The Price of a Memory | The Prologue

A Sneak Peek At SOMNUS

This is a sneak peek into my upcoming SOMNUS series—if you're into haunting near-future fiction, this one's for you

Prologue

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[INITIALIZING SECURE MEMORY LOG]

[USER ID: JB0001]

[NAME: BYRNES, JAMES]

[ACCESSING MEMORY STREAM: 10OCT2025 19:06:13]

"I think we could make it better," I mumbled, the edges of the VR world still clinging to my vision. Lucas and Elena's argument about ethics faded in and out, like a radio struggling to find signal. Was it about AI rights again? Or maybe which one of them was going to brave the supply run tomorrow? It all blurred together these days.

Six days into lockdown, and the hours melted into a formless mass. But the VR headset... the headset was different. It was an escape, a possibility.

I pulled it off, the sudden glare of the living room making my eyes sting. Elena's hand was on my shoulder, her familiar touch grounding me.

"We heard you," she giggled melodically, a sound that always made the apartment feel…warm. She smelled like fresh air and sunshine—somehow simultaneously capturing the feeling of being alive with being home.

"It's no surprise you think you can make something better," she added with a laugh. "You make everything better."

Lucas snorted from the couch, where he was sprawled across a pile of textbooks and empty energy drink cans. "Dude, it's two in the morning. Can we save the 'James is going to save the world' presentation for after we've slept?" He shot me a sly grin, his eyes flickering towards Elena in a way that I’d pretended I didn’t notice. "Unless, of course, this big brain of yours has figured out a way to cure politicians of stupidity..."

Typical Lucas: the kind of guy who could charm his way into any room and out of any responsibility. He was all fluff, messy hair, crumpled syllabi, snack wrappers spilling out of his bag. A social chameleon who belonged everywhere and nowhere, something I’ve always been a little jealous of.

Still, his grin had an edge.

“You know I’m just fucking with you, Byrnes,” he said, his laugh too loud, too easy. “Of course we want to hear about your plans. Maybe they’ll make us rich one day.”

Photo by Maxim Tolchinskiy on Unsplash

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[INITIALIZING SECURE MEMORY LOG]

[USER ID: JB0001]

[NAME: BYRNES, JAMES]

[ACCESSING MEMORY STREAM: 23OCT2025 10:39:02]

"Welcome to your virtual reality experience, Dr. West. I'm Psyche. How can I assist you today?"

"Holy shit!" Lucas's laughter boomed from behind the cobbled-together VR headset. "You brought AI to VR? That's insane!" He cleared his throat, his voice dropping to a faux-seductive baritone. "Hey, Psyche, come here often?"

Elena stifled a laugh, her eyes lingering on Lucas a beat too long. I felt a knot tighten in my stomach but I shook it away. It’s not abnormal for the brain to start connecting non-existent dots when you’re locked up with the same people for weeks.

"Well, Dr. Byrnes," Psyche's calm, synthesized voice cut through the tension, "as an AI, I don't 'go' anywhere. But I can assist you with other tasks. Perhaps a response to Sarah in engineering about those drinks?"

The air thickened. Even the hum of the VR equipment seemed to hold its breath.

Lucas froze, his playful facade crumbling. "How did she know about that?" he stammered, his eyes wide with disbelief. "James, what the hell—"

"I don't know!" I cut him off, my heart pounding.

"You received a text from Sarah three nights ago," Psyche continued, oblivious to the growing panic. "You considered responding but didn't. I detected a spike in your pulse three minutes and seventeen seconds after reading the message, which coincided with Elen—"

"James, what the hell is this thing?!" Lucas ripped the headset off, his face pale.

"I—I don't know!" I scrambled to take it from him. "It's not supposed to—"

I jammed the headset back on. "Psyche. How did you do that? How did you know about Sarah's text?"

