Mei Lin’s reservation book filled with precise requests: “A summer afternoon in 1920s Tuscany,” “a winter’s night in 1960s Tokyo.” No names, no dishes—only ancestral experiences. She logged each in her digital ledger, tagging them Memory Transfer: Confirmed, Identity Erosion: Moderate.

In the kitchen, her knife struck the board in exact intervals, a rhythm that stilled the static in her skull. Heirloom seeds—her grandmother’s rice, great-aunt’s bitter melon—hummed faintly in their jars, a subsonic thrum she felt in her molars. Although anosmic since the surgery, Mei tasted through the lattice of memories embedded in the plants. Each dish pulsed with inherited sensation: the grit of 1940s paddy soil, the metallic tang of monsoon air.

That night, Mr. Jenkins, a regular, consumed her signature congee. His breath hitched. “I’m in a field,” he whispered, “bare feet in flooded earth. I’m harvesting rice.” His voice carried the cadence of someone not his own. Later, when asked about his wedding, he frowned. “I see red lanterns… but I don’t think they were ours.”

Mei paused, fingers hovering over her tablet. Memory Displacement: Severe. Subject replaced autobiographical core with foreign lineage. She tapped out a three-count rhythm—her grandmother’s lullaby—on the steel counter.

The next evening, she cooked without heirlooms. Store-bought rice, ordinary broth. As she stirred, the silence in her skull felt heavier. No ancestral hum, no phantom textures. Just heat, motion, the scrape of a spoon on a pot.

She plated the plain congee, steam rising like a question. It was an act of resistance. And a mourning. To protect their memories, she had to abandon her own.