Nigel could access the computer lab anytime school was open, even between school periods. Aside from Mr. Levinson's class, the lab had the best connectivity in the entire school. When Nigel arrived, he had to stop short of running into another student; there was a small but noticeable line to the computer lab.

“What's going on?” Nigel said aloud to no one in particular.

“New reader system,” the boy in front of him said. “You have to scan your school ID.”

Nigel nodded in acknowledgement. He recognized the boy; he had seen him around when the computer lab just opened. Nigel thought his name was George.

When they finally reached the front of the line, George waved his badge atop the reader and entered. Nigel was about to do the same when he heard a familiar voice.

“Hey, Chum.”

To Nigel’s horror, it was Jake!

“Got to go to the lab,” Nigel said and stepped in.

Jake suddenly cut the line but was stopped by a tall and burly proctor.

“Swipe your badge for entry. No tailgating,” the proctor demanded.

Jake tried swiping his school badge. A red light and audible negative tone emitted from the reader.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

“You do not have access,” the proctor said. “Go to school administration and get it fixed.”

“Hey, Bonehead, we’re not finished,” Jake cried as he was escorted out of the computer lab.

As Nigel entered, he glanced at his watch. 3:11 p.m. The lab was fairly dead for this time of day; he counted about eight students. Nigel sat at his favorite terminal at the far side of the lab. It was close to the window, and the desk was big enough for him to work on the desktop and his laptop at the same time. Nigel quickly set up the laptop, did his usual screen obfuscation (which always took several minutes), then finally started working on his project.

Since Mr. Levinson made it clear that he wasn't accepting any computer game projects, Nigel chose machine learning as his backup project. Nigel had heard the buzzword “machine learning” somewhere, but it was so new that most students knew little or nothing about it. It wasn't even in his assigned textbooks yet, and Mr. Levinson almost always used up-to-date materials.

Nigel glanced up from his project long enough to see a girl he recognized. Oh, the girl from the district office! What was her name? Nigel frowned in concentration. She tripped and dropped a book just short of Nigel's desk. He quickly got up and retrieved the book and handed it to the girl.

“Thanks,” she said.

The cover of the textbook pictured a robot holding a dove in its metal hand. The title read Electric Dream: The Story of Artificial Intelligence.

“It’s for my project in Mr. Levinson’s class,” the girl said.

“Cool. My project is on machine learning.”

“Awesome,” the girl said excitedly. “Most of the kids here are doing something trivial like creating games. You are the first person I met who actually has something worthwhile.”

“What is your name?” Nigel asked, swallowing back his urge to argue that there was nothing trivial about creating games.

“Josephine. But all my friends call me Jet.”

“I’m Nigel.”

“I’m so glad we met, Nigel. We should talk soon so we can compare notes.”

Nigel thought he noticed Jet blush, but before he could process this thought, Jet gave Nigel a smile and walked away.