“I don't want to go. I don't want to go. But it is my duty, I must. What do I do? What do I do? I must go.”

“Why you, Avelina? There are other Brazilian students in the school”, Suzy Nicholson asked.

“I think it's my fault, Suzy. I'm so sorry, Lina”, Kelly said. “It is because of me, my family, my mother. You have lived with us for months, most of a school year. That is why they want you.”

“I have news, Kelly”, her other close friend, Coriola, said. “My father told me last night. I have a choice. I can stay here in America with my family, or go to Italy, to be in the new school they are starting in Naples. My mother says she doesn't want me to leave, but I should obey my father. He told me to choose for myself. I said I would talk to you in class today. Now, here is Avelina, about to go to Brazil. What should I do?”

The rest of the class looked on, not ready to say a word. Half of the class was built around Kelly, consisting of her three Level 5 friends, Suzy, Coriola and Avelina.  The other half was another cluster, three of them were all Level 5 friends of another core person, a senior girl. Two of those three were linked to Suzy, being very compatible musicians who often played together. Everyone in the class was more or less compatible with all of the others. They got along perfectly together.

Suzy looked at Kelly and then at her other two friends. They looked to the senior at the core of their group, a girl named Mariana Romya. She gave those two intermediaries a meaningful look. They in turn gave Suzy a meaningful look. Not a word was spoken. Suzy put her hand on Kelly's arm. “Kel.”

“I know.” She looked at Avelina, then at Coriola. It was a sad look that spoke more clearly than words. It said she would miss them. That meant they should go.

Coriola spoke up. “Yes, I know. I have a duty to my mother country and to the movement this school represents. I must go. I will miss you all, but I must go.”

Avelina looked at Kelly again. “I understand. Yes, I also have a duty, not only to the movement and my mother country, but to my people, the poor from the favelas.”

Now Mariana spoke. “I am proud of you two. I think you have made the right decision. It means this class will be torn apart soon. I graduate in June. You two leave soon. Next year the class will be different, but I will always remember it the way it was now.”

So it was decided. But Sally Aston advised Avelina to play her cards carefully.

“They are making too much of you, and will put too much pressure on you. You are here on a student visa and we will make sure you can stay in this country if you that's your choice. So you don't have to back. They know that. When they introduced you to your teacher, they were hoping your would take that to mean it was all a done deal. Hold back a bit, don't say that the decision is made. Ask them for some assurances.”

“What should I ask for?”

“I am not the right person to advise you, Avelina. I am older and perhaps wiser, but I am not truly close to you. Talk to Future and to Kelly. Tell them my suggestion, but leave the details to them.”

Future knew what should be Avelina's first demand. “Tell them not to expect you there right way. It is only April. They want you there early to get an early start, the way STH got going. Instead, have them send people to your school in New York. I think Kelly's mother can arrange for the students and teachers they want in their school to have limited visas, good until September. That way the Brazilians won't be afraid of losing their people. Tie them into the school, even if only for a few months. I am sure that can be done. Then they can all go back to Brazil with you, Avelina. That way you will not be the only one with experience in our school.”

Kelly agreed, and added, “Talk to the other Brazilian students here about the kind of duty you feel. See if some of them would go with you. That way their school could start up as a forest of rooted trees, rather than just one tree with you as the root. I am assuming no cross-linking will be possible for a while, so a group of people will fan out from you. They should make your tree of friends and friends of friends as big as possible, but not depend on you. Let them plant other roots as well.”

“I understand. Yes, I will do both of those things. And one more. I think what matters is pool size. We all know that. Opening the new schools will not rob this one of Italian and Portuguese speaking students. It will enlarge the size of the pool of connected students. If I remain in contact by video, then our links will persist. The same with the other Portuguese speaking and Italian speaking students – they can all remain linked, by laptop video through the school's wi-fi network, if nothing else. In some ways we will be one school. I will ask the authorities to accept this fact and let compatibility determine where students go to school, not nationality. I will promise them a year, but only a year, and only if they promise to let the social technology determine where I belong after that.”

“That is wonderful”, Future said. “Exactly the right think to say to them. I think they will agree.”

Avelina talked seventeen other Portuguese speaking students into going to the new school, three of them from Portugal itself, wanting the adventure this would surely be.

“I hope they will all agree to come, Kelly.”

“If you get your government to tie them in, they probably will.”

Working with Sally and school principal Paul Grey, Avelina gently pushed the government in the directions the three girls had agreed on, using her own participation as an inducement. She explained that the other students she had recruited felt the same way. They wanted ties made in New York, first.

This would not be easy, but many teachers and students in Brazil did have enough English to get along at Social Tech High. Some of those would be suitable matches for Avelina and the other seventeen Portuguese speaking students.

By the time June arrived, Avelina was happily studying with two teachers from Brazil, and had three new friends with her in New York — five people radiating out from her.  The other seven from the school, her recruits, were similarly connected, though none of those trees were themselves interconnected. They did not make a larger tree nor a larger connected graph of any kind, just a forest. But that would be good enough, for now.

Back in Brazil, links were being forged for the teachers and students in New York. When they arrived home at the beginning of September they would be much better connected up.

Kelly turned thirteen in June. Avelina and the others stayed for the more casual summer school, with Future Green joining them. It was wonderful for Avelina to have her best friend there with her, day after day.

Coriola had been doing the same thing with students and teachers bound for Italy. Another student that Kelly barely knew had collected students and teachers for a school to be formed in New Delhi, India. Kelly promise to visit Coriola as soon as possible, but when it came down to a decision it had been Avelina's Brazil that Kelly had chosen to visit.

The last day of August, all the new students for the Brazilian school flew to São Paulo. Kelly and Future went with them, to stay the long weekend before the fall term started at Social Tech.

There was a surprise for Avelina when she arrived at the impressive new school. There were her mother and sisters, clean, nicely dressed, smiling happily at the sight of her, then breaking down into tears as one by one they hugged Avelina.  A bigger surprise, the biggest yet. Avelina's mother could drive! And had a little car! How could this be?

“I have a job now, Avelina. I work at the school”, her mother said, in Portuguese. “I clean, some during the day, some in the evening. Not skilled work, but work. I like it. I keep the school looking pretty. It is very pretty, my darling, you will enjoy going there.”

Her family had an apartment!  A very small apartment, but an apartment. Two bedrooms. Avelina would have to share with a sister, the other sharing with her mother, but they had an apartment and could be together. Avelina wept with joy. Sharing a room with Kelly had been magical, but she loved her family.

Kelly shed some tears of her own, happy for her friend. But she was not Avelina's only Level Five friend now. She had many. Two teachers, three students. Plus the two long distance friends, Future and Kelly, always available though her laptop computer or by using one of the school's many video walls.

Avelina had taught Kelly some Portuguese over the past few months, so she could have simple conversations with the girl's family, if they spoke slowly enough. It was good to see how their life had changed, how happy they were.

“Avelina, you should use the Tech Fantasies software and find a man for your mother, probably a step-father for you.”

“Is it possible? There are already four of us in the house. I know we are probably not very compatible, just being thrown together by the randomness of biology, but we have always been close. Could a man be added without problems?”

“Set her up with a long-wait request. Test the waters by having the machine monitor possible candidates for a month. That should tell you what level of compatibility to expect. Then put in a request for someone of that level, having her check out the closest matches as they arrive.”

“I guess that should work.”

Kelly returned home to start the fall term at Social Tech High without her close friends, Coriola and Avelina. Before the summer had ended, she had spoken with video to strangers, two new girls, possible replacements for Coriola and Avelina. They seemed likely friends, but a disheartened Kelly had not let the prospect of meeting them take her mind off a deep feeling of loss. She had shed tears while looking at Avelina's empty bed. No new girl would take her place there, Kelly would have her room to herself once again.

This mood did not last long. She met her new friends in a couple of classes during the day, then both of them were with her for the intense last class. That class was entirely different. Suzy and her fellow musicians were not in it. But three other girls she knew and liked were there. Two girls from higher grades filled out the room. Kelly had seen them around the school, but the school was big now, 4200 students, so it was not surprising that they were effectively strangers. A new teacher was there to “chair the meeting”, without participating much.

In 50 minutes all eight girls felt like friends. When the class ended, Kelly realized that the girls who had entered her life were going to be important parts of it. That would not stop her from missing Coriola and Avelina, but then those year-long friends were just a video-phone call away. She spoke with them that very evening.

 By the end of the week it was clear. Kelly now had five Level 5 friends: Suzy and the new girls, Ching and Sina, at the school, Coriola in Naples, Avelina in São Paulo. Now in Grade Eight herself, Kelly's friend Ching from Hong Kong was in Grade Seven. Her friend Sina from Sri Lanka was in Grade Nine. Both were new to the school.

Together with Kelly they formed that much desired transitive grouping, Ching and Sina being mutually compatible at slightly above Level Five. Despite a difference in age, they shared a room in one of the residences. Ching was part of the regular intake of Grade 7 students to replace the graduated seniors. Sina had been added to help fill a gap left by the departure of students to other schools. Because of her, Kelly realized. Ching and Sina had both been admitted to the school because of her. Seeing their joy at being in this special environment made Kelly happy. Three friends at the school, her two long distance friends, and a wonderfully compatible class to enjoy at the end of each day. She had gained much, lost nothing.

This was true for all those who had felt a great loss when their friends had left for Naples, New Delhi, or São Paulo. All of them used long-distance video links to maintain their friendships, while acquiring new ones.

Many other links between the schools were forged at this time, so none of them operated alone. Social Tech High was still central, because it drew upon the pool of students from around the world, offering the attraction of famous New York City itself as an inducement for to join that pool.

As the years went by, Kelly Phillips and her family would be part of an always expanding international community of students and their families. The new friends she made this year would not be needed for the ever growing number of new schools in the network, so they would stay with her for the rest of her time as the school. She'd get to know their families, who would eventually immigrate into the US.

Over the years Kelly would get high level relationships outside of school, but within the city, including one boy, then another. She grew into a mature young woman whose pretty face and other physical attributes were nothing in comparison with her education, wisdom and mental abilities. The school turned her into someone truly special, unique.

The year Kelly graduated and turned eighteen was the year that her twelve year old sister entered a much more mature version of the school. Kate came to Social Tech High from an affiliated Social Tech School for kindergarten, primary and elementary education, which had been created two years after Kelly entered high school.

That same year the STH Annex was opened in a nearby building. It was an experimental school based on the team teaching methods that had been successfully used for education students at the high school and for all students at Connected College. The Annex proved a success, so after one year at the main school, Kate had transferred there.

From that first year, when Alice Ames entered the school, till Kelly Phillips graduated, fifteen years later, the school had grown from a small experiment into the centre of a large network of schools based on social technology, all over the world. Each had a great effect on the cities and nations in which they operated. The world had changed around it, but in many ways Social Tech High had changed the world.

—

It did not take long. Two busy days after the shocking announcement they were all in a new apartment.

A new apartment! This was incredible, unbelievable! And the apartment itself. It occupied almost a whole floor of a building! Not a very big building, but almost a whole floor of it. Well, half a floor. There was one other apartment up here on the eleventh floor with them.

Was moving to this big and beautiful place the greatest surprise? No! The other apartment? It contained Kelly's “favourite Aunt”, the woman she'd been named after, Ann Kelly, along with her husband, Mitch Kirkwood and their two children, Jimmy and Judy. Katie was ecstatic. Judy, a year younger, was her best friend.

“Mommy!”, Kelly said, at a loss for further words. Katie added her voice in full agreement.

In this apartment were many rooms, enough for Avelina to have one of her own. She looked at Kelly. Kelly looked at her. “Mommy, how about a spare room with one bed in it and lots of space for stuff, and then my room, our room, with two beds in it. That way we can sleep in the same room, like now, or different ones, when we want. Who knows, we might want to have boys over and need separate rooms!”

Avelina blushed. Sally just laughed, not saying a word. But when the furniture was all moved in, the girls had the room layouts Kelly had specified.

Now the whole Tech Fantasies Trio and Ann's husband lived on one floor of a building. They could run the organization as never before. They needed that proximity, for both women were far along in their carefully timed pregnancies and had become rather slow moving.

A month later, in March, Sally surprised everyone but herself. She had known from sonograms, but the others were shocked when Sally produced not one but two babies, a boy and a girl. Drake at last had the son Sally'd wanted him to have. As Kelly said, the other baby was “a fine female person, like the best of us.” The boy was named Nelson Mitchell Phillips, after Ann's husband, Mitch Kirkwood. His twin sister was named Clarity Ann Kirkwood.

A week later Ann Kelly had her own child, a daughter, named Jane Alice Kirkwood. Very fond of Alice Ames, Ann had persuaded Mitch that they should use her name.

The three babies, born so close together, would be treated almost as triplets. For at least the first few years of their life they would always be together. Kelly and Avelina would share some of the responsibility for looking after the babies with their four parents, who now lived on the same floor of the building.

The new apartment had a large dining room and parlour as well as a family oriented living room. The kitchen was large and had its own table, large enough for the family to eat at. The dining room and parlour were for company, including company arriving by video wall, which was much larger than the one they'd had before. It was opposite the windows, but its bright LED display could be seen even in a sunny room.

One evening Kelly was sitting at the side, mostly watching and listening while Avelina talked to Future Green, but adding a few remarks sometimes. She liked to just sit and listen, to watch the sparks fly between Avelina and Future, who were more compatible than any two people she knew. But suddenly Avelina turned to Kelly and brought her into the conversation in an almost invisible way which made it perfectly clear that it was now to be a three way discussion.

“Kelly. You know about Chure's family, don't you? That her father is rich and powerful? We haven't really discussed it. I think Chure asked you not to mention to me. She told me before, but I did not understand. Now I do. He owns this whole building. He donated the building for your father's college. The school building, too. He is rich beyond rich. I didn't know that.”

“Yes, Future wanted to tell you herself. I didn't know about the buildings though. Mommy and Daddy don't talk about who donates what.”

“Thanks, Kelly”, Future said. “I needed us to be this close, to have this magical connection, before I told her. I've told her other things, too, about my family. You might know about all my half-brothers and half-sisters. I think that was more of a shock than all the money stuff. Right, Lina?”

“Yes. Kelly, that man! Future brought him to her video wall one night, and we talked with him. He is wise and kind, but oh, to have so many women and so many children. I don't know what to think.”

“But you do know something, Lina. You have been thinking, and well. Tell Kelly.”

“Yes, yes. Kelly! I understand it now. I see it! Future and I are are from different worlds. Her home and her family are not like mine. There is no comparison. Her mother is a fine woman, like my mother, but highly skilled. I have met Chure's family this way. I believe that Chure's parents do love one another, though they live separate lives. They are educated, they have everything. They live in luxury in a rich city. My family is poor, I grew up in a house made of metal sheets tied together with wire, and went to school in temporary schools which moved around. But Future and I are the very best of friends. I love her. We know each other.”

“But we don't, in a way”, Future said. I could have come over anytime, but didn't want to push myself into your relationship. I want to visit, now. But that is beside the point. Go on, Lina, get to the good part.”

“Yes, yes! Kelly! If I can be such a good friend to a girl from a different world, then so could any person in my favela. São Paulo is huge. Like New York. And rich. Not like New York, but for our country, rich. There are millions of people who could be matched with our poor people. The favela could be completely dissolved, absorbed into the city, all that is needed is to use compatibility. That is all. Give a rich man a compatible friend, it will not matter if that friend is poor.”

