The recovery device looked nothing like the Harvester. Where the Memory Farm's machine was sleek and modern, Dr. Webb's equipment was a collection of wires and sensors that seemed held together by willpower and electrical tape. The chair was old leather, cracked in places, and the display screen flickered with static. "I know it doesn't look impressive," Dr. Webb said, adjusting a dial on the console. "But this equipment can do things the Memory Farm's machines can't. It can reach deeper. Access memories that have been buried, modified, or erased." "Buried?" I asked. "You mean memories that were deliberately hidden?" "Sometimes deliberately. Sometimes the mind hides them itself, as a protective mechanism. Trauma, pain, fear, these things can cause the mind to wall off certain experiences, to make them inaccessible to conscious recall." Dr. Webb met my eyes. "The question is: which type of buried memory are we dealing with?" I didn't have an answer. I wasn't sure I wanted one. "Are you ready?" Dr. Webb asked. I nodded. He attached sensors to my temples, forehead, and the base of my skull, the same positions the Memory Farm used, but with equipment that felt heavier, more intrusive. The leather chair creaked as I settled back. "I'm going to guide you through this," Dr. Webb said. "You'll remain conscious throughout. I need you to describe what you see, what you feel, what you remember. Don't hold back, even if the memories are painful." "Even if they're not what I expect?" "Especially then." --- The process began with a low hum, a vibration that seemed to come from inside my skull. Unlike the Memory Farm's extractions, which felt like a gentle pulling, this felt like something being pushed aside, barriers being moved, walls being broken down. "Focus on your childhood," Dr. Webb's voice came from somewhere far away. "Any memory. Any fragment. Let it surface." I thought about the bicycle lesson, the memory I had sold just days ago. But instead of the golden afternoon, the red bicycle, the encouraging voice of my father, something else emerged. A white room. The image came suddenly, sharp and clear in a way my other memories never were. The walls were white, the ceiling was white, the floor was white. Everything was sterile, clinical, cold. In the center of the room was a table. On the table was a child. I was the child. "What do you see?" Dr. Webb's voice was calm, measured. "A white room. I'm on a table. There are people around me, adults. They're wearing masks." The words came slowly, as if I was describing a dream. "One of them is holding something. A device. It's glowing." "Stay with it. What happens next?" The device touched my forehead. I felt a pressure, a sensation of something being pulled, not a memory this time, but something deeper. Something that felt like part of who I was. "It hurts," I said. "They're taking something from me. I'm crying. I want my mother." "Where is your mother?" I looked around the white room. The adults in masks were moving, working, ignoring my cries. But there was someone in the corner, two figures, watching. A man and a woman. Their faces were visible, not masked. And they were crying too. "I see them," I said. "My parents. They're watching. They're... they're not stopping it." "Describe them. What do they look like?" I focused on the woman's face. She was thin, with dark hair pulled back in a severe bun. Her eyes were red from crying, her hands pressed against her mouth as if to hold back screams. She wore a uniform, a gray jumpsuit with a number on the chest. The man beside her was equally thin, equally worn. He had the same uniform, the same number. His hand was on the woman's shoulder, but his face was twisted with an expression I couldn't name. Not anger. Not fear. Something worse. Resignation. "They're wearing uniforms," I said. "Like workers. Like..." The realization hit me. "Like Memory Farm workers." The memory continued. The device on my forehead hummed and glowed. The adults in masks worked efficiently, their movements practiced and precise. And my parents, my real parents, watched from the corner, tears streaming down their faces. "Why aren't they stopping it?" I asked. "Why are they letting this happen?" "Stay with the memory," Dr. Webb said. "Don't analyze yet. Just observe." I watched. The procedure continued for what felt like hours, though in memory time was fluid, unreliable. When it was finally over, the adults in masks removed the device and stepped back. One of them made a note on a tablet. "Subject 734," he said. "Memory extraction complete. Primary childhood memories harvested. Ready for implantation sequence." Implantation sequence. The words echoed in my mind. The adults in masks weren't just taking my memories, they were preparing to replace them. "Bring in the template," another voice said. A door opened. A new adult entered, carrying a small device. He connected it to the machinery, and suddenly the air was filled with images, golden afternoons, loving parents, birthday parties with castle cakes. The perfect childhood I had always remembered. But it wasn't my childhood. It was someone else's. "No," I whispered. "That's not... that's not real." "Stay with it," Dr. Webb said. "You need to see this." The images flowed into me, filling the spaces where my real