At graduation, my father's daunting figure was missing from the parents' section in the auditorium. Though his laughter wouldn’t have contributed to the cheerful chirps of proud parents, I desired the presence of his silence and perhaps also his disappointment—it was comforting, almost. But of course he would not attend. He did not believe in sharing knowledge—something school was mostly about. He said knowledge had to be gained on our own, not bought, not traded. Few, if any, believed that—now.

"No show, huh?" Oni asked. His graduation cap sat askew on top of his brown curls. I readjusted his cap for him and nodded before reaching up to check my own.

"Míngjì Zhang," the principal said. The míng in "smart" and the jì in "inherit" in Chinese. My father was dead set on his traditional worldviews. There is no need for an English name, he had said. "The recipient of this year's Most Promising Student Award."

Oni gave my shoulder a squeeze as I rose. My breaths shortened as I neared the stage. The bright lights blinded me. My heart thudded, and small black dots pulsed across my vision.

"Congratulations," said the principal, grasping my hand. I felt lightheaded but managed to keep my feet planted, swaying only a little—hopefully unnoticeable. I smiled, unnatural, tight. He placed in my hand a gold disk with "Most Promising Student Award 3092" and my name below it, engraved. Father would have been proud, not because of the award, but because my brain received no extra disks or alterations to win it.

"Oni Amibola," the principal said. It was an interesting change from calling forth the graduating class based on alphabetical order of last names as they had in the past to grade-based. The greatest embarrassment of all at our school was being called first. The award winners were always last. Best for last, as they had said. It did not feel that way—at least not for me.

"The recipient of this year's Great Technological Minds Award."

*     *     *
At the banquet after the ceremony, I fiddled with the case holding the golden disk on my lap. The lid flipped open and closed.

"You're not really going to toss it, are you?" Oni asked. He snatched the case from my fingers mid-flip.

"I am," I said. "I have to."

"You don't have to do anything, you know?" Oni cast his eyes down. "Your father's words ... aren’t considered universal truths." What he really wanted to say was that my father was wrong. He would say various versions of this over the years. Sometimes I believed him, but I never took it to heart in the end.

"How'll you live without sharing knowledge with or gaining knowledge from others?" he said.

"I am living now, am I not?"

Oni remained silent, then said, "When we work, it won't be the same as school."

He placed the case back in my hands. "You can't hide in your room trying to study and play catch-up forever."

*     *     *
I stared at the mind disk between my hands that my father had left when he passed on the day of my graduation. I’d returned home in my cap and gown to find my father collapsed on the bedroom floor, still dressed in his grease-stained factory uniform.

He did not believe in the merits of the memory transfer system. It was rather ironic since he was close friends with Oni's family, who were firm believers. Oni already had a job lined up with the Transfer House—the largest memory transfer corporation in Memoria.

"Look at Hilna and Juy—they didn’t receive any awards, but their parents purchased enough mind disks specific to scientific research knowledge, and now they've been placed at GM Institute," Oni muttered. "How could you possibly think that studying on your own and relying only on the memories passed down to you from your father would be enough?"

We sat cross-legged on the living room floor, staring at the golden disk I had yet to transfer. My fingers tightened around it.

"If you're not going to transfer it, at least give it to someone who will," Oni said before announcing that he had to leave for his onboarding day at Transfer House.

*     *     *
I stood in front of Noweti Genkins' apartment complex at the edge of the city. The glass next to the front door was shattered. The front porch was missing a couple of steps, and the ones remaining barely hung on. There was a rusted mailbox, the paint completely peeled off, that had long since fallen from where it was previously nailed next to the doorbell.

I shuddered at the squealing of the metal as I lifted the lid of the mailbox, dropping the case inside.

*     *     *
Transfer House never turned off its lights. Its workers never stopped working. There was always someone wanting to make transfers, and always someone who had to forfeit everything they had.

In the lobby, I spotted the station for transfers of already owned disks. It was much shorter than the line for purchasing and selling, and of course, copying. It was much cheaper to copy the skillset of a friend than to purchase a new disk, or to purchase a limited-availability disk from one of the world's leading thinkers. The leaders were always changing. Oni wanted to become one, too, even if it was only for a moment. For my father, simply living was more than enough.

"Transferring today?" asked the Transferer. Though it seemed she was juggling multiple tasks on the screen in front of her, her fingers tapping at rapid speed, her eyes were trained on me.

"Yes." I pushed the disk wrapped in an old cloth towards the woman. I could feel her silent judgment as she stared at the dust that rose from the fabric. She blew a swift breath when she lifted the disk to her face.

"That will be 150C," she said.

