"The Memory Tax"

The Memory Tax

Genre: Social Sci-Fi / Dystopia

Author: Ashfaq Ali Khan (Laltu)

1. Prologue — "Excess memory is a crime"

Year 2095.
At the height of the global economic recession, the government has imposed an additional tax on the memory usage of every citizen.
The world's economy has collapsed so much that "depression" and "excessive thinking" are now state crimes.
People can only keep urgent or important memories active; the rest of the memories must be made "dormant" or deleted. This has put the lower classes of society in a more difficult situation.
A Memory Meter is installed in the human brain —
which measures how much memory you are using in a day.
The rule: A tax has to be paid for each active memory.
That is, the more you remember, the higher the tax.

The government slogan:

"Forget what is unnecessary —
stay calm, stay healthy, stay productive."

The middle class and upper class manage easily.
But for the lower class, memory is their only asset.
That is why they are the most 'guilty'.

2. Romel — The child of the rules

Romel Chakraborty, a 43-year-old Memory Tax Inspector,
is a strict disciplinarian, calm, and always dutiful. But his secret weakness is that he could not erase some of his dead wife's memories, which is illegal.

On his desk glitters the official badge —
“Ministry of Cognitive Regulation”.

Every day at ten in the morning, he goes door to door,
scans the memory meter, and says —
“Your brain has accumulated 123% excess data, please erase it.”

Yet at night, Romel becomes human.
Then he opens his secret drawer.
There is a memory capsule hidden there,
which contains the only forbidden memory —
the song of his dead wife Meena.

Romel knows that
even his lifetime income is not enough to pay taxes for this memory.
Still, he runs it secretly.
In a soft voice, Meena sings —

“If you come back after the clouds, remember, I am here.”
This memory sometimes makes him human.
That song is what keeps Romel human.

3. Nandini's house — the crime of the story. She is an elderly lower-class woman, she has illegally stored memories to tell her grandchildren the stories of the old days of the family. She thinks that memories are the real wealth of a person.

One day a message comes from the head office:

“Citizen ID: NND-71. Excess Memory Usage: 386%
Inspection Required — Inspector Romel Chakraborty.”

Nandini's memory - meter gives an extra signal.
Romel is instructed to go to his house and erase the extra memories.

As instructed, Romel goes to the old part of the city.
A wooden house, lines of sunlight in the gap in the roof,
old books, tape recorders, wooden dolls all around.

There sits Nandini Devi —
an old woman with a strange light in her eyes.

Rommel operates the machine.
The meter makes a loud noise — “Memory Overload Detected.”

“Your memory data is violating the law,” Rommel says.
“As per the instructions, unnecessary memories must be deleted.”

Nandini says calmly,
“What do you mean unnecessary memories, father?
In these stories, my mother, my village market,
my childhood songs — these are my life.”

Two children sitting next to her whisper —
“Grandma will tell the story of Mahua Sundari today.”

Rommel stops.
For a moment, he feels — these are the stories his wife would have told one day.
This room is like a protest filled with the fragrance of the past.
It seems to Rommel that these are not just family memories, but countless stories and songs of lost people - traditions that have been remembered.
Nandini demands, I have to pay tax on the number of stories and songs in my head? Are stories, poems a luxury?

4. Dr. Arup Sen — (Technology Regret) The scientist who created this 'memory-tax-technology'. He is now remorseful and secretly runs an underground library of memory-storage.
Now he has come to save Nandini.

The story begins with Rumel's daily work - testing the memory meters of citizens. The government argues that excessive memory storage reduces brain performance and puts pressure on the environment, so this tax is necessary. In reality, it is a strategy to easily control the lower classes by making them forget their cultural history.

Rumel is about to send the report, when a man in a gray coat opens the door and enters.
He says,
"I am Dr. Arup Sen.
I am the inventor of the technology, which is now the standard for this tax."

Rumel looks in surprise.
This name has been erased from government records!

Dr. Sen slowly says,
“I thought that preserving people’s memories would keep them healthy.
But they have turned it into a business.
Now I run an ‘underground memory library’—
where the erased memories of billions of people are stored.”

Nandini says,
“Send all my stories, all my songs there, Doctor.
Maybe one day someone will listen to them again.”

Mission begins: Rumel, Dr. Sen and Nandini enter the underground ‘memory library’, where there is a secret door. There are the erased or abandoned memories of billions of people in society stored there. Their goal is to reveal the information to the public through that hidden door.

A conflict arises inside Romel.
His duty says— “They are criminals.”
But Meena’s voice whispers—

“If you forget love, where are the people?”

5. Underground Journey — “Memory Library”

The night city is silent.
The three of them quietly go down the abandoned subway tunnel.
At the end, a huge room—
countless luminous spheres float across the walls.

Each sphere is a memory.
A farmer's smile,
a lover's tears,
a mother's lullaby— everything is captured there.

Dr. Sen says,
“Inside this server is 'The Door'—
a code that, if opened, will bring back all erased memories.”

Romel asks, “Then shall we begin?”

* The Retrieval and Consequence

6. The War of Memories

Romel puts his government training to use.
He types into the console— Access: Romel_Inspector_ID. Override Protocol.

Suddenly, a warning message appears on the screen—
“Unauthorized Access Detected.”
The drone lights up above.

Using his inspector's trained knowledge of the room, he tries to hack the government's memory-control server. This hacking creates temporary chaos in the human brain.
Dr. Sen shouts, “Open the Door now!”
Romel inputs the final code:

RETRIEVE_ALL()

The system shakes for a moment.
Then… silence.
Then a strange storm begins.

Every person in the city, every head,
starts to shine together.
Each person’s memory comes to another person’s mind. In this chaos, Rumel finds his wife’s secret song on the memory server.
A young man, a stranger, suddenly remembers his lost father.
An old woman hums that old Baul song.
A child’s first birthday candle wakes up in his mind.

People see their past in each other’s eyes.

Rumel feels – Meena’s song is floating inside him,
but this time he is not listening alone –
the whole city is singing that song.
He decides, not personal memories, but the forgotten history of society is more important to restore.
Rumel successfully frees the erased memories. In an instant, people all over the country regain their forgotten history, culture and emotional memories. The dystopian system collapses,

7. The drones finally descend.
Rumel, Nandini and Dr. Sen are arrested.
Yet they smile – because the job is done.

People have now regained their lost past,
their culture, their love.
The system of memory tax has broken down.

Rommel closes his eyes and listens—
somewhere far away, someone is singing that folk song
that no one has ever heard, yet was in everyone's heart—

"Under the open sky,
I will remember again,
I will not forget."

--------------------------------
* Theme, Explanation and Uniqueness of the story (Thim, Explanation and Uniqueness)

Aspects --- Symbolic meaning

Memory tax -- State information control; Politics of erasing history

Cultural Dystopia - It questions not only economic inequality but also the right to memory and the dangers of seeing cultural heritage as a commodity.

Science and Emotion - The extreme use of technology and the struggle of basic human emotions and folk - traditions against it.

Rumel - Moral grayness, Rumel himself is part of the system. His personal weakness (wife's memory) encourages him to go against the system, which gives his character more depth.

Nandini - Oral tradition, folk culture and maternal memory .
Rumel - The conflict between duty and humanity.

Dr. Sen - The moral remorse of technology

. Memory - Library - The repository of human collective consciousness and history.

Door / Retrieval - Liberation and rebirth of memory

* Summary in one line

"A society that sells its memory,
one day loses its soul.