We Can Remember It For You Wholesale

Synopsis (spoilers!): Quail has one dream: he wants to go to Mars. It has became an obsession, so he decides to get rid of it..but he is not rich enough to afford a space trip. He catches a comercial on TV for Rekal, a company that sells false memories: he goes to their building, asks for memories about a Mars trip. The Rekal guys show him what they have in stock, and Quail chooses a special memory: he will remember he was a secret agent on a mission on Mars...The operation begins, but it goes terribly wrong: the doctors discover that Quail's memories have already been altered. Quail is in fact a former secret agent, he has already been to Mars, and his obsession about this planet was caused by a little residue of his memories erased by the government. Quail wakes up, and remembers two things: his false trip to Mars, and his real one...He comes back home, but can't stand the mental pressure, so he goes to Rekal again. He explains his problem, and they make a commercial move: they offer him to erase his true and false memories about Mars, and to implant for free some other memories about something else. Quail accepts, and asks them a memory that would make him the most important man in the world. Rekal has got somehting in stock: Quail will remember that when he was a child, some extraterrestrial landed under his nose, and signed a contract with him. As long as Quail will be alive, they won't invade Earth. So Quail is protecting the whole planet by simply existing. The Rekal doctors starts the operation, but something goes wrong...Quail has already this memory.

The themes: This short story is a reflexion about memory, how memories can be changed, by the time, by mental disorders,...