Schooled

by Pamela Ruth Foland

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  Despite being grateful for the escape from his horrid living situation, Goru still wasn’t sure of how he felt. His sisters were positively glowing with pleasure as they strutted towards their future dressed in all new clothes. Andrea, had taken them shopping and all three of the triplets were given the opportunity to create new wardrobes which for the first time fully reflected their individuality. Ibu and Inu wore smart looking tailored dresses in pink and blue. Goru chose to reflect a less straight laced style and bought clothes which were similar in character to his old ones minus the rips, tears and worn places. His style could best be described as relaxed casual grunge. He felt more comfortable in his clothes than he had in a long time.

  The campus radiated newness. Goru and his sisters had passed a massive athletics field, on their way from the place where the shuttle had dropped them off towards the main buildings of the campus. It looked like it could be configured for any sport from soccer to baseball to, if it actually existed, quidditch. The trees and other landscaping were clearly newly planted with the exception of a huge oak at the center of the walkway beside one of the buildings. The buildings themselves radiated a newness as well the windows were all sparklingly clear and the brick and stonework was crisp and clean.

  Goru was ill at ease, the discomfort he felt radiated from the mob of students making their way towards the dormitory buildings. He didn’t understand why he was afraid, other than the fact that he wasn’t used to being surrounded by so many new people. Ibu and Inu were chuckling and pointing at some odd clothing choices their peers had made. Ahead stood what was undeniably the purple dormitory, despite its small ground level footprint. Silently Goru adjusted their three bottomless travel bags on his shoulder and used his arms to propel actively his sisters towards the entrance. Eventually they entered and approached the bank of elevator doors at the back. The right hand doors opened and a pleasant voice emanated from within, “Welcome, I assume you are Goru, Inu and Ibu. What surname have you three chosen?”

  “Nathan,” Ibu and Inu agreed.

  “Nattan,” Goru replied at the same time, he glared at them. They had agreed on the name last night in silent discussion.

  “Ibu and I changed our minds,” Inu stated.

  “We thought people might get the right idea of who our father was,” Ibu argued.

  Goru continued to glare, “That was why I suggested it. It isn’t like people here knew he had taken Oshido as his name. “

  “Uh, the point is anonymity. Be glad we decided on Nathan,” Ibu harrumphed. She and Inu each took their travel bag from him and got on the elevator. They closed the door before he could get in.

  “So, that is how it is going to be!” Goru grumbled at the elevator door.

  The elevator to his right opened and the same friendly voice came from within, “I applaud your boldness Mr. Nattan. I am sorry your sisters don’t choose to share it. Let me welcome you to the purple dormitories. My name is Maeve Pointer. I am the AI for your group, as well as a student…”

  Goru glared at the open elevator before stepping inside. Then he realized there was no point in ostracizing a potential ally because he was upset at his sisters ditching him, “I apologize Maeve at my attitude. Until just now it was the three of us against it all. I guess they want it to be the two of them….”

  “I don’t blame them, given your father’s behavior they probably feel safer. I am curious why you want the association,” Maeve stated non-judgmentally. Goru got in the elevator and the doors closed behind him.

  “He is my father. Whatever he did, I owe the man respect and just a touch of reverence, especially since there is clearly no one else in The Preserve that does. In fact, the only thing I fault him for is not being there for his offspring,” Goru stated, “and I believe others hold more blame in that than he does.” Goru visualized the many faces, young and old, of Mae Amante, the object of his hatred.

  “I get it, he helped create you, but you could see how Natto, the man, could hamper your progress,” Maeve stated, “I don’t know what I would do if some controversial AI were my parent so I can’t council you on how to proceed. I believe your choice is bold, and as such admirable.”

  Goru blinked, “Thank you..”

  “No problem. Here we are… our floor,” The elevator doors opened. He exited and noted there was only one set of elevator doors, but his sisters were waiting there. That must mean there was some kind of dimensional folding at work. He watched his sisters chattering softly in what looked like a media corner. Goru walked and took a seat at the table. He heard his sisters chuckling softly behind him. He did his best to ignore them. They had formed their own group of two. He was no longer a member. Maeve was still somewhere in the wiring. Goru considered continuing the conversation, but morbidly staring at his own future sounded more palatable.

  Chapter Three

  Arrivals

  Stone entered the bedroom area of the dormitory unit, with two things occupying her mind. The first thing was registering displeasure that only the female unit would open to her. It seemed so intolerant that they forced her to sleep in the girls dorm because of the archaic idea that sex and gender were the same. She had hoped… The second object of her interest was the electronic circuitry throughout the room. She detected wiring, trans-dimensional conduits and fiber-optics criss-crossing one another. It made pretty and entertaining fractal patterns of various energies flowing around the room. It was nearly hypnotic. Within moments the relative impersonality of the room had Stone very bored. Internally she began sorting through the latest download she took from the net. She barely made note of the other biological occupants of the room, two girls. The room was rather sterile and Stone had no personal possessions to spread around to alter that. She she simply had not been alive long enough to collect them. She thought about going out to the delivery cupboard and ordering things, but decided she didn’t want to fake a personality.

