Taking with them the sound advice of two children, one not yet 12, the Tech Fantasies Trio returned to New York. One of the suggestions made by “almost 14” year old Beth had been that the three study their own social environment first.
Ann, Sally and Drake had worked together for three years in the Vancouver office of a large international software company. The three had met while at UBC, but been drawn together only when work on two long-term projects had brought them into close contact. It did not take them long to become good friends, and a bit more.
The personnel office and project management at Spatial must have been able to predict that the three could work well together. That they became close friends was more happenstance than anything else.
The three had founded Technological Fantasies out of a desire to change society so that the baby still in Sally’s womb could grow up in a better world. While accumulating a pool of local candidates for matching purposes, the unwed mother-to-be had admitted to Drake Phillips just how desperate she felt.
With an explicit upfront caveat about his probable infidelity, Drake had offered to marry Sally. What made her cry with relief and love was his promise that whatever else happened he would never abandon her, would help to raise her child as if it was his own. He said he would be always be a good father to her child. That was enough.
A few month’s later, Sally Aston had given birth to a daughter, given as a first name Ann’s last name. The pretty little girl, Kelly Aston Phillips was adored by all three of the people who felt like her parents.
After founding Tech Fantasies and seeing that it would probably be a success, Drake and Sally had taken little Kelly and gone to study for their doctorates at CalTech in Pasadena. Ann went by herself to Princeton for the same purpose. All three had master’s degrees, and had only needed two years to get their doctorates, which they had obtained only recently.
At Princeton, Ann Kelly had used the Tech Fantasies matching software to find an extremely compatible husband, Mitchell Kirkwood. Ann and this assistant professor of linguistics still lived in Princeton, commuting to New York sometimes to interact with Drake and Sally, who had set up and still ran the New York office of their non-profit organization.
The link between Ann and Mitch was so strong that they seemed to be almost one entity. Both tall, slender people raised in strictly religious households, they had independently lost their religion, but still felt and acted as if they retained their faith.
Sally connected Ann to Drake because the strongest bond of friendship among the original three had been between her and Ann, despite the fact that Ann had been in Drake’s bed.
Not really part of Tech Fantasies himself, Mitch was like an appendage to the woman he had so quickly made his wife.
After working out the structure and likely consequences of their social structure, Ann proposed that Sally expand her role as linchpin to be the node or vertex tying the four of them to the new school. Sally had thought of this herself.
“I’d like to do it, guys. Let me take on the role of acting principal and be the first teacher, too. I’ll teach math.”
“Done”, Drake announced, as the others nodded agreement.
“OK, good, I’m the boss. Drake and Ann are tied to the school through me, but not as teachers. Beth said start with two teachers, the most compatible we could find, and the damn kid is right. I gotta find myself a second teacher.”
“As few constraints as possible, Sally. Don’t reduce the solution space by specifying anything except compatibility with you, the willingness to join the school, and the ability to teach.”
“That’s three constraints”, Drake noted. “Probably too many, and they are not all necessary. Given extreme compatibility with you, Sal, and the ability to teach, I bet she’d be willing to teach for us.”
“I think I’ll do it formally, with factor analysis. Using our database of information about all the possible teachers, I’ll estimate how well each of the criteria I mentioned is met. Then do factor analysis to reduce the space to one dimension, the principal component.”
“Which we might call the principal’s component”, Drake joked.
Right. Funny, funny. Anyway, those with a high value of this principal’s component, as you call it, are the best of the available candidates.
Ann was skilled at finding good candidates, using the software she had helped to write. Together they did exactly what was said, then came up with a list of 10 names.
“Good work, ladies. Those 10 are almost equally likely. Let’s do it by hand from here on in. Sal, pick the one you think you want the most, and call her.” Drake wanted a woman teacher. He didn’t want his Sally working with any magically compatible man.
“OK, Drakie, I know what you are thinking. A woman it is. I want someone with a doctorate, to help give the school credibility. She might end up as principal someday, when I back out of day to day work at the school. So here we go. I am calling number seven, Ellen Smith, who has a doctorate in, hey, this is great, it’s in education. Her dissertation was on small group dynamics in the high school environment.”
“Perfect”, Ann and Drake agreed.
Sally made the call “Dr. Smith, this is Sally Aston from Technological Fantasies. You are on our user list, with a profile.”
“Oh, how wonderful to hear from you. Your organization helped me find my husband, the ideal man for me, one in a million.”
“We would like to offer you a job, working with us on an educational project.”
“Well, I do have a job, but I wouldn’t have to renew my contract for the fall, if you had something exciting to offer me. Something tells me you do.”
“Yes. Right now we are looking for a teacher. You teach sociology at a big high school in Brooklyn, don’t you? This would be a better job, doing much the same, but in a better environment and with good prospects.”
“Oh, that does interest me.”
