Memory, Orientation, Origins in Mnemonic

Mnemonic begins with a monologue about the location of memory processes in the brain and continues on to contemplate the genealogy of humankind:

"Anyway, our job, the job of remembering, is to reassemble, to literally re-member, put the relevant members back together. But what I am getting at is that remembering is essentially not only an act of retrieval but a creative thing, it happens in the moment, an act, an act of the imagination. Of course if memory is this chaotic map it’s highly likely that you will lose your way and retrieve or imagine something you didn’t expect because you take a different route than the one you thought you should. For example as I stand here trying to remember my text, for some reason my father is coming to my mind."

Without memory, the narrator surmises, humans would have no identity, no sense of orientation, and no sense of origin. Mnemonic draws heavily from proven methods of mapping human evolution and from the uncanny realization that methods of identification based on DNA sampling and other forms of dating the remains of human corpses reveal more information than exists about the recently deceased.