I always got in trouble for my strong-will. I was a bad seed. Perhaps it is my paternal foremother who is to blame. A woman who, in self-defense, killed a Bolshevik soldier with an axe. Is it her epigenetic remnants that disrupt my chromosomal DNA sequencing? Science has proven what our ancestors once observed. That a curse and a blessing effect each of us from four generations before. We can never escape it. Shall I consider her trauma a curse or a blessing? Perhaps a bit of both. A curse if I am catastrophizing the state of our society, and a blessing if it has helped me see through all the lies.

I live in an era where neural-quantum interfaces allow humanity to trace and feel their ancestral memories. Health care providers call this the Ravel; recorded quantum vibrational knots across generations of genetic code. Clinicians install this Ravel in the minds of civilians under the guise of “mental wellness integration.” Consumers wait in anticipation reminiscent of a new iPhone release.

I didn’t. Something in my marrow spoke to me like a tuning fork against my ribs.

But a year ago, after enough people “healed” from their inherited trauma and started seeing the world in suspiciously identical ways, I caved. Not to comply, but to infiltrate.
My nightmares had become unbearable. A silver forest. Blood-stained snow. Screams in a language I only remember my grandfather speaking when he had led mealtime prayer. And then there was the axe. Not in my grasp, but deep inside me, beating like a little tyrant within me.

The Ravel Technician, a lanky man with iridescent implants where his eyebrows should have been, gave me the standard line. “Your ancestors stored truth in your blood. The Ravel just helps you decode it.” He was only half-lying.

The interface took hold fast. My body spasmed. I felt a sudden jolt behind my eyes, followed by visions. But these weren’t memories. They were simulations. Branching timelines, hyperreal and endlessly looping. My foremother’s moment with the soldier played again and again. In some versions, she fled. In others, she died. In one, she joined them. Yet always, I watched from inside her. Each variant left a trace in me. A moral fingerprint. My soul felt split in a hundred pieces, and still, the Ravel kept whispering: Which choice is the origin? Which path is yours? I resisted.

That’s when I met the anomaly. A young woman, maybe twenty, barefoot in a Soviet-era field hospital rendered in perfect virtual detail. She looked directly at me, though I was supposedly just a viewer.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” she said.

“Are you?” I asked.

“They loop us,” she said. “And they reprogram us to make us forget who we really were. But your line resisted. Your foremother was the last unbroken thread. That’s why they’re trying to overwrite her.”

My breath froze.

“The Ravel isn’t revealing ancestral truth,” she continued. “It’s rewriting it. Don’t you know the word ravel is a contranym, meaning to knot and unknot. The program is reframing trauma not to heal, but to erase resistance. They’re conditioning entire bloodlines to be more… pliable.”

I felt the axe again. It pulsated behind my rib cage.

“Why show me this?”

“I’m unable to disclose that information. But your bravery in facing the real of your past is rare. Most avoid it. That is why most humans don’t resist. They don’t want to remember what hurts them or the situations that cause them shame.”

The woman reached out, touched my temple, and in a flash, I saw the full horror. Algorithms editing lineages like code, deleting acts of rebellion, transforming moments of courage into guilt, defanging memory itself. The Ravel wasn’t a healing tool. It was an eraser. A technological form of denial.

Instead of complying, I pushed back. They had underestimated the echo in my blood. Story by story I faced and processed all my unwanted memories. I spoke with my ancestors, and digested their lived experience instead of canceling and deleting. It was hard. Perspective taking has always been difficult. In time, I won.
​
Sometimes late at night, I still dream of the axe. Not with fear, but with reverence. A reminder that our lived experience is not just a record; it’s a weapon against all the lies. And like the Ravel, our strong-will shackles and sets us free.

​

It was late. Way past closing. The pizza ovens were off, the floor mopped, and the neon “OPEN” sign still buzzed faintly in the window like it hadn’t gotten the memo. I was sitting on a yellow crate behind the counter, pulling off my flour-dusted sneakers and rubbing my arches when I saw her.

