Crane's Foot

I've been mulling over this idea for a while now. What if we can access our blood memories? We can follow our chromosomes back to our ancestors. At the onset of puberty, a flood of memories from times and places long past course through our minds like a long-repressed trauma. Only with years of mental discipline and concentration can we reach back to the very birth of our cultural identities with coherence. Our parents, our grandparents, our great-grandparents and so on and so forth, as far back as our minds allow. Thousands of years, hundreds of generations. We remember their experiences, their skills, their thoughts and dreams, everything up until the conception of the younger generation. Words and songs and stories lost to time are immediately resurrected. Their personalities bleed into our own as we experience their lives as our own. Being an Irish farmer, a Viking raider, a Russian serf, an American slave, a Spanish conquistador, a Roman soldier, a Scythian rider, a Venetian banker, a plague survivor. A stranger across the world is remembered as a brother in a previous life. Clans and nations once dust are restored to life with bonds as strong as childhood adventures. Bitter rivalries and holy wars long dead are rendered fresh.