Insignia (11 page)

Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays consisted of Calisthenics from 0800 to 0930, and then math, but only from 1000 to 1020. That wasn’t right, was it? How could a math class be twenty minutes long?

But all the other standard classes appeared to be a mere twenty minutes: English from 1025 to 1045, US History from 1050 to 1110, Physical Science from 1115 to 1135, World Languages from 1140 to 1200. After that? Just lunch and an entire afternoon dedicated to Applied Simulations.

The normal high school classes didn’t appear on the Tuesday/Thursday schedules, either. Programming from 0800 to 1130, and the entire afternoon was Level I Tactics.

Tom followed the other plebes to the Lafayette Room, the lecture hall he’d seen on his tour. He tailed Vik to a bench and slid onto the wooden seat. For his part, Yuri parted ways with them and settled down next to Wyatt. Before him, the plebes flipped back their sleeves to expose their forearm keyboards.

A ping in Tom’s brain:
Morning class has now commenced
. Silence descended upon the room as a small, gray-haired man mounted the stage in front of the room. Tom’s brain scrolled through his profile.

“Good day, trainees,” said the professor. “Please put away any extraneous materials for our exam.”

“Exam?” Tom asked Vik sharply.

“Yeah,” Vik said. “Hard-core math exam. Better pass it, Tom, or you’re out of the program.”

Tom didn’t think he’d be out of the program now that the military had gone to the trouble of installing a processor in his head, but the words horrified him.

Then the test sequence began. A question blasted itself in front of Tom’s vision. He began to read,
Estimate graphically all the local maxima and minima of …

Tom had no idea how to do this. He’d never learned this. And yet as he stared at the numbers the strangest thing happened, like a series of sequential, ordered thoughts. A visual formed in his head of a cube with slices, and the values took on a new shape in his head.

Something this difficult shouldn’t make such perfect, logical sense—but it did. Tom began typing on his own keyboard. He worked through the problem, the calculations flashing through his brain like
he
had turned into a calculator. He submitted his answer with a tap to his forearm keyboard. The next problem was just as straightforward, and the next.

He submitted his exam, and his vision center flashed
100 percent
. He stared at the number, disbelieving. He’d answered eighteen calculus questions in seven minutes. He’d never taken calculus before. He’d never even passed algebra.

At his side, Vik, who’d finished a few minutes earlier, glanced sidelong at him and waggled his caterpillar-like eyebrows, as if to say,
Ha-ha, freaked you out again
.

Tom fought the urge to break into peals of laughter, because this was unbelievable. How strange to think about this—to realize that something that had always been so frustrating like math could be so easy once his brain was supplemented with a computer.

Dr. Lichtenstein’s voice came from the front of the room again. “Excellent.” He was looking over the results on his own screen. “I see our lowest score was an eighty-nine.”

Beamer snorted. Tom suspected suddenly that he’d scored the 89.

“And it looks like number eleven tripped a good many of you up. Perhaps I should have clarified that concept in your homework feed. As we have four minutes left to class, we’ll go over that together.”

Four minutes later, their math lesson was done. Dr. Lichtenstein told them their assigned downloads for the Wednesday exam were already in the system and bade them farewell. It was 1020 hours on the dot. Tom watched him leave, disbelieving. The schedule wasn’t a mistake. Math class was only twenty minutes long.

The rest of the morning’s classes proceeded the same way, the plebes seated in the room, the teachers changing three times in an hour. Tom had learned more in the weeks while his brain was being resequenced than he had in four years at Rosewood Reformatory. In English, his grammar was impeccable, and his reading comprehension on his exam 100 percent. In US History, he readily filled out all the dates and names and historical implications of the major political events surrounding the French and Indian War. In Physical Science, he correctly identified quantum entanglement as the concept behind the military’s intrasolar communications grid. When the day’s World Languages teacher strolled in speaking Japanese, Tom understood her before he knew he understood her. He spoke into the microphone on the computer during the oral examination, and the processor recorded his voice patterns. His accent matched that of a native Okinawan.

At noon, he staggered out with Vik at his side, his brain buzzing like he’d received an electric jolt. “Wow.” Tom spoke half to himself, trying to get his head around it. “I speak Japanese.”

“Sure you do.”

“What else do I speak?”

“Depends on what language we’ll get tested on Friday.”

“And what else can I do? Create a nuke? Build a starship? Do I know kung fu?”

Vik answered, “If you’re scheduled to kung fu fight in Applied Simulations later, you got it in your homework download.”

Tom understood it finally: he could do anything now. The entire world was his.

A
N HOUR LATER
in the mess hall, Tom carried his tray toward the conveyer belt by the door and toyed with a fantasy: dropping in on Rosewood Reformatory with his fluent Japanese and telling them all about some starship he’d built single-handedly and won the war with. He didn’t notice the large kid with a Genghis ax on his sleeve until the guy had elbowed past him. Tom stumbled to the side, caught off guard by the sudden explosion of muscular impulses from the processor in his head, trying to balance him. His drink slipped from his tray. He watched it launch on a collision course with the dark-haired girl in front of him....

But she whipped around like a striking snake and caught the glass before the dark liquid sloshed over the rim.

“Nice reflexes,” Tom said, impressed. He glanced up at her face—and caught his breath.

