Remuent

Remuent is a fictional term used in speculative fiction and worldbuilding to denote a class of memory-modulating artifacts or technologies. In most portrayals, remuents are compact devices or jewelry that interact with neural activity to influence recall, either by enhancing a single memory, stabilizing a memory trace, or enabling access to a distributed memory repository.

Mechanism and forms vary by narrative, but remuents are often depicted as crystalline or biometric instruments that emit resonant fields tuned to individual brain patterns. They may function locally, improving recall of targeted events, or globally, linking a user to a communal archive. Some versions include consent safeguards, ritual preparation, or required calibration to align with ethical or legal norms within the story world.

Impact and themes commonly explored with remuents include memory ownership, consent, coercion, and the social consequences of pervasive recall. Narratives may probe privacy implications, the creation of memory markets, disparities in access, and the tension between personal autonomy and collective memory.

Etymology and status: the coinage remuent is a fictional term without a real-world etymology, introduced to evoke memory and return. As a narrative device, it lacks a canonical definition outside its fictional contexts, and its details are shaped by the world in which it appears.

See also: memory augmentation, data ethics, collective memory.