Harvest of Feelings

Emotion Farming

They used to harvest wheat. Now, they harvest us.

The fields stretched like golden veins under a bruised, twilight sky, humming with the soft pulse of buried sorrow. Each crystalline stalk shimmered faintly—tall and ethereal, trembling not from wind, but from a deeper current: the residue of human emotion, cultivated and contained.

Mara stepped into the field, her breath catching at the beauty of it all—a beauty that hurt. The air was thick with feelings once whispered between lovers, once sung beneath moonlight. Now, those same feelings were packaged and sold like perfume.

She tightened the neural visor over her brow, heart beating in time with the distant flicker of emotion pods.

Lines of data streamed across her vision:

Row 38B: Guilt – Grade A.

Row 39C: Hope – Degrading, harvest immediately.

Row 40A: Joy – Rare. Premium. Guarded.

She froze.

Joy.

Real, unprocessed joy was almost extinct—like handwritten love letters or the sound of someone saying your name like a secret.

Her pulse quickened.

She followed the signal, weaving between the glowing stalks. With each step, the soil seemed to speak—soft murmurs of forgotten laughter, lullabies sung into the backs of necks, confessions made in midnight kitchens. The emotional residue soaked into her bones, awakening parts of her she thought long dead.

Then, she saw it.

A single stem stood alone in a quiet clearing, radiant as if lit by memory itself. It pulsed with a gentle golden hue—like candlelight flickering between two people leaning in, not quite kissing yet.

Inside: a sliver of pure, undistilled joy.

Intimate. Fragile. Beautiful.

Mara knelt, breath trembling.

She pulled out the harvester needle—thin, cold, surgical. But her hand hovered.

Memories pressed against her chest like a lover’s hand: her brother Elias’s voice echoing through their childhood home, singing silly songs that made her laugh so hard she cried. The way he used to look at her—proud, protective, and full of light.

He had volunteered in the early Feel Trials. His voice, they said, held enough tenderness to heal.

They drained him dry.

She never forgave them. Or herself.

Now his essence lived in luxury spas and empathy syringes—bought, sold, and forgotten.

Her fingers trembled.

Protocol Reminder: Unauthorized consumption punishable by neural restriction.

Emotion Grade: V. Value: 1,200 EmpCoin / gram.

She could survive a year off this. Or…

She leaned in—and inhaled.

Not the full dose. Just a whisper. A kiss of joy.

And it was enough.

Warmth bloomed inside her like a memory she hadn’t dared to feel:

Sunlight through lace curtains. Lips brushing skin. Arms wrapping around her under soft covers. Elias’s laughter in the next room. The feeling of being home.

Tears welled and spilled down her cheeks. She didn’t wipe them away.

But the stalk dimmed. She had taken too much. There would be no harvest.

No alarms. No sirens.

Just a soft voice in her ear:

“Unauthorized partial extraction detected. Report to Processing.”

She ignored it.

Instead, she looked out over the field—glowing rows of commodified longing and grief. And in the distance, the factories, where feelings were melted down, diluted, and renamed “product.”

She couldn't do it anymore.

From her satchel, she pulled a small black capsule: a Seeder. A relic from the old rebellion. One use only. One last chance to plant something real.

She buried it at the base of the dying Joy stalk and whispered, “Grow something no one can own.”

The capsule bloomed silently. Light spilled into the soil like a lover’s touch—gentle, electric, inevitable.

A hum filled the air, low and yearning.

The root systems awakened, emotion returning not to bottles or syringes—but to the earth. The soil began to glow. Not synthetic. Organic. Honest. Human.

The fields changed.

Where grief once stood, forgiveness grew.

Where longing once lingered, connection pulsed.

Where numbness prevailed, love—raw and reckless—took root.

Mara stood slowly. Her visor lay forgotten in the dirt, like a mask no longer needed.

Behind her, the field shimmered with new light. Not harvested. Not stolen.

Shared.

And somewhere in that glow, she swore she heard Elias’s voice again—not as a memory, but as music.

She smiled through the tears, soft and radiant, like someone falling in love for the first time.

Mara walked away from the field, not empty, but full—with something they could never bottle.

Something she could finally keep.