“I think that is true, Lina. I don't think you are the first to have this insight, but it is a good one.”

“No, wait. I am not finished. It is a good idea, but hard to do, yes? But our school, we know how to do it, we are experts, you see?”

“Yes, I see. But I don't see.”

“Let me”, Future said. “About 3 ½ percent of the school is from Brazil. About 150 students. Suppose they were all linked to that school in Brazil that their government is planning. That school could quickly learn the message and spread it to the people, teach them to link up. I think I can talk my father into helping set up schools where they are needed. He cannot afford to pay for them, or pay for so many scholarships, but he could do a lot.”

“Yes, Chure, I understand. But the whole world needs help, not just Brazil. He is not that wealthy.”

“Tell her, Lina.”

“I had an idea. This school has made the part of New York around it more valuable. Chure said her father thought that might happen, and has invested in it. Um, not to say the wrong thing, but Mr. Green is a very smart man. Donating money to the school has made him money. Maybe more than what he donated. I am sure his intentions were most honourable, he did generously make true donations, but he is a smart man, and perhaps has more money now than he gave away.”

“I'm sure he has, Lina. And this is the great idea. Daddy will go for it, I know he will. He can't afford to start up schools everywhere, but he could start with Brazil. Buy some land and donate some money for a school, provided the government makes some agreements with him, I don't know what, just so they they don't sabotage his plans. Our plans!”

“Oh, I like it. Please talk to him about it, Chure.”

“I will.”

The following evening, Future Green called back, very excited, saying that her father liked the idea. The weekend was not far away. When it arrived, so did Ken and Future Green, who would stay with Sarah Rivers, in her huge apartment. Avelina and Future hugged each other with great enthusiasm, then Chure hugged Kelly as well.

“We can all talk later. I am sure you two have much catching up to do”, Kelly said, though in fact the girls had been in daily contact by video. They always had more to say, though, and physical proximity made it even more magical than usual.

Everyone was invited to Sarah's for dinner Saturday evening. Ann and her family came as well.

Kelly's six year old half-sister Kate was surprised to discover that their hostess had a boy about her own age. Sarah had married a musician named Albert Standish and given him a son, a boy named Rivers Standish. Shy at first, Kate soon warmed up to Rivers, especially after he played the piano for her. Kelly was impressed. He played much better than she did.

Ken Green let Sarah take charge of the meeting. She was good at that and seized every opportunity to do so, without actually being bossy or offensive.

“The girls have an idea. I am not going to apportion blame, but I think Kelly is relatively innocent for once. I don't know Avelina very well, but I know Future can hold her own in any company. Should I be asking you, Chure?”

“Avelina wants a school like ours in her country. So does the Brazilian government. They need a little stimulus and probably help, too. Money would be nice. She noted that Daddy might have actually made money by donating to the school. He admits it.”

“I would have been just as happy to donate money to the school if its presence did not increase the value of property near it, but I do not regret investing in that property, now that you mention it.”

“Me too”, Sarah said. “I've sold some of what I bought, to buy more. He bought some from me, but has been flipping more, I think. The outer periphery is owned by others now, who have mostly bought property from us, but between us Ken and I own most of the property near the school. Devious, eh?”

“Damn. Could have used some of that as residences”, Sally said.

“I got the building between your school and its residences only recently, Sally. If you wanted to move your residences into that building, it could be arranged. I should have suggested it”, Ken said.

“Daddy, let me return to the point”, Future said. “Everybody, he told us that we could get started wherever conditions are good. The one the Brazilians were going to start up hasn't gotten going. Politics, probably. Daddy thinks he can help with that. He has some influence with Brazilian officials and would be able to fund a school in São Paulo and offer scholarships to students who need it, especially the really poor ones. All they would have to do is put in writing some agreements to keep their hands off the land nearby the school, which he would buy. Right, Daddy?”

“Let me in on that, too”, Sarah said, not giving Ken a chance to reply. “What about other countries?”

“Not Mexico City, Sarah, for example”, Ken said. It is in a natural depression and will always have a dirty atmosphere. But there are lots of other choices. On the edges of cities, perhaps. Land the city will expand into once the school lures them out into it.”

“Dare I say the word 'college'?”, Drake asked.

“It would help, I think”, Sarah said. “Put both the college and the school on the edge of the city, but not too close together. Encourage infill between them. On property we own. I'm getting into this, folks.”

Avelina said little at first, then spoke about her dream of dissolving the favelas. “I think back to all those people I saw a year ago. They were just people. I liked some of them, I didn't like others. They were all unique. Pick any one of them at random, I think you could find someone in the big city who would gain from their mutual friendship. I am sure of this. I just know it. Don't you? Is there any doubt?”

Ken Green spoke carefully to the girl. “Yes, Avelina. You are right. I am sure you know that we have similar dreams. It is very hard to make them a reality. Future tells me you have ideas about that. Would you like to tell us about them?”

“Mr. Green, can you understand how much the school has changed my life? More than I ever imagined it could. But there is only one other person from a favela near São Paulo. Just one. A boy. I have met him and talked about home with him. We shared some nostalgia, even for such a poor place. But that is all I had in common with this boy, we were not compatible. There is no link between us, we could do nothing to bind together our people. That was a disappointment for me. But it no surprise, given the numbers. You all understand how the odds work, don't you”?

The others nodded, sensing both sadness and anger beneath the new feelings of happiness and understanding she exhibited.

“A quarter of the people in Brazil are poor”, she went on. “My city is rich, but it still has its poor, like those in my little Tiana, my favela, my slum, you would call it. Our city of 10 million people, 30 million altogether counting its metropolitan area, is like New York, but has more than a million poor people in it, four million in the metropolitan area. Four million!”

“Wow, that's a lot, Avelina”, Drake said. “I didn't know that. How many could be students in a school like ours?”

“The poor people are younger as a whole, since many die young, a tragedy. About a fifth of the people in the favelas are school age, almost half of them about the age for this school. Suppose we say it is about one in every ten of the four million, that would be 400,000 of the right age. I don't think more than 120 thousand would have enough education to go to high school at all. But that is enough for every high school student to have a Level Five friendship. A school could be filled from the favelas alone. If the government school was the same size as this one and was fair about it, not giving preference to the rich, then maybe a thousand poor students would be in the school. I have looked up these numbers and I think I am right.”

“That sounds about right, Avelina”, Sally said. “You know that our school draws from all over the world and gives scholarships to the poor. You know we have an incentive program, so people seek out eligible students for us. That works. It may surprise you, Avelina, but we have at least a thousand poor students, and about three hundred from a level of poverty like yours.”

“Three hundred! That is amazing. But of course I would not know that, your scholarships make us all appear rich. I am very grateful.”

“No matter”, Future said. “What is important would be getting those thousand students from around São Paulo into a school like ours. They would help tie together the city. They would begin the dissolution of the favelas, their absorption into the city.”

Ken nodded, proud of his daughter for her role in all of this.

“I say take the initiative, Ken”, Sarah told him. “We can both do it, but I will get started. I'll use your name freely, and your money too, if you don't mind. I'll lean on Brazilian officials, reminding them of how much business we do with their country. Maybe reminding them of how they might personally gain from taking an interest in our project.”

“Tut, Sarah”, Ken said under his breath.

“I am not talking about actual bribes. Let us say unique opportunities. Legal, if just barely. Then I'll offer them a school on a few conditions. We'll want the right to chose a principal with them, nominating Brazilian educators for their approval. We'll pay for the building, if we can say where it will be. We'll ask for fair treatment of the poor and offer scholarships as an inducement.”

“Where you choose to place the school would be in the middle of land suitable for investment, then”, Sally asked, though she was sure she knew the answer.

“Well, again, we will just nominate a place, for their approval, but we'll lean on them a bit harder.”

“What about government expropriation of land”, Ann asked. “Could you stop them, if they chose to force you out at a loss.”

“I think so”, Ken said. “My people get good intelligence from the area and have a lot of influence. It is speculation, and speculation always has its risks, but my people have done a lot of it. They are good at what they do. Of course I am no expert myself, what do I know? But I hire good people and pay them well. I give them large amounts of money to invest here or there, moving it around as necessary. We could do without Brazil, you see. We could withdraw all our operations from it, contribute nothing more to their economy. Contribute nothing more to the campaigns of people seeking elective office.”

“You would do that? All for the sake of one school?”, Avelina asked.

“Probably more than one”, Sarah said. “But yes. That would be the threat. We need to think about creating schools all over the world, and that is only possible if land speculation makes it affordable.”

“Oh, oh, I am so excited”, Avelina burst out. “I can believe now. I can see it happening. When do you think it might happen. Can you tell me something about your plans.”

“The day I heard about this from Future I set my realty people looking for sites in the area”, Ken Green said. “I expect a full report in a few days. Then I will just buy what looks best. If the government won't agree to that site, I'll sell it again, probably after doing some land consolidation, which will increase its value.”

“Ken wants me to handle most of this. As usual I get stuck with the dirty work”, Sarah said, with feigned weariness and resignation. “I am going to say something like, 'Here is a site. We own it. We'll build you a school building and help you get going quickly, if you agree', then hint at other possible projects, instead, such one in Buenos Aires, maybe Naples, or some city in Asia. In other words, 'Cooperate or we take our business elsewhere'”.

Sally Aston looked on, amused. She liked watching Sarah at work.

“Let me help, let me help, please!”, Avelina begged. The project excited her.

Now that they had seen each other in person, Avelina and Future could not be kept apart. The latter had an unlimited budget for air travel and arrived every other weekend, though she never interfered with what Kelly and Avelina liked to do. Their sightseeing and volunteer work went on, Future helping quite happily.

It took seven weeks, but one Saturday the families of the Tech Fantasies Trio were invited over to have dinner with Sarah Rivers. Future Green had flown in for the weekend and spent the afternoon in deep and intense conversation with Avelina, bubbling, the girls were excited to be together as always, but their discussions were heavy stuff.

“We have a deal”, Sarah announced. We have set up dummy companies to own the real estate around our new school. Some Brazilian officials have wisely chosen to invest their own money in those companies. So have a number of rich and influential Brazilians, though Ken will be the majority shareholder in them. The government has wisely accepted our offer to build the school and manage it for a while, also accepting our offer to provide scholarships to poor students.”

“When, when? Where?”, Avelina could hardly contain herself. “Soon, and you'll see”, were the answers, repeated given, in not quite those terms.

Some better answers would appear soon. The next Friday afternoon, wilted and withered by the bright light of education at its best, Kelly and Sally were picked up in a car which contained not only Future Green but a boy about the same age.

“Avelina, Kelly, may I introduce my half-brother, Solid Green. His mother is a construction engineer, who has worked on some of Daddy's building projects. Solid knows about building sites. Right, Sol? Daddy asked him to come along and check out things before the architects went crazy.”

“Check out things?”, Avelina was confused.

“We are going to São Paulo, honey”, Sally said.

“We are!?”

“I hope you don't mind, but I packed some things for you. We're on our way to the airport right now. It will just be the weekend, so I didn't pack much for you.”

“My family! Will I get to see my family?!”

“Yes, dear, if you want. I hoped you'd want to do that. And we'd like to meet them.”

“Oh, but where we live. It is so poor. My mother would be ashamed.”

“We are not going to dress up, Avelina, or drive up in a fancy car. Nothing to overwhelm them. And we have presents packed. Good practical things.”

“Oh, well, my mother is a proud woman, but she is desperate. If you bring something to make their lives easier and don't make a big splash, it would be good. I'd like you to meet them. My sisters are very pretty.”

“I like pretty girls”, Solid noted. That was probably true. He had been turning them from Kelly to Avelina, back and forth, completely ignoring the New York sights and sounds. Sally saw no point in trying to talk to him. Future was amused. Boys!

Avelina was ecstatic to be flying back to Brazil with her two closest friends beside her. They had been met at the plane by Drake, who thought a quick trip might be fun. They caught the 6:10 flight from JFK, which landed at São Paulo's GRU airport just over 9 hours later, at 3:30 AM. The girls had been too excited to sleep on the plane, so by the time they reached their hotel they just dropped off to sleep, exhausted, in a matter of minutes.

Kelly and Avelina had put in one of those overwhelming Friday's at STH even before getting on the plane, so they were tired out, while Future had already taken the plane from Vancouver to New York. They got a room with two king size beds in it.  Avelina regularly slept in the same room with Kelly, so they now shared a bed. Future was content to have the other.

Solid Green had a smaller room of his own, to his delight, in which he would watch pornographic movies on the TV and drink forbidden beverages from the minibar. Drake and Sally were not too tired to entertain themselves in ways they never got used to. Now forty, Sally was at an age when female sexuality is strong, and Drake was always strong. Willing, able, well-equipped for the task, and strong. Now almost 13 years older than when Sally had first taken him into her, his talents and enthusiasm were undiminished.

Though Sally had just mentioned a deal, more was underway. Rezoning had already been pushed through to allow the construction of educational, and residential buildings in a large neighbourhood of northwestern São Paulo. Not a bad part of town at all, there were a couple of strips blighted by low-grade commercial operations, such as used-car lots and unprofitable strip malls.

All four of the young people were surprised to find a huge area of ground which had already been cleared. “The Brazilians love what they call football”, Sally explained. “They insisted on big playing fields for soccer and other sports. The school will look like any other suburban school, surrounded playgrounds and parking lots, but there will be some residences, too.”

“Where will the school building be?”

“Here look at this site map.”

“OK, I've got the general picture”, Solid Green said, a moment later. “I've got to walk the site.” He then pulled a notebook out of his pocket and started walking. The girls watched as he began to traverse the perimeter of the cleared area.

A few large pieces of machinery were sitting idle near one edge of the area. Kelly wondered about that, then noticed men sitting in or on them, apparently eating. Yes, it would be lunch time.

Soon some large black cars drove up. After them came a grey van with with high-tech equipment on its roof. Two men and a woman got out of the van and set up a news camera. With the camera pointed at the black cars, various well dressed men and two women emerged. Kelly understood the real reason for their visit. Publicity.

Solid and Future Green suggested staying out of sight, but Kelly and Avelina were wanted for the show. They had to endure the various introductions. Everything was done twice, once with the officials who could speak English doing so, and once entirely in Portuguese, using a translator. Apparently the tapes would be edited into two versions, one suitable for distribution in the English-speaking world and one for the Brazilian media.

For Avelina the Portuguese one came first. Kelly could see the shock on her face, but not understand what was said. Then, in English, she heard an official introduce Avelina to one of the women who had arrived with him.

“Avelina, my dear, this is Mrs. Mendez. We have looked all over Brazil to find her. She will be your teacher.”

As the welcoming passed her by, Avelina turned to Kelly, tears in her eyes. “I must come back, to São Paulo, to be the first student in the school. They want me soon, before the building is finished, and will find me other friends. Kelly, oh, Kelly.”

The two girls hugged and cried. When they could get away, they rushed to where the other kids were standing. Avelina hugged Future and cried. All three of them were upset. Kelly couldn't believe it. Avelina, to be gone, just like that. It wasn't fair.

After a while, the official welcome completely, the kids got back in the SUV they'd rented at the airport. Drake drove. Sally was emotional too, but managed to reassure the girls somewhat.

“You can still be friends, still talk everyday. Avelina, you and Future already have a long-distance friendship. You can do that with Kelly, too. I know you will still be close.”

