Chapter 36: The Silver-Haired Whore of the Memory Black Market

As the clone's silver hair glowed with the ghostly light of a data stream in a dark alley, Luna was scanning the wrinkles at the corners of her eyes with a money detector.

"This memory of being raped..." The whore ripped her scalp open to reveal the brain-machine interface, "... Can I trade it for a double dose of anti-radiation pills?"

Rule #175: all memory transactions must be notarized through the cerebral cortex. The neon tubes of the dark alleys are retrofitted with spinal vertebrae, and each boner flashes a different price - childhood trauma at 50 can points per gram, sexual memories skyrocketed by 300% due to the clone strike. The prostitutes have nano-memory embedded in their silver hair, which forms QR codes on the ground as it falls, and can be scanned to experience five minutes of virtual life.

"I want to buy the memory of July 12, 1999." Luna's electrodes jabbed into the whore's amygdala, "The security footage from the convenience store cooler that day."

The whore has a sudden seizure and her silver hair explodes like a spider web. A holographic projection emerges from the hair: five-year-old Luna is having a hot cocoa can held against her throat by Cole, while the convenience store president is hand-adjusting the camera angle from behind the pile of cans in the corner of the cooler. Even deadlier is the video watermark - showing that the meme has been resold 47 times, with the latest buyer being Jax's Genetic Virus Corporation.

"Rule 176 addendum!" Luna freezes the memory data being uploaded with liquid nitrogen, "Memories involving the ontology are subject to 200% royalty."

Slime suddenly oozed from the walls of the dark alley. Those who thought it was sewage quickly discover the truth - it's a defense system for the memory black market, with dissolved snitch brain tissue floating in the slime. The prostitute takes the opportunity to bite off her own tongue, revealing a miniature projector hidden in her jaw: the image shows three hundred Luna clones selling the same memories in different locations, each version subtly tampered with.

"You think you're the original?" The whore scoffed through her esophageal vocalizer, "We all have cold storage memories, the only difference is..." She ripped open her chest cavity to reveal the throbbing memory crystals, "... Who sells them for more."

Riots erupted as the price of memories collapsed.

When the first whore strangled her silver hair with a pair of scissors, the strands spontaneously combusting in the air as a distress signal, Luna saw the truth of the black market - those silver hairs weren't from clones at all, but were cultivated from follicles stolen from Luna's own head. Each memory whore's scalp was imprinted with a miniature date of production that matched the date of her childhood violation perfectly.

"Number 177!" She activated the EMP necklaces and green smoke billowed from the prostitutes' brain-computer interfaces, "All pirated memories must be destroyed with native brain matter."

Suddenly, the entire dark alley began to squirm. The ground cracked and extended nerve fibers, hanging the escaping whores upside down. Their silver hair was forced into memory distillers, and the brain matter was purified in the heat to produce a pale golden liquid - the very memories of Luna's excised childhood joy. The bottle at the outlet of the still is inscribed:

"President's Special, better with alcohol"

The moonlight is distorted by the memory vapors, and Luna sees her whole life in the mottled walls. Every significant moment was marked down: memories of her first orgasm were on sale at a sex store, fratricidal pleasure was being auctioned off as munitions, and even her anger at the moment was being transformed in real time into an NFT digital collection.

"Dear sister..." Jax's holographic projection burrowed out of the vaporizer, "... Your pain feeds the entire black market..." His fingers traced the void, displaying the backend data of the memory trade - each of her tears split into microcredits, each scream converted into convenience store points.

"Rule 178!" Luna shoves a vaporizer into the whore's uterus, "When memory becomes currency, transform the brain into a money shredder."

The prostitutes suddenly went into labor en masse. Instead of babies, what is produced are memory worms with silver hair. These worms burrow into the ear canals of passersby, implanting false memories into the cortex.Luna's gas mask corrodes, and neurotoxins waft through the air she inhales-the smell of the antidepressant her mother slipped into the cake for her seventh birthday.

"Surprise?" The last whore hissed before melting away, "We're all a dumping ground for your memories..." Her eyeballs burst open, splattering coded shards of lens, "... Even forgetting is a luxury!"

As the dark alley collapses, Luna catches the memory crystals floating down. A handwritten note from her father emerges from the UV light:

"Number of memory cleanses for Subject 48: 471, recommend increasing the dose of electric shock"

A new call comes from the distance. The clones push a memory food cart through the ruins, the speakers on the front of the cart playing an advertisement:

"Freshly arrived! Luna's nightmare footage from last night, buy two get one free!"