  We provide an exact analytic description of decelerating, stopping and
re-accelerating optical solitons in atomic media. By virtue of this solution we
describe in detail how spatially localized optical memory bits can be written
down, read and moved along the atomic medium in a prescribed manner. Dynamical
control over the solitons is realized via a background laser field whose
intensity controls the velocity of the slow light in a similar way as in the
linear theory of electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT). We solve the
nonlinear model when the controlling field and the solitons interact in an
inseparable nonlinear superposition process. This allows us to access results
beyond the limits of the linear theory of EIT.