But it would not be the same, would it?

It did seem familiar in some ways. Back home in Tiana, her poor São Paulo favela, there had been classes with very few students. Like this class at the end of the school day, those kids had been of different ages. But school had not been attractive and the students were dirty, with little drive or previous education.

This was entirely different. Avelina's day had been spent in clean classrooms with comfortable seats. Attached to each seat was a small desk. They formed attractive units which could be moved but were in a quarter circle around a teacher desk, facing the teacher and the front wall of the room, which was all one giant video screen, like the one in Kelly's dining room.

In every class that screen had lit up to show a seating plan for the classroom, with the names of all the students listed. The teacher had usually said something like “Our composition is a little different today. That's because of a new student, Avelina Azevado, from Brazil. Welcome Avelina.” But sometimes the teacher had added that there other changes too. It didn't take the girl long to realize that the changes were because of her.

Just before lunch, Avelina got an explanation. She was in a social technology class, right here at Social Tech High! That must mean something. After introducing her to the class, the teacher, a Miss Ramsey said that there were other changes too. By this time Avelina was familiar with how freely the kids spoke in class and knew she'd have to contribute as well, so she started out with a question herself. Right away.

“Miss Ramsey. Why are there other changes? They are because of me, are they not?”

“Catherine, how about you start?”

“Alright. Avelina, I think there are about, uh, 600 Grade Seven students in the school. Is that right?” Miss Ramsey nodded. Catherine continued. “Well, at this school every single Grade Seven student takes Social Technology. In higher grades it is optional, but in this grade everybody takes it. We have eight kids in the class, so that means, about, maybe 75 different social tech classes. Well, there are lots of ways of dividing 600 kids into classes of eight. Some huge number, I don't remember. Uh, Georgio, you know?”

“Roughly four times ten to the 17^th power. Do I have to explain that, Avelina?”

“No, I studied mathematics from a book in my school in Tiana. You are doing permutations and combinations. I don't remember the formulas, but I do know the numbers are very big.”

“These are the combinations, which is what Cathy asked for”, Georgio said, “but we do put the students in a special seating order, so the number is even bigger. If we did strict permutations, it would be over ten to the power of 22. That's big.”

“Right”, Catherine Rostrovich went on. “thanks Georgio. So to really pick classes of eight from 600 students is too hard to do, and to put us all in order might as well be impossible. So the school software fakes it. I think they have dedicated hardware now, too. Still fakes it. Comes up with something good enough.”

“Oh, I see, I see. Do you know how it makes this approximation?”, Avelina asked.

“Well, first they use all the interpersonal compatibility data they get from us, and form a big 600 by 600 matrix. You know, a table, this student in this row is compatible with that student in that column. Then this is used as an input to a Travelling Salesman Problem solver. The result is something like a big circle, each of use with a person on our left and one on our right. Then we just grab 75 eight-kid long segments of the circle.”

“Yes, yes, I do understand! I do. I read about matrices and about that kind of problem. Oh! I have a question. What does the diagonal of the matrix look like? Is every student compatible with himself or herself?”

“No”, a student named Ram Manita said. “That is a matter for psychology. We have well-adjusted kids and troubled kids, even here, though being with those who are compatible with you always makes your own inner self more at ease.”

“Oh, I see. Yes. That would be true. Thank you, Ram. I am happy now, very happy, but it must be because of you, all you people. But you don't put me at ease. You set fire to my imagination.”

Avelina's imagination was just about burned out by the time she reached that last class of the day. That one did it to her. She mentioned what she had learned in social tech class that day and how it had affected her.

“But now, Avelina”, Kelly said. Be ready for this. Every day, the last hour of the day, and all Friday afternoon, too, we make up a class like this, in which ages and subjects don't matter. Here we don't just divide 600 Grade Seven students into classes of eight, we divide 4200 students into classes of eight. Since we do use the TSP to get seating arrangements, that means picking the best from ten to the 28^th possibilities. Really, really impossible. But we do good guessing. It seems to work. You watch.”

Yes, it worked. The sparkling, deep, enthralling conversation excited Avelina beyond what she had thought possible. Only twelve, living in a single room with her family, schooled by nuns, Avelina had never had an orgasm, by her own hand or any other means, but this was like an orgasm, an hour long orgasm, which left her worn out, drained, destroyed.

They were quiet in the car when Sally drove the girls home. Kelly just led Avelina to their room, pushed her in the direction of her bed, then lay down herself on the other bed. Within minutes they were both asleep.

Kelly napped only a little while, since this was just an ordinary day, not one of those blistering Friday afternoons.

“Well”, her mother said, when Kelly emerged. “I bet that did her in. She'll be a new girl by tomorrow, won't she?”

“If not by tomorrow, then by the end of the week. A Friday afternoon might prove lethal!”

“I hope not. Guess we should hold off on that Friday extension, for her sake. Don't want to kill off too many students.”

“Ouch. That. Oh, Mommy, I'd forgotten. Don't tell me your are actually going through with it?”

“It was your idea, Kel. I talked it over with Paul, Ellen and Alma. We all liked it. I am not sure exactly when Paul will announce it, but soon.”

Kelly groaned, looking in the direction of her bedroom. “Poor Avelina!”

Early in the school year, not long before Avelina arrived and at the very end of one Friday afternoon, Kelly had asked about extending those long afternoon sessions backwards into the mornings, so that the full day each Friday would be full of the kind of scheduled, optimized but unorganized classes which now characterized the afternoons.

“I dunno, Kel”, Suzy had said in response. “I don't know if I could stand being with guys all day. Enough is enough.”

“Hey, hey, wait! What if we get the machine to anticipate that, adapt to it. There are zillions of ways to divide up and order the kids. Billions just as good as one another.

More than that. Put us in one class in the morning … “

“ … and another in the afternoon”, Suzy finished.

“Better”, Coriola insisted. “Let each hour of the day be different. Right now this class fills up a whole afternoon. Long afternoon, kills us quick. Not so bad if we mix and match the kids, maybe. Do the same all day, some of us might survive it.”

“Worth a try, I guess”, another girl said, “as long as we have medical help standing by.”

By the time school principal Dr. Paul Grey heard about it, the plan was fully developed. Computer science and social technology students from various grades had worked together on the weekend to come up with algorithms and write some simple programs in ST to do the work.

“Basically we've added a relaxation factor, Dr. Grey”, a senior boy explained. “That's the technical term for the mathematical operation being applied, but also seems to fit what we're going to do. We are going to relax the constraints on the solution space as the day goes by. Give the kids a chance to relax a bit too.”

“I see. We are, are we? Well, that's nice to know. Proceed.”

“Oh, uh, sorry, Dr. Grey. I mean, if you want to do this. I hope you will.  Here's the plan. We are going to constrain the solution space for the first hour of the day by forming the compatibility matrix with a mixture of academic topic data and interpersonal compatibility data. As the day goes by we'll relax the academic component down to nothing, so that the last class of the day is just interpersonal stuff.”

“Quite an idea.”

“Oh, more than that, sir. We've got the ST code to do it. Give it a whirl anytime you want.”

“I'll think about it. Have to consult with Ellen, at least. Sally, too. I'll get back to you. Where did this idea come from, anyway?”

“Class Eleven, sir, that's the one with Kelly Phillips in it. She seems to be the one who got the ball rolling.”

“Oh. That might make it easier to get her mother onside.”

Social Tech High ran for seven hours a day, three classes before lunch, an hour for lunch, then three classes after lunch. The longer than usual afternoon was to accommodate the special class at the end of the day. The first hour of the day was made up using a 675 by 675 matrix for each grade. That was 600 students plus 75 teachers. The matrix was tweaked by introducing an artificial incompatibility between teachers, to spread them at distant points on the circle-like network that resulted from applying the TSP approximation algorithm. Then eight-kid-sized segments of the circle were snipped out to form classes, each one based on a single teacher.

Some fudging of the data needed to be done, but ST had a well-written fudge library to be called at will. Homeroom classes were just plain vanilla. Other classes had a different flavour because they addressed specific topics, like Avelina's social technology class.

For the big special classes at the end of the day, no special sweetening was required. Every student in the school participated, classes were segmented by simply rotating a cookie-cutter around in 4200 steps until the best was found. Teachers were assigned classes on a simple best match basis. Relatively simple.

The first new Friday would be that of the following month, which would be in early November. By then Avelina would have had been in New York for three weeks, and participated in two ordinary Friday afternoons. From being stressed almost to the breaking point the first week, Avelina was now copying well enough. Kelly hoped the longer Friday would not be too much for the girl.

“The important thing, Lina, is not to overdo it. Skip a class if you have to. Each a longer lunch, sit down in a comfortable chair to rest for a while. Lie down if you have to. Survive it.”

“How hard will it be?”

“Hard. I am sorry. It's only six weeks at the school for me, you know, I've had that many Fridays. But I was here for summer school every year since I was five. Its not the same, not really intense, but it got me ready for the tough stuff.

That and six Fridays behind me, I'll be OK. I think we'll both make it.”

Several students burned out each hour during the day. As each hour ended, a few more kids were sent home or to a more leisurely part of the school, an intellectual clinic, being expanded as the number of casualties increased.

The first hour of the day was most like one in an ordinary day, since classes that hour were mostly on one topic. The main difference was that students of different ages made up those classes. Interpersonal compatibilities were important, so was subject matter, but age or grade level was not. As the day wore on topic mattered less and less. By the end of the day it didn't matter at all. The last class of the day was just like the last class of any other day. But following so many other remarkable classes, it was somehow different. Each student in it had different experiences to report. Good experiences, but like nothing ever felt before. It was a more relaxed class than usual, but still stimulating. The best class anyone of them had ever experienced.

For Kelly and Avelina, every weekend had been divided into sightseeing and work. Not school work, but physical work, volunteer work on some project. Avelina was shown the city, or as much as possible of it. Nobody could ever see all of New York City, not even in a lifetime. Sightseeing was tiring, mentally tiring. Physical work was the solution. Every weekend afternoon Kelly took Avelina to the site of some project the kids and some adults were working on. This became a routine. Eventually Avelina would want to go out on her own, but for now the girl was happy to be with her friend.

In the evenings Avelina usually spent some time with Future Green, via video wall. Sometimes Kelly sat in, sometimes she did not. When she did the conversations were different, hinging even more on Avelina, who was compatible both with Chure and Kelly. They talked about many things. Being twelve year old girls, they talked about boys, of course. Sometimes their discussions went into the intellectual stratosphere, sometimes they were like girls their own age in every way.

At first Avelina's Catholic upbringing made the more down to earth material shocking. Subjects Avelina had only the vaguest of ideas about were explained in detail, almost scaring her. People did that!? And sometimes that!? No, impossible. How horrible. It was horrible, wasn't it? The North American girls had heard about girls who did things and liked them. All three girls were virgins, though Kelly had no deep commitment to preserving this status. Future could imagine sex all too well, but was surprisingly timid for one so apparently wise.

Kelly was not the timid type.  Fourteen, for sure”, she said. “Two years from now. Maybe earlier, maybe on my fourteenth birthday. I could get a guy just like that, snap, and he'd be a guy, right, he'd go for it, bang.”

Future found that plausible, and rather envied Kelly her determination. Avelina could not imagine doing it so young. Or at all. Unlike many other girls her age she'd had little knowledge of what sex was like when living at home in Brazil. Many children grew up in one room shanty houses where they could hear their parents breathing hotly, groaning, moving about with passion in the dark some nights.

But Avelina's father was dead. Her mother had just the three daughters, which she raised in utter poverty with no man or boy to help. Unlike some mothers and daughters in the slums, they did not sell sex for money nor trade it for food. So the girl had no experience at all, nothing except for the lewd remarks the boys around her made. They only served to reinforce her puritan attitudes, if you can call any Catholic girl puritan.

The North American girls would change Avelina, influencing the way she thought about sex, but not enough for her to contribute to the persistent underage sex problem. That did not stop her from getting a crush on a boy in her behavioural sciences class, but it put her beyond his reach. Just as well.

School social events might have been a problem for Avelina, but here she just took the computer's advice. She would do that until she recovered from the effects of being plunged into a new environment. Kelly helped her choose from among the top few choices given by the computer, which were usually almost as good as one another.

These choices would be noted and would affect the way the system made suggestions in the future. At first Kelly's influence would be felt, but the system could account for that. Later Avelina's choices would be her own.

There were many school dances. Everybody liked them. By now the school had adopted a variant of the old dance card scheme. Each student was given a card with a few partners and several pieces of well known dance music listed. They were expected to meet with their scheduled partners and pick dances together, but each person had some blank spaces on their cards for special dances with special people. Since the school provided multiple suggestions it seemed less like pushing people together – less like promoting sexual relationships.

Avelina found herself paired with seven different boys and had to meet with each one in turn to pick a dance. As she did this, her card filled up, until she came to the three spaces for optional dances. She was too shy to find anyone to fill in them, but a boy she knew did approach her, and she got an eighth dance. Eight different dances with eight different boys, then another with the boy who'd approached her. She liked him. A boy from her homeroom class, she liked him a lot. But he would never get more than a kiss from her, and not right away.

By the winter holidays, Avelina was feeling at home in New York with Kelly and her family, though she missed her own mother and sisters back in Brazil. Her scholarship included a small entertainment allowance which Avelina had saved up, so she was able to send her family presents. She wanted to send them thin mattresses and pillows, some simple clothing, along with a bit of canned food. All so practical, nothing fun. Seeing this broke Kelly's heart. She added some gifts of her own, toys for the younger, prettier clothes for Avelina's mother and both sisters.

Kelly and her parents sternly insisted that Avelina buy them no presents. “You have little money. Keep what you have.” Avelina promised, but bought little Katie something anyway. Many people bought gifts for Avelina and her family, embarrassing the girl but pleasing her. Sally did more than give presents to the family. She sent two computers with all the trimmings and some modern textbooks to the little school where Avelina had studied.

Sally was very pregnant. She'd had amniocentesis back in July, when she became aware of her much desired condition. It had detected Y-chromosomes. Sally had been happy. Almost exactly four months after Christmas she would be able to give Drake a son.

Avelina had a crush on Drake. She couldn't help it. Kelly's father was such an impressive man. Not tall, he was everything else a man should be, everything a woman might want, except the stereotypical “dark” to go with with the most outstanding property he did have. Handsome. Wow. Avelina could hardly keep her eyes off him. Sally noticed, but knew the girl was no threat to her.

During the winter holidays there was major work to be undertaken at the college, where a new lease had expired, giving them a whole new floor of their main building. Ken Green had bought the whole building and was turning over space to the college when leases expired.

Connected College was growing rapidly now, having gotten over the difficult initial stages and gotten a reputation which made it easy to attract international students. They were following the lead of Social Tech High, though differing in the details. Kelly, Avelina and friends happily worked at the college building for much of the winter break, doing physical labour which they had come to enjoy. They were developing skills, too. Drake made them be careful and arranged for adult supervision of anything remotely dangerous, but got the girls a chance to learn many new things.

This time it was both Kelly and Avelina who developed a crush on the same college boy, a boldly handsome volunteer who worked hard, played the guitar, and could keep up with anyone in conversation. Kelly told Avelina she'd give herself to the boy if he asked, compatible or not.

“Oh, no, you would not!”

“Would too! I want him! I can't help it.”

