Interstellar Academy by Kennedy Harkins (read books for money .TXT) 📕

up bottles filled with rare metals that grow on some extinct animals on their planet, tiny machines they built themselves, and other miscellaneous wrong answers. With each pair that set their bottle on Iqbal’s desk, his frown deepened a bit. He didn’t seem angry, more like he’d been proved right when he’d of rather been proved wrong.

It was our turn to go up, and I quickly filled up the bottle with the answer I’d grabbed from our room. It pour in easily enough, though I did get some on my suit. It was quickly absorbed by the fabric, and I didn’t give it a second thought.

I marched up to Iqbal’s desk with Dru on my heels. He’d seen me put the contents inside the bottle, but was more confused than ever. I could almost see the gears turning in his head while he thought of ways to pin this all on me.

“What runs and has no feet, roars but has no mouth?” I placed the bottle on his desk. “Water, that’s what.”

Iqbal was silent for a moment, looking at the vial. I could almost hear Dru fuming besides me. The class snickered.

Then the Professor laughed. “Yes! That’s exactly right!” He clapped his hands. “What’s that Earth expression? Oh--a gold star for you.”

And everyone was dumbstruck. Especially me.

 

_____

 

I had a couple hours to stew in my amazement before I had to face reality: Professor Accia, who was more than happy to knock me off my high perch, free of charge.

"Come to devastate another virtual craft, Greenie?" she asked me while the rest of the class piled into the simulation room.

I hugged the stack of book tags closer to my chest. "Unless you're offering to let me crash the real thing."

She snorted, turning to help a student trying to get her attention. "The only way you're getting back inside another ship is over my dead body."

"Looking forward to it," I muttered and ducked into one of the closet sized simulation compartments.

I activated the game with a voice command, pulling out my holo at the same time. I already had Cruiser Controls and their Functions pulled up on the screen. I'd read through it at least ten times, taking so many notes it felt like I was rewriting the book. I brought up a side tab with the condensed version of those notes.

Taking a deep breath through my nose, I started up the virtual ship according to the instructions: pressing the start button only after I had turned on the stabilizer. I grinned when it didn't make the growling noise I'd become pathetically used to. The ship hummed happily, and it felt like I was already flying.

I clicked off the stabilizer in the same motion that I pulled a notch slowly out of its socket. I had the same view that a pilot would have in the control room plus a corner of the screen was donated to an "upside down" and side views of my surrounds. I watched as the ship rose, and the trees and buildings grew small. I wasn't sure where I was supposed to be taking off from, but it definitely wasn't Earth, as it had two suns.

I hovered around the blinking number that told my elevation. It hit seventy-five feet.

"Come on, baby, almost there."

I'd been at it for almost a week, and it never failed, as soon as I reached ninety-nine feet, I careened and crashed. It felt like the ship was revolting against me. I’d even tried only going up to about seventy or so and proceeding from there. I lasted a minutes more, tops. The ship didn’t like to fly that low--or the game didn’t want me to. Plus, it never failed that, even in the middle of the desert, I could find something to crash into.

One hundred. I grinned like an idiot, fighting the urge to run and tell Kavi. And then run and smash it in Dru’s face.

One hundred-twenty. I felt like I was on top of the world--which I might have been. Some world, somewhere. Or maybe it was just a simulation of a colony.

One hundred-fifty. A light headed feeling invading me, like I was actually that high in the air. It was exhilarating. Freeing. Terrifying.

I hit two hundred feet, and I gave it some gas, pushing forward on the lever to increase the acceleration. I whipped my hands over to the handlebars, trying keeping the ship from jerking off into a tail spin. I’d learned that lesson the hard way. Multiple times.

I was too slow; however, and the craft was out of my control. I pulled on the bars and tried desperately to flick on the stabilizers. The screen flashed red with large warning signs. The book tags fell off my lap as I leaped up, pressing everything I could get my hands on and trying to pull myself out of a death spiral.

Game over.

I smiled grimly and pulled back up the main menu for the simulation. I grabbed the tags off the floor and scrolled through my holo for the later notes, attempting to make some sense out of what I did wrong.