Heather gazed back for a searching moment, then her yellow-brown eyes widened. “Oh, Tom, you’re here!”

She sounded so happy to see him that his stomach flipped. “Yeah, I’m here.”

“I barely recognized you without the …” She trailed off, eyes scanning his face. Then she said brightly, “I’ve been waiting for weeks for you to pop out of the surgery suite. I thought you’d changed your mind on us.”

Tom didn’t know what to say to that, staring into the gorgeous face of a girl who he’d thought would never give a guy like him the time of day.

Back when he wasn’t smart.

Back when his skin was messed up.

Back when he was homeless and had nothing going for him.

The thoughts fired in his brain all at once. A sense of having been reborn as a new person overcame him. He wondered at his own daring when he leaned closer, held her eyes, and said, “Sorry. I’d never keep
you
waiting.”

He was rewarded by Heather’s giggle. “Aw, you’re still cute, Tom.”

“Cute?” Tom tried to puzzle that one out. Was that flattering or unmanly?

A rich laugh broke in between them. A tall, handsome guy shoved his tray onto the conveyer belt, then casually propped his elbow on Heather’s shoulder. “I see the H-bomb has claimed another victim.”

Tom didn’t need the neural processor to tell him who
this
was. He’d know Elliot Ramirez anywhere. The text scrolled over his vision center nonetheless.

Laughter tinged Elliot’s voice. “You’ve gotta live up to that wily reputation, don’t you, H? Toying with the affections of poor, innocent plebes.”

Heather shrugged her shoulder so Elliot’s arm slipped off. “I like poor, innocent plebes. And I’ll have you know,
I
helped General Marsh find Tom’s network address, and
I
helped run him through Marsh’s experimental screening scenario.”

“So what did you get for that?” Elliot teased. “Is the next slot for Camelot Company guaranteed to someone in Machiavelli Division?”

“Don’t listen to a word Elliot says, Tom,” Heather said sternly.

Elliot raised an eyebrow. “Actually, Raines, you’ll have to listen to what I say. You’re in my Applied Simulations group.”

“I am?” Tom said.

“Yes,” Elliot confirmed, his dark eyes flicking over some information he could see, scrolling through some manifest in his head. “Thomas Raines, my newbie.”

“Oh.” Heather pouted. “That’s too bad. I hoped I’d have you, Tom.”

Tom fervently wished she had him, too.

Elliot clapped his shoulder. “Hey, you lucked out.” He winked. “Trust me, the people back home will go nuts when you tell them I’m the one training you.”

Tom thought of Neil’s reaction if he ever found out his kid would be taking orders from Elliot Ramirez, of all people.

“Yeah,” Tom agreed. “My dad would definitely go nuts.”

V
IK SAID
A
PPLIED
Simulations were groups of plebes battling simulated enemies together under the leadership of members of Camelot Company. Vik really liked his group because it was led by Heather, who was apparently very hands-on, the thought of which made Tom wild with envy. Yuri, on the other hand, didn’t care for his. He was in a group led by a Combatant named Karl Marsters, who always chose the goriest, bloodiest simulations available for his plebes. Apparently, Karl especially loved assuming the role of his division’s namesake, Genghis Khan, and ordering his plebes to pile up the heads of villagers.

Tom and Beamer entered a thirteenth floor training room. It resembled the one Marsh and Olivia had showed him on his tour: vast and dim, with a series of cots in a circle, EKG monitors at the ends.

“Do we need to put on electrodes or something?” Tom asked Beamer, pointing to the EKGs.

“No. There’s a neural wire under the cot, and it goes in your brain stem access port.”

Tom’s hand flew back to his neck, to the round port he’d felt earlier.

“It’s how you hook into the simulations and get downloads, too,” Beamer added. “Just stick the wire in, and the neural processor will do the rest.”

They settled on empty beds. Tom spotted Wyatt Enslow already perched on one of them, her long legs curled up in front of her.

Tom said, “Hey.”

She replied, “Shh.”

Nice to see you, too
, Tom thought.

Plebes continued to shuffle in, and then Elliot Ramirez came and slid onto the edge of the last empty cot. The EKG monitor bathed his black hair in a faint green glow. “Good to see you’re all on time.” He beamed at Tom. “Now, let’s give a warm welcome to our newest member.”

Awkward clapping followed. Tom felt for a strange moment like he’d accidentally wandered into a support group.

“You see, Tom,” Elliot went on, “I don’t like to throw my plebes into a simulation like a lot of other instructors do. It’s important we all have a chance to chat first, get out some of our emotions, decompress from the tensions of the day. I like to get my group thinking about self-empowering topics. Today, we’re going to discuss something very important. And that thing is perhaps the most important concept of all: self-actualization.”

Elliot was silent a moment to let the lofty words sink in. Then he launched into a tedious description of something called Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. He related those needs to anecdotes from his own life, and other moving tales of triumph over adversity he’d read in letters from his many adoring fans. Then he veered into a discussion about the triumph of the human spirit.

Tom grew so restless with the talk about self-empowerment that he almost shifted his weight right off the cot. He knew—just knew—that Heather and even that Genghis Division guy, Karl Marsters, had been running their own groups through fantastic simulations for over a half hour while Elliot perched in that preschooler circle with them, delighting himself with the sound of his own voice.