memories had been. I felt them taking root, weaving themselves into my consciousness, becoming what I would remember as truth. The golden light, the loving parents, the endless joy, all of it implanted, artificial, false. And my real parents, my original parents, watched from the corner as their daughter was erased and replaced. When the memory ended, I was crying. Dr. Webb had removed the sensors and was sitting across from me, his expression grave. I could see in his eyes that he had expected something like this, that he had seen it before. "How old was I?" I asked. "In that memory?" "Based on the neural patterns, I would estimate four or five years old. Young enough for the implantation to take hold completely. Young enough that you would never question what you remembered." "My parents... my real parents. They were Memory Farm workers?" "Likely Providers themselves. The system often uses the children of Providers as subjects for memory implantation. It's more efficient, the children are already in the system, already accessible." "They sold me." The words tasted bitter. "They sold my childhood to the Memory Farm." "It's more complicated than that." Dr. Webb's voice was gentle. "Providers often have no choice. The system demands a certain quota of memories, and when adults can't meet it, the pressure falls on their children. Your parents may have been forced to cooperate. Or they may have been deceived about what would happen to you." "Deceived? They watched! They watched while strangers took my memories and replaced them with lies!" "I know." Dr. Webb was silent for a moment. "I know it's painful. But you need to understand, this is how the system works. The Memory Farm doesn't just sell memories. It manufactures them. It takes real experiences from some people and gives them to others. And sometimes, it takes memories from children who are too young to consent, too young to understand what they're losing." I thought about my childhood, the golden afternoons, the loving parents, the endless joy. All of it borrowed. All of it stolen from someone else's life. And my real childhood, the white room, the masked figures, the parents who watched as their daughter was erased, hidden beneath layers of implanted lies. "Can I get them back?" I asked. "My real memories?" "Some of them. The implantation process doesn't erase original memories completely, it buries them, suppresses them. With time and treatment, we can recover fragments. But not everything. Some things are lost forever." I sat in the old leather chair, surrounded by equipment that looked like it belonged in a museum, and grieved for a childhood I had never known I lost. The perfect memories I had sold for years, the memories that had made me a Premium Provider, were not mine to sell. They had never been mine. They were stolen goods.
I went home to confront my parents. The apartment I had grown up in was in a modest building in the residential district, not luxurious, but comfortable. The kind of place where a middle-class family might raise a child. The kind of place that suggested stability, normalcy, love. But everything I remembered about that apartment was a lie. I had called ahead, telling them I was coming to visit. They had sounded happy to hear from me, their voices warm, familiar, exactly as I remembered them. But now, knowing what I knew, those voices sounded different. Performed. Professional. My mother opened the door before I could knock. She was exactly as I remembered, soft features, autumn-colored hair, a smile that crinkled the corners of her eyes. The same smile I had seen in photographs, the same smile I had tried and failed to recall in my memories. "Elena! It's so good to see you." She pulled me into an embrace, and I let her, my body rigid with tension. "Come in, come in. Your father is in the kitchen. He's making your favorite, lasagna." I stepped inside. The apartment was exactly as I remembered it, family photos on the walls, comfortable furniture, the smell of cooking filling the air. Everything designed to feel like home. But it wasn't home. It was a set. And these people were not my parents. --- My father emerged from the kitchen, wiping his hands on a towel. He was tall and broad-shouldered, with a smile that crinkled the corners of his eyes, just like my mother's. Just like the photographs. Just like the implanted memories. "There's my girl," he said. "How are you doing? How's work?" "Work is fine." I stood in the middle of the living room, not sitting, not relaxing. "I need to talk to you both. About something important." My mother's smile faltered slightly. "Is everything okay? You seem tense." "I'm not tense. I'm angry." I took a breath. "I know the truth. About who I am. About who you are." My father and mother exchanged a glance. It was brief, barely a second, but I caught it. The look of two people who had been waiting for this moment. "What do you mean?" my father asked. His voice was calm, steady. Professional. "I mean I know you're not my parents. I know you're actors. I know my entire childhood was manufactured." The words came out harder than I intended. "I know my real parents were Memory Farm workers who sold me to the system. And I know you were hired to play a role." Silence. The apartment suddenly felt very small. Then