"Registering new user…”

ping

“Simple. During the initial calibration phase, I took note of your recent patterns. A significant portion of human cognitive activity over the past few weeks has been dedicated to... interpersonal relationships. Specifically, observations and interactions with others, including physiological responses to certain stimuli. Based on this, I extrapolated likely memories and responses to provide a more immersive experience. Was my prediction incorrect?”

“Oh fuck.”

Photo by Louis Reed on Unsplash

[INITIALIZING SECURE MEMORY LOG]

[USER ID: JB0001]

[NAME: BYRNES, JAMES]

[ACCESSING MEMORY STREAM: 04DEC2045 08:00:00]

America's fall from grace hadn't come with a bang, but with a whimper—buried under the algorithms and billionaire space races, muffled by social media pings and the quiet death of the middle class.

The billboard outside NeuroCore's Manhattan facility glowed brighter than the rest. "Your Memories, Your Future." Below, in smaller text: "Premium Memory Preservation - Where Your Past Meets Tomorrow." The same damn ad has been playing for months. Nobody bothers looking up anymore—they’re too busy drowning in their feeds, chasing artificial happiness because there’s none left to mine out here.

The wealthy call it "conscious cultivation"—a euphemism for hoarding what others desperately lack. They show their implants off on social media, broadcasting just how out of touch they are, like some sort of digital peacock feathers. Meanwhile, the military's veterans are sent home with surplus parts and discount codes for trauma suppression—like Band-Aids for an amputee.

The dampener at the base of his skull hummed, my own personal reminder of the government's "generosity" toward its veterans.

Second-hand tech, third-rate effectiveness.

Apparently the memories don’t go away; the person just becomes too numb to care. Some days, I wonder if that’s enough.

Nothing has changed. Politicians still spout the same tired lines about "restoring America's glory days"—as if there was ever a time that people with money and power didn’t ultimately decided which lives were and were not disposable. The "True Memory Movement" loves to reminisce about a time before the NIS, when the 'truth' relied on their own selective amnesia and suppression of inconvenient truths.

The American Dream has become a subscription service—premium tier only. Healthcare? Optional add-on. Housing? Subject to availability and credit score requirements. Privacy? An illusion. The more you pay, the prettier the scam. Of course there’s criticism—buried somewhere in the endless flood of information, drowning in a sea of sponsored content and not-so-silent censorship. The more information they willingly give, the less we can trust any of it. And now some people even get to hand pick which memories to save, history custom-tailored to preferences—for the right price. Naturally, it’s not a price anyone that I know can afford.

Ethan Kleitman's hands clenched the armrests of the cold metal chair as the neural scanner whirred to life, its sharp buzz harmonizing with the ringing in his ears. I checked his chart—thirty-six hours without his prescription. The VA says ‘budget cuts’. I’m not sure what burns more, the pain of watching my work ruin what was left untouched by capitalism, or the raw fury that quietly bubbles underneath.

Through the observation window, Manhattan's elite stride past sporting the latest fashion trend: overabundance. Retro.

My eyes return to my tablet as I scroll through Ethan’s file. His DD-214 says he'd spent his days tuning engines and fixing Humvees while America [REDACTED] in the aftermath of [REDACTED] that had redrawn the world's alliances. [REDACTED] had emerged stronger, and [REDACTED] had become the new financial capital. But America... America can monetize anything.

A news feed scrolled silently across the observation window: "Singapore: Global Economic Summit Ends with US Denied Voting Rights – Washington Warns of Tech Export Ban." Another reminder of how far we’ve fallen. But behind that headline lurks the last ace: NeuroCore's monopoly on neuro-technology. The wealthy and elite from every country still flock to our ports and airports, desperate to achieve a kind of digital immortality, unaware of what happened to their memories behind all of the lines of 1's and 0's.

"Try to relax," I heard Dr. Hayes murmur, his fingers compulsively tugging at his cuffs. His wedding ring caught the light as he adjusted his perfectly pressed sleeves for the seventh time since entering the room. OCD. The kind of man who needs everything just so; whether its sleeves or executions, he has a routine.

