“Peter, time to get up! You'll miss your bus!”
Peter sat up and rubbed his eyes. Through the starburst that always came from pressing on your eyeballs too hard he could just see an error message: You have been logged out – idle for two hours.
“So that's what happens when you fall asleep in a game,” he muttered. Still, for as little sleep as he'd gotten it had been the most restful he'd had in a while. He resolved to log back in as soon as he got back home. Provided he survived the next eight hours.
Blearily he clambered out of bed and began pulling on his clothes. The school uniform wasn't particularly onerous. No tie and blazer here, just shorts and a collared t-shirt. Socks and runners completed the ensemble. He stopped to check himself in the mirrored door of the cupboard. Hat, shirt, pants, socks, shoes. Check.
Down the hall echoed the sounds of breakfast preparation. Following them more from instinct than intent, Peter slumped into a chair at the table. His mother placed a bowl of cereal in front of him with a spoon in it.
“The most important meal of the day,” she said in a tone that sounded too happy to be real. “Now eat up, you've got ten minutes to be down at the stop. Your lunch is in your bag, which is by the door.”
Peter winced at the forced joviality in his mother's voice. He winced even harder when he bit into a spoonful of cereal. Granted that it was full of protein, carbohydrates and vitamins, but over the years legislators had contrived to force breakfast cereal companies to convert their product from something sugar filled and delicious into something with less taste and more texture than the cardboard box it came in. He chewed and swallowed as fast as he dared without losing a tooth.
As soon as he'd eaten as little as he could get away with he hopped up and poured the rest down the in-sink-blender-thing. He'd never caught the name of it, his parents just called it a “muncher”. Popping the bowl on the small pile of like crockery he hugged his mum and dashed out the door. A second later he dashed back in the door, grabbed his backpack and dashed out again. Seeing that it was on its way down already, rather than wait for the lift he pounded down a couple of flights of stairs to catch up, and took a moment to catch his breath as it descended the rest of the way. At the bottom he didn’t wait until the doors were fully open before dashing out through the lobby and over to the bus stop.
Just as he arrived, so too did the bus, arriving with a soft purr of electric motors. The doors swung inwards to allow him and the two other people who'd already been waiting to get on. Peter made his unsteady way to about the middle of the vehicle as it pulled away from the curb. The algorithm in control of the bus wasn't going to wait until he'd sat down and even accelerated harder as he swung into the seat, nearly pitching him headfirst into the lap of the boy in the window seat.
Peter gave him an apologetic grimace as he muttered “stupid machines”. The boy returned the grimace then proceeded to stare fixedly out the window. The rest of the blessedly short trip was spent in awkward silence.
The bus glided up to the stop outside the school and the doors opened with a slight hiss. The students shouldered and jostled to be the first off, as they had since time immemorial. As soon as their feet hit the pavement they fanned out into their cliques. The sporty ones ran inside, a football appearing as if by magic. The cool kids slouched along the fence, carefully cultivated indifference on their faces. The smarter crew babbled as they made their way into the grounds as they discussed topics from chess to chemistry to music. Peter ducked across the aisle to an empty seat to let his unwilling seatmate join them. He was happy to be last off.
Standing at the gate to the schoolyard Peter took a deep breath. “Best get it over with,” he mused. He began making his way through the school, the wide spaced buildings joined by covered walkways that thronged with students preparing for the day in their own way. Peter stepped around the groups, sometimes taking to the grass beside the walkways when there were too many people blocking the path. He arrived at the sheltered area where his class's lockers were. Every student was issued a locker and a combination lock that you were allowed to customise. Peter had gone with a classic: 36 left, 24 right, 36 left. He'd taken it from an old animated TV show he'd watched with his grandad when he was still alive. He still didn't know why Grandad had found it so funny, but that little yellow kid's locker combo had stuck in his mind.
Peter opened his locker door and dropped his bag into the bottom. Unzipping it, he began extracting his sports clothes, lunchbox and the tablet PC he was supposed to have used for homework last night instead of surfing the web and playing games. Games. His mind drifted back to the serenity of the garden he'd fallen asleep in. How photorealistic the textures had been. The gentle breeze and, now that he thought about it, the faint strains of background music. It all lived up to its name, it truly was a Garden of Tranquillity. Peter's arms dropped to his sides and his eyes closed as he recalled the scene.
CLANG! A big, meaty hand slammed Peter's locker closed, making him jump. Peter glared into the small piggish eyes of Billy Tomlinson. Or, as nobody ever called him to his face, Bully Tomlinson. Kid's insults aren't particularly inspired, but at least they're on point. Billy was the menace of Peter's grade. He'd managed to fail so comprehensively he'd been held back three times. He was head and shoulders taller than the next closest kid, and built like a brick outhouse. He was small minded and petty, but to balance that he had a very large opinion of himself. And right now his attention was on Peter.
