The Price of Rain: A Dystopian Short Story

Kai knew something was wrong when his mother didn’t laugh at the joke.

It was their joke. It had been for years. Every time it rained—which was rare enough in the climate-controlled sectors—one of them would say, “Remember when we got caught in that downpour at the pier?” The other would finish: “And you insisted we dance in it like idiots?”

But when Kai said it that morning, watching the scheduled precipitation streak down their apartment’s single window—gray water against gray sky—his mother just smiled. The kind of smile you give strangers when you don’t understand what they’re talking about.

“That sounds nice,” she said, returning to her coffee. The cheap synthetic stuff that stained her only mug brown. But it was hot, and it was hers—the one luxury Kai insisted on, even when she refused to buy it for herself.

Kai felt something sink inside him. He studied her face—the new hollowness around her eyes, the slight tremor in her fingers as she held the chipped ceramic mug. She’d been taking extra shifts at the factory, he knew. Overtime sorting components for the neural-link headsets that everyone upstairs wore constantly, the ones that let you live in any reality you could afford to stream.

“Mom.” His voice came out smaller than he intended. “The pier. When I was seven. We missed the last transit because—”

“Oh, I know, sweetheart.” She touched his arm with her own work-roughened hand. “I’m just tired.”

But it wasn’t tiredness. Kai had seen tiredness—the bone-deep exhaustion that made her collapse on their sagging couch after fourteen-hour shifts. This was different. This was an absence, like trying to find something in an empty drawer.

He waited until she left for her shift, listening to her footsteps fade down the concrete stairwell that always smelled of industrial cleaner and rust. Then he went to the drawer where she kept their documents. Ration cards with their bent corners, water credits on faded paper, his school enrollment—and there, beneath everything else, a stack of receipts from MemorEase Extraction Services. The paper was slick, expensive.

Transaction #47-B: Childhood Memory (Subject: Female Child, Age 4-6, Seaside Location). Quality Grade: Premium. Sensory Details: Tactile, Auditory, Olfactory. Sale Price: 340 credits.

The date was three weeks ago. Kai did the math—340 credits was nearly a month’s rent.

He kept reading, the paper whispering between his fingers. There were dozens of receipts, going back eighteen months. Beach memories. Birthday memories. The time they’d found an actual orange tree growing wild in the old district, its fruit like small suns against the gray concrete walls. Her memories, sold one by one to MemorEase, which packaged and resold them to people who never left their neural-link chairs.

People upstairs who’d never felt real sand between their toes or tasted fruit picked from a branch. People who lived in fantasy realms and celebrity simulations, who purchased “authentic experiences” in bulk while Kai’s family bought water by the liter, measuring out their lives in the smallest quantities possible.

 The poor had become memory miners, selling pieces of their pasts just to stay alive.

Kai found the final receipt at the bottom of the stack, the one that made his chest tighten.

Transaction #4681-C: Shared Memory (Subjects: Mother and Son, Pier, Rainfall Event). Quality Grade: Premium. Emotional Resonance: High. Sale Price: 890 credits.

890 credits. That was their joke. Their memory. Now owned by someone else, probably someone who’d never been rained on in their life, who wanted to feel what it was like to dance with someone you loved while water soaked through your clothes and the world smelled like salt and ozone.

The extraction date was yesterday.

Kai’s vision blurred. He wanted to be angry, but the receipt for their electricity bill was right there too, stamped FINAL NOTICE in red that seemed to pulse against the cheap yellow paper. She’d sold their memories to keep the lights on.

His school enrollment card lay in the drawer—she’d paid this semester’s tuition for the physical classes that could get him above base-level factory work. The wealthy kids learned from their link-chairs, guaranteeing any future they wanted. But if Kai finished, he could support a family someday. Have children. Love them the way she loved him. That’s what she always said.

He found her after her shift, waiting at the transit platform where exhaust vents pumped warm, recycled air that tasted metallic. The setting sun—real, not simulated—painted everything orange through the industrial haze. His mother looked small in the dying light, her shoulders curved inward as if she was trying to make herself disappear.

