In a world where memories can be extracted, refined and consumed like drugs, the past becomes a commodity. "Memos," as they are called, offer fleeting glimpses of long-gone joy, triumph, and love. For most people, it's a harmless pastime. For some, it's an addiction. For others, it's a weapon.
Lin, a "dust collector," is a relic of this forgotten era. He doesn't trade in polished, commercialized mnemonics. Instead, he sifts through the discarded residue—the "dust"—of social memory, fragments of memory that have been discarded by the mainstream market as too fragmentary, painful, or bizarre. He is a scavenger of memories, haunted by a past beyond his own reach: a blank childhood erased by traumatic events.
His peaceful life of sorting out other people's fleeting ghosts is shattered when he stumbles across a strange wisp of dust - a memory that feels impossible yet eerily familiar. This is a key, a key that unlocks the conspiracy that reaches the highest levels of power in the city-state of "New Alexandria". This city-state society is based on the commodification of souls.
Lin is hunted by the "enforcers" of the Memory Syndicate, and at the same time is troubled by echoes that are not his own. He must join forces with a disillusioned Syndicate chemist and a rebellious "anti-memonic" activist. Together they must navigate a maze of corporate espionage, neurological warfare and a dark, unregulated underworld of memory trading.
