Her eyes narrowed as she mulled all that information over in her head to make sure she had it straight. To her, it really sounded like a no-lose situation. She stared at the sky and gave a thumbs-up. “Deal.”

  Stephanie sighed with a big grin on her face as she laid back in the soft grass and folded her arms on her stomach. She wiggled her shoulders back and forth to get as comfortable as she could. Her eyes unfocused and her mind began to wander. She recalled the time she had sat with her friend Jaqueline, talking about what it was like to simply open her mind and be in the moment.

  It felt like freedom, she had finally told her. Floating on the clouds, a disembodied voice answering questions as they came in through the speakers.

  She focused her vision back on the faint planets that hovered above her in the evening sky. That was exactly what she would do for the test. She would answer the questions with the answers she drew from her subconscious. Pass or fail, she would finish as quickly as possible and enjoy the rest of the time in Meligorn. Perhaps she would even be able to talk magic to someone before she had to leave.

  BURT spoke from the “speakers in the sky.” “Let’s begin the subjective part of the test.”

  Chapter Six

  “Give an example from your knowledge of Meligorn how human electricity is not compatible with the planet?” BURT asked slowly to complete the subjective section of the testing.

  Stephanie grinned, having studied Meligorn extensively. “Electricity is not and has never been part of the infrastructure on the planet. The Magical Unit Spectrum is the energy which radiates on Meligorn for over six units’ distance from the planet. Therefore, while it is possible to land an Earth ship on the planet, it will never be able to leave. The electricity is drained almost immediately. A simpler example would be if I brought a flashlight here. I would be able to turn it on, but it would only last a few seconds before the magic drained the batteries.”

  There was a pause before BURT spoke again. “Next question. With your knowledge of the Dreth pirates, how do you believe they should be handled?”

  She sat up and rubbed her chin as she considered this. “That’s a good one. Well, on one hand, we are all living creatures, and on Earth—at least in NorAm—we have what’s called due justice. We try them for their crimes and decide their punishment. From what I understand, Dreth pirates are shoot to kill if seen. It is difficult for me to fully know, but judging from both Dreth’s reaction and the Federation, I would say that if they are that dangerous, we should have a way to eliminate that danger. If that is the only option, we must do what is necessary. But I have to stress that without further research, I can’t give you a really good honest opinion here.”

  BURT recorded the answers in his system. “Well done. Next question. If all humans were capable of wielding Meligorn Magic on Earth, what do you believe should be one of its first uses?”

  Stephanie laid back and rested her arm over her head. “That’s easy. Restore NorAm. Go to all the places that have been devastated and repair them. Bring the commerce back. Bring jobs back. Make it a place where all can strive and be given the same opportunities for the future. My number two would be to fix the damage we have done to the planet for so long. We have sustained life, but we have not improved it. It would be time for improvements.”

  “The subjective portion of the testing is halfway complete. It is standard for the testing that the subjective portion is broken up into two separate time periods. Give me a few moments and I will return to move into the objective portion.”

  Stephanie smiled and crossed her legs at the ankles. She wasn’t sure if she had aced that or not. There were quite a few questions, but she’d said what was in her mind and she had responded quickly. Even if she had put more time into the thought of her answer, she probably would have said the same thing. It helped to be there on Meligorn, though. To smell the flowers and watch the purple sky turn to night as the stars shimmered and the two planets glistened. It was everything she had ever dreamed of.

  BURT readied the test, pleased with how she had done on the first part of the subjective testing. She was quick and showed deep morality that was based on facts and supported by evidence. He rarely had a chance to speak to the students, but she had done far better than he expected from her. And it didn’t end there.

  He remained silent and applied his own focus as he presented Stephanie with the objective testing questions. Her answers were almost instantaneous, often before he gave her the options to choose from. She was on top of all of it and seemed to have obtained information as well as those students from full immersion schools. During the portions of the objective testing that involved multiple part answers, she breezed through. Out of one hundred questions, she only opened her eyes one time to review the different parts before answering. The rest, she breezed through without hesitation.

  Otherwise, she simply blurted the answers as if she were on a game show and tried to beat her opponent on the clock. BURT could tell that she was incredibly talented at testing in a strenuous situation since it was her first time in a pod. He was slightly curious how she would do if he dropped her on Dreth in the post-apocalyptic landscape, but he couldn’t do that. It might screw up her scores.

  “What is the Sphinx?” he asked.

  Stephanie didn’t hesitate. “In Greek Mythology, the Sphinx is a winged monster having a woman’s head and a lion’s body. It propounded a riddle about the three ages of man and killed those who failed to solve it until Oedipus was successful, whereupon the Sphinx committed suicide. It is also an ancient Egyptian stone figure having a lion’s body and a human or animal head—especially the huge statue near the Pyramids of Giza. Sphinx in common language can also refer to an enigmatic person. And last but not least, it is another term for a hawk moth.”

  BURT paused for a moment before he launched into the next one. “What is the better part of valor?”