He held the receipt out for her to see.

“You went through my things,” she said. Not a question.

“The pier memory.” Kai’s throat was tight. “That was ours.”

“I know.”

“You don’t, though. Not anymore.”

She flinched. For a long moment, they stood in silence, watching people hurry past with their heads down. Everyone down here moved quickly, their footsteps a constant percussion against concrete. Time was money. They had places to be, actual lives to live—even if those lives were being sold off, piece by piece.

“The Duncans upstairs,” his mother said, her voice barely audible over the hum of machinery.

“They haven’t left their apartment in four years. They paid extra for the penthouse—floor-to-ceiling windows with views of the real sunset. But they never look outside. They just lie in their link-chairs with those gel pillows molded to their skulls, living in some fantasy where they’re celebrities on a beach planet. They buy meal paste subscriptions and waste disposal services and memories. They never even think about where it all comes from.”

“I know how it works, Mom.”

“Do you?” She turned to face him, and in the orange light he could see new lines around her mouth. “Mrs. Duncan purchased my pier memory, Kai. I saw the transaction record. She paid 890 credits to feel what it’s like to love someone enough to dance in the rain with them. Because she’s forgotten how to love her own children. They haven’t spoken in months. They just… exist, in separate simulations, in the same room.”

Kai shook his head. “That doesn’t make it okay.”

“No,” his mother agreed. “It doesn’t. But her credits are helping us live. And maybe—” her voice cracked, “—maybe someone upstairs experiencing genuine joy, even secondhand, is better than no one experiencing it at all.”

Kai couldn’t believe she was saying this. It was she who had encouraged him to dance in the rain all those years ago. Not to run from minor inconveniences but to find joy in the unplanned.

“That’s not genuine. Besides, you don’t even remember it anymore.”

“I remember that it was important. I remember that you’re upset, which means it mattered.” She touched his cheek with her work-roughened hand. “And you remember. Some things you don’t need the memory of to know they were real.”

But Kai wasn’t sure that was true. Without the memory, wasn’t it just a story someone told you? How could you mourn what you couldn’t recall?

The transit arrived with a screech of metal on metal and a gust of brake-heated air. They boarded in silence. The car was packed with factory workers in stained coveralls, cleaning crews with chemical burns on their hands, delivery drivers with permanently hunched shoulders—people selling off their experiences, their laughter, their first kisses, whatever still had value, just to survive.

The fluorescent lights flickered overhead, casting everyone in a sickly green-white glow.

Kai noticed things he hadn’t before. The woman across from them, staring blankly at nothing with her mouth slightly open—had she sold too much? The man near the door with the MemorEase intake appointment card in his hand, already mourning what he was about to lose. A teenager his age stared down at his hands, turning over a small teddy bear again and again, its fur matted and worn.

“How many?” Kai asked as the transit jolted toward their stop, the mechanical voice announcing stations in a tone devoid of warmth. “How many memories have you sold?”

His mother was quiet for a long time, watching her reflection ghost across the dark window. “I don’t know,” she whispered. “I don’t remember.”

That night, Kai couldn’t sleep. Their apartment creaked and settled around him, pipes hissing behind thin walls, someone’s music thumping through the ceiling. He kept thinking about the pier, reconstructing it from his own memory. But how much of what he remembered was real, and how much had he created to fill the gaps of what he’d forgotten because he’d been so young? He usually relied on his mother’s retelling of the moment, her laughter as she described how he’d splashed in every puddle.

He got up, the floor cold against his bare feet, and searched the apartment for proof of their past. Photos, maybe, or a journal. But people like them didn’t have much documentation—no credits for photography subscriptions or archival services. Their history existed in their heads, nowhere else.

In the hallway closet, wedged behind her two pairs of work boots, he found a small box. Cardboard, soft with age, held together with ancient tape. Inside were objects that smelled faintly of must: a smooth piece of sea glass that caught the dim light and turned it aquamarine, its edges frosted from years in the ocean. A ticket stub from a museum they’d somehow scraped together credits to visit, the paper so fragile it threatened to crumble at his touch. A child’s drawing of an orange, carefully preserved between sheets of plastic, the crayon lines bold and confident.

