The Traders

The second through fifth floors belong to the Traders—those who have made the Tower not just a place to climb, but a place to live.

The Economy of Memory

In Meridian below, memory trading is a profession. In the Tower, it is everything.

The Traders are organized into Guilds:

The Archivists: They collect. Their floors are libraries of crystallized experience, organized by era, emotion, subject. They do not trade for profit; they trade for completeness.

The Merchants: They profit. Buy low, sell high. A memory of a commoner's happy day might be worthless—until you find someone who has forgotten what happiness feels like. Then it is priceless.

The Extractors: My people, in a sense. They specialize in taking memories others do not wish to sell. Their services are expensive and technically illegal—but in the Tower, law is flexible.

The Healers: They use memories therapeutically. A traumatic memory replaced with a peaceful one. A gap in identity filled with borrowed experience. Their work is delicate and often fails.

The Seekers: They climb. Unlike Traders who stay on their floors, Seekers are always ascending, always looking for the next level, the next secret, the next step toward whatever waits at the top.

Life in the Tower

By the third floor, I had stopped thinking about leaving.

This happens to everyone. The Tower becomes normal. The outside world—with its unchanging memories, its linear time, its tedious permanence—seems dull. Here, everything is fluid. You can become anyone. You can forget anything.

I rented a room on the fourth floor from a Merchant named Vel.

Vel had been in the Tower for thirty years. They had traded away their childhood, their first love, their mother tongue. What remained was pure commerce—a being that saw every interaction as transaction, every relationship as trade.

"You have potential," Vel told me. "Your memories are... interesting. Unusual origin. I could get good prices."

"I am not here to sell."

"Everyone sells eventually. The question is what you get in return."

The Memory Markets

The fourth floor hosts the largest Memory Market in the Tower.

Imagine a bazaar where instead of goods, people trade experience. Stalls offer:

• Combat memories from great warriors (popular among those who want skill without training)
• Romantic memories from famous lovers (tragic and addictive)
• Intellectual memories from scholars (the quickest path to knowledge, if you can afford it)
• Emotional memories: pure joy, profound grief, transcendent peace (these are the most expensive—emotion is irreplaceable)

I walked through the market daily, learning prices, understanding value.

A memory of learning to ride a bicycle: 5 credits A memory of a grandparent's death: 20 credits A memory of achieving a lifelong goal: 100 credits A memory of unconditional love: 500+ credits

The prices revealed what humans truly value. Skill was cheap. Emotion was expensive. Connection was almost impossible to buy—because those who had it rarely sold it.

The Forgetting

Living in the Tower changes you in ways beyond trade.

The longer you stay, the harder it becomes to remember the outside. Not because the memories are traded away—but because the Tower's reality begins to feel more real.

I noticed this on the fourth floor. I tried to remember my mother's kitchen. The image was there, but muted. As if seen through fog.

Was it fading because of the Tower? Or simply because I was no longer reinforcing it with daily recall?

Did the distinction matter?

The Thief's Work

I began taking contracts.

An Archivist wanted a specific memory from a sleeping Merchant: the memory of a deal that had gone badly. The Archivist was writing a history; the Merchant did not want that history written.

I waited. I watched. I learned the Merchant's routines.

And one night, I extracted.

The memory showed a younger Merchant, desperate, trading their ethics for advancement. A deal that hurt innocent people. A choice that haunted them.

I delivered the memory. The Archivist paid.

That night, I wondered what the Merchant would feel when they reached for the memory and found absence. Would they be relieved? Confused? Angry?

Did I care?

The Cost of Climbing

With each floor I ascended, the price of the next stairway increased.

Floor 5 to Floor 6 cost me the memory of my first kiss. I had been saving it—it was pure, uncomplicated, one of the few bright spots in a difficult youth.

But I wanted to climb. So I paid.

The stairway showed me others who had paid. Their faces, their sacrifices, their regrets. Most were now empty shells, wandering the upper floors, trading reflexively, no longer remembering why they started.

Is that what I was becoming?

I reached the sixth floor. Then the seventh.

And there I met the old man whose memory would start everything.

In the Tower, everyone is both buyer and seller. The question is whether you know your own prices—or whether the Tower sets them for you.

Next: Fragments of Truth—what the stolen memory revealed about the Tower's purpose.