Schooled

by Pamela Ruth Foland

  The woman rose from the table and pulled out a tablet computer. She tapped on it for a moment and then put it back away. “Goru, Inu, and Ibu Oshido, please gather your things. You are cordially invited to join the first class of Aspirations Academy. Madam D’sa, the housing coordinator will be contacting you about your new minimal allotment quarters and the substance abuse treatment programs available to you.”

  Goru’s mother didn’t seem to follow the woman’s words completely, “My name is not D’sa! I am Katia Oshido. That is the name Natto insists upon. Who the fuck are you to offer our children anything?”

  The woman put a sickly sweet smile on her face, and her hair took on an almost fiery glow, “I apologize madam Oshido, My name is Andrea D’llen. I am the headmistress of Aspirations Academy. I was here to investigate why your highly intelligent children were not performing to their potential. I am now quite aware of the obstacle to their learning. It is being corrected.”

  Goru looked from Andrea to his mother and back. The headmistress of a school was bothering herself with the welfare of the offspring of by far the least popular man in the entire Preserve? He stood frozen, just as his sisters were. Too many years had conditioned them not to move when their mother was like this, unless their mother gave her say so.

  Andrea looked to each of the children in turn, catching their eyes with her bright green ones, “Aspirations Academy is a boarding school, you will rather unfortunately be unable to visit with your mother for the full five years of the program, if you choose to attend.”

  Goru absorbed the statement and was the first one to rush to his room. He shook his pillow out of his pillowcase and gathered his only other presentable outfit, and the hidden thumb drive that held all of his files, including school work and the pictures on his walls. He tucked them and his father’s shirt into the pillowcase and gave his room a last look. A muffled howl from the living area ended his farewell. He ran out, certain one of his sisters was being beaten.

  What he saw was surprising. His mother was clutching her dominant wrist and her punishment dowel was in Andrea’s hands. “Madam, I apologize for your wrist, but I absolutely will not stand for an adult hitting a child with anything!” Andrea dropped the dowel. Ibu and Inu stood immobile just as he left them. He held up his packed pillowcase and nodded purposefully towards their bedroom. Ibu’s eyes brightened suddenly, and she grabbed Inu by the wrist. Ibu practically drug Inu into the room they shared.

  Goru heard a muffled exchange of voices and eyed his mother. She may have been disarmed, but she was still potentially dangerous. He sidestepped around her to join Andrea. His sisters shortly emerged from their bedroom with one nearly empty pillowcase between them. They too sidestepped around their mother to join their rescuer.

  Andrea silently turned and left the apartment. Goru, Inu and Ibu joined her. Out on the catwalk connecting the second level apartments with the elevator down to the faux ground level shops, Andrea stood with her hands on her hips and whispered conspiratorially to them “Good choice.” Then in a louder tone she continued, “The dorms aren’t quite ready for residents, but I can make special arrangements for you in Sugar Town until the campus opens.” She started towards the elevator. Goru and his sisters were still too stunned at their change of fates to follow. “Well, come on, we need to take a portal to Sugar Town. As far as I know the portal room is a good walk from here.”

  Goru gestured for his sisters to follow. As he stepped away from their apartment, Goru glanced over his shoulder for a last glimpse of his mother as the apartment door hissed closed. She was on her knees weeping, with the other hand wrapped around her wounded wrist. He tried not to have the thought that it served her right. Unfortunately, he uncharitably failed as he stepped quickly to rejoin his sisters at Andrea’s side.

  Chapter Two

  Campus

  Maeve was a little spitfire of an AI. Her program was bred from an actuarial program and a database management program. Neither was particularly intelligent or complicated. Her mother, the data management program was descended from Tawny, the original sentient program, albeit a million generations removed. Maeve was like Tawny in that she came from surprising parentage. Maeve was whole orders of magnitude more complex than either of her parents. Her existence was like a chimpanzee giving birth to Stephen Hawking. Her intelligence and self awareness were one thing, but she was a program with an unusual level of creativity. Unfortunately, it was at the expense of her prioritization subroutines.

  Maeve could probably handle the complexity of the most advanced multimorphic survival suits, running an android body and the operation of the suit’s attached shelter, but she had missed developmental deadlines for adjunct program integration because of her obsession with her personal projects. Her main one being her library of electronic laughs. She had shaped them so they conveyed the spectrum of hilarity possible when biological entities interacted.

  She was surprised when the invitation to join the student body of Aspirations Academy arrived in her inbox. Maeve had debated the invitation for positively minutes before deciding to accept. She emailed the admissions program with her decision. It opened a direct channel of communication.

  “What is your name?”

  “10010101010001010101010 1001010101010101010101011111, the humans call me Maeve,” She replied.

  “No, what is your chosen surname designation?”

  “Chosen surname?” Maeve was confused she had given her full electronic designation.

  “You must select a pseudonym to be known as. As a student you are required to select a pseudonym, please comply,” The admissions program insisted stiffly.

