They injected the neural lace to bridge my brain to the data-stream. In 28 minutes, I downloaded fluent Portuguese—verbs, syntax, perfect accent. A complete success.

But with the language came ghosts. The scent of diesel and mangoes. Red dust under feet not my own. A woman’s voice singing an unnamed lullaby, threaded with a homesickness that now lives in my ribs.

The techs call it “non-target sensory recall.” Data noise. To me, it is a memory. Vivid and aching: a rusting green gate under a blistering sun, a place I have never been.

The future of learning is here, efficient and profound. It just comes woven with someone else’s lost past. I am fluent in a new world, and haunted by another.