Artifacts of memories. Physical ghosts.

His mother appeared in the doorway, wrapped in a thin blanket that couldn’t quite hide her shivering. “I kept those,” she said, “because I knew I’d forget. I wanted something to prove it happened, even if I couldn’t remember how it felt.”

Kai held up the sea glass, felt its smooth weight in his palm. “Tell me about this.” He remembered when they’d found this together, the way she’d gasped like they’d discovered actual treasure.

“I can’t. I sold that one eight months ago. Went for 620 credits—apparently ocean memories are premium content. Someone who’s never seen a beach wanted to know what it felt like to find treasure in the sand.” She sat beside him on the floor, the movement making her joints crack. “But you were there. You could tell me.”

So he did. He told her about the day they’d taken the long transit to the coast, the windows fogging with their breath. They’d walked for hours looking for the access point that wasn’t gated off, never finding one, but her hand was warm in his even as the wind cut through their too-thin jackets. He told her about the waves—how they’d sounded like breathing, how they’d smelled of brine and rotting kelp and something ancient. The shock of cold water soaking through his shoes, making him gasp and laugh at the same time. He told her how she’d found the sea glass half-buried in black sand, held it up to the light like it was made of captured sky, and declared it magic. How they’d stayed until sunset painted the water gold and pink, even though it meant walking home because they’d spent their transit credits on the entry fee. How their feet had ached, and they’d been so cold, but she’d hummed the whole way, some song from her childhood that she’d never taught him the words to. That now she probably never could.

His mother listened with tears streaming down her face, catching in the lines around her mouth, mourning a joy she couldn’t recall.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry, Kai. I didn’t know what else to do. The bills kept coming and my wages kept shrinking, and I thought—I thought at least someone should get to experience these things, even if I couldn’t anymore. At least they wouldn’t be wasted.”

“They’re not wasted when we keep them,” Kai said, holding up the piece of sea glass. “They’re ours. They’re who we are.”

“We are people who survive,” his mother replied. “Sometimes survival costs more than we want to pay.”

Kai looked at the box of artifacts scattered across the threadbare carpet, and a terrifying idea formed. If she sold all their memories, would she remember him? Would she love him anymore? How much could she sell before he was just a boy who lived with her? A stranger who bought her coffee?

“No more,” he said. “Promise me. No more memories.”

“Kai, we need—”

“I’ll quit school. I’ll work. We’ll figure it out.” He grabbed her hands, felt how thin they’d become. “But you can’t sell any more. Eventually, there won’t be anything left. You won’t remember who I am. You won’t remember who you are.”

His mother opened her mouth to argue, then closed it. She looked at the objects scattered between them—proof of a life she could no longer access. “What if it’s already too late?” she asked quietly. “What if I’ve already sold the important parts?”

“Then I’ll remember for both of us,” Kai said. “I’ll tell you every story, every detail. I’ll be your archive.”

“That’s too much to carry.”

“It’s mine to carry. You gave those memories to me too. They’re not just yours to sell.”

His mother made a sound halfway between a laugh and a sob. She pulled him close, and Kai tried to memorize everything—the smell of factory chemicals and lavender soap. The rhythm of her breathing, slightly ragged from years of poor air quality. The strength still left in her arms despite everything. Someday, someone might offer him credits for this moment. Someday, he might be desperate enough to consider it.

But not today. Today, he would keep it. He would hoard it like the treasure it was, precious as sea glass, irreplaceable as rain.

“Okay,” his mother finally said, her breath warm against his hair. “Okay. No more. We’ll find another way.”

Kai nodded against her shoulder, hoping it was a promise she could keep. Hoping that between his memories and her artifacts, they could piece together enough of who they’d been to remember who they still were.

Outside their window, the scheduled rain began again, tapping against glass in metered rhythm.

 They didn’t mention the pier. They didn’t need to.

 Some memories lived on—not in detail, but in the shape they left behind.

 Some moments are valuable simply because they existed.