After paying tuition, there was only about 4000C left in my joint account with my father. I pulled out the transparent C Card from the lanyard around my neck and inserted it into the machine the Transferer set in front of me. My fingers pressed the digital outlines on the Transfer Machine's screen.

Payment Accepted.

The Transferer waved me towards the Transfer room. There were several chairs with helmets hanging above them, spread in uniform lines across the room—some occupied, some not. She sat me down and motioned for me to stay still as she secured the helmet over my head.

"Close your eyes and relax," she said.

I heard the Transferer inserting the disk into the helmet.

*     *     *
On my way out, Oni stopped me by the door.

"Hey! I thought you weren't going to transfer?" He scanned me as though looking for some sort of physical difference after the transfer. His eyes held an excited glint.

"My father's disk," I said.

His smile waned. "Oh."

*     *     *
"Thank you," Noweti said when I opened the door. She held out the empty case towards me. "I made the transfer." She shuffled her feet, a forlorn smile on her lips. "But it's only enough for me to return to school. Maybe even an entry-level job if I'm really lucky, but even then, it's hard to keep up." Then she waved a dismissive hand in the air. "I really appreciate it. I do. But ... I was wondering if your father's factory happened to be hiring?" Noweti looked down, as if ashamed.

Ice sliced down my spine. The golden disk was a double-edge reward. I wondered what Oni's disk contained? Perhaps it was only brief but specialized knowledge that was not enough to forward or break into a career and only made him curious enough, hungry enough, to purchase more. Did Transfer House provide him with knowledge disks he would need to elevate his position? Did they offer discounts? Force him to purchase more disks himself? Were they free as part of his job benefits? The smart only got smarter.

"My father is dead."

"Any black mind market connections?" I knew what she was suggesting. Even though she was called up first for graduation, perhaps I was the same. Perhaps I did not have to study like she did. Perhaps—

I shook my head and shut the door, the empty case still in her outstretched hand.

*     *     *
I sat cross-legged in the living room without Oni this time. He seemed hard to reach since he started at Transfer House. I wanted to ask about his employment details, but he said they were confidential. I should have known.

After the transfer, I did not feel any different. The Transferer said that it might take a while before the contents of the disk could be accessed, and the recollections may come in brief flashes. "Purchase some mind-ache medication in case," she had said. I dumped the aluminum pills package from its box and set a cup of water beside it.

Black specks appeared in front of my eyes before it swallowed my living room whole.

*     *     *
You walked onto the stage first like Noweti, not because you were not smart, but because you were smart in a way that was unacceptable.

The principal grinned and said, "Congratulations," before whispering, "for being first."

You understood what that meant. It limited your options, but what it did not limit was your freedom. You smiled in response. "Thank you."

With hands empty, you walked off the stage. To be first to step onto the stage was almost equal to having no "formal education."

*     *     *
You went to "black markets," though not the kind that Noweti thought of, filled with illegal sellers of hard- and soft-cover books. The ones that interested you most were the ones on history, politics, the events of riots and protest—and change.

At home, in a house similar in condition to but much smaller than Noweti's, you read by the light of a small solar powered lamp until your eyes were barely visible because you would rather buy more books than a pair of glasses.

*     *     *
You were always punctual when arriving at the factory—never a minute late or a minute early. The daily routine never changed. It was simple.

You wanted me to go to school not because you thought it was useful but because you wanted me to understand, to learn, to realize how the world worked on my own. Children, you understood, were difficult to convince.

*     *     *
In your drawer sat a second memory disk. A wealth of knowledge and memories from great thinkers of the past sat within its digital make-up—thinkers that were no longer relevant to the world, but to you, held the key to change it: peacekeepers, activists, advocators that were arrested and exiled by the Memorian government.

You wanted us to share memories, knowledge, organically. You did not believe in memory and knowledge for profit, monetized distribution. In your eyes, the economy of knowledge failed us and will continue to fail us. To you, Oni's family was only one out of the millions who fed the knowledge economy. You wanted to save them, but they could not be saved.

*     *     *
I sat with my head in my hands, knees drawn, mind swimming, and tossed back a mind-ache pill.

To live simply was a choice you consciously made, and perhaps to live simply would be enough for me too—or at least, that was what others would believe looking in from the outside.

There was a knock on the door. Then another. Several more.

"Míngjì?" It was Oni. "Míngjì! I have some great news! I'm being promoted at Transfer House!" It had only been a week.

I thought of the factory my father had worked at where they disposed of all the damaged and illegal disks marked by Transfer House. My legs wobbled when I stood. I staggered upstairs toward my father's room, toward the drawer in his memories.