In a future where people live through recorded memories instead of their own experiences, a man discovers the painful truth that real achievement requires effort—and sets out to reclaim humanity’s ability to live for real.

SYNOPSIS:

In 20NN, the corporation New World introduces a revolutionary technology—“1000 Lives,” a device that allows one person’s physical sensations and lived experience to be recorded and transmitted directly into the brain of another. Memories, bodily feelings, triumphs and fears are extracted, stored on a medium called a Memory Keeper, and played back through a station that connects directly to the neural system. Humanity believes it has finally found a way to live more than one life. The first years are an era of euphoria. Thousands live through recorded romances, victories, culinary sensations, and moments of glory. The entertainment industry thrives as New World recruits celebrities, athletes, and idols to create premium recordings. Life becomes a modular construct—people assemble their personalities from fragments of others. But euphoria comes at a price. A decade later, society begins to stagnate. Few pursue mastery or effort—why learn when you can simply live a finished version of success? Reality is abandoned in favor of simulation. Athletic excellence collapses as generations refuse to train; championships fade as there are no true competitors left. The world becomes a place of passive consumption. Fifty years after launch, civilization is transformed beyond recognition. Physical activity is limited to searching for food or maintaining systems. People live inside curated moments of others’ achievements. New content creation shrinks to 0.5% of its former peak. Memories of birth, first kisses, learning, struggle become ‘boring’ and are deleted to conserve storage. Only climax moments of history remain. Almost no one remembers the value of effort—except one. Our protagonist is an ordinary citizen shaped entirely by recorded experience. His favorite memory is an NBA finals game in which he—the avatar within the recording—scores the game‑winning shot. He relives this moment hundreds of times until he believes his body must be capable of the same. For the first time in his life, he acts in the real world. He buys a rare basketball, builds a crude hoop in his courtyard, and attempts the shot—fifteen meters out, just like in the recording. The ball doesn’t even reach the rim. Twenty attempts, no success. He can’t score from a meter away. What was effortless in memory becomes impossible in reality. Shock and panic become his first true sensations. He searches for athletic training memories—finding only two hours of fragmented content. He consumes them, expecting transformation. Nothing changes. At last he realizes the truth: memories don’t teach—they deceive. So begins his first real path. He trains alone, using the scarce recordings as loose instruction. Months of labor make him a neighborhood curiosity—why toil when perfection is downloadable? He becomes known as a freak. Yet he persists. After half a year of sweat, pain, and humiliation, he lands his first five‑meter shot. Instead of triumph, he feels horror. The world has lost its path to meaning. People traded life for illusion. He gains a new purpose—to live a life of his own, and more importantly, to find others capable of reclaiming humanity’s connection to effort, struggle, and real joy. The story unfolds as a search for allies and a confrontation with a world addicted to instant fulfillment. The protagonist becomes the first voice of a new generation—one that wants not to live a thousand borrowed lives, but one authentic one.