Summary

This short story is related from a first-person limited point of view, told by the narrator, Adam Woods. Adam, along with people named Quimbly and Barrett, form a team that carefully designs memories for people called beamed memories. They design everything from births of children to skydiving to family vacations. They call themselves mapmakers and pride themselves in quality work. Quimbly chooses to manufacture dark and painful memories for people. Adam does not like this change, and he often leaves the office to get breaks from the darkness. Adam meets a woman named Cynthia while trying to venture away from Quimbly’s dark memories. Cynthia is different from anyone Adam knows. She does not beam her memories because she lives her own. She does not use technology or hook up to technology in any way. She reads paper books and writes in journals...