Examined

Cartimandua Risc watched her fellow Pipe-Riders shuddering to exit status as the flow slowed and the walls switched down to permeability. Making the necessary effort of will and body, she transferred from the network to independent muscle-based transportation. The Pipes could take her no closer to her destination, and the walk, she insisted to her grumbling brain and unaccustomed body, would give her a chance to run through her deep mnemonics one more time.

Despite the controlled light increase, supposed to ease the transition from the Pipes, the glinting of Upside dazzled Risc for a moment. She was not a creature of the daytime Polis, as a rule. Now she thought about it, the last time she had been out on a street-ramble, she had been pre-teen, with natural hair and skin. The place felt uncomfortably alien, with its unmediated air-flow and its undeflected solar rays. But there was no use in complaining. You didn’t get to choose where you would take the test, and she would be under cover once she got to EarthAlone Academy.

Nobody blinked or tutted any more, as they safecruised past the brilliant blue sphere with its unmistakable EarthAlone symbol – a blue/green holosphere on a committedly empty blackground.  In fact, as she knew, the school was regarded as a success in this sometimes troubled sector of UpCity. Exam results were top class and clans were kicking and scratching to get their kids in. There were Loner schools popping up all over the place now. She was the only one who seemed to feel deeply uneasy about it.

It was not that she was a New Trad, or any sort of non-aligned Expecter. She had not darkened the inside of an Advent Tower since her Registration. Hers was no feeling of jealousy of a rival cult. She came at the whole thing from a completely different angle, finding no necessity to build her life and mind around either the Manifold Expectation, an unshakable faith in the imminent approach of alien life forms, or on the Loner Credo: the subjective certainty that humankind represented the only dominant, intelligent, lifeform in the universe. She saw no particular reason to make her mind up about the meaning of life. It wouldn’t do, however, to mention such extreme views unless she was very sure she was amongst kindred spirits. Officially, she was a Roller, hooked on the Deified Four. And yeah, she did like the odd flutter: it passed the time, and the hosts at the DiceDens were required by statute to be hot. So far her Chipnotes said she was a Fortunate: she had won far more often than she had lost.

She was really hoping that the luck was more real than she actually believed, and that it would hold. For today she was taking her Final Examination. If she got through it, she would be a qualified Para-Rhetor, first class, licensed to post for state school kids on the Accepted Facts Page. Not that she would ever be likely to apply for a job at EarthAlone 1.