Caych

Caych is a term used in speculative fiction and worldbuilding to describe a device, system, or practice for capturing and preserving experiential knowledge—such as memories, skills, or cultural narratives—and for transmitting that knowledge to others. In many settings, caychs function as repositories that blend technology with ritual, memory, and identity. Access to a caych is typically mediated by a key, a consent protocol, or a ceremonial act, and retrieval may alter the user’s memory or skill set, raising questions about trust and authenticity.

The word caych is a coined term with no single canonical origin in published sources. It is commonly presented as a portmanteau of “cache” and “catch” or as an entirely invented root, designed to evoke storage and transmission of living knowledge.

Caychs may take diverse forms: physical objects (such as crystal prisms or carved tokens) that store data in encoded patterns; digital networks that synchronize across users; or oral-tradition frameworks in which narratives are repeatedly cayched into communal memory. They typically involve encoding processes that balance fidelity with resilience, and they may impose limits to prevent memory corruption or over-reliance on a single source.

In-world implications include shifts in education, governance, and ethics, as communities debate who may caych, what may be stored, and how to guard against manipulation, data decay, or cultural homogenization.

See also: memory, archive, data cache, artifact, narrative tradition.