Happily this did not turn into a real problem. The girls were cute, but obviously too young, and he had a girlfriend, a nurse who couldn't come to work on the building, but kept him satisfied in bed. When Kelly eventually found this out she was upset, jealous, envious, hurt — and greatly relieved.

Girls of age twelve can be difficult.  Kelly and Avelina were not, ever. They had each other at home and they had the unique STH environment at school. Avelina also had Future Green as a friend. Kelly also had Suzy and Coriola as friends. The close friends knew each other too well for jealousy to be an issue. Suzy and Coriola were sufficiently compatible with each other and with Avelina that they could could share those amazing afternoon classes.

Kelly's social life was rich. The school had ensured that. Not without some manipulation on her mother's part, but it was the school which made it work. Her situation seemed almost too good to be true, but it was almost typical. Most of the students at Social Tech High were just as well connected and therefore well-adjusted, feeling very little of the “teen angst” which afflicted so many other kids at other schools.

“Mommy, that's great! Another high level friend! To live with us? I love the idea.”

“Her name is Avelina Azevedo. She comes from a very poor family, Kelly. It might be hard for her to adapt to our home and school.”

“I will help her. I will help her with everything. Count on me.”

“I do, Kelly. I always have. Alright. I'll call Paul. He said that he'd arrange it right away, tonight, if you agreed. We will pick her up at the airport tomorrow evening, after dinner.”

“I can hardly wait! Does she have video?”

“No streaming video. Her school doesn't have it. But they e-mailed me a short video clip taken with a cellphone by an aid worker. She has been going to school for years in a series of tent schools set up by Catholic Charities workers. Her family is one of the poorest on Earth, Kelly. They live in one of the terrible slums that surround São Paulo, the largest city in Brazil.”

“Oh, poor girl. Mommy, now I really want to help. I want to see the video when we get home, OK?”

The video had no sound and was of poor quality. It showed a short girl with dark hair and olive skin, in a colourful dress which stood out against against the somewhat dirty side of a tent.

“The Brazilian government is thinking of having a school which would be a bit like ours, but only for kids from São Paulo. It is such a big city, almost as big as metropolitan New York, that they could get pretty good compatibility levels without the expense of bringing in foreign students. They had everyone in city schools tested and the Catholic Charities agency did the surrounding slums, too. Even though she comes from a family with no education, Avelina is a brilliant student. Her English is good – almost perfect, they say.”

After supper, there was a call for Kelly on the family video wall in the dining room. Kelly was pleased to see Beth Green, whom she knew from summer school and from the music generation project. The big video surface was subdivided, showing a girl about Kelly's age against a different background. “Kelly, this is my half-sister Future Green. We used to call her Churie, which sounds a bit like cheery but actually rhymes with curry. But I don't think she likes that much anymore.”

“Sounds too much like a kid. I usually go by Chure, or my full name, Future.”

“Chure is going to be Avelina's long distance friend. You and Chure are moderately compatible, no big deal, but she is almost Level Six with Avelina.”

“Wow.”

“I wanted Beth to introduce me to you first, Kelly, so that I got a chance to talk to you before you met our new friend. I am very compatible with her, but we come from very different world. Her family lives in a slum full of poor people and is one of the poorest there. I guess you know something about my father already.”

“I've met him.”

“Did you know that he is one of the richest men in the world?”

“I thought he might be. Mommy said he donated more to the school than anyone else.”

“Right. Well, you can see that Avelina might have a bit of a problem understanding how we stand. So I thought you might help.”

“I promised my mother I would help her every way I can. And I will. Trust me. I will make her comfortable, not just with living here and going to school, but with everything. You and your family too. Uh, could you tell me a bit about yourself, Future?”

“Well, I am the third child of my mother, Geena Telford. She owns and runs Telford and Green, Custom Automobiles. They build expensive cars for people who want something unique. My brother and sister work there. They got special tutors to make them car people, but my mother told my father he could educate me anyway he wanted. It's always up to the mothers, you see. Daddy has always been fascinated by the growth of technology, but hasn't had a futurologist in the family, so he hired tutors to train me for that purpose.”

“Oh. So your mother makes custom cars, and your father makes custom kids? Oh, oh, sorry, I didn't mean that to be offensive. I know he is a fine man, and all of his children are supposed to be wonderful.”

“No offence taken. He is very open about what he does, proud of it and proud of us. We all love him and share his pride.”

“So, you are a futurologist?”

“Yup. And Avelina is supposed to be very interested the future of technology. She hopes it will lift everybody out of the slums.”

“I hope so too.”

Next evening, after a supper which Kelly was almost too excited to eat, Sally drove out to JFK. There they waited until the American Airlines flight from São Paulo arrived. Holding up a sign with “Avelina Azevedo” written on it big letters, Kelly looked around for the face she had seen on the video. One of the last passengers to leave the plane, there she was, a small slight girl with a nervous smile on her face.

“Avelina! I am Kelly Phillips. This is my mother, Sally Aston. She is going to drive us home. You are going to live with us, if you want to.”

“Hello. Yes, Kelly. Please. I have nowhere else to go.”

On the trip home, Kelly sat in the back seat so she could talk more easily with her new friend.

“Kelly. Please. Tell me why I am here. There are many children where I lived, some very nice and very smart. They are better students than I am. But they did not to come to your country. Why am I here?”

“Didn't they tell you anything?”

“Yes, they said that the tests we wrote told the experts that I should come here. But I don't understand why.”

“Oh. Well we have a special school for students who are not just good in school but also have a friend in the school. You and I will be friends, if the tests are right. There is another girl for you too. You and she will be friends if the tests are right. They measured interpersonal compatibility as well as academic abilities.”

“Well, 'interpersonal' is a new word for me, but I can guess what it means. We are alike, so we will probably be friends?”

“No, we will probably be friends, but that does not mean we are alike. They told me you are interested in the future of technology. Did they tell you about me?”

“No. Only that you are nice and go to my new school. You seem nice.”

“Well, I suppose I should care about the future of technology, maybe I do, but it is not a big interest of mine. I like books and music and I want to study journalism some day.”

“That is very different. Can you tell me about my other new friend, or should I ask her myself?”

“The most important thing is that she lives a long way away and does not go to the school. She is connected with it, though. To talk to her you will have to use a video screen, like television.”

“We did not have a television where I come from, but I know what they are. So I will sit in front of a camera and talk to her, while she sits in front of a camera and talks to me? Is that how it works?”

“Yes, though we use more than one camera and they are very small. You won't notice them.”

“What is she like, this friend? Have you talked to her this way?”

“Yes I have, yesterday. She is smart like you and also interested in future technology. Everything about the future, actually, but especially technology and its impact. Can you guess her name?”

“No, why should I be able to guess her name? I don't understand.”

“Her name is Future. Actually, her whole name is Future Green. That sounds like an ecology movement, but its just because her father is a Mr. Green.”

“Future! I have never heard of anyone having that name!”

“It's a long story. You will probably use the short form of her name, her nickname, which is just Chure. Easier to say.”

“Chure. So strange. But if she is interested in the future I will be happy to call her anything she wants.”

“Friends sometimes call me Kel, short for Kelly. Do you have a short form of your name?”

“No, the nuns and lay workers said I should not be casual about names. They said names were important. But I am not sure why. I will call you what you like.”

“See what happens. Usually you use a nickname only once you get to know a person. Maybe someday you will decide you could be called Av, Ava, or maybe Lina.”

The two talked of various things till reaching the apartment building in which Kelly lived with her parents and sister Kate. It was a 12 story Art Deco building from the 1930's. Kelly was used to it, but still thought it beautiful. Avelina was overwhelmed by it. She was equally impressed by the apartment itself. More than Drake and Sally would ordinarily have spent, it was paid for by some Tech Fantasies donors, who insisted the two founding members take it as a condition of the donor's contributions to the organization.

Everything was ready for the girl. Kelly had offered to share her large room with Avelina, knowing that they were so compatible it would work out perfectly. Kelly had packed up all of the old stuff she never used anymore to make room for another bed, on the other side of the room. Kelly's oversized desk had been rearranged so that the two girls could work side by side each with her own computer.

“Just the two of us in this room, Kelly? What about your sister? In Brazil our whole house has only one room. We all slept in it.”

“Katie has her own room, Avelina.”

“A whole room for one person! For a young child!”

“It is not a large room. She is just barely old enough to have one of her own, but she likes it. We used to share so I could look after her, but not since she started kindergarten.”

After Avelina was settled, which amounted to taking a few possessions out of one small suitcase, Kelly led the girl into the dining room, where she called Future Green on the video wall.

“Oh, oh, Kelly, that wall, that is, it is a computer.”

“More than just an ordinary one. A very special computer handles the video communications, but the wall can also be used as a monitor. Here's your new friend. Hello, Future. This is Avelina. I've told her a bit about you, but not about your family.”

Kelly mostly sat and listened while Chure and Avelina talked. They talked mostly about technology. The Brazilian girl had read about a lot of it, but seen little. She would see much more Monday morning, when Kelly took her to Social Tech High.

That night the two girls sat up late, talking. “I know nothing of this school of yours. It is supposed to be very famous, but I have not been able to read about it. All our schoolbooks were old and we had no newspapers. The school had an old computer, but no Internet.”

“You will like it. Everybody there is very compatible with at least two other people. It used to just be one other person, but Mommy and Dr. Grey have filled in the gaps.”

“Your mother?”

“She was principal of the school until a few months ago.”

“Oh, a very important person. She did not seem important, just very nice.”

“Both. She's great. Tell me, Avelina, what did you study at your school in Brazil”

“A bit of everything we had a book for, by myself, and what the teachers taught us. They taught us mathematics and English, mostly. Reading and writing Portuguese first, then English. Do you think mine is good?”

“Very good. I don't know any Portuguese at all, though.”

“I have one other language. An older nun taught me Latin.”

“Hey! I take Latin. I had to pick a language to get started with in Grade Six at my school, and I chose Latin because people told me I should someday read the classics. It was a private school. I don't think kids that young take languages at ordinary schools. When did you start studying Latin?”

“A valde diu abhinc , Ego non vere memor. Forsit annus Ego coepi schola. Ego eram super septem annus vetus.”
 

“Oh.”

Kelly thought it would be nice to generate some music that they would both enjoy — “Hey, Avelina, we could merge our, oh, you wouldn't have a playlist, of course. We generate new music from a library of existing music. I can do that, because I have a collection of music that I like to listen to. I guess you will have, in a while.”

 “I know songs.”

“Oh, hey, wait, there is a transcriber on the system. Sing a song and it will turn it into Midi that the music generator can read. Maybe we can do that in a while.”

“I have not heard of this music generator. How can a computer be creative? I love to think about what technology can do, but I don't think it can do art of any kind. Not real art.”

“We agree. The generated music lacks a kind of creativity, but it is fun to listen to. It can be inspiring, if the source music was inspirational. But it is all based on human creativity. It combines what people have done into new combinations, but is not really creative itself. Just a sec. I mean second, I mean wait a moment. I have to talk to my mother. Come with me.”

Kelly ran into the main hall and tapped on the door to her parent's bedroom, which was ajar. Drake said to come in, which Kelly did right away. Avelina hesitated outside. Drake and Sally were both dressed for bed, in bathrobes, Sally with a nightgown under hers. Peeking in, Avelina saw Kelly's father sitting at a computer, while her mother lay on the bed reading a book. The girl blushed when she saw Drake's bare legs below the robe, and tried not to think about what it might be covering.

“Mommy, Daddy!”, Kelly said right away, “Avelina has no playlist, no music library, nothing. Is there some way I can download the playlists of all Brazilian people except the really cosmopolitan ones? Can I do a weighted merge of them? More weight on the ones they have in common but not excluding any?”

“Um, let me see”, Sally began. “Yes, almost all anyway. Only a few students keep their playlists private, though a few keep some songs private. Probably the dirty ones. There is a search function.”

“And yes”, Drake continued. “A weighted merge is possible. But I'd suggest you use weights it so that you are in effect taking what they have in common minus what the school as a whole does. To eliminate all the pop songs that everybody likes but are not very Portuguese.”

“So I can generate a music library for Avelina, to start with, anyway? A playlist she can edit? Can you show me? I mean show us?”

“Let's go to the dining room and use the video wall as a monitor”, Sally suggested, putting aside her book.

Sally subdivided the screen, so that the left half was an overhead view of her hands on her keyboard and monitor, taken with one of the cams that came with the video wall. The right hand side was synched to her own small monitor, which Sally ignored.

“Here. We press Help, pick School Software, pick Music, pick Playlists, pick Search, then Collect. Type in Brazilian Portuguese students. There's a list of students, pick Merge All. Hit Help again. Select Arithmetic Operators, Frequency Weighting, Arithmetic Operators again, Subtract, then ignore the playlist name box, just click on School Mean.”

Avelina sat there, utterly dazzled. Technology beyond her wildest dreams!

“OK”, Kelly said. “I can take it from here”. She pressed Save As, typed in Brazil Minus Us, pressed Generate, then Play. Immediately sounds emerged from the hidden loudspeakers behind the screen and a few elsewhere in the room.

The music that emerged was Latin, of a flavour Kelly did not quite recognize. The Portuguese lyrics were Markov-generated too, rather poetic and almost making sense. Avelina listened in wonder.

Kelly left the music running, but typed some text which showed up on the screen in large letters. “Tomorrow you can do a merge with mine, and then another one with Future's. You will like the results, I promise. No, wait, you should edit the playlist first. That will take a while. No rush.”

After listening for a while, the girls went back to bed, but talked for hours. Avelina was tired out, as travellers always are, but just had to talk to her new friend. The next day, Kelly took Avelina out to see the city.

Stunned by New York in the dusk of the previous evening, Avelina loved to look at it in the morning light. There were not so many tall buildings were she now lived and would go to school, but she could see and admire the enormous ones not far away.

The first stop on Kelly's sightseeing tour was the Technological Fantasies office. The original office had once belonged to an accounting firm. Not large, it had a reception area behind a front window, with several small offices in the back. Now the organization was taking over space in the building above it as leases expired. Right above the ground floor was a large open area being converted into a museum of technology – past and future. Avelina spent so much time in this museum that the rest of the tour would have to be postponed.

Future Green had called earlier, at what should have been lunch time, but Avelina was still in the technology museum at that time. Chure left a message, but it would go unanswered for a while. Sally had bought a powerful cellphone as a present for Avelina, but had been planning to give it to her at lunch.

When the girls finally arrived home it was 4 PM. Drake was due home by 5:30. Sally decided to wait. When Drake arrived the couple presented Avelina with her new toy, a computer of great power packed into a handheld phone. Having just marvelled over such an item at the technology museum, Avelina was overwhelmed to have one of her own.

The school was in an older building which had been renovated inside and out. Only a warehouse before renovation, it was not altogether unattractive on the exterior and had been made attractive inside. The ground floor had a high ceiling above the entrance hall, which was beside the gym. There were rooms on the ground floor and on a mezzanine floor on the other side of the hallway. There was an elevator and escalators.

Kelly rightly assumed that Avelina had never been on an escalator, so she took the girl up the escalator to the mezzanine, then back down to the ground floor. There, Kelly led Avelina into the school office, for simple registration tasks, which included the production of a photo ID card. While there, she named and briefly explained some of the office equipment.

