Character Building: Alsanara Naomi Jacobs

She is the epitome of average at her surface. Her grades are good, but only with hard work and studying. She fails the occasional exam, but keeps her school work at a solid just-above-middle-ground score. She took her Standards six months ago. She did not test out, and she was glad. It wasn't as if she expected to: her scores have always been average. But this year's test had the written responses, and she had been afraid that they would see through their hollow webbing: her answers were dazzlingly lower-average, exactly what would be expected from a sixteen year old test-taker in the middle of the Hog. They were also as fictitious as her mother's old fairy tales. Yes, Alsanara is average, but she is not stupid.

Her mother taught her well. Mother, who sometimes looks at the 3-V as if she wants to shout at its projected reporters and political officials. Mother who, more and more often, doesn't go into the bedroom she shares with Dad, even when he comes home in the middle of the night from his job as a labor force worker for the city's public services department. Mother who stopped drinking tea sweetened with honey when she started arguing with Dad, and started drinking tea sharpened with something clear and alcoholic. Something most likely illegal, and almost definitely unhealthy.

No, San is not stupid. She feels the tension in the air like the pollution that rides through the currents of the city. The pollution that turns the dense smog a bright red when the sun rises. People are not happy, and those people who, like her, have tuned their eyes and ears to the frequencies of the arrests and executions, are whispering. They are whispering, they are gathering, and it's rumored that some of them are fleeing.

And so San is running. She is running through the alleys and auto-industrial buildings of the factory district with messages and codes embedded in her fingers and “fluffers” on her eyes. To the occasional retina scanner, she is a non-person, a ghost.

She is running with what she thinks of as secrets. After all, she's not the only one keeping secrets, is she?

They have secrets too. She knows they do. And who are “they?”

The Government, of course.

They might be listening.

Shh!

Character Building: Layme Tessa Ray

She is smart. She's smart and she has always known it. School comes easily to her. She slips by with average grades and extraordinary intellect.

She rarely sleeps. Computer programming and image manipulation are her hobbies. She has some hacks and programs that she's gotten her hands on, and she has built on them. She does things like flipping all the brightboards backwards, confounding her teachers and giving her just a little extra time to finish an assignment while they're distracted.

She is not the only proggie, and she is not the best one, but she is the smartest.

Before she tests out into the Dorms, her programs are simple and usually isolated. They aren't System based at all, only simple codes of letters and numbers interacting on one personal drive. She creates little animals: a brilliant red phoenix for herself; a graceful wild feline for her cousin Tessa, a high-class fashionista pop-culture queen who tours the world with her parents, who are Government diplomats—high profile PR people. Layme is satisfied to keep her hobbies small.

She has taken the National Standardized Placement and Assessment Exam only a month ago, better known as NatStan or Standards, and her results have come back. She has been reassigned to live in a youth-only Dorm, on the prestigious University campus where she has lived all her life. Her parents are professors, and University housing is one of the perks. The letter is very specific: the accommodations are not a prison, and her activities will not be interfered with if possible, but the reassignment is mandatory. She will attend the elite Dormitory Education Building for lessons, and she will room and board with other “high-achieving youth.”

She has, as they say, “tested out,” and she is slightly shocked. She has taken the Standards before; they are given at five, ten, sixteen, and twenty one years of age, but according to rumor, if you haven't tested out at ten, you won't test out at all. Evidently this isn't true.

And so she is preparing to move. She will leave everything but her conscreens, her techrings, and her back-up drive here; no great loss. It's not like she can't just requisition whatever she needs. As for moving away from her parents, she rarely sees them anyway. Her independent streak combined with the fact that they both taught in different departments and lived on different parts of campus meant she doesn't see them much anyway.

And so she walks out of the room she has known since childhood with barely a thought.

After all, the relocation is a Gov mandate. Why would the Government move her if it wasn't beneficial to her?

They never would. It would be a waste of their time, of course.

Duh.