“Would you like to play again?” the computerized voice asked.

I took a deep breath. “Run it.”

Drusus

 

September 7th:

“Would you like to play again?”

“No. Close program,” I said, picking up my things off the floor.

When I emerged from my room, everyone else was still busy crashing their ships over and over again. My aunt gave me a questioning look as I left, but I just shook my head. Flying, virtual or otherwise, was a chore. And I felt no compulsion to practice any further when I was already better than anyone in my class.

Instead, I pulled out my holo and opened up my mapping application. I hadn’t progressed any further than mapping out the arena a couple days ago, and it was time I made some real headway. The Commander wouldn’t elevate me in the military for my flying abilities, but for my fighting and this favor. Battle I had under control; it was this I was failing at.

I decided to start with the buildings around the arena since it was in the center of campus. That way, I could start there and make circles going towards the outlying regions, making sure I didn’t spend a suspicious amount of time in one spot. Getting caught was not an option.

I started with a repair facility to the left of the arena. Taking note of it’s dimensions and measurements was easy, but I had to get closer to record the contents. It should have been easy, as all repairing is done by machines, but the place was crawling with AIs. Most of them, strangely, didn’t even appear to be damaged.

I wasn’t worried about one of them seeing me, really, since it was before lights out and not a restricted area. A person might notice someone hanging around a repair building for a long period of  time as a disruption in a social pattern, but AIs wouldn’t. Still, they were set up to record anything and everything, and I didn’t want the wrong person to see me skulking around, seemingly doing nothing.

Actions like that show up on adults’ radars. It means trouble. And I couldn’t afford to be viewed as trouble.

Luckily, it was late in the day and along with the lights slowly dimling, a lot of students were headed back from their last classes, allowing me cover. I was able to hid in the shadows between two buildings and see most of the factory like interior of the repair shop from a window.

I mapped the repair building and one other before the streets cleared out too thoroughly to allow me to continue. I made my way back to my secluded practice area, fingering the package I carried in my breast pocket.

All was quiet and peaceful, prompting me to play something serene and soft. Part of it was practicality: not being overheard by an unlikely passerby. Part of it was that I’d had that kind of music stuck in my heart all day. It felt cathartic to finally release it into the world.

The music came out even sweeter than I’d planned and washed away the worry and stress of the week. Being there, playing, I could forget the holo map at my feet, the challenging course load, and even that human girl who had shown me up with the chemistry question.

A slow clapping started behind me, and I spun around, almost dropping my piccolo in the shuffle. I gripped it tighter in reassurance that it wasn’t bent and broken at my feet.

The oldest Syreni woman I had ever seen stood before me. She was small, bent over with age. She had silver hair that was broken up by three small, purple fins on her head. She had the same color of scales on her in patches. One patch covered her eye and set off her green irises.

The hands that clapped for me were webbed like the rest of her species. Unlike the rest of her species, she had no gills on the sides of her neck. A Syreni without gills was like a Tundrian without wings. I shuddered.

“You play beautifully.” She took a step forward, and I became aware that the map was still open at my feet.

The color drained from my skin at my carelessness. She would see it. She would see it, and I would be revealed. A sweat broke out acrossed my body, and I felt a slight tremble in my fingers. This couldn’t be it.

“Very few Tundrians play well,” she said, a frown on her face.

And therein lies my shame.

“I am Professor Euterpe, the music teacher. I direct the orchestra,” She said proudly. The old woman looked at me for a moment more, nodded, and turned to leave. “I will see you at my rehearsals now.”

I opened my mouth to tell her that she would most definitely not be seeing me at her rehearsals, but years of discipline to respect elders and my near miss with expulsion held my tongue. She didn’t even know my name, so there was no need to protest. When I didn’t show up she would let it go, having no choice.

Still, I thought wistfully as I put away my instrument and holo, it would be...nice. I’d never even heard an ensemble play, but I couldn’t doubt that all those instruments working together would be...nice.

So very nice.