Kelly next showed Avelina to a locker where she could keep books and supplies. To the Brazilian girl's delight, the locker contained not only a few books but one of the laptop computers which the school issued to scholarship students.

“It is equipped with the school's software and has a wi-fi connection to the school's system. The user help system is very complete. See this button here? It is a help button. I will give you context sensitive help, which usually includes a search box and a menu of other help locations. There is enough help built in that you could learn all about it from the machine itself, but I will teach you how to use it.”

“Please, Kelly. Let me teach myself, first. I will accept your help when I need it, but I will learn more if I study on my own and try out what I learn.”

“Smart girl. That's the right idea.”

Avelina was not in Kelly's homeroom class, but was in the same class at the end of the day, the class based only on compatibility, not age or grade. She replaced another girl, who would be missed but never far away in the school.

“May I introduce my new friend and roommate, Avelina Azevedo, from São Paulo, Brazil. Avelina, would you like to say something about yourself?”

“Yes, Kelly, and thank you. I come from a poor place beside a rich city. Our school had few books and no computer, but I learned everything that was in the books we had. I am most interested in technology and in the future. Mostly I am interested in future technology and what it will do for the world. I hope it will change the world so that nobody has to be poor like the people in my favela.”

The others spoke kindly to Avelina, turning the conversation to her interests instead of probing into her background. They too hoped the future would have no poor places in it. They shared her hope that technology would make the difference.

“Nobody had told me the name of the school where I would be going. Perhaps they were all keeping it a secret, to surprise me. I don't know. But when I saw the name on the building my head spun with delight. The Social Technology High School. I am so happy now.” 

“It’s not good enough, Mommy”, Kelly said. “Suzy and I have being playing with it a lot. It works, but is just not good enough.” Kelly liked all kinds of music. Her Level Five best friend, Suzy Nicholson, liked mostly classical music.

“I’ve applied it to my own playlists, which are all classical, Mrs. Aston”,

Suzy said. “The music that comes out is not very sophisticated.”

“It’s not all that great for other kinds of music, Mommy. Being able to generate new music from collections of music is wonderful, and it does let us compare profiles, but the generated music itself is not magical stuff.”

“I know, Kelly. None of us knew much about music. We tried to solve the technical problems. There were plenty of those. More than enough. Control of repetition was the worse.”

“How is that, Mrs. Aston”, Suzy asked.

“Well, music is repetitive by nature, but that poses problems for Markov processes in which what comes later is based on what came before. We had to do all sorts of weighting tricks to keep it from being too repetitive — just playing the same thing over and over. We had to take the music apart, too, so that we did separate Markov processes on rhythms, chords and melodies. That was the hard part. None of us knew enough about music to do that analysis well. That’s probably the real reason why you aren’t satisfied with the result.”

“You must have help, though? People who do know music, don’t you?”, Kelly asked her mother.

“Yes, we had some help. We wouldn’t have been able to do it at all otherwise. We made use of some existing software, too. That made up for some of what we didn’t know ourselves, though using other people’s software can sometimes be harder than writing your own. I know it’s not perfect, but it is more than just a proof of concept. This has become a great project.”

“I guess there is nothing we could do to help is there? Maybe Suzy could. She knows everything about music.”

Sally didn’t want to cut Kelly out of the loop. Her lovely daughter was her life. Besides, Kelly had almost invented the project, though Drake had the key vision.

“Maybe you could both help”, Sally told the girls. “If I were to package some of our components so they could be called from the school’s ST language, maybe you could play around with them. Some of your other friends might be interested, too. If people at the school worked on it enough, they might be able to take it over, make it their own. What we have is too big and complicated, it would be nice to have something simpler, which students could understand and maintain themselves.”

“Well, I do know something about music and can program a little bit in ST”, Kelly said. “I don’t think Suzy can program at all, but she knows everything about music, right Suze?”

“No, but some. I like to listen to classical music, which is mostly what I play, but — “

“ – but she can play anything. I’ve heard her. Jazz, country, pop, anything”, Kelly finished.

“Don’t worry too much about the programming, Kelly. There are other students who can help with that. Though you might have fun trying to write a tiny Markov music program in ST. I’ll give you some information about how one works. Then if you want to, you might just start from scratch, see what you get. What I’d really like to see though, is more analysis of how music fits together.”

“We can find our for ourselves how one works”, Kelly said. “I am sure it is on the Internet somewhere, and Suzy can handle the music stuff.”

“I am sure all the information you need is out there. Try searching for Markov music or stochastic music.”

Enthusiastic, Suzy and Kelly went off to try to create a toy version of the new software. “This is just for fun, Suze. And to learn something. I’ll think about what other kids might do, if we can get more.”

The current Markov music software was being constantly improved, but could still be put in package form. It would take a while for Sally and her colleagues to collect the components and put them in easily callable form, but it would be worth doing even if nobody at the school ever tried to use them.

Everyone at school did use the current music generation program. Mr. Everett collected the playlists from everyone in his homeroom class of moderately compatible Grade Seven students. They then spent every morning for a week listening to the generated music, which more or less defined their class.

Kelly could not just sit still and listen to music. The made notes on paper, drew diagrams and typed things into her computer while the music played. 

At the end of Friday afternoon, Kelly found Mr. Everett and handed him a printout.

“This is a project, sir. I might do it with Suzy, if nobody else is interested. Please tell me what you think.”

“OK, I’ll read this, Kelly. But can you give it too me in a few words, right now?”

“I think what my mother would most like to see is a complete revision of the music generator program, written entirely in ST. The trivial one was easy. It is just an ST program that asks you if you want to run the main program. I also wrote the next step, which is an ST program which calls the main program’s playlist input function, then the main program’s music generation function. I thought we could keep splitting it up into smaller and smaller pieces, until we got to simple functions. I don’t know what to do after that, though. Get help, I guess.”

“That’s good, Kelly. I’ll read what you have written here, then perhaps talk to the class about it Monday morning.”

As use of the existing software spread its power was better understood, but so were its limitations. The impact of music seemed to be on the right brain and also on the limbic system, which was a locus for emotions. The left brain cognitive functions were not so well represented or responsive.

The finest application of the stochastic music generation system was with roommates in the school’s residences. Two very close friends at Level Five or above could share a room under certain conditions. Couples with a sexual relationship could only do so if of legal age in both the state and in their home countries. Students with homes in the city or a plausible commuting distances were excluded from residences need for others.

Wherever students have shared rooms, music has always been a problem because tastes do differ. One person’s music is another’s noise. The new music generation system could guarantee the creation of music both roommates would like. Each of the two people sharing a room would have a playlist, specifying a set of pieces the person liked to hear. The intersection of those two sets was music they both liked to hear. From that intersection could be generated an endless supply of music which both roommates would like or at least find inoffensive.  That could be good background music for when they wanted some, but was not the most interesting use of their playlists. Another approach would be to take the union of those sets, instead of their intersection. This music would usually be richer, drawing on more sources, but not necessarily something either would like very much.  For example, some people do not consider rap music to be music and want to turn it off when it is played. Using the union of one of their playlists with one from someone who liked rap music a lot would produce a mixture that at least one of them would probably find objectionable.

This is where the unique circumstances of the school residences became manifest.  Given that the two individuals were already known to be Level Five or above, their musical preferences were unlikely to be that different. When two people have similar tastes in music it is usually easy for each to learn or acquire a taste for what the other likes.

The twelve year old boy Santos Coriega in Kelly’s homeroom was from Mexico City and liked Latin music. He shared a room with a boy from Louisiana who liked fusion music with an element of New Orleans jazz in it. The intersection of their playlists was mostly pop, though pop using brass section seemed to appeal to both. The union of their playlists was very large. The music created from them was very rich. It took a while, but soon both boys liked it much better than the music they had grown up with.

A true understanding of what this meant began in the residences, and it was Santos who explained it to Kelly. “What Rene and I did, Kelly, be merged our playlists, just the two of us. The result was fantabulous because we are so the best of amigos. Lots better stuff than we got with more people. Hey, I thought, wow, this is great, the two of us. Then it hit me. The whole school, all of us, we chain. Then wham, everybody in the house knows.”

“Right. Each one of us has someone really close. What we get from merging just our two playlists is what two Level Five people have. Compatible mean right and left brains, so if two compatible people do it, the music is not just right brain stuff.”

“What I said.”

Kelly and Suzy had each heard the rich music that the school generated. Each girl had turned her own playlist into an endless stream of music. Fascinated, neither was satisfied. They had collected a few playlists from various friends and merged them. Good, but not yet spectacular.  One simple thing that both girls had overlooked was the most obvious, merging just their own two playlists, nobody else’s.

The result was not so immediately magical, not so nearly visceral. It took time to fully appreciate. It was not as rich as music based on a larger number of source playlists. But it was more profound. It was the music of two rather musical Level Five friends. Drawing from and reflecting that level of compatibility, it captured something from all parts of their brains, not just those traditionally associated with music.

Kelly had one other Level Five friend, Cariola Tevanza. Cariola was interested in math and computer science, like Kelly’s parents.

“Cariola. We have to try this. We have to try this. Merge our playlists, just the two of us. Nobody else.”

“I thought it was better with more. It always sounds better to me, though not really the kind of music I like.”

“I know, I know. But we are real compatible. That makes a difference. It does.”

Cariola liked choral music, from any time period, or in any style, just as long as it was sung by a choir. The union or merger of their playlists was very eclectic, with more music for multiple voices, but far beyond any superficial differences was the overwhelming effect of unity which the music generated in both girls. It made them feel an intellectual couple. They could sense the linkings of their minds.

Kelly went to see the school principal herself. “Dr. Grey?”

“Yes, Kelly. This is a surprise. What’s up?”

“We need to get every compatible pair to merge their playlists, sir. Ever person has got to do it. Just in pairs. If you have two friends, do it separately with each one. Try it yourself, sir!”

“You are sure about this?”

“I wouldn’t bother you if I wasn’t, Dr. Grey.”

 So Paul Grey contacted his three close friends, two students and a teacher. Individually he merged his personal playlist with each of their.  In pairs, they sat back to listen.

 Soon as excited as Kelly was, Paul Grey broadcast an e-mail message to every person in the school. He broadcast it also to school members who did not actually attend the school, such as important people in the local Tech Fantasies organization. He included long-distance links. This would be overkill, of course. Everybody might already know. Information passed through the school like magic with no electronic help.

 By Monday morning, when Mr. Everett spoke to his class about Kelly’s project, the whole class had tried pair-music generation with all their compatible friends. Amazed at the results, they were receptive to anything to do with music generation.  After giving a bit of an explanation, Mr. Everett said, “This would make a nice class project, and the way Kelly describes it does sound like people who are not too skilled could still contribute. Is anyone else here able to do a little programming?”

 There was nobody. Most people in the class were musicians.

“I am sure other people in the school will catch on and help”, Kelly said, “but it would be nice to do something in this class. I can’t do much myself, though.”

“Cleta and I don’t play music, Mr. Everett, so we don’t contribute much to this class. Could you ask the computer to swap us out and get a couple of programmers, instead?”, one student suggested.

The very next day the class reformed first thing in the morning with two good ST programmers replacing the two non-musicians in the group. Mr. Everett then had Kelly tell the class in more detail what they thought the class might do.

“The big program everyone uses is going to get broken down and redone, I’m sure, probably in ST, I hope. Even then it’s going to be too big for me to understand. We could help by splitting off a little piece to work on. But I also think a small program could be written to do some of the same things, then we could just make it bigger and better, keeping the software easy enough for a kid to understand. ST is good for that. I got started already. Well, I got started both ways, top down and bottom up. My parent’s told me might be good. It’s been fun, actually. We might just carry on the same way. Those of you who are musical, rather than programmers, could write the top level help stuff which has to be part of every ST program. You have to say what a program is going to do before you can run it. You musicians will know what it should do.”

A good idea, the class immediately adopted it. It remained a class project for exactly two weeks, until school principal Paul Grey got a demonstration.

“Good. You can be the lead class for now, and we can add on to what you have done, but I think this is now a school project!”

The class had mixed feelings about this. On the one had they felt their project had been hijacked. On the other, they were proud of getting it started. Kelly and Suzy felt just as ambivalent about it, until their parents praised them for their initiative. That did make them feel better.

The school offered dozens of small music classes and some larger ones. It offered even more computer classes. There were classes where people of extreme compatibility worked together. While still able to choose their own projects, most chose to participate in the bigger project.

The unique closely connected environment of Social Tech High made the success of this project inevitable. As the software got better and better, so did the music its Markov mechanisms generated from existing libraries of music.

The school still enjoyed connections to many other people from outside the school. Many of these were long-distance connections. Included were Beth Green, her artistic sister Esmeralda and Alice Ames. It was only natural that these people join in the school project. The fact that it was the school’s project never seemed to matter. These were school people, no matter how far away. If they could help, all the better.

The only stipulation was that all software had to be written in the school’s ST language. That language was designed to be easily taught to young students, easy to maintain, easy to document, yet powerful enough for all purposes.

Alice Ames had been part of the Social Tech project which had defined the language and written its first interpreter. She had written its first compiler, after rewriting an improved version of the ST interpreter in ST itself. Now an MIT student, Alice still used the language sometimes, though the university wanted her to code in other languages. Sufficiently fluent in ST and as brilliant as always, she loved her former school and would do anything for it.

Most fluent in the language were seniors who had been in the school since Grade Seven and done all their programming in it. Several of those skilled programmers were also musicians. They took over the project and led it well, but Kelly and Suzy still got to contribute.

 Not everyone was happy with the rapidly developing software and the music generated by it. It soon seemed that everywhere you went there was music playing. That bothered a few people, who liked peace and quiet, but the really frustrated people in the school were those who liked to write songs or compose music themselves.

What is the point?”, Tennison Daley asked, sadly one day, while speaking to Kelly. “The machine turns out better music than I do.”

“I don’t know, Tenny. I just have this intuition, this feeling, that somehow what you do is important. Let’s ask someone.”

Kelly took the problem to Ann, who was like a favourite aunt. “Tennison writes music. Songs and stuff. Or at least she always did. Now she doesn’t see the point.”

“Ah. That problem. I have talked about it with Alice and some others.  We got some good comments from Beth Green and her sister Esmeralda. It seems that Esmeralda is not just a visual artist, she does music too. I think I can explain it to you, maybe. Let me try. Does the notion of abstract space mean anything to you? What about hyperplane?”

“Yes, Ann, you see, in math class we spend more than half our time talking about math itself, less on specific things. We’ve been taught about abstract spaces of many dimensions. And hyperplanes are just like planes in our three dimensional world. They have one fewer dimension.”

“Well, close. There is the trivial hyperplane which is the whole abstract space itself, and a canonical hyperplane, which has just one fewer dimension, and the null hyperplane, with no dimensions at all, but a subspace with any number of dimensions can be a hyperplane.”

“OK. I guess.”

“So, think of Suzy’s playlist and the music generated from it. All classical sounding. Now suppose we deleted everything by Beethoven from her playlist. What would the generated music sound like?”

“Real different. Beethoven was big.”

“Exactly. Now think of Suzy’s playlist defining an abstract space of music. Without Beethoven, you get only a hyperplane, embedded within that abstract space. Removing Beethoven has removed a whole dimension.”

“I get it! I get it! So a human author contributes new dimensions to what would otherwise be confined to a hyperplane.”

