disconnected {~updates weekly-ish~}

Knowledge is power.
And when you need money to buy that knowledge, then money is power.
Body augments are common, most insurances even cover them. You can update your eyes, your ears, even get some sick robot arms. But brain implants, they're trickier. Downloading someone's carefully edited memories may give you the knowledge to be a surgeon, or a master programmer, but it can come with a serious consequence - overlay. The inability to differentiate real from imagined, the destruction of a memory based timeline. Though, the real hurdle to following your dreams is as it's been for hundreds of years: cash money. Sure, there are ad supported memory packages, but in a world where the only experiences that matter to employers are the ones you've purchased, things like college degrees and hands on learning are worthless.
Kate, Cal, and Wren all work in the industries' leading memory company, and are about to be confronted in a very violent way by the true division of money and knowledge that exist in the country. Yet their survival depends, not on what they've bought, but what they've learned.

This is still a first draft, without any professional editing, so thank you for any comments related to technical problems with the story, and thanks for reading and leaving your feedback! I do my best to update weekly, and there are a projected 20ish chapters.

This story is rated MA and contains violence, mild gore, and suicide themes.

Cover photo by Bogdan Pasca on Unsplash