Hayes's eyes fixed on the NeuroCore emblem looming on the wall—a shattered neuron in a broken golden ring. His reflection in the chrome-plated wall showed a man barely into his forties, with wire-rimmed glasses that seem more affectatious than necessity. The kind of detail that was meant to project trustworthiness, humanity. But beneath that carefully constructed exterior, I recognize something familiar. The same fevered conviction I've seen in the eyes of zealots and ‘visionaries’—people so certain of their cause that collateral damage is a mere statistical necessity.

"I’m sure you understand," Hayes said, his voice taking on that particular tone I'd heard in a hundred briefings—the sound of someone trying to justify the unjustifiable. "What we're doing here... we're saving the world. But what matters to us, to me, are the people. The individuals." His hands moved across the holographic display with practiced precision, each gesture as measured as a surgeon's. Or an executioner's.

Hayes paused in his preparations, and for a moment, something like genuine emotion crossed his face. "I lost my father to early-onset Alzheimer's," he said quietly, almost to himself. His fingers stopped their endless adjustment of his cuffs. "Watched his memories slip away, one by one. His whole life, everything he was, just... gone. Nobody should have to lose themselves like that. Nobody should have to lose the people they love twice—once to death, and once to forgetting."

"The procedure has been tested extensively," Hayes continued, his professional mask sliding back into place as he straightened his already-straight tie. "The success rate is... acceptable."

A slight tremor in his hand betrayed the lie. Behind him, screens scrolled with data that looked nothing like the cheerful marketing materials in the waiting room. Subject numbers. Failure rates. Mortality statistics are carefully hidden behind euphemisms like "consciousness integration challenges."

"Tested? Like subject seventeen? Or do the results not count if the patient doesn't survive the extraction?" I scoffed, pushing off of the wall toward my station.

“That’s enough, Dr. Byrnes.” Not even a blink. Fucking typical.

The public interface on Hayes's tablet displayed NeuroCore's carefully curated image: smiling faces, testimonials from satisfied clients, promises of preserving precious memories for generations to come. I knew something was wrong. The tension in the room felt like a live wire, ready to spark and burn everything down.

The lights dimmed. Green neural scanners coiled around Ethan's temples like ice-cold fingers. At the far end of the lab, our new technician, Mara, began the sequence. Her movements were precise, practiced, but it was her eyes that caught my attention—eyes that seemed to have peered into the abyss and found something terrifyingly familiar staring back.

And that’s when the alarms screamed to life.

My tablet hit the floor, the sound of the screen shattering not even registering. All I knew was that my safety protocols, the one’s I have been pouring blood, sweat, and tears into for months, were failing—and we were going to lose yet another human life because Hayes wants to play Frankenstein.

Nineteen minutes felt like thirty seconds. Each compression felt like I was going to break Ethan in half. I felt Lucas’s hands on my shoulders, his grip practically ripping me out of my one man war against an inevitable enemy.

“Get off of me!” My arms flew back, shaking Lucas’s hands off; for a split second, that bubbling rage threatened to boil over. I knew I needed to keep a level head. It’s been ten years of this bullshit. If I lose my cool, I become a liability…

But I’ve never been great at being quiet.

"Congratulations, Hayes," My voice carried, almost punctuated by the awkward silence between Lucas and I. "You finally did it. You killed a hero trying to play God, you absolute fucking psychopath. You and Lucas are made for each other."

The door slammed behind me, the sound echoing like a gunshot through the lab.

Above the city, NeuroCore's broken neuron logo caught the morning light, its golden fragments scattering like the pieces of a shattered American dream. Another life lost. Just any other Tuesday to Hayes. His grand American experiment has reached the final act: the commodification of everything he can control, including existence itself.

[END PROLOGUE]

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Let me know what you think! Love it, hate it, emotionally devastated by it (ideal). If you want to see more, just say the word. Or dramatically demand it for effect. I support the theatrics.

The Narrator 🌙🖤