“Right. So Tennison, what you should do is keep on writing you own original material. You can listen to what is already being produced and add something new, or just start from scratch. I’d say that you should do a lot of listening first. Listen to what the school produces and what your friends produce. Listen to what your own playlist of favourite pieces generates. Most especially listen to your the pair-music generated with your most compatible friends. Then try to create something new. Well, I recommend listening first, but what do I know? Do whatever works best for you. Kelly, we need a method by which people can add new pieces to their playlists. A way of submitting pieces so that people will actually listen to them and add them to their own collections.”

Kelly thought and thought and thought. Finally she brought an answer to her mother. Sally called in her friends Ellen Smith and Alma Renwick, then had Kelly repeat the idea.

“Well, we’ve stopped playing school music over the loudspeakers – that was kind of annoying. Now it is on a broadcast channel for in-school use. We can tune in and listen to it. Lots of us do. But for new music, I think we need another broadcast channel. Kinda like a school radio. Something to play only new music, written by real people. Not necessarily our students, but it could be. No, best we don’t limit it. Just real people anywhere. Then kids can download the good stuff into their collections.”

Kelly also repeated the conversation she’d had with Ann, summarizing her suggestion. It did seem like a good idea. Vice-principal Ellen Smith said she would talk it over with Paul Grey, but was sure she could make it happen.

It did not take long before there were a several wi-fi channels for different kinds of new music by real people. A school radio station accepted donated music, sometimes by students, often by artists from around the world seeking recognition in the hope of future fame and fortune. As Social Tech High spread the use of better and better software to generate music, it also became a clearing house for freely redistributable music by human artists.

She had made two key suggestions. The first was that the division of students between city schools could let the city’s school system as a whole mimic the compatibility model Social Tech used. That could be applicable only to a city as dense as New York, with so many schools, but it would be possible.  In response to the initiative put forth by Tech Fantasies, using the Social Tech High name to attract participants, a few teachers had changed schools, making those schools more distinctive. But not much more distinctive. In response to the same initiative, some parents had used the software and found different schools for their kids to attend. But not many parents and the schools were still not distinctive enough for this to matter.

Much more would have to happen before Kelly’s idea could make a real difference, but it was full of possibilities. Kelly’s mother would keep her beloved daughter informed of progress, but warned her that it was going to be slow.  “What is important is that we’ve given the schools some hope of almost catching up to Social Tech, Kelly. None of them could have done so individually, without our enormous number of international applications, but between them there is hope.”

“So they’ll first divide the kids between schools, like I suggested — when they can, that’s the hard part – but then it will be easy for any one of them to put the kids into the right classes?”

“Well, easier. Only a very few have our small classes, but still, it will make a difference. I think we’ve sold them on the idea of making their profiles as distinctive as possible. They like being distinctive. Schools always have.”

“How different are they?”

“Not much, but they are working on it. Some are doing profiles for classes, too. It looks like in the end all schools and all classes will have somewhat different profiles. Within a school, there’s lots of flexibility. They can swap kids between classes without much trouble. Getting them in the right schools is harder. Not much progress yet. I’ll let you know.”

“Maybe next year will be better.”

“I hope so. Now they want to do it. We’ve talked them into it. That’s what’s important. I am very proud of you for suggesting it.”

“Thanks Mommy. It was just an idea. You raised me to think and say what I think. You might regret that, someday.”

“I am almost beginning to regret listening to your other suggestion, about making profiles audible. Oh, Kelly, if only you knew what a can of worms that opened!”

“Sorry. I guess that came from playing and talking about music so much at school. We have two classes based on compatibility without really a subject to study.  The one at the end of the day has really tight links in it, because there is no grade restriction. Homeroom class in the morning is just for us Grade Sevens. Since we have a music teacher as homeroom teacher, that is usually what we do.  Music.”

“Wherever it came from, it’s quite an idea. Caused us so much trouble, though.”

Beth Green had been right that it was in principle possible to do spectral analysis of profile data, producing a spectrum which could be mapped into the audible range. Sally had been right in saying that this would only produce something which made sense if a lot of work was done on the rows of data. Neither had anticipated the amount of work that would be necessary.

Dr. Paul Grey, the new school principal was not a mathematician, but he appreciated both the basic idea and the need for a lot of mathematical work to make it happen. “OK”, he said, “suppose that I want to listen to our school.  Let’s say that I should hear a sound, a single note. Do you know what to do to get me that sound?”

“Not really. We know of a lot of mathematical transformations”, Sally replied, “but we are not sure how to apply them.”

“There should be a right way and a wrong way, though. Both mathematics and music seem to be non-arbitrary languages.”

“Yes, they do. That’s the problem. We don’t want to introduce an arbitrariness by inventing some mapping between our profiles and the sounds which will represent them.”

“Have you gotten anything I could listen to, anything at all?”

“Well, yes. I guess. Let me just fetch a file from my home machine.”

Sally got a file and played it. It was not just noise, there was a definite tone colour to it, but it was not exciting.  “That is from a matrix created by drawing out of the files one row of questionnaire answers per student. Then we reduced the whole matrix to a single spectrum. Actually we are listening to only the magnitudes, not the phase information, which helps us locate the source but doesn’t affect our sense of tone colour. Only the magnitudes determine what it actually sounds like.”

“You can really represent a whole table full of information by a single sound?”

“Yes, through well-known and non-arbitrary transformations. What is arbitrary is the way the matrix is composed, how the table was created.”

“Can you also create sounds for the profiles of individual people?”

“Yes. A row of the matrix would represent a person. A different kind of transformation can turn just that row into a spectrum.”

“Is the sound of the school as a whole just the sum of the sounds of the individual students?”

“Well, it could be, but that’s not how we get the audible representation of the collection of individuals. If we did that, then there would be just a big blurry indistinct mass of sound.”

“Oh. Well, I won’t probe you for details, which I wouldn’t understand anyway. Can you just play me the sonic representations of a few individual students chosen at random?”

Sally did. “Hey, they do sound distinctive. Not so much like noise.  Are you sure the school’s sound is not just the sum of these individual sounds?”

 Sally would have to demonstrate. “Here let me just add up all the student sounds.” The result was a different kind of noise.

 “More like the sound of Grand Central Station”, Paul said, “where a thousand people are all talking at once. Entirely different. I can’t explain why, but it is different.”

“Well, in the case of a lot of different sources, the actual shape of the spectrum varies from time to time in an apparently random manner. The school sound is technically the convolution of a single function, the formant of the sound, with an underlying noise.”

“Too technical, but I can hear the difference. Have you played these sounds for Kelly?”

“No. I guess I should.”

Kelly listened to the audible representation of the school.  “No, that just doesn’t sound right to me. I think it should be like this:”, Kelly said, playing a big chord on her electronic keyboard with both hands. “Or this:” Another big chord. “Actually, I think it should be like this:” She played a slow chord progression, then looked expectantly up at her mother.

“Damn.”

“Mommy. Watch your language. A fine example you are setting for your sweet innocent little daughter.”

Sally didn’t really hear Kelly.  She was lost in thought. “A chord progression. It is so obvious. But what does that mean? Would it be the progressive development of the overall pattern of education during the year?”

“Maybe. I guess. Not really. Actually, I’d think of a school as described by a whole piece of music. Not program music, like ‘The Moldau’, or ‘The Four Seasons’, but just some abstract piece of music. A school might sound like a piece by Beethoven, or like one by Bach. Do you see?”

“What a nuisance you are, kid!”

“Mommy! Did I mention the sweet innocent little daughter part?”

“Sweet, yes. Innocent, I hope so. Not so little anymore. But how could I have given birth to such a monster? You and your ideas! OK, you’re not a monster and I love you.  Just leave the big ideas to the big people, eh?”

“OK, Mommy. I’ll try. I’ll just ignore everything you have ever taught me about thinking for myself and saying what I think.”

“No, you have to come with me and explain all this to the good people of Technological Fantasies. If this isn’t a technological fantasy, I don’t know what is.”

Getting the good people from Tech Fantasies together just meant getting Ann to walk over. She didn’t live very far away.

Sally spoke to Ann and Drake. “Now this is Kelly’s show. The young person in our midst has been thinking again, though we’ve warned her about that. Kelly?”

“Um. Well, we talked about, uh, I talked about making a sound from a profile of a school. I meant a chord, but you guys have turned this around and are looking for a, a tone colour. Like the sound of an instrument. OK, I guess so. A school which sounded like a trumpet would be different from one which sounded like a flute.  Not as different as a major chord compared to one containing a tritone, but different. I can imagine really different sounds if they were like different chords played by different instruments. But they wouldn’t be as a different as two pieces of music, say one by Bach and one by Beethoven. Nor say as much. To really show the differences between things, they should be something like that, different kinds of music. Different pieces of music.”

“I told Kelly what a nuisance she was”, Sally said, pride visible on her face, “but she just looked up at me with her blue eyes wide open and an expression of utter innocence on her face, as if to say ‘Who, me?’”

“So, who you, how would a school’s profile become a piece of music?”, Ann asked.

“Uh, I don’t know. But Mr. Everett told us about Algorithmic Composition, where you just put some parameters into a program and it writes a piece of music for you. So a profile could be turned into parameters, maybe. I dunno.”

“Interesting idea, Kelly. Very hard too implement, I think”, Drake said. “I’ve heard some computer generated music, and some of it wasn’t too bad, but it didn’t appeal to me very much.”

“What about Markov Music, Drake”,  his wife asked.

“You mean have a big collection of music, then generate music from it by a stochastic process. Interesting.  Probably produce better music. Hey, hey, wait a minute! A school has a collection of music in it! Just download playlists from all the kids.  Fetch the scores and lyrics, there’s a library of stuff to run a Markov generator on. School to piece of music, no problem.”

“Or one kid to a piece of music, Daddy”, added Kelly. “Download my playlist. Download Suzy’s. Even Katie has one, kid’s songs.”

“Drake, Kelly, that’s brilliant!”, Sally said, so proud of her husband and daughter. “Sure, there are problems with Markov generators, but nothing that can’t be solved. Lower the weights on the most recently used sequences, for example, to solve the banana problem.”

“I agree. You’re right Drake”, Ann said, truly impressed, “and you too, Kelly. You might want to edit your playlist a bit before letting us use it as your profile, but there it is, an audible presentation of a person, with no fancy mathematics. Markov stuff is simple. As Sally said, we can tart it up a bit, keep it from being too repetitive. Easy.”

They tried it with everybody they knew, first, getting the source music in machine readable form as Midi files. Kelly had eclectic taste, pop music, classical music, showtunes, country, jazz, just about everything. That didn’t make her stochastic music a boring blur of different styles at all, instead it made it richer, with a wider range, reflecting the complex girl underneath the pretty one. Suzy liked mostly classical music, as it quickly became clear. As predicted, little Kate Phillips translated into an unending sequence of children’s tunes. But not all children’s tunes, just those of a certain style.

As this was done more and more, everyone involved was impressed with how clearly the generated music portrayed the individual person. “Now. The school.”

These days it was fairly easy to get the scores and lyrics for music, though a fee had to be paid to the copyright holder. It took a significant amount of money to get access to all the music a whole school played, but no, Sarah Rivers said it was insignificant and paid the bill herself, fascinated.

With a big library of music to draw from the new Tech Fantasies Markov Music Profiler went to work and produced an endless stream of music. With no opposition from the students after they had heard the whole story, some of this music was played over the school’s loudspeaker system during lunch hour.  Popular music did predominate the output but not overwhelm it. Instead of the large number of student inputs tending to produce a blur, they added instead a richness. There seemed to be at least one student who liked every single known kind of music, so occasionally the output would draw something from each of the more esoteric styles. 

Endlessly fascinating, this was just what one school produced.   Another local school was persuaded to do the same thing once all the funds and work to accomplish it were provided by others.  Here the result was different. Lacking the large international population, this school produced a much narrower range of music, with popular music even more dominant.  The experiment had to be repeated. Sarah Rivers again provided the funds. By now there was a large student following, so many volunteers were eager to do the actual work.  Different schools did produce different kinds of music. They reflected the ethnic composition of neighbourhoods, the academic standings and ambitions of the students, the kinds of music programs the school offered, and several other factors.

 For all that this was fascinating, it did not quite solve the original problem. It would have been so nice to get a single note, a detailed spectrum for a school, to which a student could be compared, as in Kelly’s original idea.  It was Alice Ames who provided the answer. Now a student at MIT, she had followed these developments, trying to make sense of them. She wished she could get music generated from students at MIT and Harvard, for example. Alice supposed it was only a matter of time until the big universities caught on the idea and tried it.  Still having a close connection with Ann Kelly, usually based on long-distance communication through video walls, Alice passed on an idea she’d had.

“Change the time scale, Ann.  Consider the waveform of a single note. The Fourier transform produces its spectrum, which is how we hear it. Now consider a whole piece of music, the actual waveform of a piece lasting at least several minutes. Do its Fourier transform.”

“That would be interesting. It would have too many data points to be heard as a single tone, but I guess they could be compressed. Run through a smoothing filter, then subsampled, I suppose. It would be a non-arbitrary way of turning a piece of music into a single sound, like we were trying to get before.”

“I think so”, Alice said. “You’re almost getting the arbitrariness out of the whole process. Students like what they like, which depends on deep-seated aspects of their being. They collect music, you do Markov generation based on their collections, which is a non-arbitrary process. If you then do what I said, there is no real arbitrariness in producing a single tone which would represent either an entire school or a single individual from their piece of music.”

“Then we could do exactly what Kelly said when we first discussed this. Compare the sound representing the new student to the sound of a school. Pick the best school by how well the sounds mesh.”

“I do hope they give that girl an A-plus in music, Ann.”

“Well, Kelly says she doesn’t play the keyboards all that well, but she sure should get an A-plus in something.”

Indeed she should. Before long every school in New York City had a piece of stochastic music generated from its students playlists. All were enjoyable, all fascinating, but because of its extraordinary emphasis on compatibility and predominance of international students, Social Tech High sounded better than any.

During the summer just before Kelly started at the high school, there was a significant change in that parent organization. It’s president, Ann Kelly moved to New York. Back in June, two conversations had converged into a single proposal.  One ongoing conversation was about the problems raised by having Ann living 53 miles away in Princeton with her husband, Mitchell Kirkwood. Also discussed at length was the organization and staffing of the Connected College created by Drake Phillips, Kelly’s legal father. It was young Kelly herself who first suggested having Drake hire Mitch away from Princeton. That seemed impossible at first. Who would want to leave Princeton for some unknown little college in Manhattan?

“Anything you want, Mitch. Professor of Linguistics, Dean of Arts, Vice-President, whatever. Anything that will make you come.  Money, of course. Whatever it takes.”

“Well Drake, understand that I am a true believer. Princeton offers me much, but not connectivity. Let me speculate. Suppose you just call me Professor of Linguistics, but let me build my own department, hiring a few more faculty members than usual. Suppose we go to great lengths to make sure that each new faculty member is well connected. Let’s add Social Tech to that. Make all of my faculty members connected to the school as well as to me, each other, and the college. That may mean bringing quite a few people.”

“That does sound good, Mitch, but to be honest, I don’t think it will be possible to find linguists who are directly connected.”

“Oh, you won’t need many for a while anyway. And I didn’t really mean connected to other linguists. Just make sure that they are connected, somehow, even indirectly, but through faculty members, so the links won’t evaporate as students pass through and graduate.”

