As the auctioneer's gavel struck the young girl's temple, her first love memory was being spun into golden threads, winding around the glass column engraved with price tags.
"Lot 48—Luna Brand First Kiss Memory, 99.9% Purity!" The auctioneer's voice carried the synthetic sweetness of honey, "Starting bid: three cans of beef, or an equivalent amount of childhood trauma."
New Divine Code, Article 27: All emotions must be priced transparently. The auction hall's ceiling hung with countless neural fibers, each connected to a brain submerged in nutrient solution. Buyers in the VIP box wore brainwave resonators, their pleasure centers being forcibly stimulated—this was the auction house's exclusive "consumption climax experience." Luna stood in the shadows of the box, her quantum retina analyzing the true identities of each bidder: clones, AI, data ghosts from the convenience store headquarters.
"I want to redeem the memory of the twilight of September 18, 2003." She pressed the scalpel against her hippocampus, "using the pain sensations of the next ten years as collateral."
The auctioneer's electronic eye suddenly burst into red light, and mechanical fingers pierced her cochlea, extracting a holographic projection—fourteen-year-old Luna curled up in the convenience store warehouse, Cole's fingers tracing her neck, while in the corner of the surveillance screen, her mother calmly adjusted the camera's focus. The watermark on the image indicated that this memory had been resold 666 times, with the latest buyer being Jax Holdings' "Emotional Distillation Company."
"Amendment to Article 28 of the Code!" The auctioneer's skull split open, revealing the pulsating brain tissue of the CEO inside, "Original memories must pay a 600% soul tax."
The black market trembled with neural impulses.
When the first bidder suddenly suffered an epileptic seizure, his brain matter splattered across the auction table, immediately collected, purified, and encapsulated by nanobots into a limited-edition "Sudden Death Experience" emotional capsule. Other buyers frantically bid higher, their pupils reflecting fragments of different versions of memories—each Luna clone was selling altered "authentic memories."
"Item 29!" Luna extracted the auctioneer's spine and inserted it into her neural interface, "When memories become commodities, the black market becomes a graveyard!"
Her quantum consciousness instantly infiltrated the auction house's main system, and the ultimate truth emerged from the data flood—the entire emotional economy was built on her neural network. Every memory auctioned off was training the convenience store headquarters to refine their slave algorithms. In the deepest server room, preserved in formaldehyde, was a brain tissue slice from when she was five years old, engraved with "Primitive Emotional Module 1.0."
"Dear financial product..." Jax's holographic projection rose from the bloodstain, "...do you know how many AI-induced agents were made from your first kiss memory?" His mechanical fingers unfolded, projecting global sales data: 48,000,000 doses.
Luna crushed the auctioneer's brain nucleus, triggering an EMP storm that swept across the black market. All nutrient pods exploded, thousands of brains burning in the air, releasing imprisoned memories. Among the ashes, she picked up a neural fragment. Under ultraviolet light, her father's handwritten annotation appeared:
"When emotional yield reaches 48%, activate the civilizational emotional reset protocol."
Beyond the ruins, new holographic billboards lit up. Clones in neural fiber gowns promoted the latest product:
"Limited-time offer! Luna Brand Ultimate Despair Experience—buy one, get three free, plus a preview of the cosmic formatting!"