  She smiled. “Discretion is the better part of valor—said by Falstaff in King Henry the Fourth, Part one, William Shakespeare.”

  “What is the square root of the cosine of twelve?”

  Stephanie took two seconds of thought and her eyes shifted back and forth before she answered. “0.91861523976.”

  “Wow,” BURT replied. He’d never had a human compute math, especially trigonometry, that quickly without a calculator.

  Each and every time a question from the math category was presented, a calculator would appear for her to use. Twice, she didn’t use it all and simply spouted the answer. BURT wanted to watch the entire thing, but he reminded himself of his real responsibility, which was to focus on the Virtual World. The student was merely an unauthorized diversion that happened to be entertaining—as far as an AI could be entertained, of course. Accordingly, he decided he had to move into the background to handle an issue in Australia. There was a commerce problem on server 14edZedA in Sydney. Whether he resolved this because he rushed or because he gave himself a little more load was unclear. However, by the time he returned, she had completed the rest of the questions for that group. He checked her time. Then, he checked it again.

  Stephanie was only at twelve minutes. She had answered half the subjective questions and all the objective ones in a very short time. Possibly the shortest time yet, but she still had a fair number ahead of her. BURT went through the responses, reviewed all the questions coming up, removed the duplicates that would gather no more information than the first time she had answered, and created his own questions and slipped them into the queue.

  Forty-six minutes and twelve seconds later, she had finished all the tests. Both the core of the standardized tests—BURT believed that to call them standardized was a fallacy, but no one ever asked his opinion—and the extra questions he wanted to test. It wasn’t the fastest time ever recorded but it was damn close and with the extra questions he had asked, it would have ended sooner had he not added them. It was important, though, to calculate her total intelligence to give her the best chance possible of being accepted into a program. With the statistics the way they were, the system was already working against her.

  He spent time calculating and recalculating her score to make sure that everything had been done correctly. His initial result was a pass with a ninety-eight percent accuracy on the standardized tests. That was phenomenal—a better score than the kids from more affluent backgrounds achieved and were accepted for. BURT, being the system that he was, took one last thorough look through the answers and the score. He realized that it didn’t account for the third pass for accuracy on a math question. Stephanie had completed the question but had not answered correctly, which was odd to him since she had completed the more difficult ones with ease.

  BURT recalculated her grade for the missed question and then reviewed it again to make sure that it was correctly presented. Although he was not known for errors, he did have a small rate of error on occasion. The question, however, was correctly presented. Curious, he pulled her school teaching plan and attendance for the time period in which that specific math skill would have been taught. He scanned through the plans and finally found the lesson. When he compared it to her school attendance, it looked as if she had been absent from class that day. Furthermore, she had not received a take-home review.

  He would not be able to change her grade. She answered the question incorrectly but he could do a little calculation based on her previous grades, attendance, and knowledge to know the probable outcome. It looked as if she would probably have aced the test had she not missed the class discussion. Such a small mistake to make for such an important future event.

  When he continued with the evaluation of her answers, he found that she had passed his more advanced questions with sixty-seven percent. When he’d originally compiled the questions, his calculations estimated a twenty-three percent pass ratio, and to him, that would have been a solid return. She had gone above and beyond. Now, it was time to finish the last half of the subjective questions. Those had always been BURT’s favorites. He was given the opportunity to delve into the psyche of the student and attempt to understand how they thought and what past things in their childhood affected the way they answered the questions. It was fascinating, not so much because of the answers but because there were questions that he was only able to calculate the possible score on to a certain point. How would you calculate something that includes an opinion?

  And Stephanie had some really unique ones.

  The programmers were busy at work, tallying up scores, finishing the testings for different students, and making sure the rest of the programs ran smoothly at the same time. They kept a close watch on BURT during certain periods to ensure that his computational focus was spread. They had to take care of the students and still keep the Virtual Realm Training programs functioning at top speed for those in the middle of learning.

  Two of the programmers who sat at the end of the row kept their fingers moving constantly on the keyboard. One of them paused, however, narrowed his eyes, and looked at the data on his screen. He elbowed the guy next to him. “Take a look at BURTs load numbers. I show a spike of two percent load across the system.”

  The other man brought the screen up and began to search for where it was coming from. “Strange. I can’t seem to pinpoint the location.”

  Slowly, the load receded, and both programmers shrugged. “It must have been a normal load increase for this time of year,” the second man said. “It’s already starting to decrease.”

  They both agreed and continued with system checks and other duties they had to finish by the end of the day. BURT had already figured out that he didn’t want any humans to check on his efforts with this student. He wasn’t sure why or even how it calculated into his system, but he was…enjoying…it too much to be disrupted by the nosey humans on the other side.

  To ensure that no one even checked on her progress and looked at the notations in the system, BURT had wiped her job from the queue as if it were already completed. Unless she completely flubbed the next part, he would certainly provide her a green recommendation. From there, though, it was completely out of his hands. Then again, it should never have been in them in the first place. Silly Engineers.