“That we can do. I wanted a tightly connected faculty anyway. If thorough connectivity is enough to lure you away from Princeton, then come.”

“I will worry about my grad students, but there’s a big department there, someone will take them on.”

So in June, Mitchell Kirkwood had given up his job at Princeton, to take a major role in Drake’s small college. With Mitch came his wife, the lovely Ann Kelly, and their two children, Jimmy and Judy. In the fall, Jimmy and Judy would be in school with Sally’s Kate. Judy in kindergarten, Kate in Grade One, Jimmy in Grade Two. Kelly had been in this same school from kindergarten through Grade Six.

On the one hand, Kelly felt it only natural that her sister should start Grade One in Kelly’s old school. On the other hand it seemed wrong to just assume that a school which had been good for Kelly would be good for Kate. It had been a good school, one of the best, but nothing like Social Tech. Was an elementary school like Social Tech High possible?

Kelly asked her mother. “Mommy, why is Social Tech just a high school?”

“Well, there is a natural break at puberty, Kelly. It seems best to keep the younger kids in a school of their own, away from the older kids, who are all obsessed with sex.”

“Oh. I guess that makes sense. You’ve heard about us older kids, huh. Who would have guessed it?  But couldn’t there be an elementary school organized like your school is? Our school, I mean.”

“We’ve talked about it. I don’t think we’d have nearly as many parents in distant places willing to part with younger kids. That would reduce the pool size down to local parts of New York City. Not so good.”

“But not so bad, either, would it be, Mommy?”

“I just don’t think it’s practical, dear, though we have talked about it. The best answer seems to be: Maybe Someday.”

That put an end to the conversation, but Kelly was not quite satisfied. One day she brought it up again.

“Mommy. Your Tech Fantasies software is aimed at adults, isn’t it.”

“Mostly, but it is OK for kids your age to use it.”

“What about younger kids? Like Jimmy, Kate and Judy.”

“It just doesn’t seem very appropriate for them, dear.”

“I was thinking of schools. The city is full of schools. Instead of trying with one school, trying to make an elementary school version of your school, what about something for all the schools? Something parents could use to put their kids in the right schools.”

“Hmm. I don’t think our current software supports that. It probably should. I don’t know why we haven’t thought about it before. I’ll talk to Ann and your father.”

Ann said, “It can’t be that hard to do. Probably harder to persuade parents to do it. We are still having trouble getting people to use our software for anything.”

“But people will do things for their kids that they won’t do for themselves. Drake?”

“Of course. It should just be a matter of fixing the software and advertising that it’s now available.”

Software changes were easy. Getting parents to use the software would be more difficult. Sally approached Sarah Rivers, thinking that a budget for advertising would have to be set up.

“Sharing good experiences does make people more compatible, I think, doesn’t it Sally? That’s why people with only Level Four marriages still stay together and seem happy?”

“Yes, I think so, Sarah. We can see that happening within the school.”

“Right. So kids whose primary and elementary school experiences were better would be more compatible, I think.”

“OK, should be.”

“So we want to say something like: ‘Parents, don’t just send your child to the nearest school. Follow the example of the famous Social Tech High school. Use the available software to send your children to the right school, where they will be with compatible others.’ Use the highly visible success of your school in advertising the new idea.”

“I get it. Sarah, you said, ‘available software’ instead of being more specific. Why was that?”

“Sally, this is getting ridiculous. We can’t just go on telling people to use ‘The System’ and ‘Tech Fantasies’ is not much better. The word ‘fantasies’ turns some people off.”

“What do you suggest?”

“How about something like ‘Social Software System’.”

“A bit generic.”

“Generic might be good, but yes, I guess if we are talking about this specific case, we might say ‘Social Tech High software’ as in ‘send your children to the right school by using the free Social Tech High software, available everywhere.’ Like that, Sally?”

“I guess so. But I am not sure how to make it work.”

Once again the Social Tech High organizing committee met to discuss the subject. Because she had originated the idea, Kelly was invited.

Among the smartest people on the planet, the committee members could not arrive at a solution which might accomplish something by dividing students between schools. It seemed essential to work on compatibility within a school. Had this been a bad idea after all?

 It was Kelly who suggested a solution. “Suppose that each school is equivalent. No science schools or history schools. We could still match up kids to schools, couldn’t we? Think of a major chord. C, E, and G. Now try adding various other notes. Add an F-sharp. That sounds terrible. But there are different notes you could add which would work. Adding B makes a nice sound. But there are chords to which an F-sharp could be added, like a G major chord. Think of a school as singing a certain chord. It might also beat to a certain rhythm, as well.”

There was quiet in the room as everyone sat and thought.

“Yes, yes. I see it”, Beth said, after a while. “A school could have a profile which had nothing to do with what it taught. Something more spectrographic – the peaks and valleys in a profile function.  If you could listen to any ordinary school right now you would hear white noise. Instead there should be something distinctive. But not just a distinctive subject matter.”

The whole question of listening to profiles would fester in the minds of all of them for some time to come.  But for the moment Beth’s spectrographic elaboration of Kelly’s idea dominated the discussion.

“Spectral analysis is much more general than just expressing something in terms of differing frequencies”, Beth explained. “It involve mapping something into a family of related functions. More general yet are optimization methods like the more familiar Principal Components Analysis which we all use in our software.  The components are all orthogonal, but they don’t resemble each other. In spectral analysis the components are related. The most useful set is just the one containing the sine and cosine waves of the ordinary Fourier transform.”

“Yes”, Ann agreed. “The best basis is obtained by optimizing the components to the specific data, but if you don’t even look at the data, you can still construct a good basis for an abstract space, and the best will be the Fourier one.”

“I don’t understand the part about not even looking at the data”, Drake said. He was more a computer science person than a programmer.

“Just don’t do any optimization, I mean”, Ann said. Don’t seek the Principal Component, just assume that it is a sine wave with a period equal to the length of your data matrix.”

Beth went on, “That lets you turn a whole matrix of data into a single function. If that function were treated as a sound spectrum, you could indeed listen to it. So if we collected everything we knew about a school into one big data matrix, then turned that into a sound spectrum, we could listen to it. Right now I think they would be white noise, but that doesn’t have to be true.”

“You are right in the abstract, Beth”, Sally said. “But believe me, you have to do something to the matrix, or the result wouldn’t be meaningful. Optimizing row ordering, I think.”

“Oops, yes, of course.”

“I followed approximately none of that”, Kelly said. “It didn’t sound like you were shooting me down, though. You think what I said might work?”

“Yup, good one, Kelly”, Beth announced.

Kelly didn’t understand much of what was said after that, but there did seem to be a plan emerging.  It was going to require the cooperation of school officials at many schools, but the name Social Tech High might work wonders. They all wanted their kids to go there. If this would make it more likely, it was worth doing.  Even with the schools cooperating, it would be difficult to do. It was only possible to get started. One key issue was getting teachers swapped between schools.

It was just barely possible to get some recommendations ready by September. Most parents and almost all teachers would probably ignore them, but there might be some effect.  By the time Kelly went to Social Tech High for the first day, there was enough done for the parents in the organizing committee itself to make their choices. Ann’s children, Jimmy and Judy would go to two different schools. Sally’s little Katie would go to a third.

And, of course, Kelly went to Social Tech High. That exhausting first day was only the beginning of an exhausting week. Thrilling, but taking so much out of her.

Kelly’s regular classes were not what she had expected. Her first class had not been a regular music class but a homeroom class which would meet at the beginning of each week.There were other classes for music.  In those, the teacher said little. They played music and discussed it afterwards. That was all. No theory. There were theory questions in the homework, though.  Not hard to do.

Math class was not what she expected either. They spent their time discussing what seemed to be a giant structure, mathematics itself, rather than learning how to do things. There were homework problems to be solved those. Pages in the book where hints were found were given. The problems were not hard, though. As with music, all homework problems looked like tests, and were to be handed in the next day.

The best classes in the day were the last ones, the special classes, where various topics were discusses. Life itself was a topic. So was sex, of course. Actually that was the first topic discussed, the very first day. Some of the older girls had done it, some did it a lot. The younger girls had not.

 “I am not allowed to give you any advice about this”, the teacher said. “It’s up to you. You can say what you want, ask what you want. I can provide answers to factual questions if you need them, that’s all.”

Kelly had to ask. “How old does a girl have to be before doing it?”

A girl of about fifteen answered “There just isn’t any biological age limit, Kelly. But the government has laws. So if you are under 17, you have to sneak around. I sneak around.”

“Oh.” It had been a hard problem for Sally to deal with when she had run the school, but all she had said to Kelly was, “Don’t until you are ready. You’ll know when that is.”

Unanimously the girls thought the law was stupid. One of the older girls said, “Why wait. It’s fun.”

Another girl said. “I did it once. It hurt. And I didn’t really like the guy anyway. I’ll wait until I am in love.”

Kelly thought that was a good idea, but the first girl, oldest one in the room answered the last, “You want to find love, use the social software. Find love, have sex, enjoy.”

Kelly could not contain her herself, she always said what she thought. In this case she said, “I am twelve. When I was in Grade Six, last year, that seemed really old. I thought a lot about doing it. Now I’m in the youngest grade in the school and don’t seem so old anymore more. Half the girls in this room haven’t had sex yet, and some of those are older than me.”

There was more discussion, but Kelly left with her mind made up. No boyfriend, not yet, no sex, either. That wouldn’t stop her from thinking about it every single night. But she was only in Grade Seven, after all.

Every day the last class was different. Sex was still a topic, but not the only topic. On Thursday it was mentioned at all.   The teacher had predicted changes in the class, but no students came or left. By Friday afternoon only the seating arrangement had changed. Two of the girls near the middle of the row had swapped seats. Kelly did not quite know what to make of this class, only that it worked. The discussions were deep, exciting, intense and full of humour.

By the end of Friday afternoon, Kelly was completely exhausted, her mind feeling burned out. The two afternoon classes had been an intellectual thrill, but she could even produce the light of a single watt bulb anymore. Sally understood.  “I’ll plan a late dinner, Kelly. How about you go and lie down for a while. Even if you can’t sleep, close your eyes, anyway.”

“Thanks, Mommy. Oh, yeah, close my eyes. Wow, I need to.”

Sally didn’t want to wake her. When the smell of cooking didn’t get her up, Sally and Drake ate without her, keeping food warm for another hours. By the time Kelly stumbled down stairs, after ten o’clock, it was in the fridge.

On the weekend, Kelly got up and practised on her keyboard for a while, then met with Suzy and a few other kids to play some music. This was not her class at school, just a few people they both knew. Suzy was the only real musician in the group. Kelly was glad her friend had come, though she was so far above the level of the rest that it couldn’t have been much fun for her.

After doing this, and bringing her friends home for lunch, Kelly badly needed a little physical exertion, so she got Drake to take her somewhere to do some work. There was some plastering and painting to be done at his college now, which would continuing to grow, becoming a four year college a year from now. He wanted it completely ready ahead of time.

Some colleges have feeder schools designed to prepare their students.  Drake’s college was just the opposite, a place for those who had become dependent on a network of close social relationships within a learning environment. Though Connected College would grow and continue to be excellent institution, it would be in effect an upward extension of Social Tech High.

The college students were all ones who had not wanted to go to a regular university. They were only admitted into the college if the software agreed that they should be. That required good academic performance and a level of connection like the school had. For some students backward connections into the high school would be considered sufficient, but this was not enough, for most.  Because they all felt a dependence on the compatibility-based environment, most did have some backward connection into the school. Though Drake and the others had chosen a different name and location to make it clear that it was not related to Social Tech High, they were closer than they appeared. The students were not fooled. Nor did they want to be. Almost as one they looked back to their days at the high school as the happiest of their lives.

As agreed, the school did nothing to publicize the existence of the college or present it as an alternative to university until late in the senior year. Only then it was mentioned as an alternative, and just to a few, the ones who said they needed an alternative.

As the universities acquired more and more Social Tech grads they were beginning to exert some pull on students who remained in the school.  Sally Aston asked her daughter about this. Kelly said that everyone she had met just assumed they would go to university. No exceptions. Maybe they all would. The stats suggested that.  Sally wondered if there would be some pull the other way, the school exerting an influence over the universities. They seemed to want Social Tech students, perhaps they would make some changes to lure them away from the competition.

It would take longer for the effects to reach downward, but the the desire to be or to attract students from Social Tech High would gradually draw in both older and younger students, those at universities and those at elementary schools.

At a more or less equivalent ceremony at MIT, Beth Green received her doctorate. Having earned a name for herself by publishing several papers even before completing this degree, Beth had several job offers, including one from MIT itself.  With the aid of a disgustingly overt bribe in the form of a donation to the university, Beth was able to get a very nice position at MIT. That was where she wanted to teach anyway. Taking the bait was just accepting the inevitable.

Beth and her husband would spend less time in New York this summer, partly because she had course preparation to do and partly because her father needed her in Vancouver, but the couple did come to stay with Beth’s mother for a month.  During that time Beth again spent some time at the Social Tech summer school, enjoying the opportunity to work with young people. At 23, all the kids in the school now seemed young to Beth. Sally remembered when Beth had been as young as her Grade Eight students. That seemed a long time ago.

Alice and her boyfriend were also at the school that summer, the summer after her first year at MIT. She enjoyed taking time to speak with Beth, whom she did not see too often, though they were at the same university.  Again Alice found herself in a couple of classes in which people of various ages talked about computer software. One these classes should be mentioned here, because for the first time young Kelly Phillips ended up in the same classroom as Beth and Alice. Kelly had been learning more and more about computers.

Kelly only knew the ST programming environment, though she knew that there were other ways to program.   She was well aware that her mother and father both wrote programs, and with Ann, had written the original Tech Fantasies software. Had that been very hard to do? Would have been easier if they had been able to use ST? Kelly wondered if that was even possible. Maybe ST itself depended on some underlying Tech Fantasies software. She wanted to find out.

As always, Kelly asked questions when she didn’t know something. In the past she had always asked her parents or Ann. Sometimes she had looked up answers on the computer. But now she had her beloved little handheld computer and cellphone. It had a touch screen and she could write queries on it.  By now the former search engines based on searching for particular words and phrases also included some more organized methods. Like most of these small computers, Kelly’s would store queries which could later be recalled and asked again, but would also be put into a query profile.

This was a form of information technology built right into her little computer. From the questions she had asked, it could suggest questions she might ask. There were various privacy settings, but if set the right way, some of this information profile data could be sent to another computer. On the advice of Ann, Kelly had set it up so that her query profile would be sent regularly to the computer at Social Tech High. This computer would process information from all students, including ones who had come only for summer school, such as the siblings of current students.

Because of the queries Kelly had made, the school computer knew she was interested in the way the Tech Fantasies software had developed and its relationship to the ST language she was learning. So in the summer, when handing out class suggestions, one Kelly received was for a class on just that topic.   As it turned out, Alice Ames was giving the class. Beth Green was just sitting in, as if a student, saying little at first. But all these classes quickly turned into discussions. This one was no different. Even Kelly ended up participating, mostly by asking questions. Some of her questions were insightful, others just puzzled, some difficult to answer. The others found that trying to explain things to this young girl was an interesting exercise. Only Beth and Alice knew who she was.

