Memory Bank

by Skylar  230110709 高宁

Characters

- Teller A (Red Face): Outwardly warm and reassuring, yet with weariness and doubt in their eyes.

- Teller B (White Face): Strict and aloof, the embodiment of rules, yet not devoid of emotions.

- Father: Middle-aged, plainly dressed, bowed by life’s weight, yet with traces of paternal love in his gaze.

- Tingting: In her twenties, successful and poised, yet with a hint of coldness in her demeanor.

- Auctioneer: Professional and flamboyant, skilled at hyping up the atmosphere.

- Scholar: Focused yet somewhat obsessive.

- Speculator: Shrewd and profit-driven.

- Tycoon: With the air of a nouveau riche, exaggerated in actions, providing comic elements.

Opening Montage (Projection or Voice-over)

(Warm, nostalgic visuals flash: a child’s hand in a father’s, a bedside lamp at night, a smiling face on a bicycle seat…)

Voice-over by Teller A, warm and magnetic with an inductive tone:

“Is there a corner to store your overwhelming past? Is there a switch to temporarily shut out life’s heaviness? Memory Bank offers another possibility. We understand some pasts are too heavy, and the future requires lightness. Here, we can help transform those precious ‘onces’ into strength for moving forward.”

(The visuals fade out, transitioning to a cold, realistic bank scene.)

Act One: Memory Bank

Detail-oriented stage design: cold metal counters, faintly glowing computer screens, a corner with promotional posters reading “Pawning Memories, Embracing the Future” and “Accurate Valuation, Warm Service.” In the waiting area, a man sits numbly, a blank adhesive strip on his forehead from a recent memory extraction.

(Lights come up. The father stands nervously at the counter, fingers curling and releasing. Teller A smiles, though the smile doesn’t reach their eyes. Teller B types away on the keyboard, the sound crisp.)

Father (hoarsely): “I… I want to pawn my memories.”

Teller B (without looking up): “ID, please. Fill out the ‘Memory Extraction Consent Form’ and the ‘Emotional Value Assessment Application Form.’”

Teller A (handing over a cup of water with practiced gesture): “Sir, have some water first. No rush. We’re like a special kind of pawnshop here. Not pawning objects, but memories. For an emergency, I suppose?”

Father (taking the water but not drinking it, clutching it like a lifeline): “For my daughter. Tingting… she’s very ill. She needs surgery.” He takes out a crumpled diagnosis report and carefully slides it under the counter glass.

Teller B (scanning the document, calmly): “Information verified. According to procedure, you need to pawn memory assets of corresponding value. Please describe the content.”

Father (falling into a reverie, his eyes softening for a moment): “It’s… the memories between me and Tingting. From when she was three, riding on my shoulders to the lantern festival, with sugar-coated hawks sticking to her hair… to later when she was in elementary school, I rode my bicycle to take her every day, and she would sing in the seat behind me… And when she got her first perfect score, I took her to the park, and she laughed… Are these worth anything?”

Teller B (watching the data fluctuate on the screen): “Parent-child shared memories, significant emotional peaks, market valuation of 350,000 credit points. Your daughter’s surgery and subsequent rehabilitation costs are estimated at 500,000. A deficit of 150,000.”

Father (paling instantly): “150,000? I… I have my own memories! My university admission day! And… and my first trip with my wife, watching the sunrise by the sea… Will these be enough?” His voice pleads.

Teller B: “Personal highlight memory clips, valuation of 120,000. Total of 470,000. Still short by 30,000.”

Father (staggering, steadying himself on the counter, his voice strained): “30,000… Just for 30,000… Do I have to… forget how I held her, watched her grow, how I… loved her?”

Teller A (their professional smile fading, a moment of silence, then softly): “Sir, memories are carriers of the past. But your daughter is the future. Carriers can vanish, but the future… as long as she’s alive, can be created. Can’t it?” This phrase, perhaps repeated countless times, now carries a hint of uncertainty.

(The father is struck, slowly lifting his head, looking at Teller A, yet seemingly through him into nothingness. A strong struggle flashes in his eyes, eventually replaced by a desperate calm. He slowly picks up the pen, his hand trembling violently as he signs the documents.)

Father (his voice barely audible): “… Proceed. As long as she lives.”

(Lights focus on the father pressing his thumbprint. Teller B activates the equipment, a helmet-like device descending from the ceiling. The father closes his eyes, tears streaming down. The lights settle on his pained face, then gradually dim. Only the faint hum of the machine and the father’s suppressed, animal-like sobs can be heard.)

