Preface

The bell above the door chimed with the soft, silvery ring of possibility-a sound unmistakable to anyone in town. It meant someone was about to forget, or someone was about to remember.

Dream Vacations did not look extraordinary from the outside: a narrow storefront wedged between a tax office and a nail salon, its windows tinted to protect the delicate nature of what lay within. But anyone who stepped inside knew instantly that this was no ordinary shop. Its walls were lined with glowing glass cylinders-memory vaults-each one labeled with a handwritten tag and a brief, tantalizing description.

“Three-day trip to Las Vegas. Seller: 35-year-old African-American woman.”

“Dinner with in-laws. Seller: 50-year-old Mexican man.”

“First snowfall of the year. Seller: 22-year-old white nonbinary person.”

The descriptions were always minimal by design. Customers were reminded that memories were deeply personal, and that the core of the trade was experience, not narrative. What mattered was how it felt to have lived it.

The door chimed again. A nervous young man stepped inside, rubbing the back of his neck.

“First time?” the clerk behind the counter asked gently.

“Yeah. I… I want to sell something.”

The clerk smiled with practiced reassurance. “You don’t remember every day of your life, right? This’ll just be one you won’t remember either.”

That line, spoken thousands of times within these walls, always seemed to calm people. The young man nodded, and after a few minutes of quiet discussion, he allowed the technician to guide him to the back room. He would emerge lighter-one memory poorer, one paycheck richer-and entirely unaware of what he had just given up.

As he passed a woman waiting near the counter, she looked up from her brochure. “Buying or selling?” she asked.

“Selling,” he replied, though he didn’t know what he was selling anymore.

She nodded with a sympathetic smile. She herself was a buyer, one of the regulars who came in every few months for something new. “It’s better than a vacation,” she murmured to the clerk as he pulled up her account. “You don’t go anywhere, but afterwards it feels like you did.”

“All sales are final,” the clerk reminded her as he retrieved a small crystalline capsule from the vault. “No refunds. But if you ever want it removed, we can clear the memory completely.”

“I know, I know,” she said with a laugh. “Just give me something nice this time. Something relaxing.”

The clerk handed her a capsule labeled, “Seven days on a private beach. Seller: 41-year-old Korean man.”

The woman held it carefully, almost reverently, before heading to the back room where her new “vacation” would soon settle itself seamlessly among her own recollections.

Outside, the sky was gray and ordinary, but inside Dream Vacations, entire lives waited in delicate glass vessels-adventures, heartbreaks, simple breakfasts, arguments, celebrations, and everything in between.

Part marketplace, part sanctuary, part escape hatch, Dream Vacations thrived on one immutable truth:

In a world where memories were currency, everyone had something to sell-and something they longed to feel.

And here, for the right price, they could.

Chapter 1

Cicily Rosenburg had always known three things about herself:

She was pretty-very pretty.

She deserved the best-absolutely the best.

And she rarely, if ever, got quite what she deserved.

Her Hawaiian vacation was supposed to be the exception. A week in paradise with one of her closest friends, Gabriella, complete with beachfront views, tropical drinks, and sun-drenched days designed to flatter her every angle. The brochure promised luxury. The photos promised bliss. Cicily expected perfection.

What she got was… fine. And for Cicily, fine was its own special kind of failure.

She remembered the start of the trip clearly as she settled into the Dream Vacations transfer chair, electrodes lightly touching her temples. The technician beside her asked her to close her eyes and think about the beginning.

So she did.

She remembered spending two hours selecting outfits for the trip, rejecting half her wardrobe for being too casual, too dated, too “been there, worn that.” She recalled Gabriella honking from the driveway, texting We’re gonna miss the flight! while Cicily debated between three nearly identical pairs of sandals. The airport had been a blur of admiring-or gawking-faces. Men craned their necks as she passed, most of them not remotely attractive enough for her to bother noticing. She sighed at them then, and she sighed again as the memory streamed through her mind now.