 All year long Sally Aston had been preparing for what would happen after this summer. Well, in truth, she had held it in mind for many years.  Her daughter Kelly had finished Grade Six. For the past year she had been treated as an important person – Sally abusing her authority, perhaps. As an important person, a chain had been created for Kelly, wiring her into the school. Throughout her Grade Six year Kelly had been connected to an extremely compatible Grade Seven student from the school. That student and two others had been added for the one specific reason, to tie Sally’s darling daughter into the school.

Sally knew that this chain would not break. There was no reason why anyone in it would not just move on to the next grade. While other connections might be formed, Kelly would at least have one to this other student, who would be in Grade Eight when Kelly entered the school properly.  In the strictest, most technical sense of the term, Kelly was therefore already a member of the school, though not yet attending it. This summer she would be among those about to enter the school, those whose unstructured summer would lead naturally into the structured fall session.

When the spring term at Kelly’s school ended and the summer school at Social Tech High had begun, the girl who would turn twelve this summer eagerly rushed to meet her friend from the school, and the two of them participated in various events. Suzy played her violin, once with Kelly accompanying her, before an actual audience.

 Eventually, when actually twelve, Kelly broke free of her parents view and dragged Suzy off to do some volunteer work for the new extension to Drake’s Connected College. It was not only expanding to accommodate more students, but preparing to be a four year college.  Watching twelve year old Kelly with best friend Suzy, as they enjoyed the summer school, it was all too obvious to Sally Aston that her daughter was growing up. Sally had always planned for Kelly to go to Social Tech High, but was just not ready for it to happen.

 Trying not to think about it, Sally tried to focus her attention instead on little Kate, who would enter Grade One in the fall. At least with Kate there would be nothing to worry about. She would not be ready for the school for many years.  Well, six more years, but that was longer than she’d been alive, too long a time for Sally to visualize.

Just before the end of summer, a software patch added two years ago to work on tightening school connections passed along to Kelly another friend suggestion. It had been Alice Ames who had suggested linking each newly admitted Grade Seven students to two other students in the school. Alice pointed out that because supply exceeded demand by so much, this could almost always be done with two extra links, sometimes less. So to admit 200 desirable Grade Sevens, admit at most 600 new students altogether, and each would be doubly connected.

Kelly was already linked to Suzy Nicholson, who would be in Grade Eight when school resumed. Now Kelly would have another friend, if she accepted the suggestion and went through to back and forth protocol to identify each other as they verified their probable friendship.  Kelly and this girl compared interests and outlook, chatted by text, then by video. They both agreed that they wanted to meet and looked forward to seeing each other soon.

As MIT prepared to start it its fall term, a slightly terrified Beth Green prepared to teach her first class. She would be teaching both a freshman and a sophomore class this year. It was not entirely coincidence that her sophomore class in mathematics would include a girl named Alice Ames, as well as Beth’s own sister, Caroline, at 19 still the rocket scientist in the family.

Alice and her boyfriend Jason were still together, now sharing an apartment not far from the university. She still had friends at MIT who had come from Social Tech High. Sally had decided that Alice was to be considered an important person, so a chain had been constructed to tie her into the school. Alice greatly appreciated this, feeling great affection for the school, happy to be in touch with someone there.

In September, the day fall classes at Social Tech High were due to start, a very mature girl of twelve spoke to her mother over breakfast.

“Mommy, this is for your benefit, not mine. Understand that I am proud of you and would gladly enter school with your arm around me. But I would never want anyone to think you might show favouritism. So please, let me off a block before we reach the school, and I will walk from there.”

She could not help herself. Sally cried. It had finally come to this. Her beloved Kelly was to be a Grade Seven student at Social Tech High.

“There is something I have not told you, Kelly. I was waiting for today. I handed in my resignation at the end of June, effective at the end of summer. Yesterday. Today I am no longer the principal of Social Tech High. Paul Grey has taken my place as principal, Ellen Smith will be his vice-principal. Another new mathematics teacher will take my place.”

“Mommy!”

“It was time, Kelly.”

“What will you do?”

“Ann has work for me, but also I want to spend more time raising your sister. Kate is not you, but she is a darling. And there is one more thing.”

“Yes, Mommy?”

“I am pregnant again. So is Ann.”

Kelly blushed. Now very aware of sex, she knew that that meant, but couldn’t think of it. “You were pregnant with me when you started Technological Fantasies, weren’t you? Now here you are, leaving the school, pregnant again, twelve years later. Don’t make a habit of this, OK?”

Sally nodded. After breakfast she drove the girls to school. After walking Kate into her first class as a Grade One student, she then drove Kelly to Social Tech High. It was not the first time the girl had been there, of course. She’d loved the summer schools, which were open to family members. But this time Kelly would sit in ordinary classes, with teachers Sally knew well.

As Kelly still wanted her to do, Sally dropped her beloved daughter off one block away from the entrance to the school, barely within sight of it. She watched rather sadly as the girl walked the block, head up, looking the fully confident student she would be.

For Sally, Social Tech High was over. For Kelly, it had just begun.

Walking into the building was not unusual. She’d been there so many times. Before. This felt a bit different, though. Few adults, probably teachers. Lots more kids, none of them younger. Kelly remembered that from being in the oldest grade of her elementary school, she had become as student in the youngest grade of Social Tech High.

There were tables near the doorway. Over them were signs. “If you know where you are supposed to be, go there. If not stop here and ask.”  Kelly knew. She’d used the computer and found out everything she could about this day. She would be in what was called Mr. Everett’s class, though she would take classes with other teachers. He was one of the Grade Seven music teachers. Her friend Suzy would be in the same class.

When Kelly got to class, Suzy was already there, having arrived a bit early, very nervous. On the screen behind the teacher’s desk a seating plan was laid out. Suzy was seated behind the desk assigned to her, very near the middle of the room.  Kelly was to sit right beside her!  Oh, that was a relief.

On the other side would be a Santos Coriega. Was that a boy’s name? Looked like one. She would sit beside a boy. That made Kelly nervous. She knew that although interpersonal compatibility within classes could not be guaranteed, more or less compatible people were seated together when possible. If he was a boy, Santos was probably the most compatible boy in the class for her. Twelve year old Kelly was extremely aware of boys.

Soon a tall and strong looking boy entered the room, looked at the screen and sat down beside her.  “You are Kelly Phillips?”, he asked, without any hesitation.

“Yes”, she replied, trying not to hesitate either. “Santos Coriega?”

“Yeah. Your friend? Suzy Nicholson?”

“Yes, Suzy, this is Santos. Santos, Suzy. Suzy and I have been friends for over a year.” Was she babbling? Why did she keep saying her friend’s name, over and over again?”

Before any other students appeared, a man came into the room and sat down at the teachers desk, in front of the row of student desks. His was positioned in the middle of the room, with the quarter circle of students in front of him.  “Hello. Just the three of you, so far?” But it was only a matter of a few minutes until the room was full. Eight students, one teacher. That’s what classes at Social Tech were like.

“Well. I am glad to see you all. I’m Tom Everett, Mr. Everett to you. I am one of the music teachers and usually teach the lower grades. Everybody in this class is at least a little bit compatible with me. That might mean you are musical, but maybe not. Each of you is also at least a little bit compatible with every other student in the class. That’s another hint that you may be musical, but doesn’t prove anything. Maybe you just like music a lot. If you take music, you will probably take it we me, but there are other teachers. I’m not going to try to figure that out now. I will get you to introduce yourselves, though, and when its your turn, please say if you do play an instrument. I’m going to hand out some course information to each of you, as tell us your names. Starting with you, the nearest the door.”

“I am Yang Sung Li, from China. I play the violin.”

“If we just call you by one name, that would be Sung, wouldn’t it, Mr. Li?”

“Yes sir.”

All eight students gave their names.

Suzy said, “I am Suzy Nicholson, from not far away her in the city. I play the violin.”

Kelly said, “I am Kelly Phillips, I was born in Vancouver, Canada, but have lived here most of my life. I play keyboards a bit. And I think I will be taking music.”

The boy on the other side of Kelly said, “I am Santos Coriega, from Mexico city, in Mexico. I play the guitar.”

Two of the eight students were not sure why they were in class, because they did not play an instrument, but they did love music.

“Doesn’t everybody?” A girl named Elena asked.

“Well, you may remember that we asked you whether you liked other kinds of art or music better, and got you to name some of your favourites. There were some people who preferred the visual arts, and named famous artists instead of musicians. But most people do like music best.”

Kelly looked at the sheets of paper which Mr. Everett had given her. One was a map of the school, which must have been printed especially for her, because it showed her the classrooms she would use. Another two pages gave her a course schedule. A final page contained general information, including information about how to use the computers, to get more information and to give feedback about her schedule.

Kelly didn’t find anything at all unusual about any of this. No trace of the social technology which had given the school its name. It seemed just like ordinary schools she had read about and seen in movies. Except for the small classes.

“Well”, began Mr. Everett. “Two things are magical about this school. One is the small class size. The other is the very careful way we divide students into classes. You’ll see how well this works out. There are other things that make the school a success, but those are the most important. Your math teacher will explain about the way we divide things up. As for class size, you’ll see, soon enough. Now, about music. I’d like to get started doing music right away. Some of you may turn out to be too good for this class, but let’s get started as we are. Does anyone have an instrument here?”

Suzy and the Chinese boy named Sung had their violins. A boy who played the clarinet and a girl who played the flute had their instruments with them. Mr. Everett himself produced a portable electronic keyboard. He looked at Kelly. “Miss Phillips. Kelly. You said you played keyboards?”

“Oh, no, no, only a little bit.”

Mr. Everett looked down at a paper on his desk. “Well, this brief description the software put out says you probably play at this level. Do you remember answering questions about that? How many years you’ve played, what kind of lessons you’ve had?”

“I guess so.”

“Then you are probably good enough for this class. Try. Play us something.”

Kelly blushed red. This was her worst nightmare. “Mr. Everett, sir, I am probably the worst player in here. How about you ask my friend Suzy? She is great.”

“Well, I don’t want to embarrass you. If a solo is too much, maybe you could accompany someone else. Did you say Suzy is your friend? Let me look.” He picked up a class list.  “Ah good, two close friends in one class. I always like it when that happens. So you must have accompanied Suzy in the past, haven’t you?” He looked at Suzy for confirmation. She nodded.

Actually, Kelly had accompanied her friend in public during summer school, but this was different. This was real school, and here a teacher was singling her out. Ouch.

“Here then, take my keyboard, Kelly. It will almost fit on your desk, just hang over the sides a bit. Suzy, if you don’t mind? What have you played, recently, girls?”

“Easy pieces”, Kelly said. “For my sake. I could never keep up with her. Um, the Dvorak Sonatina?”

“Good. Ladies, when you are ready.”

Suzy played perfectly. Kelly managed to keep up.

“That’s wonderful. More than good enough Kelly. You’ll do fine.”

Mr. Everett got others to play, while Kelly exhaled and tried to relax. She envied the two non-musicians in the group.

“Alright, musicians. Let me ask you. Can you all read music? Or just play it?”

They all just looked at each other.

“Come on there are only the six of you, and we are all going to be great friends. I am sure of it. You seem to be great kids and the software doesn’t lie. So, anyone who can’t read music?”

Kelly said. “Well, I am not good at it, like Suzy is.”

Mr. Everett sighed, then punched a few keys on his computer, putting a bit of musical score on the screen. A single melody. “Kelly. Please.”

Embarrassed, Kelly played the melody. “Good, Kelly. Anyone who couldn’t have done that?” Nobody said anything. “Alright then. Mr. Coriega didn’t bring his guitar, but we have two violins, clarinet, flute and keyboard. Let us try a little piece. Not too hard. Kelly, if you can’t play the chords, just play the melody. Sung, if you could play the top line, just this once, perhaps you could play the second, Suzy.   The woodwinds just duplicate the melody for now. We can run through it once, at least.”

“Perhaps I could play below the melody, sir? Maybe the tenor line?”, the clarinetist asked.

“Wonderful. Please do. Shall we give it a try. Take a minute to tune up, then I’ll pretend to conduct.”

Kelly groaned. She wished she’d had a year to practice the piece first, wished it was one she knew, but she would try.

It didn’t work out too badly. Sung and Suzy were brilliant, the flute sounded good with them, and the clarinet playing under them was good too. Kelly had decided not to do the melody at all, just accompanying the others by playing chords with both hands.

“Miss Phillips. That was a good idea, thank you. Very nice to see someone take the initiative. Let’s try it again.”

Actually, this was fun. Now over her embarrassment, Kelly was able to enjoy herself, though still shaky.

“Good. Santos, please bring your guitar to the next class. I think I am going to have to listen to some solos soon, but that’s enough for now.”

Awfully glad that class was over, Kelly went on the next, a math class, with a different teacher. There she got into the usual discussion about the permutations and combinations of students. She’d heard most of that before, from her mother and with the aid of a good video, in summer school.

Over the course of the day, Kelly sat in classes with lots of different kids. The ones in her math class were not the same as the ones in her music class, because all the kids in math had to be somewhat compatible with the math teacher. There were lots of math teachers, so this could be arranged, but it completely changed the composition of the class.

In math, Kelly found that she was to sit beside her new friend the girl the school software had found for her, Cariola Trevanza, from Italy. They were excited to meet each other and babbled with enthusiasm until class began.

During the day Kelly was once more in a class with Suzy, once with Cariola again, but usually with less compatible students.  There was some small overlap between classes, but not much, so during the day Kelly met about 30 different students. She found it hard to remember them all, but she would remember them when those classes reoccurred, because each class had only eight students and each class had been very intense.

It was not obvious on that first day, but by the end of the week it was clear that Kelly liked all her classmates, she really liked them. The second week would have different classes, since the school used a two-week schedule. The same classes repeated in the same order every two weeks, though most classes gathered more than once a week.

The last class of each day and the whole of Friday afternoon was different. Not unstructured like summer school, it was not highly structured, either. Instead each of these classes was just a teacher and eight kids thrown into a room together. The might be from different grades. The teacher might be any of the school’s teachers, regardless of grade or subject.

The whole idea was to just to divide the schools 4,000 students and 500 teachers into compatible groups, one teacher and eight kids per class, as compatible as possible. No specific topic for conversation was required, though a few were suggested.

When the last class of the first day had come, Kelly knew what was supposed to happen, but the teacher explained.

“This is a special class. Just me and you, this group of very compatible students. We’re all girls here, no boys or men, so we can talk freely. All we are going to do is talk. There will be no homework. The software suggested some topics for today, but we can ignore them if we want. I think you are from different grades. That’s normal for this kind of class. You’ll probably enjoy our discussions, whether you are older or younger. I’ll get you to introduce yourselves while I hand out an information sheet.”

Kelly had Suzy beside her on one side and Coriola beside her on the other. On the other side of Suzy was her ninth grade friend. In most classes a boy sat on one side of her. Not in this one, though. Suzy was beside her, then came Suzy’s ninth grade friend.

“We have some very strong connections in this room. I am not very compatible with any of you. I am just the best teacher the machine could find for you. Some of you students are sitting beside one of of your chosen links into the school, some of you are not, just the best we could fit into the class, instead. But everyone of you is quite compatible with everyone else in the room. You’re already in the seats we’ve picked for you. That’s a best guess too, and may change.”

The day was over. Kelly stood outside the school while the parents came by and picked up those had to be driven home. All she could say was, “Hi, Mommy, it was great, I’ll tell you all about it later. I’ve got to close my eyes for a minute”.

By the time Kelly got home, she was sound asleep.