  Stone didn’t even have clothes, her nanites simulated them. Her wardrobe was limited by the size of her imagination. Her tastes ran to more masculine dress and really had not reached a high level of complexity. She was still learning to simulate seams properly.

  She looked over the two girls seated at the square table. One seemed upset, she was dressed in a simple asexual outfit of jeans and a t-shirt. The girl’s breasts appeared to have been bound given the way she was breathing. Intrigued by suppressing that particular secondary sexual trait, Stone felt she could pull the outfit off. The other girl wore a sports bra beneath a pink blouse. Her bicycle shorts were trimmed in lace. Stone wouldn’t wear it but she supposed males would find it highly attractive.

  The girls were both lost in their own thoughts. Stone became aware of instructions to the room’s program to summon them to the common area. Before it could process the request Stone spun to leave. When she reached the door she was shocked at how slowly it processed the impulse to open for her. She glanced over her shoulder. At first Stone thought the other two girls were frozen, then she realized that her perception was faster than it had ever been. Finally she heard the program make the summons. The two girls moved as if in slow motion to respond to the summons. Stone took a breath and focused on slowing her motion and perception. While she struggled within, both girls overtook her and exited. “Are you coming?” The blonde girl asked from the hallway.

  Stone nodded at what she believed was a normal speed. The girl’s reaction was to continue off down the hallway. Stone assessed her experience. It was an interesting sensation. She filed the experience for later experimentation.

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  Faith walked into the familiar elevator lounge for the purple dorms. Maeve had told her about a summons to their common room. The left-hand elevator was open, and she saw Tawny waiting with a young man. She contemplated waiting for another elevator. The solitary exploration of the less-traveled areas of the campus of the campus had left Faith pleasantly relaxed. The idea of interacting with Tawny and the boy had her anx
iety ramping up again. Faith thought of her knife, of the brief relief the pain of cutting brought. She wished she thought she could get away with it. The young man appeared to be at the beginning of puberty. Faith towered over him by eleven inches. His hair was nearly white blonde, and he had the highly tanned skin of someone who spent a lot of time outdoors. He was dressed in khaki pants and a loose, comfortable shirt.

  He offered her an open palm, “My name’s Beaker Corduroy.”

  “Faith,” She shook his hand as she boarded the elevator.

  “Tawny said you’re part of my dormitory group. How long has it been since your metamorphosis?” Beaker asked probingly. “A few months,” Faith answered rubbing her forearm.

  “Did it hurt?”

  Faith nodded and stared at her feet. The elevator door closed and Faith felt a strange motionless motion. It was disorienting.

  “Oh,” Beaker uttered, “I am guessing it won’t be too long before I have mine. I have been ravenous.”

  Faith flashed him a meek smile, “I spent most of my life ravenous. I feel like I hardly eat anymore.”

  “Really?” Beaker seemed ready to probe further.

  Faith was utterly relieved when the elevator door opened and cut him off. Faith stepped out into what felt like a room full of strangers. There was a pair of what Faith presumed were twins that looked like they could be her close family members, she thought they might be cousins or even nieces or grandnieces. Her mother had already been a great grandmother when she was born. Faith sat in one of the empty chairs and waited for Tawny to get everyone’s attention.

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  Beaker wasn’t sure what he thought about Faith. Physically she was an adult, but she seemed emotionally much younger than even he was. He had put forth a great deal of effort to draw her into a conversation, but she seemed hesitant and standoffish. By the time the elevator door opened he was ready to give up the effort. He stepped from the elevator glancing between the two sets of elevator doors. He was pretty sure he noticed a mineral common to his parent’s shelter. Did that mean the campus was in an asteroid as well, or perhaps a small moon? Beaker changed focus to the room in front of him. It seemed to be a common room. There were other teens waiting in the room, a red-haired boy and girl who seemed to be nearly identical sat hand in hand on a couch. A blonde girl sat stiffly on the other end of the same couch. Beaker noticed an individual he couldn’t quite classify by gender leaning against a bookshelf, not really seeming to be paying attention. The last really noticeable person was a young brunette boy with long dark hair and sullen eyes boring holes through the blonde girl sitting on the couch.

  Tawny took up position in front of the media screen and mechanically cleared her throat, "You are all grouped together on the thought that your talents and interests will be complimentary of each other, as a unit you should be able to contribute your strengths mitigating the weaknesses of others. Your placement was not random or arbitrary. All of you were selected specifically for what you could contribute to one another,” Tawny paused, “Now I want each of you to introduce yourself.”

  Two nearly identical girls stood up from their seats to comply. One wore a blue dress and had her hair cropped long on top and shorter on the sides, she was slightly shorter with a rounder face. The other was slightly taller, in a pink dress with a shorter version of her sister’s haircut and her face was narrower. The one in the blue dress spoke first, “I am Ibu Nathan.”

  “I am Inu, her sister,” The one in the pink dress stated.