“Scar-boy. Wha' choo doin'?” Billy had no volume control. His voice rebounded off the walls in the semi-enclosed space and drew all eyes. Billy rapped his knuckles on the now closed locker door. “Ah axed you a question, Scar-boy. Wha' choo doin' standin' dere lookin' at'cha locker for? You'se in me way.”
If the ground could have opened up and swallowed Peter right now he would have welcomed it. He kept his eyes averted and made no sudden moves. “Mjustgettingmystuff,” he mumbled. “SorryI'llgetoutofyourway.”
Billy placed one oversized paw in the centre of Peter's chest and thrust. Peter fell on his ass and slid across the concrete floor to fetch up against the lockers on the opposite wall. “Stay outta me way or you'se gonna get 'nother scar.” And with that Billy stomped off to fail another class.
Peter clambered up off the floor and quickly gathered his wits and belongings. Homeroom started soon and he couldn't miss the roll call. He waited until Billy was well out of sight though – best not to tempt fate. Peter thanked his lucky stars that monster wasn't in any of his classes.
A few minutes later Peter was dropping himself into a plastic chair just as the bell began to ring. He slid his bag under the desk and waited for the homeroom teacher to arrive. He wished that he could access the internet while he waited, but schools were geo-locked to educational sites only. All he could see in his icon area was the school's crest that indicated that any net searches had to go through their portal. He doubted the Age's wiki was on their whitelist. He made do with taking some notes on things to check once he was unrestricted again.
He took his stylus out of his bag and tapped it on the desk. A note pad appeared in his vision and an overlay changed the grey cylinder of the stylus to a vibrant green fountain pen. It was an expensive skin for the device that his grandad had bought him for his last birthday before his grandad passed away. Peter made sure to use it every chance he got and even practiced his penmanship in Grandad's memory.
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In virtually perfect copperplate he jotted down a short list of things to research, like skills and how they're acquired, item durability – since he'd already managed to tear his shirt and didn't want to wander about naked, and how to learn magic. After a moment he added crafting and materials. If his stuff was going to break, it might be a good idea to know how to make new gear.
He was just sitting back admiring his handiwork when the teacher logged in. Whilst it had been deemed that children benefited greatly from the group learning environment, a number of high profile court cases and the universal availability of the implant meant that it was better for all that the teachers were only present digitally. They were still able to present their classes normally, and were actually able to give any struggling students the attention they needed and teach the rest of the class simultaneously. Not to mention it meant that teachers could work from home and didn't have to deal with irate parents when their precious snowflake received a poor mark on a test.
The class greeted their homeroom teacher with a chorus of “good morning teacher” with varying levels of enthusiasm. Mr Wadsworth was a fairly decent teacher who taught woodworking and metal shop during the day. Peter was scheduled for that class just after lunch. After homeroom he had a double Maths and single English.
“Good morning class. I hope everyone had a fun weekend?”
The class responded with a round of “yeses”, “nos” and one whoop from John at the back of the room. Clearly he'd had an excellent weekend. Peter was instantly jealous.
As Mr Wadsworth began taking attendance Peter tapped the disk icon at the top of the notepad, saving the page for later. He dropped the stylus back into his bag and raised his hand as his name was called.
“Here,” he called out. The average response. The more studious, or brown-nosed, called out “present”. The cool kids, or at least those who thought they were cool, responded with “yup” or “yes”. It wasn't a large class, only about eighteen in all, and was soon done.
“Righto, off you go,” Mr Wadsworth said as he stood up. “I'll see some of you this afternoon, the rest of you have a nice day.” He stepped towards the door and disappeared in a puff of virtual wood shavings. It wasn't the usual disconnect animation, but he'd been teaching for a long time and earned a few concessions.
Peter grabbed his bag from under the desk and joined the flow out the door. The stream of students merged into the faster moving current of bodies on the path outside as he navigated his way to the Maths classrooms.
His journey took him past the school library, which made him smile. It's very existence was something of an anachronism, there being very little need for books anymore. Still, there were some kept here, as well as the traditional quiet research cubicles and group study tables. The space that once held shelf after shelf of hardcopy had been given over to lounges, beanbags and thick rugs with cushions. During lunch times this was his haven where he could read or study without being bothered. Billy and his ilk never entered these hallowed grounds.
The ever moving tide dragged him onwards to wash up on the shores of the Maths building. It was a two story antique, said to be the oldest on the grounds. Peeling white paint flecked the outer walls and a row of port racks sat opposite the classrooms themselves, waiting to accept the bags of the students. Inside, it had been modernised, eDesks and a holoprojector retrofitted into the aging infrastructure.
