The memory dealer

 

Experimental Short Story Series #58
Title: The Memory Dealer
By Faraz Parvez (Pen name of Professor Dr. Arshad Afzal, Former Faculty Member, Umm Al Qura University, Makkah, KSA)

In the steel-gray alleys of Elysium-9, memories weren’t sacred—they were sold.

You could walk into any Recollection Parlor, plug a chip behind your ear, and taste someone else’s past for the right price. Want to feel what it’s like to win a war? That’s 300 credits. Want the thrill of your first kiss, even if it wasn’t yours? 180 credits. Heartbreak? 50. Childhood joy? 400.

Memories were currency. Identity was a luxury.

And then came Naya.

A girl with no registration. No barcode. No parents. She wandered the edge of the Memory Market like static on a perfect broadcast. People ignored her until she began remembering things she never experienced—and things no one ever should.

She recalled a man being executed in a memory not hers. A meeting in a mirrorless room where officials plotted to erase history from people’s minds—not metaphorically, but literally. She saw a version of the city before the Memory Trade ever began. Clean skies. Real trees. Children with names.

Naya didn’t buy these memories.

They were hers.

The Memory Dealers wanted her contained. “Leak like that could bankrupt the Archive,” one whispered. Another: “She’s not a glitch—she’s the origin.”

Naya didn’t run. She walked straight into the Prime Vault—the most secure memory repository in Elysium-9—and touched the Core Node. What happened next has been retold in stammered whispers across alley fires and black-market channels.

The city blinked.

And everyone remembered.

What it was like to be human.

Why We Tell These Stories
This is entry #58 in our Experimental Short Story Series, where each tale is a reality slightly bent, broken, or blooming. The Memory Dealer explores the commodification of identity and the soul’s resistance to erasure.

As we approach our 60th tale and prepare to publish our collection in print and digital editions, we thank you—our travelers of words and wonder.

The mind forgets. But the heart remembers.

Read, Reflect, Return.
Because tomorrow, another story waits.

farazparvez1.blogspot.com
dr-arshadafzal.blogspot.com


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