  Tawny acknowledged them with a nod. Then she looked at the other likely pair of twins. The boy spoke first, “We are Millie and…”

  The girl continued, “Milo Dane. We…”

  “Just turned twelve…” the boy continued.

  Beaker fervently hoped that they didn’t regularly pass conversational threads between them. What he had picked up so far was like a bad game of tennis. Tawny nodded the twins into submission and looked to the individual of ambiguous gender.

  “Hi, I am Stone Jacobs.” The name didn’t settle the gender conundrum.

  A razorwolf male stepped from the elevator, he verbally introduced himself, “My name is Scout Oldmind, obviously I am truevoice clan, but they told me to pick a pseudonym…”

  A female razorwolf exited the elevator next, she was clearly from the bipedal Truebreed clan, she had all the most specialized traits, including opposible thumbs, upright posture and most likely the ability to speak aloud. Beaker knew about Truebreed clan from his friends, but she was the first he had ever actually seen. “Hi folks, my name is Fubar. I know it is an acronym for, effed up beyond all recognition. Contrary to any generous opinions to the contrary that is exactly what it stands for. My parents were the last members of our tribe surviving out in the exotic radiation at the end of the old omniverse, I was the only one in my litter born alive and unmutated. My parents basically believed in the custom of naming their pups after significant events... So, Fubar…”

  Beaker cracked a grin. Fubar seemed as cool as most of his razorwolf friends back home. Maybe he wouldn’t be so homesick after all. He accidentally noticed Tawny trying to catch his eye. “Oh, I suppose I should take a turn, Beaker Corduroy, thirteen years old, science geek.”

  The blonde on the end of the couch raised her hand, “Uh my name is Lyla, and, I chose Carlyle as my last name.”

  Beaker noticed the sullen boy shift in his seat, “You MAY call me Goru Nattan.” The boy’s voice held more than a hint of malice clearly aimed at Lyla.

  “Ooh me next,” A heavily mechanical male voice sounded from the top shelf of the bookcase. Beaker thought for sure it was a program making itself known, but instead an enormous white house cat leaped to the middle of the coffee table in front of the couch. “My name is Sugar, but I am a cat. So don’t mistake me for being sweet!” He began preening his fur on his chest. Sugar wore a collar like some of Beaker’s razorwolf friends, which Beaker realized allowed Sugar to speak. At that point Beaker missed the rest of the introductions, which included a number of more late arrivals. He was too busy looking over his furred classmates.

  Beaker was startled back into focus, when Tawny cleared her throat again, “I suggest you take the remainder of the day to familiarize yourself with these rooms and investigate your resources. You may order dinner from the food processor and any toiletries may be ordered from the delivery cupboards in the commissary area. Have a nice evening.”

  - - - - - - -

  Goru stared at Lyla, actually he glared at her. Her voice confirmed what he saw. She was closely related to Mae Amante. Mae was a Porusan-Agurian hybrid. Porusans were a partially parthenogenic species, meaning that a portion of the female population gave birth almost exclusively to clones. Only severe systemic stress allowed for any male DNA to be integrated into the embryo. Mae’s mother had been so severely injured on a basic level that she gave birth to a hybrid, but Goru was firmly certain that Mae had reverted to type. Lyla had to be Mae’s daughter. She was virtually identical. Goru was fixating on the girl counting the ways of confirming his assumption. He vaguely made note of the group identifying themselves.

  There was a pure human who identified himself as Maynard Bison, he came from an earth parallel where Columbus never sailed and native Americans rediscovered the “Old World.” A completely parthenogenic species was represented by a newly mature woman, Tudra Thistle. There was a rare example of the shape shifting Agurian race with dark skin and blue eyes. He chose to call himself Lenny V. There was a multimorphic android male going by Ardun.

  Lastly a presumably recently matured female who was Briaunti like Goru rose to introduce herself. She drew his attention because she was last, and because she bore a strong physical resemblance to his sisters in the face. Briaunti were all heavily related, but this newly minted woman was only slightly removed from his family tree. That being true, he felt a sense of kinship with her timidity. She probably didn’t want her infamous lineage revealed either. “My name is Faith, Brucan, I
guess.”

  “My name is Maeve Pointer I’m the floor AI and also a student!” Maeve chirped through a speaker in the corner.

  Once the introductions were through Tawny cleared her throat again, “I suggest you take the remainder of the day to familiarize yourself with these rooms and investigate your resources. You may order dinner from the food processor and any toiletries may be ordered from the delivery cupboards in the commissary area. Have a nice evening.” Tawny walked mechanically to the elevator which opened for her and she departed, probably to repeat the introductions on the next floor.

  When Tawny left, Lyla decided to get chatty, “So Beaker, what is your story?”

  Faith grimaced at her, “Our pasts and parentage is supposed to remain anonymous.”

  “Okay so what did you do to occupy yourself?” Millie asked, this time she spoke alone. It screamed of a personal interest in the subject, Beaker. Milo turned and looked at her oddly.

  Beaker smiled, “I ran with a pack of razorwolves and analyzed minerals and alloys for fun.”

  “Science, for fun…” Lyla nodded, “sounds perfectly reasonable.”