Memory Lane
An imaginative composed by Hunter (Year 10)
The City of Eidensa - once known around the world as the City of Memories - is now unrecognisable. I sit atop an abandoned train crate, with my legs dangling off the cold edge of the rusted steel, as I stare at the flashing neon signs flickering on and off from across the other side of the street.
‘MEMORIES SOLD HERE!’
‘LIVE MEMORY AUCTION’
It hadn’t always been like this; it felt like just yesterday families flocked around the Memory Gardens to share stories. Stories surely long gone, sold off to the highest bidder.
Imagine a world where people don’t just work for money, they sell their own memories. The invention of the Excalimer took the world by surprise - a needle device inserted into the mind to extract or implant any memory - leaving the human mind like a collage of multiple puzzle pieces that don’t fit quite right anymore.
Moments once priceless to one’s identity can now be traded for a slip of paper with some numbers on it: the warmth of your mother’s hug, the tingle in your gut after your first kiss, or the excitement running through the tunnel of graduation on the last day of primary school - all could simply be erased from your mind and sold away for loose change to someone you don’t know and never will.
The rich collect important memories like trophies on the shelf. They have the need to feel what others have truly felt - real laughter, real pride, real love. Yet they reject the pain and sadness that made it real. In contrast, the poor sell the memories they hold closest to their heart just to survive another week of slowly not being able to recognise their reflection in the mirror. Each extraction chips away shards of a slowly dissolving soul until there is barely anything holding them together. They begin to forget who they really are, walking the streets like shadows. There, but not really living.
Ever since the government declared memories a resource, the streets have echoed with broken footsteps, not laughter, not joy. Sorrow and sadness were disposable, temporary, optional - at least for the wealthy who had the means to rid themselves of their pain. Only those who had experienced something beautiful were considered valuable.
Experience itself became a form of currency.
I haven’t seen my mum in almost three months now. I don't think I could ever sell the memory of exchanging the priceless words “I love you” for the last time as I left the house to school, unaware she wouldn't be there when I came home. I still remember how she stood beside the door, her hands trembling ever so slightly as she handed me my lunchbox. Her words sounded softer than usual, and her noticeably fair cheeks sagged, creating a crease in her soft skin. She looked completely drained. If I lost this memory, I'd lose myself along with it. She was always there for me. I feel guilty. Maybe if I had gotten a job along with school she wouldn't have felt the need to sell away her soul, memory by memory just to keep food on the table.
The streets are suffocated with Excalimer shops, standing side by side like silent killers waiting to steal what’s left of a fading soul. The gentle ZZZZ of the needle pulling the past out of the people for a paycheck sends a cold shiver down my spine as I slowly ride past the neon red clinic
A young boy catches my eye.
He is probably about eleven or twelve and he sits in the reclined brown chair, nervously swinging his untied shoelaces. My gaze floats back up to the needle being prepared. My heart rises to my throat as I park my bike up against a thick oak tree and take a step closer to the posterised tinted window of the clinic. I think to myself, how could you possibly live with yourself, coming home to your family after erasing a kid's memory of his own…
He wouldn't have known any better.
A tear slowly drips down my cheek, chilled by the cold autumn breeze that shakes the brown leaves from above me. I turn to shield my face from the gush when I notice a bright red note stuck to the handle of my bike. I unfold the piece of paper and the jagged faint words pierced my thoughts like barbed wire.
‘They take what you treasure. We fight to give it back. Find us in the shadows before it’s too late - The Remnants.'
