“Do you know how much you’ll be paid?”

“Yes!”

“I always thought of you as a pragmatic person Sunny. How is it that you can’t see it? The wheel of luck is knocking at your door, waiting to discharge its fortune and instead of welcoming it with open arms, you want to lock the door shut!”

“Pretty much!”

“You are being impossible!” Eddy cried.

“Am I?”

“Yes, you are! You know we’ll pay you whatever you want, there’s no curb on the money. I just don’t see it Sunny. Why are you being so naïve? Don’t you love money? Don’t you want riches? Isn’t this what you’ve always dreamed of? Able to buy anything that your heart desires?”

“The price is too cheap.”

“The fucking price is too cheap! We haven’t offered a price, it’s for you to decide whatever you think is the right price.”

“There is no price of a memory.”

“Everything’s got a price Sunny”

“I don’t.”

“You think you’re being smart right now?”

“Did I ever say I was smart?”

“Do you realize what you’re saying no to? Do you not see it?”

“I do!”

“Then what’s the damn problem?”

“You are asking me to lose my identity.”

“We most certainly are not! We’re merely trading one of your memory for a price. How is that losing your identity?”

“A specific memory, not one of!”

“Yes.”

“I can’t do it.”

“You can’t do it, or you don’t want to do it.”

“I won’t do it!”

“It’s just a single memory.”

“It’s not just one memory, it’s all the memories!”

“All related to just that one thing, so it’s not everything, it’s just one thing scattered at all places.”

“That one thing is my life!”

“Your life is your life M. Your family, your dreams, your desire and ambitions that’s your life. Not memory of some…”

“Careful! Careful about the word you say next, you don’t want it to be your last.”

“You know who she is. You know what she is!”

“You don’t know who I am.”

“I know who you are, that’s why we are giving you this offer in the first place. With all that money you can create a myriad of memories that can last you a thousand lifetimes.”

“I don’t have a thousand lives.”

“Why are you so reluctant to preserving the thing that’s only wrecking you?”

“Because I am not me without it Ed! How is that not clear?”

“It’s not! You would still be you, in fact, you’d be better off without it. You are miserable now!”

“I need something to make me feel alive!”

“You have everything! And we are giving your more! Money that you can’t count your whole life, and we are stripping you of your agony.”

“You don’t take the cream out of cake and still call it cake. You don’t take the fire out of the sun and still call it the sun. You don’t take water out of oceans and still call them ocean. You don’t take the soul out of a person and still call him alive. You don’t take X out of me and still call me Sunny!”

“But you can have hundreds, no thousands of X with all that money.”

“True! But it won’t be her, Ed! It’s not that I am losing a memory, for you it seems that way, but for me! For me it’s everything. The things I love, the things I hate, everything is shaped by it. It’s what defines me as a person who I am now. You are not asking me to trade memory Ed, you are asking if I would be someone else for a price. And if I become someone else who would be me?”

“This is absurd! You are deluded by your own thoughts!”

“If that’s so! But it’s not happening, Ed. I ain’t trading shit!”

“And there’s nothing I can do to change your mind?”

“Nope! There ain’t!”

“Huh! Your loss!” grieved Eddy as he got up to leave.

“Please close the door shut when you leave!”