THE MEMORY HACKERS -Ashraful Islam

Dhaka city at night was a glowing puzzle of lights, honking rickshaws, and the chatter of tea stalls. In the narrow alleys of New Market, where shops closed late and street vendors still shouted for customers, three friends—Shafin, Nabil, and Riyad—wandered deeper into a part of the bazaar they had never seen before. The three of them were students of Class Ten, usually busy with exams and cricket matches, but that evening they had promised to explore the city’s hidden corners.

Shafin, who always carried a cheap secondhand smartphone loaded with games and half-broken apps, was the first to notice something strange. His screen flickered even though the battery was nearly full. Letters scrambled across the glass as if someone was typing inside it. A single message appeared: “MEMORY MARKET. TONIGHT ONLY. ENTRY CODE 9090.”

He blinked. “Guys, look at this.”

Nabil, sharp-eyed and endlessly curious, leaned over. “Memory Market? Is that some kind of video game?”

Riyad, the tallest and most cautious of the three, frowned. “Or a scam. Don’t click anything.”

But the phone screen glowed brighter, and arrows appeared, pointing toward a shadowy passage behind a row of shoe sellers. Curiosity pushed them forward. The air grew cooler, the neon lights faded, and soon they stood before a locked shutter painted with strange symbols. Shafin typed the code 9090 into his phone. To their shock, the shutter creaked open by itself.

Inside, the world changed. The alley expanded into a secret underground arcade glowing with holographic colors. Stalls floated like islands, each displaying swirling orbs of light instead of goods. People in dark coats moved about silently, their faces hidden behind masks that shimmered with shifting patterns. Instead of money, they traded chips glowing with tiny sparks.

“This is impossible,” whispered Nabil. “Are those memories?”

The friends realized at once what they had stumbled into: a black-market exchange where human memories were bought and sold like files. A vendor held up a glowing sphere and shouted, “The taste of your grandmother’s biryani! Only two chips!” Another whispered, “Your first Eid gift, relive it again!” The air was thick with echoes of laughter, cries and all trapped inside the glowing orbs.

Shafin’s mouth went dry. “People are selling pieces of themselves.”

They drifted past the stalls in awe until they reached one in the corner, smaller than the others. A single orb floated above the table, glowing faint blue. Its label flickered: FORGOTTEN CHILDHOOD: PRICE NEGOTIABLE.

Nabil felt his heart squeeze. “Whose memory is that?”

Behind the table sat a boy no older than sixteen, his mask pulled down to reveal a pale face. His eyes were empty, like he had misplaced something important. “It’s mine,” he said quietly. “I don’t need it anymore. I’m selling my childhood.”

The friends froze. Riyad stammered, “But why would you sell that?”

The boy shrugged. “Some memories hurt too much. Better to forget and make some money. Someone else can enjoy it.”

Shafin, always impulsive, shook his head. “That’s not right. Childhood is who you are.”

The boy looked away. “Not for me.”

Before they could reply, a tall figure in a black coat approached. His mask was shaped like a grinning tiger, and his voice hissed through hidden speakers. “I’ll buy it. Childhood is rare these days. Perfect for clients who crave innocence.” He reached out with a bag of glowing chips.

Nabil’s instincts screamed danger. He grabbed Shafin’s arm. “We can’t let him do this.”

But what could three students do in a secret market filled with dangerous traders?

As the tiger-masked buyer prepared to seal the deal, Shafin’s old phone buzzed again. The cracked screen displayed new words: “HACK ENTRY AVAILABLE. DO YOU ACCEPT?” Without thinking, he tapped YES. Suddenly, his phone vibrated like a living thing, and blue streams of code shot out, wrapping around the glowing orb of the boy’s childhood. The market gasped as the orb slipped from the stall and floated toward Shafin’s hands.

“What have you done?” the tiger-masked man roared, reaching for them.

“Run!” shouted Riyad.

The three of them bolted, weaving through stalls as traders shouted in alarm. Orbs of memory burst in their path, flashing images of lost summers, cricket games on muddy fields, rainy days in school, the smell of hilsa frying in monsoon kitchens. The chase twisted through the underground bazaar until the friends burst into a dead-end chamber lit only by flickering neon.

The orb pulsed in Shafin’s grip, whispering with the laughter of children. Nabil realized it wasn’t just a ball of light—it wanted to go home.

“We have to return it to him,” he said.

“But how?” asked Riyad.

Shafin stared at his phone. The cracked screen displayed a new instruction: “TRANSFER: PLACE ORB AGAINST HOST.”

Just then, the tiger-masked man stormed into the chamber with two guards. “Hand it over!”

Shafin hesitated only a moment. He pressed the orb against the boy’s chest. The blue light sank into him like water into sand. For a heartbeat, nothing happened. Then the boy gasped and fell to his knees, his eyes filling with tears. He looked at them with wonder. “I remember the first time I flew a kite over Lalbagh Fort, the smell of my mother’s cooking, the friends I lost It’s all back.”

The tiger-masked man snarled. “Fools! Memories are currency here. You can’t just give them away!”

But something strange happened. The boy stood tall, glowing faintly. His recovered childhood spread warmth through the chamber, and the orbs around them flickered, shaking loose from their stalls. Echoes of laughter and joy filled the air as memories escaped their prisons.

The traders panicked, trying to grab the orbs, but they scattered like fireflies into the shadows. The underground market trembled, its neon signs glitching. The walls cracked with bursts of blue light.

“Time to go!” shouted Nabil.

The friends raced through collapsing passages, guided by Shafin’s flickering phone. The boy ran with them, his face now alive with forgotten joy. They burst out of the shutter into the ordinary night of New Market. Behind them, the secret bazaar crumbled into silence, vanishing as if it had never existed.

Panting, they stood under the glow of a tea stall’s lantern. The world looked the same—rickshaw bells, frying parathas, voices of customers—but they knew they had seen something that most people could never imagine.

The boy bowed to them. “You saved me. You reminded me that even painful memories are part of who we are. Without them, we’re hollow.”

Riyad asked softly, “Will the market come back?”

“Maybe,” said the boy. “But people like you memory hackers, you can fight it.” He smiled for the first time, then slipped into the crowd and disappeared.

The three friends looked at each other. Shafin’s phone was quiet now, its screen cracked as before, no messages, no glowing code. It seemed like a useless old device again.

But they knew better.

As they walked back toward home, Nabil whispered, “We just changed someone’s life.”

Riyad added, “And maybe the whole city’s.”

Shafin grinned. “Next time, though, let’s just stick to cricket.”

They laughed together, their own memories—good and bad suddenly more precious than ever. And in the hidden corners of Dhaka, where neon shadows still flickered, the legend of the three student Memory Hackers had already begun.