The Foundry runs on other people's joy. All night the machines hum, pulling the happiest hour out of each seller. By dawn the canisters land on Mara's desk, warm and faintly glowing. Her job is simple: scan, log, shelve, forget. She's done it for six years. Tonight a canister rolls down the chute with a name printed on the side. Her name. Mara Vance.

Mara takes the canister straight to her supervisor, Dell, who runs the night floor. She sets it on his desk. 'This has my name on it,' she says. 'I never sold a memory.' Dell looks at it for a long moment, then quietly closes his office door.

Dell takes the canister and tells Mara it's a clerical error, nothing more. He'll handle it. But as she leaves, she sees him slide the canister into a hidden safe behind his desk, a safe already half full of canisters, every single one labeled with her name.

That night Mara stays late, picks the lock on Dell's safe, and finds dozens of her own hours hoarded inside. He hasn't been selling them. He's been keeping them, because one of them is a memory of the two of them, long ago, before all this. Mara takes every canister that's hers and walks out the door for the last time, finally carrying her whole life in her arms.