections of the Great Regents who preceded you, and in every case, we end up with this... Great shiny blue pine tree. Crazy, right? Especially since not everyone has this, it's an additional way to confirm that you are a Great Regent. For the others, there's just an endless mess of sounds and images, and it's just as hard to find what you're looking for in there as it is to find a hat in a tornado of wigs, if you see what I mean."

The Great Regent nodded sparingly, without taking his eyes off the tree.

He approached, the tree looming over him. Looking closely, one could notice that the branches of this tree branched out more and more, until they became invisible to the naked eye. Here, no bark, but stretched images wrapping each branch, snapshots of memories, with such perfect temporal precision that one could watch their progression just by moving one's gaze from end to end. I gestured for Robert to observe. For every snapshot we observed, it seemed the memory expanded, enveloping us.

"Yes..." He said dreamily, "I remember this... The picnic..."

I decided to let him go, to meet his memories, to embrace the process. My mothers always used to say, "If you want to unde...stand, you've got to get you... hands in it," with their distinctive accent from the region of Héloé where the "r"s sounded like a gentle exhalation taking its time to leave and fade away, before giving way to the following syllables queuing up. And that's exactly what Robert Grognon was slowly doing. "Get your hands in it."

The Robert Grognon from a week ago wouldn't have been capable of acting this way, all sprawled out that he was, in his comfortable little life, his simple and predictable job, with his little house next to his parents', who were technically his neighbors, with his cherished library, his armchair that, under the weight of years and his passable body, was gently but surely molding to his posterior over time. The Robert who, looking at the world through his kitchen window, or his television, wouldn't have even taken the first step towards the memory tree. But in truth, a lot has happened, and Robert Grognon is today very, very far from home.

He looked with a slight emotion, nostalgia, or sadness, (I have trouble at reading human emotions, sorry, not my thing), at a glimpse of a memory on one of the branches. It showed a little boy picnicking with his parents, on a green hill overlooking a city that I imagined to be his childhood home. The sky is blue. He plays rolling down the grassy hill like a sausage that had escaped from their picnic basket. He rolls, and rolls, laughing, and his parents look at each other, laugh, then get an idea, and do the same. The little family is united at the bottom of the hill, laughing heartily. Then they climb back up the slope, out of breath, grass stains on their jeans ("it's okay, it'll be a memory," reads on the lips of the dad). And they eat, cherry tomatoes, slices of cucumber cut lengthwise, with which they will inevitably have a sword fight with. Indeed, Robert Grognon's life was beautiful back then.

"I remember," he said, "my parents improvised the picnic, just like that. That's how my parents are. They want to do something, they do it. No limits, no barriers. I sometimes found them maybe a bit too extreme, but I don't have any bad memories with them."

Interesting, I thought.

"What is that?" Pointing to a specific branch with his finger.
"That, Robert, is the beauty of your mind, it's another distinctive signs that you are a Grand Regent."
"What do you mean?"

"The context."

"The context?"

"The context."

"The context?!"

"Your brain records, like many forms of life, a sequence of your existence. But you, you record more than that. Your connection with the universe is such that you unknowingly record what happens in your perimeter, over a quite extended period depending on the memory."

He looked at me, not understanding.

"Let me show you."

And I led him to the top of the tree—without really knowing how, I must admit. There, we saw our conversation on the terrace of the Good Land. Taking a branch, we were able to see the Grand Servants, talking among themselves, even though they were at a respectable distance from us.

"We could, for example, immerse ourselves in this memory and hear what they're saying."

"No way?"

"I assure you, yes. That's how Grand Regents are, let's say, wired to the world around them. And it's a godsend for a Grand Scribe."

"And since when do I have this in my head?"

"Theoretically, since the creation of the universe."

"The Engineer?"

"The Engineer."

"So, you know him? Why does he do that?"

"Honestly, no idea... Alright. Your early life. Let's see if I can find something interesting about your parents to start with... If that's okay with you?"

"Wait, what? About my parents?"

"Yes, you have that in your genetic memory normally. And what I saw with you earlier make me curious about them. Plus, you are here because of them, don't you ? So, do I have your consent?"

"Uh... Let's say that... Well yes, but uh..."

"Don't forget, I'm not forcing you in any way, and if there's a memory you don't like, I won't take it into account."

Robert looked at me intently, then at the tree.

"Fine... Lead the way, captain."

We bent down to approach the base of the trunk, which grew larger as we neared it—or were we shrinking?—and then, beneath the trunk, we saw a root. We approached it, and images became clearer, enlarged, enveloping us like an oversized blanket. From where we were, suddenly aware of being spectators of an event unfolding on a boat—or rather, no, on