“Would you mind coming to meet with us, please? We are creating a new private high school not far from the East Village, in Manhattan.”
“Yes, certainly. When and where should I meet with you?”
“Come to the main Tech Fantasies office. Its address is on our website. We started in Canada, so it is a dot ca site. TechnologicalFantasies dot SocialTechnology dot ca. Anytime today or tomorrow would be good, probably in the evening, since you are working. E-mail us with the time you expect to be here.”
“Oh, this is thrilling. I’ll come tonight, if I may. Around 7:30? Is that a good time.”
“That’s perfect.”
Dr. Ellen Smith arrived right on time, then sat down with the expanded trio, Mitchell Kirkwood being included.
“We have one teacher, Dr. Smith, me, and already consider ourselves a school, though we have no students yet”, Sally told her. “Drake has a doctorate in Computing Science from CalTech. He’s my husband. We were both there for grad school, and my degree is in Applied Mathematics. I will teach math at the school. The others will be tied to us, but not as teachers. Ann and Mitch live in Princeton, where he is an assistant professor of linguistics. Ann, Ann Kelly, she is his wife, whose doctorate is in pure mathematics. Ann’s the president of Technological Fantasies.”
“Wow, heavy hitters. OK, I’m in. What do you want me to do?”
“There is a good chance you will end up as principal, Dr. Smith, but I’ll hold onto the title for now. You are much more qualified to run a school than I am, but this will be no ordinary school. We are using the Tech Fantasies software to bring in compatible teachers and students one at a time.”
“So I am supposed to be compatible with you?”
“Let’s assume you are. We’ll want you anyway, whether we work out or not.”
Soon Ann and Mitch took a train back to Princeton, then Sally sat down with Ellen Smith to work out the first few steps.
“According to our, uh, adviser, a certain Miss Beth Green, who seems to have it all figured out, we now need two students. We need to choose them carefully.”
“One student apiece? Great student to faculty ratio. What do you expect to end up with?”
“Eight students per teacher. We plan to work up to 64 students a grade, in 8 small classes. Four grades, 9 to 12, for a total of 256 students. Then we let it coast for a year before any further expansion.”
“If you and I are compatible, we need to find two more students, compatible with each other and with both of us?”
“That constraint reduces the solution space too much, uh, cuts down the number of candidates too much. It is better to find one student for you, another for me. If they don’t hate one another on sight, that’s just gravy.”
“You envision a chain, then?”
“I know you are an expert in small groups, but we might not meet in groups larger than two until we find more students. Those are just the start.”
“You’re the boss, and I get it, I think. No small group of three or four that I can play with, not yet.”
“Sorry. Next we use the same rather mathematical methods which were used to pick you, and find others to join us. As few constraints as possible.”
“Let’s get started then.”
The first student they picked was a 17 year old boy, John Calder, due to enter his senior year in the fall. He would study various subjects, of course, but have Sally teach him math. He was her student. Then a 15 year old boy, Anderson Simms. Andy, Ellen’s student, who would study sociology and psychology with her. Happily the two boys did not hate each other on sight, but were only mariginally compatible.
Now what? “Sex is going to be a big issue, Ellen. We can’t avoid it. Let’s have a word with John. He is single, I think.”
Sally approached her student, who greeted her warmly. He found the older woman quite attractive. She found him attractive too. A woman with a past, she had enjoyed the exertions of several 17 year old boys when around that age.
“John. Do you have a girlfriend?”
“Are you interested, Dr. Aston?”
“I am going to ignore that. An unusual experience for me. Do you have a girlfriend?”
“No.”
“Tech Fantasies runs a matching service, you know. We are thinking about finding a third student, probably a girl who would be very compatible with you.”
“Does that mean what I think it means?”
“We are not here to pander, John. What the two of you do will be none of our business.”
“Good enough.”
With input from John Calder, Sally and Ellen found a girl, Grace Ling, old enough at 17, to be a legal target for John’s designs, quite compatible with him, and a likely senior at the school.
Grace did not plan to take any of the subjects the two teachers would be offering classes in. She liked English, geography and history.
“We will have teachers for those subjects, Grace. Please join our school.”
“What about fees?”
“We have one student on a full scholarship, and might consider giving you the same, if you were in need of it.”
“Probably not, I just wondered. My father does pretty well.”
As it happened, John Calder and Grace Ling flew like magnet and iron. Within days were obviously having a sexual relationship. Her parents were not happy about this, but would not hold back her school fees, as she had feared.
So now the school had two teachers and three student. Grace and John had an excellent social link, John had an additional one, to his teacher, Sally. It would not take long for the structure to grow further.
Soon Dr. Ellen Smith would be able to study her small group dynamics in this unique high school setting. Happy about that, happy with Andy as her student, she could not yet appreciate just how stimulating Social Tech High would be for all concerned. Not having had a single class yet, John and Grace were already finding their new school stimulating.