MEMORY INN

By Yudi Zhang

Literary Work

This short story began with an idea: that AI can store, reproduce, and amplify our memories. It is based on a piece I wrote years ago. With the assistance of ChatGPT 4o and Claude 3.7 Sonnet, I reworked the old text—refining the narrative, translating from Chinese to English, and adjusting diction.

"Memory Inn" centers on memory—reimagined, reconstructed, and blended. Set aboard an old, drifting starship, the story follows the innkeeper and those who come and go, tracing time’s erosion and preservation of what we remember at once. For the writing process itself, the focus was not on how technology represents memory, but on how a person reinterprets the past through imagination. I discussed and coordinated with the AIs; the memory itself, though, remained blurred, displaced, and incomplete.

This is not a story about permanence. It is a reflection on the brevity of memory. Human experience stays briefly at certain points in time, like travelers, leaving moments behind. Memory connects emotion and being, but it cannot be kept whole. It fades. It shifts. It may be forgotten. And still, we move on.