Slipping the tablet out of its sleeve in the bag, Peter slung the bag into the rack, then cursed himself and opened the bag and pulled out his stylus. Re-zipping the bag he turned and went inside to find a desk. He stopped at the first unoccupied seat and slid the tablet into the slot at the top end of the desk. The screen lit up and he slumped into the chair as the tablet synced with the classroom. It sometimes took a while for them to connect as the cases were bulky and hardened and didn't always sit neatly in their slot. They were also heavily encrypted. Obviously the school knew that students would love nothing more than to hack the devices and give themselves perfect marks, which was the primary reason they used them to record the students responses and progress instead of relying on the student's implant.
His tablet had only just finished its routine when Mr Luck pixelated into view. He didn't even offer any pleasantries and instead launched into a recap of everything they'd learned last week. Perfect. Peter let the educator's droning voice fade out as he called up a book he'd saved to the notepad and started reading. It wasn't uncommon for Mr Luck to spend the entire double saying the same thing multiple different ways. In part, it was his idiom. In part, it was because you needed to rotate some concepts through multiple axes to fit them inside the head of the more obtuse of his classmates. Either way, he had plenty of time to kill and his head was already starting to ache from lack of sleep.
He wasn't sure if he'd dozed or just been focused on his book, but before he knew it the bell was ringing for the end of the class. Peter thumbed through the list of stuff on the tablet for the educating that had occurred around him. He was confident that he'd missed nothing and could knock over the questions at home. Tugging the tablet out of the slot he once more joined the flow of students out the door.
Once out the door, and having snagged his bag and dropped the tablet into it, he had to force his way opposed to the flow to get to his English class. It was held in a newer building up a slight rise which gave it a commanding view of the grounds. It boasted an outdoor area for dramatic curricula, and an indoor classroom that resembled a miniature amphitheatre. Mrs Easton, his teacher, knew how to extract the most from the facilities with such a voice and presence that it had been halfway through the first term before one of the other students had paused in the middle of an oral exam to exclaim “Mrs Easton, you're short!”
Indeed, now that Peter looked at her avatar as it pixelated in, she was just barely taller than the desk. Such was her command of the language it had taken weeks to realise this. Her passion was infectious; many who had never read a book in their life before starting her class were now devouring novels in their spare time. Ok, maybe not novels. See Spot Run might be a classic, but it's no Treasure Island or Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Still, it's a start.
This week they were reading and acting out parts from an Australian play called And the Big Men Fly. It didn't particularly interest Peter; he'd never liked football of any kind let alone an obscure style like the one this play was about. It’s one saving grace was that it wasn't primarily about the game itself but about the lies people tell to convince others to do their bidding and how those lies come back to us, not unlike the Australian boomerang to an untrained thrower.
It was impossible to sleep in Mrs Easton's class, and Peter spent most of his time reading the play instead of his book. He was actually sad when the bell rang for lunch.
Peter pulled his bag from the rack outside the class and jogged across the grass to where his locker resided. He scanned the crowd for danger and found it clear. Good. He quickly unlocked his locker and pulled out the lunchbox. After the disappointing breakfast he was feeling quite peckish, and so pulled the lid off the lunchbox in a hurry. Out fell two sandwiches, tomato and cheese and cucumber and lettuce, judging by the look of them. Suddenly not so hungry Peter dropped the offending “food” into a nearby trash can. He knew his mother was just trying to give him a healthy meal, but why did healthy have to taste like ass? Sod it. He could raid the cupboard when he got home.
Still wrapped up in his irritation, Peter slammed the door of his locker, jammed the lock together, turned and marched straight into a wall of meat. For the second time today Peter ended up on his butt staring up at Billy Tomlinson. Billy's face was rapidly turning red as what had just occurred filtered into his consciousness.
“So Scar-boy, you'se wanna go?” Billy slammed his palms into his chest in the age old gesture of manliness. “You'se tink you da king now?”
Peter scrambled off the floor, seeing red. “Shut it Bully. Just because your mum changed her name to some boy-band reject doesn't make you a rock star.” A niggling thought at the back of Peter's head raised the possibility that this was not the best course of action. It was swiftly drowned out by the rising ire. “The only reason you're still allowed to go to this school is because she's sleeping with the treasurer. Not even the principle. The. Treasurer.” Peter paused and blinked, suddenly unsure as to where to go from here.
Billy provided the answer. Peter's vision exploded into stars. The last thing he heard before darkness enveloped him was “You shoulda left me mam outta this. Scar-boy.”