my mother spoke. "Who told you this?" "Does it matter? Is it true?" My father set down the towel. He moved to the couch and sat down, gesturing for my mother to join him. They sat together, their body language suggesting a united front. "It's true," my father said. "We're not your biological parents." Hearing it confirmed was different from suspecting it. The words hit me like a physical blow. "You're actors," I repeated. "You were hired to, what? Give me a fake childhood? Make me believe I had a loving family?" "We were hired to give you a good life." My mother's voice was soft, pleading. "Elena, please, sit down. Let us explain." "I don't want to sit down. I want the truth." "The truth is complicated." My father leaned forward. "Yes, we were hired by the Memory Farm. Yes, we were paid to play the role of your parents. But that doesn't mean what we felt for you wasn't real." "Real?" I laughed bitterly. "You were paid to love me. That's not real." "At first, maybe. But over the years..." My mother's eyes glistened. "You became our daughter. In every way that matters. We raised you, we cared for you, we watched you grow. The money stopped mattering a long time ago." They told me the story. They were both actors, struggling performers who had taken a job that seemed too good to be true. The Memory Farm needed people to play roles for children who had been selected for memory implantation. The children would be given new memories, new identities, and they needed parents to complete the illusion. The pay was good. The hours were reasonable. And all they had to do was pretend to love a child who wasn't theirs. "We thought it would be easy," my father said. "Just a job. But then we met you. You were five years old, and you had just been through... something. We didn't know what. But you were scared and confused, and you needed someone to care for you." "So we did," my mother continued. "We cared for you. Along the way, it stopped being pretend." "The Memory Farm wanted us to maintain distance," my father added. "They said emotional attachment could compromise the project. But we couldn't help it. You were our daughter. Maybe not by blood, but by choice. By love." I listened to their story, feeling nothing. Or rather, feeling too much, anger, betrayal, confusion, grief. All tangled together in a knot I couldn't unravel. "Why didn't you tell me?" I asked. "All these years. You let me believe a lie." "Because the truth would have destroyed you." My mother reached out, as if to touch my hand, but pulled back. "The Memory Farm told us what would happen if you knew. They said children who learned the truth often couldn't cope. They became unstable. Some of them... some of them didn't survive." "So you protected me by lying to me." "We protected you by loving you." My father's voice was firm. "Whatever else might be true, that part is real. We love you, Elena. We've loved you since you were five years old. And nothing, not the money, not the Memory Farm, not the truth, can change that." I left the apartment without eating the lasagna. My parents, my actors, my caregivers, my whatever-they-were, stood in the doorway, watching me go. They didn't try to stop me. They didn't try to explain further. They just watched, their faces a mixture of sadness and resignation. I walked through the residential district, past the comfortable buildings and the well-dressed people, trying to process what I had learned. My entire life was a construction. My childhood memories were implanted. My parents were actors. My identity was a fiction created by the Memory Farm. But the actors had loved me. They said they had loved me. And I remembered that love, the warmth of my mother's hugs, the strength of my father's hand, the feeling of being safe and cherished. Those memories were implanted too, weren't they? Or were they real? I couldn't tell anymore. I couldn't distinguish between what was genuine and what was manufactured. The boundaries had blurred, dissolved, disappeared. I found myself standing in front of the Memory Farm, looking up at the building that had shaped my entire existence. This was where my real memories had been taken. This was where my fake memories had been implanted. This was where I had worked for six years, selling stolen goods to strangers who wanted to experience a childhood they never had. I had been a victim of the system. And then I had become a participant in it. What did that make me? That night, I dreamed of the white room. I was on the table again, small and scared, watching the masked figures work. But this time, I could see the faces of the people in the corner, my real parents, the Memory Farm workers. They were crying, reaching toward me, their mouths moving in words I couldn't hear. I tried to reach back, but my arms wouldn't move. I was strapped down, helpless, watching as my memories were extracted one by one. Then the scene shifted. I was older now, sitting in a comfortable living room, opening birthday presents while two strangers smiled at me. The strangers had kind faces, loving expressions. They called me their daughter. But I knew they were strangers. I knew this was a performance. And yet I couldn't stop myself from smiling back, from accepting their love, from believing the lie. When I woke up, I was crying.