Act Two: Memory Auction

The stage transforms into an opulent auction hall, with dazzling lights. A massive electronic screen displays auction item information. Guests, dressed in fine attire, chatter, creating a buzzing background noise.

(The auctioneer stands under the spotlight, their speech full of drama.)

Auctioneer: “Ladies and gentlemen! Prepare your passion and discernment! Next up is one of tonight’s highlights, Lot No.7, titled ‘Silent Paternal Love’! This is not ordinary memory; this is a silent epic of fatherhood! No grand words here, just countless morning silhouettes, midnight sighs, and those eyes that always watch you from behind, yet often go unnoticed!”

Tycoon (immediately raising his paddle, shouting): “250,000! I just acquired a space travel memory; this ‘down-to-earth’ touch will complement it well!”

Scholar (adjusting his glasses, seriously): “300,000! This Eastern cultural paradigm of restrained, non-verbal paternal love holds significant value for my ‘emotional semiotics’ research!”

Speculator (sneering, lazily raising his paddle): “350,000! Such ‘melodramatic’ memories, when processed into immersive experiences, offer substantial profit margins when sold to urbanites seeking ‘emotional substitutes.’”

(Tingting sits in the corner, absentmindedly flipping through the auction catalog. She had come to bid on a corporate decision-making memory from a rival company. But as the description of the ‘paternal love’ memory deepens, she feels an unfamiliar, yet poignant ache in her heart. Those images… bicycles, silhouettes… like ghosts, collide with a sealed corner of her mind.)

Tingting (suddenly standing up, just as the auctioneer is about to strike the gavel, her voice clear and firm): “500,000.”

(The hall erupts in astonishment, all eyes on her. The speculator mutters a curse and withdraws. The tycoon shrugs. The auctioneer strikes the gavel excitedly.)

(Lights focus on Tingting ascending the stage, receiving the sealed memory capsule from the auctioneer. She holds it, feeling no weight, yet her palm burns.)

Act Three

The stage is divided into two performance areas. On one side is Tingting’s faint, visible, sleek, modern yet cold home. On the other, the memory bank counter is faintly visible.

(Tingting is alone at home, inserting the capsule into the memory viewer. On the other side of the stage, a soft spotlight illuminates as the father’s memories emerge like holographic images—not just visuals, but the feeling of being loved permeates the air: the father teaching her to ride a bike, his paired eyes when she falls, more hair than the number of times he fished her out of the deep, ending up high on his back like a mountain; when she had a fever, the father staying up all night holding her, his breath against hers, the warmth bringing time and space… the thick love she had long forgotten.)

(Tingting, tears streaming down, as she sobs, it’s the first time she feels the thick love she had long forgotten.)

Tingting (monologue, from dreamy sobs to gradually clear determination): “These are my father’s eyes. So, I wasn’t unloved. It was me… it was us… who lost all of this.”

“I always believed that a person is the sum of their possessions. What we own is what we are. The memories define who we are. But now, processing his memories, I can see what he saw, feel his joys, worries, and selfless love… Yet, I also know I’m not that little girl who was loved. I’m just an… intruder. A spectator who bought a ticket to someone else’s life.”

“What can we truly trade? A set of neural chemical signals? A string of encoded data? Can we trade the real temperature of that night? Can we trade the sweat from his palms due to nervousness? Can we trade the heartbroken sound when he signed his name, deciding to forget all of this?”

“Perhaps the true us is not defined by what we remember, but by what we choose to become. After everything can be priced and taken away, it’s our choice to love, to warm, to be a light for others. This choice is the only ‘self’ that no price can measure, that no one can steal.”

(She finishes, slowly wiping her tears, and picks up the communicator. She dials a number she hasn’t actively contacted for a long time. Her movements are no longer those of a high-and-mighty businesswoman, but of a person who has regained a part of her soul.)

(Lights slightly dim. Teller A and Teller B walk from the other side of the stage, taking off their uniforms, as if after work.)

Teller B (looking at Tingting’s direction, his face devoid of icy procedure, carrying a deep fatigue and insight): “Madam, we don’t steal memories. We just… put a price on emotions. And this world is always accustomed to putting a price on everything.”

Teller A (sipping a can of coffee, gazing into the distance, as if seeing the father who had come before, a complex, genuine smile on his face): “But there are always people who sell their past for money, only to find they’ve bought… quiet. They can forget how to love. Price tags can be stuck on and they can be torn off. And love is that fresh trace left after the tag is removed.”

(Lights fade to darkness. Finally, a single warm spotlight shines on Tingting’s profile, holding the communicator, filled with hope and strength. In the silence, it seems one can hear the hesitant yet familiar “Hello?” from the other end of the communicator.)

(End of play)