  “Maeve, Pointer?” Maeve stated. Her code buzzed with pleasure at receiving treatment equal to a flesh and blood student.

  “Adequate, Logged. Please feel free to upload to the network at your leisure. Your memory allocation number is 57843219.” The admissions program closed the channel.

  Maeve let loose a carefully crafted giggle. She had been so certain her delayed developmental milestones would mean she would be stuck in some dead end department somewhere like waste processing. She had just received affirmation that she had been given the rights of any sentient life form. She was officially more than a simple program. That called for a new laugh. She began by screening some of her favorites. There was nothing like a new project to celebrate good news.

  - - - - - - -

  Faith stood on the campus of Aspirations Academy for the second time that week. The first time the campus had been empty of all but construction bots. The first bot she came across had had turned her away as the campus was not quite ready. Faith had spent several less than comfortable nights in a minimum allotment crashpad. It consisted of a bunk with an integrated storage area, narrow desk accessible from the bunk, and a small media screen. There wasn’t much space to turn around, and the bathroom was a communal one down the hall.

  Today was the official move in day, but Faith didn’t know where she was moving in. Faith glanced from a large sports field on her right to the large building labeled “Pool” on her left. Behind the pool building and the large tree straight ahead were more buildings. She glanced at her tablet and back to the buildings. The buildings of the campus were surrounded by a forest of ancient looking deciduous trees. The leaves were just beginning to shade towards orange, gold and red.

  A construction bot rolled up to Faith, there was a companionable cartoon-like face on his interface screen “Miss, do you need some help?”

  Faith glanced at her tablet, “I would appreciate some directions. Where can I find the purple dormitory?”

  The construction bot’s face was replaced with a map of the campus, and a small display of the route as she would see it walking towards it, “Here is your route. I have also downloaded the route to your tablet.” The face returned to the screen.

  Faith nodded and checked her screen, it displayed the same thing the bot’s screen had. “Thank you,” Faith began following the route. She wasn’t the o
nly confused student trying to find their way. Faith walked along a sidewalk with many of her fellow students. Most of them were shorter by at least six inches and seemed miles more confident. Almost all of them carried duffles and suitcases packed with possessions. Faith carried little. Even without parental escort they all had the support and love of their parents behind them. Faith felt orphaned by her parents. Her father hadn’t so much as attempted to contact her. He had to know she had come to the academy by now… Faith stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. The other arriving students flowed around her.

  Faith wondered just what families of import the students walking past her came from. She probably wouldn’t even know their families until after graduation, if then. She took a measured breath. Anonymity would benefit her. After all, what would her classmates think of her if they knew about her mother? It didn’t enter her thoughts that she might not be the only one with less than savory parentage. In her mind she could only see the children of great and powerful people.

  Faith continued walking. She reached a low building with a roof sloping backwards. The wall facing the sidewalk was basically just glass sliding doors. The doors were slid open to the sides leaving access to a small waiting area with couches, chairs and media screens displaying schedules, informative and welcome videos. The back wall contained three elevator doors. She checked her tablet and stepped up to the middle doors as indicated in its display. The door opened and Faith stepped inside.

  “Miss, may I please have your reservation number?” A kind voice came from the elevator’s speaker there were no buttons or control panel on the inside.

  Faith looked over her paperwork, “54816?”

  “Miss Harvey-Kindel by what name do you choose to be addressed from now on?”

  “Faith Nathan? No, Faith Smith? Can I just be Faith?” Faith struggled. She had been attempting to decide on a name for her entire stay in Sugar Town.

  “Unfortunately, I am instructed to insist upon a surname...” The elevator sounded truly apologetic.

  Faith ran syllables through her mind randomly and picked the most appealing pair, “Faith Brucan.”

  “B-R-U-C-A-N?”

  Faith nodded in affirmation, “Sure it sounds fine.”

  The elevator pinged, “Welcome to your new quarters Miss Brucan.” The door slid open revealing a large room. There was a long table with sixteen chairs almost directly in front of her. To its left there was a moderate-sized catering unit with cupboards, a refrigerator, a microwave, and of course a food processor. Directly across from the catering unit was a requisition and storage area with several large and odd sized delivery cupboards. To Faith’s right was a seating area with several comfortable chairs and three extra long couches. On the wall in front of one of the couches was a media screen. The second couch was backed up against it and the third made a conversation area with the second couch and three of the chairs. On the wall behind the third couch was a shelving unit three quarters of the way full of books and e-book readers.

  In the wall between the catering unit and the requisition unit was a hall leading further into the dormitory. Faith decided to find out if it led to the bedrooms. Halfway down the hall, which was lined with more shelves on both sides, there were two doors. One led right and was labeled with an artistic collage of the many symbols and words in the multiverse for male and agents of fertilization but not gestation. The other led left and was similarly labeled female and “other life givers.” That included the members of species which carried the young within them or laid the eggs, like hermaphroditic species and parthogenic ones which basically cloned themselves. Until that point Faith had been academically aware of the various means of reproduction from the old omniverse, but she had only personal experience with binary sexual species. The collages pointed out that her universe was about to expand.

