The Last Memory

The Last Memory

The year was 2147. Humanity had finally achieved what the architects of the New Order called absolute harmony. There was no war, no crime, no suffering. And most importantly—no emotions.

For nearly a century, emotions had been deemed the root of all chaos. Love led to pain. Anger led to violence. Sadness led to despair. The solution? The Purge. A mandatory neural implant, installed at birth, that stripped individuals of irrational feelings, replacing them with calculated logic.

People still lived, worked, and functioned. But they did not laugh. They did not cry. They simply existed.

Except for one man.

Elias knew he was different. He didn’t know why, but deep inside, buried beneath the cold precision of his thoughts, something stirred. A flicker of something more.

Then, one day, he saw her.

It happened at the Archives, one of the few remaining places that stored records of the past. Elias was assigned to Memory Erasure, tasked with reviewing ancient human experiences and ensuring that no traces of the past emotions seeped into the present world.

But that day, as he scanned an old file, something changed.

The footage was grainy, distorted, but it showed two people—a man and a woman, dancing in the rain.

Elias had never seen anything like it before. The way they moved, the way they smiled… it was beyond his comprehension.

Then he saw her face.

And something in his mind broke.

The woman in the recording was real. Not just a fragment of a forgotten past, but someone Elias had seen before. Someone he knew.

Her name was Mira. She worked in the Archives, like him, but they had never spoken beyond protocol. And yet, as he watched the video, something deep and unexplainable surged within him. A feeling. Recognition.

The moment their eyes met across the silent halls of the Archives, he knew. She remembered too.

That night, they met in secret. Words were dangerous, but the silence between them carried a weight heavier than any law.

"I see them in my sleep," Mira whispered. "Memories that aren’t mine. Feelings I don’t understand."

Elias exhaled sharply. "Then we’re not alone."

For the first time in his life, he felt something warm bloom in his chest. Something dangerous.

Hope.

The next few weeks became a quiet rebellion. In the Archives, they found more recordings—more pieces of what had been stolen. Laughter, love, music, pain. A world rich with what they had lost. With what had been taken.

They practiced speaking in whispers. Mira taught Elias the sound of laughter, an unfamiliar but exhilarating noise. Elias traced the old books with his fingers, letting the words wrap around his thoughts, imagining a time when people spoke freely.

But the New Order did not tolerate imperfection.

One evening, as Elias and Mira met in the shadows of an abandoned district, the sirens wailed. The Sentinels had found them.

Elias turned to Mira. "Run."

"Not without you."

Before he could respond, the Sentinels descended. Metallic, expressionless enforcers, designed to eradicate disorder.

Mira reached for his hand, gripping it tight, as if holding onto the past itself.

The trial was swift.

"You have been found guilty of emotional corruption," the High Council declared. "The Purge will be completed."

Elias stood tall. Mira’s hand brushed against his. The last touch he would ever feel.

As the implant override initiated, his vision blurred. His thoughts dimmed. The warmth in his chest faded.

Mira’s eyes—full of something he now understood as fear—were the last thing he saw.

The world faded.

And then—

A single image remained.

A man and a woman, dancing in the rain.

But then something shifted.

A spark ignited in the void. His mind, meant to be wiped clean, fought back. The images—the feelings—would not disappear.

Somewhere, deep inside, Elias resisted.

A flicker of something old. Something powerful. A memory that refused to die.

Then, a whisper in the darkness.

Mira’s voice. “Remember.”

His eyes snapped open.

The Sentinels thought they had erased him. The High Council thought they had won.

But Elias Holloway still remembered.

And now, he would fight.