The Forgotten Meme

Cover art by Shibara

**The Forgotten Meme** is a 2018 album set in New Albion. It is the first album in The Fairypunk Trilogy.

The album stars Kerttu Aarnipuu as the Meme, Psyche Corporation narrating as Han-Mi and Paul Shapera as Raven. It was released on June 30, 2018.

## Plot

Han-Mi introduces the setting of the story. It all starts with a place where the memes go when they are forgotten as well as the rest of cyber-information, The Room Beneath New Albion. It is the space AIs used to use for experiments and once they were gone the doors were not properly closed. (*It Would Be Sad and Shameful to Not Begin a Fairy Tale with Once Upon a Time*)

Among those creatures (*You Wouldn't Believe What Kinds of Bacteria Reside in the Most Familiar of Places*) is the Little Meme. She finds herself in the dark space surrounded by the creatures. She cannot move and she collects pieces of scrap metal to create a shell, which makes her resemble a bug.

Now that she can move, the Meme lets nothing stop her. She climbs through the tunnels below the city. Unlike the other non-organic creatures, the Meme is not happy in the dark room, she wants love. (*Just Because You Become Woke in a Dank and Poorly Lit Place is No Reason Not to Say Good Morning**)*

The Meme finds herself in a city. The city is New Albion. (*No Point Being Extra About It: New Albion 11**)* It is overwhelming and the Meme can't make her way safely until a stranger picks her up. That stranger is none other than Raven, admiring the grotesque appearance of the Meme. The Meme is insecure, but Raven tells her that to him she is beautiful and looks through the narratives, deciding where to put her. (*If You Never Talked to Strangers You Would Never Meet Anybody*)

Suddenly, the Meme makes a decision to climb high above the buzzing streets and away from the danger of being trampled. She climbs a building where in a small, dark room she finds a beautiful girl Rebecca. The girl sits in the room, tubes hanging out of her and the Meme falls in love with her. (*Climbing Very Tall Things is Not Only Good Exercise, It Encourages an Existential Look at Your Mortality*)

Rebecca is inside a virtual reality, a game with Arabian Nights theme. She barely ever plugs out and the Meme watches and admires her. Finally, the Meme summons the courage and crawls onto Rebecca's lap. She feels deep love for Rebecca but fears the moment Rebecca opens her eyes and sees what the Meme looks like. (*If You are Too Hip and Jaded for Sweet Little Love Songs We Pity You*)

The Meme starts to notice that Rebecca is starting to waste away. She realizes that Rebecca will die if she doesn't unplug and decides to join the game in order to lure Rebecca out. The two of them meet in the game and even became friends. It is the best time of the Meme's life. She and Rebecca became close and even admit romantic love for each other.

But it all makes the Meme fear the moment Rebecca sees her even more.

Despite enjoying her time deeply, the Meme starts noticing that the game functions as a psyche vacuum, drawing some deeper and deeper until there was no return for them. (*When Your Mom Wants You to Cut Down on Video Games It's Because She Loves You*)

It turns out that the creatures from the dark room have the ability to infiltrate some deep corners of cyber-reality. They evolved to feed on the psyche of the gamers in the VR. Rebecca falls victim to the trap and the creatures come for her. However, the Meme wraps herself around Rebecca and doesn't let the creatures take her.

The creatures recognize the Meme as one of them. But the Meme fights. She asks and begs them to let Rebecca go, telling them that Rebecca is all she loves. The creatures don't let go. The situation escalates, the Meme calling to other memes across the net for assistance. Together, the memes release the psychic residue they had accumulated from their amused hosts over time. The resultant psychic typhoon forms a tunnel that pulls Rebecca and Meme back from the trap, into the waking world.

Finally, Rebecca opens her eyes in her dark little room and finds a strange looking bug sitting on her lap, looking at her with love. (*Homecomings that Don't Suck Rarely Make Good Stories*)

## Characters and Credits

Kerttu Aarnipuu as Meme, a meme

Psyche Chimere as Han-Mi, the narrator

Paul Shapera as Raven, a post-human

Cover art by Shibara

## Soundtrack

"You Wouldn't Believe What Kinds of Bacteria Reside in the Most Familiar of Places" - Han-Mi, Creatures
"Just Because You Become Woke in a Dank and Poorly Lit Place is No Reason Not to Say Good Morning" - Han-Mi, Meme
"No Point Being Extra About It: New Albion 11" - Meme
"If You Never Talked to Strangers You Would Never Meet Anybody" - Han-Mi, Raven, Meme
"Climbing Very Tall Things is Not Only Good Exercise, It Encourages an Existential Look at Your Mortality" - Han-Mi, Meme, Geek Chorus
"If You are Too Hip and Jaded for Sweet Little Love Songs We Pity You" - Meme
"When Your Mom Wants You to Cut Down on Video Games It's Because She Loves You" - Han-Mi, Meme
"Homecomings that Don't Suck Rarely Make Good Stories" - Han-Mi, Meme, Creatures

## Trivia

* A full transcript of the album is here
* Rebecca's reaction to the Meme's appearance was not explicitly stated. However, based on the key and Han-Mi's tone, a happy ending is implied. In The Broken Cyborg, The Meme and Rebecca are referred to as being wives, so they got married at some point between the two albums.
* *The Forgotten Meme* is one of the rare Paul Shapera albums to end on a happy note, unlike his other better-sweet or tragic endings. Notably Lauren Osborn does not appear on this album, leading to the Queen of Death theory that says that whenever Lauren sings on an album a character must die.
* There are 4 behind the scenes videos of recording the album, all titled "Recording Kerttu". Most of these videos are quite bizarre (Paul is singing songs in public and talking about wearing Kerttu's skin, Kerttu is chasing Paul around her apartment etc.), but the third video shows Kerttu singing a part of the last track, "Homecomings That Don't Suck Rarely Make Good Stories". (video 1, video 2, video 3, video 4)
* The Forgotten Meme is Keyboard Cat
* The album is mostly composed of entirely original tracks, but it features *New Albion 11* track with musical callbacks to the earlier *New Albion* tracks - most notably the theme of the *The Dolls of New Albion* reproduced for the album's genre.