The Memory Dealer

The Memory Dealer

By Mahboob Khan

In our world, forgetting has become a luxury.

People don’t talk about grief or healing anymore. They sell it. Bottled in bytes, zipped in crystal drives, and filed away in high-security vaults like old letters we’re too ashamed to read twice.

I never planned to become a memory dealer. No one does. But after my brother’s accident and the bills that followed, I took a job at one of the smaller memory clinics on the edge of East Block. Just until things got better. That was seven years ago.

Now I run my own little booth in an alley that always smells faintly of burnt plastic and rain, even when it hasn’t rained in weeks. Most people call it shady. I call it quiet. It's easier that way.

You’d be surprised how many people want to sell their memories. A mother who can’t handle the sound of her baby’s cry anymore. A war vet who jumps at the crack of thunder. A teenage girl who gave away her heart too soon and never got it back.

They come in. They sit down. They close their eyes. And when they open them again, something is missing. That’s my job. I make them forget.

It’s cleaner than it sounds.

Then, last Thursday, a man walked in wearing an old leather coat and eyes that looked like they hadn’t slept in years.

“I need this gone,” he said, placing a data crystal on the table.

I nodded, motioning to the scan chair. “Full memory removal?”

“Yeah. Everything linked to it.”

He didn’t give a name, and I didn’t ask. That’s part of the deal. Privacy is sacred in my line of work.

I plugged the crystal into my console and waited for the visuals to boot up. Normally I don’t watch the full stream. I just scan enough to verify and extract. But this one started with a tune I hadn't heard since childhood—a lullaby, sung off-key, but gently. A woman was humming it while brushing a little boy’s hair.

Something in my chest stirred.

I leaned closer, watching the boy squirm and smile in a way that felt... familiar.

The memory skipped to another scene: a small backyard with an orange plastic slide. The boy ran up and down, laughter echoing through the air. A dog barked in the background, a clumsy golden retriever chasing its tail. The man in the memory, younger but unmistakably the client, called out, “Dinner time, champ!”

The boy turned. His face fully visible now.

It was me.

I froze.

No, not someone who looked like me. Not a coincidence. It was me—down to the scar on my left eyebrow from when I fell off my bike at five. I recognized the chipped Superman mug on the porch table, the sunflower sticker on the backdoor. Things I’d always believed were part of my childhood.

I paused the stream.

My hands were trembling.

I looked at the man, now resting in the chair with the scan band on his temples. His breathing was slow. Calm. He trusted me.

But everything inside me was screaming.

I loaded up another clip from the same crystal. Birthday candles. Seven of them. A chocolate cake. That song again.

My mother was singing it.

Except… that wasn’t my mother. It was a woman I didn’t know. Her eyes were softer. Her voice carried more weight.

My world shifted beneath me. For a moment, I didn’t breathe.

I checked my personal memory files—those we all store privately in fragments, outside the system. Pictures. Old logs. School cards.

And suddenly, they looked strange. Off. Too clean. Like copies of copies.

My life wasn’t mine. At least, not the beginning.

I shut the terminal and woke the man.

“I can’t do this,” I said, voice low.

He opened his eyes slowly. “I figured.”

“You implanted these memories in me,” I said. “Didn’t you?”

He rubbed his face, suddenly looking even older. “Not just me. It was a joint decision. You were… broken. You don’t remember, and maybe that was the point. The doctors said this was kinder.”

“You’re saying I’m not who I think I am.”

“You’re still you,” he said. “Just a version of you with better memories.”

It should’ve made me furious. But all I felt was empty.

He left without another word, and I didn’t stop him.

I sat there for a long time, staring at the paused image of that birthday cake—seven candles flickering in the memory of someone else’s lie.

I don’t know if I’ll ever delete that memory. Maybe I’ll keep it. Maybe it’s better to live in the truth, even if it hurts.

Some people sell memories to forget.

Me? I just wish I knew which ones were really mine.