She was sitting on top of the take-out counter like it was the edge of a cliff, legs dangling, arms resting on her knees. She looked like she’d walked straight out of a thunderstorm. Hair windblown, cheeks sun-kissed, eyes wild. She wore cargo shorts, a faded army green tank top, and boots so worn down they looked fused to her feet.

“I never had an imaginary friend.”

“No,” she said, jumping down. “But you had a mythology. A version of yourself you carried like a lantern through your twenties. Remember the plan? Travel. Write a book in a cabin. Backpack through Patagonia. Heal people with your hands and your stories.”

“Let me guess,” I said. “You’re the ghost of who I used to think I’d be.”
​
She grinned. “Close. I’m who you planned to be. The one with the compass, the journal, and the steel mug always strapped to her pack. The one who never looked back.”

I exhaled. “It’s been a long day.”

“I know. Pepperoni shortage. Employee called in sick. And you had a suicidal client today, didn’t you?”

I blinked. “How do you know that?”

“Because I am you. Or at least the part you left behind somewhere between raising your kids, and saving your marriage.”

I rubbed my temples.

“You look tired,” she said, chewing a piece of beef jerky like it was gum.

“I have wondered when you’d show up,” I said. Because somehow, some part of me had been expecting this.

She grinned, hopping down with a quiet thud. “Figured I’d stop by. You’ve been feeling the itch.”

“What itch?”

She raised an eyebrow. “The one that hits when you’re folding laundry and listening to podcasts about people hiking the PCT. The one that whispers is this it? while you’re rinsing dishes. The one you silence with gratitude, because your life is good, but something in your bones still wants to howl.”

I didn’t say anything for a moment. Just leaned against the back door and looked at her. She was older than I remembered from the old daydreams. Not some twenty-something adventurer, but weathered, strong, like she’d lived a life worth writing down in a field journal. She looked like me, if I’d taken the other road.

“I’m not unhappy,” I said.

“I didn’t say you were.”

“I have three kids. A husband who tries. A business that keeps us fed. And I just finished my diploma. I’ve looked at my trauma. All of it. I became a counselor because of it.”

“And that’s beautiful,” she said softly. “Truly. You’ve done the work most people run from. You turned your pain into something that heals others. But tell me, when was the last time you sat by a fire and didn’t have to check your phone? Or slept outside just because it felt right? Or walked into the woods without a plan or a deadline?”

I looked at her, this rough-and-ready woman I used to sketch in notebooks and daydream about being when life felt unbearable. She was all instinct and wilderness, confidence and solitude. She was me without the self-doubt, the bills, the guilt.

“I don’t have time for—”

She cut me off. “Yes, you do. You make time for everything else. For their schedules. For your clients. For the budget and the eye appointments and the birthday parties. But you won’t give yourself a weekend in the wild?”

I sighed. “I chose this life.”

“And you’ve done it well,” she said. “But you didn’t cancel me. You just stopped inviting me.”
That one hit. I looked at her, and felt the truth settle in my chest like a warm ache. She wasn’t here to accuse me. She was here because I missed her.

“I thought becoming a grown woman meant letting you go,” I said.

She shook her head. “It meant making room for all of you. Not just the parts that serve others. You can be a mother, a wife, a therapist, and still crave a night alone under the stars, a dirt trail, wind in your face. You can want more and still love what you have.”

“I don’t want to blow up my life,” I said.

“I’m not asking you to,” she said. “I’m just asking you to remember me. And maybe pack a bag.”

She started walking toward the woods behind the shop, the way I used to sneak off as a girl, pretending I was on a quest. Before she disappeared into the trees, she turned and said, “You don’t need to become me. Just visit once in a while. I miss you.”

Then she was gone.

Not in a puff of smoke. Just gone.

I stood there for a while. Breathing in the scent of pizza grease and listening to the hum of the walk-in cooler.

Later, I kissed my husband’s head and checked on each of the kids. All of them sleeping, faces soft with the peace I’ve fought to give them.
​
Then I opened my journal and wrote:
I never had an imaginary friend. But I had a version of myself who climbed trees barefoot and believed the forest was a cathedral. I became someone else, someone good. But she’s still out there, waiting. Not angry. Just hoping I’ll show up. And maybe this fall, when the air cools, I’ll take a weekend. Just me and the trail.

​