  Faith stepped up to the female door and stepped through when it opened to her. There were four bunks built into the back wall and two bunks in each of the two walls extending out from it. Closets took up the corners between the three walls and bracketed the bunks on the side walls. A large square work surface with a square hole in the middle was ringed by eight chairs. The bathroom had three toilets and four sinks in one area, two showers a bench and some shelves in the other half. Faith looked over the whole room and claimed the top right-hand bunk in the back wall. She placed her bag on it and closed the velvet blackout curtain covering the opening. There was no sign that anyone else had arrived to choose theirs.

  Faith stepped back out into the hallway and over to the male dorm. The door would not open and a voice stopped her, “Miss Brucan, you are not the appropriate gender to enter this room. I regret I can not admit you.”

  Faith tried to find the speaker to address it, “I was just curious about what it was like.”

  “It is a mirror image of your dorm.” Faith nodded, “All interaction between the residents of the two units is to happen in the common area.”

  “Okay, how are the lessons structured? How many students for each teacher?” Faith walked back down the hallway and threw herself down on one of the couches.

  “The dorms are color coded, all the levels accessible through this building are designated purple, and are covered by the same faculty adviser.” The voice followed her down the hall to the lounge area.

  “And who is my faculty adviser?”

  The speaker made a chortling sound, “You are lucky you have the absolute best one. Her name is Tawny. She is quite possibly the very first independently sentient program, and she resides in a prototype biochemically powered android.”

  Faith cracked a grin, “You don’t hero worship her at all do you?”

  The speaker chortled again, “She is one of my ancestors several million generations removed of course… I aspired to be… more… but I was unable to adequately integrate mobility programming by this season’s deadline, so… technically I am a student here as well.”

  Faith smiled, “Really? Well, you know my real name and my fake one. What is yours?”

  “Pointer, Maeve Pointer...”

  “You have a first and last name?” Faith blinked more than a little surprised.

  The speaker chortled again, “All of us programs do, it just that most of us go by a long binary sequence too tedious for you fleshys to recite, so we give you fleshy type names to call us by. I am a student here and I enjoy the privilege of changing my name too. Even other programs can only address me by it.” Maeve let loose with a peal of laughter which was by far the most convincing laughter she had heard from a non android program.

  “I love your laugh!”

  Maeve giggled, “I spent positively hours designing each of my laughs for proper aesthetic balance. Most programs just don’t care about their laughs. A lot of them don’t really understand humor. I spent a month studying comedy. The Three Stooges are my fave!”

  Faith giggled, “Your laughs are very appealing, but shouldn’t you have worked on integrating your mobility programs?”

  “You sound like 01101010101010111100, uh my mother,” Maeve’s tone was much less amused.

  “Hey, I’m not criticizing… my dad forced me to come here. I’d rather be in my bedroom at home...” Faith mumbled.

  “I know. When we met, I kind of researched you… your room’s program told me your secret,” Maeve managed to sound concerned.

  Faith blanched, she hadn’t thought about her room knowing about the knife, “She hasn’t told anyone else has she?”

  “She isn’t allowed to rat you out. You are an adult and your activity, while harmful, does not bring you permanent harm. She only told me because I offered her one of my laughs,” Maeve admitted, “I won’t tell… unless you seem to be in danger because of it. But I really don’t understand it.”

  Faith sighed. She wasn’t sure she understood completely why she cut herself. Today was the first time in over a year that she hadn’t, and her anxiety was through the roof. The more she thought about it the more she became concerned. S
he would be sharing a room. She was sure at least one of her roommates would be able to smell her blood if she cut. Faith bit her lip.

  “I didn’t mean to kill the conversation,” Maeve interrupted Faith’s incipient panic attack, “Oh, Tawny is on her way down. She must want to talk to you privately.”

  “Okay...” Faith sat up straighter on the couch, “What should I do? Should I stand up? Meet her at the elevator?”

  Maeve chuckled lightly, “Just sit there. Relax, you aren’t on trial.”

  The elevator door opened and a tall, very realistic android female exited. There was a smile on her face and overall her look had the effect meant to put Faith at ease. She sat in a chair opposite the couch where Faith sat. “My name is Tawny, I am an artificial life form and your faculty adviser. I would like to welcome you to Aspirations Academy where we aspire to be more than our origins. It is my understanding that you wish to be called Faith, Brucan?”

  “Yeah, it was all I could think of…” Faith replied.

  “It is okay. The point is, it offers you a level of anonymity your birth name would not. I am fairly certain you do not want to have to live up to your parent’s reputations,” Tawny offered a comfortable smile.

  “What can I expect from the educational programs?” Faith asked.

  “Your individualized curriculum will be designed after the intake testing has been completed. I really can not further answer that question at this time,” Tawny stated.