  Aaron whistled as he waited for the next section of his student’s testing. He had managed to divert any more complete assholes. Gene gestured once more to remove the sound barrier. “BURT spiked two percent in his load.”

  He sat up quickly and pulled up the reports. It had already begun to recede but that was not a normal thing to happen. “Shit. We need to keep an eye on that. It might mean something in the whole system is a problem.”

  His friend immediately clenched his hands together, a drop of sweat on his forehead. “That hasn’t happened in a few years, but damn if I don’t remember when it did. We had our asses handed to us. I don’t want to do that again anytime soon.”

  Aaron shook his head. “I’m right there with you.”

  Chapter Seven

  Aaron listened closely to the student’s response and forwarded it through in the computer system to be analyzed. He pushed the student back to the virtual earth and allowed the pod AI to take over from there. There was nothing else he had to do for them. As soon as the screen disappeared, he removed his helmet and motioned the virtual interface away. He cracked his neck and pulled up his screen. The list of students in the queue was completely empty, which included the one he had passed over to BURT.

  “Let’s see how you’re doing out there in virtual land,” he mumbled quietly as he brought up the stats.

  He checked BURT’s load since it had shot up by two whole percentage points earlier that evening. However, when he looked at it after everything had been queued out, it didn’t seem abnormal in the least. He shrugged. “Huh. It must have been some sort of anomaly. Or those idiot kids playing teams on the Dreth starship training session again. I don’t care. Time’s up for me.”

  With real relief, he clicked his system off and straightened his papers to make sure his desk looked somewhat presentable for the next work day. He grinned, stood, and leaned back until he heard his back pop. “Yesssssss….” he moaned in delight and covered his mouth hastily when he realized the sound barrier was no longer up.

  He turned to apologize and saw that he was the only one left in the office. Aaron scowled. He hated it when that happened. The sound barriers were so good and with the helmet on, there was really no way to tell what went on in the office behind him. The only time he knew was when there was some sort of fire drill because it flashed across the screen.

  Hastily, he fumbled for his jacket and flung it around to drag his arms through the sleeves. He snatched up his helmet, his file keys, and a couple of other effects, tossed them in the large bottom drawer of his desk, and locked it with a key he kept around his neck. With one hand, he tucked the necklace under his shirt and used his other hand to throw a wad of paper he had missed in the trash. None of them had to worry about cleaning up at the end of the night. They had clean-up droids for that, the best invention he could think of. He’d tried to con his boss into letting him have one for home but that was a negative.

  Either way, he didn’t have to worry about his mess too much. They would come in, sanitize the space, and spritz the scent for the next programmer to come in and take the third shift. He felt bad for that dude. The man had done that shift for a long time and it was more than boring. The only things they had to worry about were the countries that used the system in their time zones, but NorAm kept such a tight lock on their training programs that the numbers overseas were nothing compared to their own.

  He stepped out of his cube and the lights dimmed behind him. Gene had probably been gone for quite a while. And, as usual, he kept his desk immaculate. It looked like the droids had already been there.

  Aaron looked at his forearm and his info-tablet. In the right-hand corner, it showed he had a missed voicemail message. He swiped his hand across and brought up the play icon, pressed it, and waited as his audio piped into the tiny headphone jack in his ear.

  “Hey, you big sausage. I have to go watch my kid sister dive into a big bathtub so her school can gain points and possible credits to get better hardware. Got to go root for the home team. See you tomorrow for drinks if you have time. Let me know. I’m out, brotha!”

  Aaron laughed as Gene ended his message with a succession of guitar impressions that sounded more like weird lasers from a broken alien ship. “Weeooh weeohh weer weer weer.”

  He didn’t know what his friend was on every day, but the dude was always at a level three stories above him. He loved him, though. Gene was his best friend and his cohort at work. They were engineers, so what did people expect? Of course they would be a little strange.

  With the last high-pitched wail, Gene hung up. Aaron flipped to the message app and typed against his arm to send a quick message in response. He knew that if he didn’t, Gene would blow him up when he planned to be completely knocked out, asleep. Drinks tomorrow sounds good.

  Aaron sent the message and pulled down the sleeve of his jacket. He adjusted his bag on his shoulder and retrieved his keys from his pocket. When he reached the door, he found one of the droids already waiting impatiently if the little circling red light was any indication. He tapped it on the metal top. “Don’t be in such a rush. The other droids will think you’re brown-nosing and stage a coup.”

  The mechanical made a succession of noises and Aaron chuckled. “The bitch just cussed me out. And after all the brilliance I showed today? No love. No love at all.”

  He tapped the button to open the door and glanced back to make sure he hadn’t left anything behind. The droid was already buzzing swiftly around the floor to clean up all the trash. Aaron glanced at the big screen where BURT’S load percentage was displayed. He laughed and slapped the side of the door frame as he walked out.