The Emotional Exchange

The Emotional Regulation Act was passed as a solution to society's problems. Crime, conflict, even simple misunderstandings—all traced back to unpredictable human emotions. The solution was the Affekta-Tech headset, a device that could safely extract and store specific feelings. What began as therapy became commerce. Now, emotions were the most valuable commodity in a world that had traded feeling for function.

Dr. Aris Thorne ran one of the most reputable Emotional Exchanges in the Upper Sector. His clients were the wealthy elite who traded in feelings like collectors traded art. They sold their excess joy to finance luxury purchases, purchased confidence for important meetings, and rented temporary love to save their marriages.

"Mr. Henderson," Aris said to his morning client. "Your quarterly emotional balance shows a surplus of contentment. The market rate is excellent this week."

The businessman nodded eagerly. "Sell it all. My wife wants a summer home."

Aris watched the monitors as Henderson's peaceful demeanor drained away, replaced by the neutral blankness that had become the new normal. The man left richer but emptier, clutching his credit chip like a holy relic.

The real profits came from what Aris called "vintage emotions"—feelings harvested before the Great Regulation. Authentic, unpolluted by emotional commerce. His most prized possession was his own private collection, emotions he'd harvested from clients who couldn't pay their debts.

Then Lena walked in.

She was Lower Sector—he could tell by her worn clothing and the way she held herself, still full of unregulated feeling. Her application said she needed to sell three months of memories to pay for her father's medical treatment.

"I can offer you 5,000 credits for your spring memories," Aris told her, already calculating the premium he'd charge for such raw, authentic emotion.

Lena hesitated. "Will I forget my daughter's birthday? She took her first steps this spring."

"Temporarily," Aris assured her. "The memories return, faded, after the emotional content is processed. You'll remember the events, just not how they felt."

As the extraction began, Aris watched the screens with professional curiosity. But what he saw made his breath catch. Lena's emotions weren't just vibrant—they were pure in a way he hadn't seen in years. Her joy at her daughter's first steps registered off the charts, a golden wave that made the monitors sing.

He did something then that violated every professional ethic. He diverted a small sample to his private collection, labeling it "Vintage Motherhood Joy - Priceless."

Weeks passed. Aris found himself returning to that sample, experiencing Lena's memory during his breaks. The warmth of it, the unconditional love—it awakened something in him he'd thought long dead. He started noticing the emptiness in his clients' eyes, the mechanical nature of their purchased emotions.

When Lena returned, desperate to buy back what she'd sold, Aris saw his chance.

"I can't sell back the original emotions," he told her. "But I can offer you something better. A partnership."

He showed her his secret project—the Underground Feeling Library. A collection of emotions he'd been saving, not for sale, but for preservation. Emotions that could be shared, experienced, but never owned.

"You want to change the system from within," Lena realized.

"The system is built on scarcity," Aris explained. "But emotions aren't scarce—we've just been taught to treat them that way. Real feelings grow when shared."

Their first act of rebellion was small. Aris began "watering down" the emotions he sold to wealthy clients, keeping part of their intensity to redistribute to the Lower Sector. A little extra confidence for a job seeker here, a bit of hope for a struggling family there.

The effects spread like ripples. A artist in the Lower Sector, given a dose of creative inspiration, painted a masterpiece that stirred something in everyone who saw it. A teacher, gifted with patience, reached a troubled student everyone had given up on.

The Emotional Regulation Bureau noticed. Unexplained emotional fluctuations appeared in their data. People were feeling too much, too authentically.

When agents stormed Aris's Exchange, they found the main floor empty. But hidden beneath it, in a chamber Aris had built for this purpose, hundreds of people were experiencing something revolutionary—shared emotion. Not bought or sold, but given freely.

Lena stood beside him, holding her daughter. "They're remembering how to feel," she whispered.

Aris watched as people laughed and cried together, experiencing emotions without price tags or time limits. The Bureau agents hesitated, their training inadequate for this scene of raw human connection.

One agent removed his emotion-suppressing headset. Then another.

The system didn't collapse in a day. But in that moment, Aris knew they'd planted a seed. The most dangerous idea in a world that had commercialized feeling: that some things are too precious to have a price.