The Memory Merchants

The first time I sold a memory, it felt like letting go of a trapped butterfly. Dr. Chen's neural interface hummed against my temples as my summer in Venice—gondolas, gelato, and first kisses—transferred into the clinic's quantum storage array. The payment hit my account instantly: fifty thousand credits for a pristine first-love memory package.

I was one of the early adopters of MemTrade, back when people still questioned the ethics of memory commerce. But in 2045, with the economy in shambles and happiness at a premium, who could blame us? The rich wanted our joy, our adventures, our firsts. And we needed their credits.

The technology seemed foolproof at first. The recipients got to experience everything as if they'd lived it themselves—emotions, sensations, even the taste of that pistachio gelato by the Rialto Bridge.

I became a regular at Chen's clinic, trading away pieces of my past like vintage collectors' items. My childhood trip to Disney World, my college graduation, and my grandmother's secret recipe for dumplings—all converted to credits in my account. The wealthy loved the authenticity of my memories, especially the ones steeped in my Chinese-American heritage. "Exotic," they called them.

The glitch started small. I noticed it first when I couldn't remember if I'd actually been to Paris or just processed someone else's memory of the Eiffel Tower. Then came the morning I looked in the mirror and couldn't recall if my eyes had always been brown or if they'd once been blue. The boundaries between my memories and the ones I'd processed for quality control at the clinic began to blur.

I wasn't alone. Message boards filled with stories of identity confusion. A banker in Tokyo woke up speaking fluent Italian, convinced he'd grown up in Naples. A teenager in São Paulo had detailed memories of fighting in wars that ended before she was born. The memory marketplace had created a new kind of pandemic—identity dissolution.

Dr. Chen called it "neural cross-contamination." The failsafe designed to keep transferred memories properly tagged as artificial were breaking down. Our minds, ever-adaptive, were integrating these foreign memories into our fundamental narratives, rewriting our very sense of self.

The government shut down MemTrade three months ago, but it was too late for some of us. I now have memories of three different childhoods, two weddings (though I've never been married), and careers I never pursued. Sometimes I wake up tasting that gelato from Venice, but I'm no longer sure if I was the one who first tasted it.

The memory merchants promised us a revolution in human experience—a way to share our most precious moments and help others live lives they could only dream of. Instead, they created a generation of people who question every memory, every skill, every preference. Are my memories of learning to play piano really mine, or did they belong to someone else first? Do I actually love spicy food, or is that someone else's palette living in my mind?

They're developing a procedure to untangle the mixed memories, to restore our original identities. These borrowed experiences have become part of who we are now. And isn't that what memories are supposed to do—shape us, change us, make us who we are?

I still have the receipt from my first memory sale. Sometimes I look at it and try to remember how it felt to be someone who was just beginning to forget. But even that memory might not be mine anymore.

After all, in a world where memories can be bought and sold, who can say which pieces of our past truly belong to us?