The rain that fell on Neo-Arcadia was never clean. It carried the chemical tang of the city's exhaust, staining the perpetual twilight with streaks of purple and orange against the towering skyscrapers. Elias Vance watched it from his office window, fifty floors above the street markets where memory traders hawked their wares to desperate customers.
His comm-link buzzed. "Mr. Vance, your 8 PM appointment is here. A Ms. Petranova."
Elias didn't turn from the window. "Send her in."
The woman who entered moved with a precision that marked her as either corporate or military. Her sharp grey suit cost more than most citizens made in a month, but her eyes held the weary intensity of someone who'd seen things they couldn't forget.
"Mr. Vance." She placed a secured data-chip on his desk. "I need this authenticated."
Elias finally turned, his gaze moving from the chip to her face. "Authentication is half my business. The other half is knowing when not to ask questions."
"Then this should be perfect for you." She didn't smile. "The standard fee, plus a bonus if you can tell me anything unusual about the engram."
Elias inserted the chip into his isolated terminal. The screen lit up with the familiar waveforms of memory data. "Sit, if you like. This will take a few minutes."
He began the standard analysis, his fingers dancing across the haptic interface. At first, everything appeared normal—the typical neural signatures of human recollection. But then he saw it: an anomaly in the visual cortex patterns.
"What exactly am I looking at here?" he asked, his professional curiosity piqued.
"A vacation memory," she said smoothly. "My client wants to ensure it's authentic before purchase."
Elias nodded, but his instincts screamed otherwise. Vacation memories followed predictable patterns—heightened sensory details, emotional peaks, chronological consistency. This memory had those elements, but there was something wrong with the visual data.
He delved deeper, isolating the anomaly. The code revealed a sky of impossible blue, not the washed-out grey that hung over Neo-Arcadia. The spectral analysis showed wavelengths that hadn't existed in the atmosphere for decades.
"This is a construct," he said finally. "A very sophisticated one, but manufactured nonetheless."
Ms. Petranova leaned forward. "How can you be certain?"
"The sky. The color parameters don't match any recorded meteorological data from the past thirty years. Someone built this memory from historical archives, not lived experience."
She watched him for a long moment. "That's interesting. Because the donor swears it's real."
Elias felt the first prickle of unease. "Then your donor is either mistaken or lying. That sky hasn't existed since before I was born."
"Yet the memory feels authentic to you otherwise?"
"The emotional resonance is consistent with genuine recall," he admitted. "But the visual data is impossible."
Ms. Petranova stood, retrieving the data-chip. "Thank you for your assessment, Mr. Vance. Your discretion, as always."
After she left, Elias sat in the growing darkness of his office. He pulled up the analysis again, studying the anomalous sky. There was something about the particular shade of blue that tugged at a memory of his own—a childhood fragment of looking up through the pollution filters at a patch of clear sky.
He shook his head. Professional curiosity was one thing; chasing ghosts was another.
His comm-link buzzed again. "Mr. Vance? There's a commotion downstairs. Security says you should stay in your office."
Elias moved to the window. Flames engulfed the street-level memory market where he'd sourced some of his less official contacts. Through the smoke, he could make out armored figures moving with coordinated precision.
Then his own office door exploded inward.