Whatever other role Social Tech High might play, it was still a school. There were teachers, students and classrooms. But most education occurred outside of the classrooms, between people tied so closely together that they shared everything.

That it was genuinely education, not just social activity was partly because of the strong bonds between teachers and students. By now most teachers had links to at least one student. The creation of the school by linking people to compatible others had often linked teachers to one another, but also linked many students to teachers. A teacher’s passion for a subject tended to flow outwards, generating sympathetic passions in their students, who in turn generated them in to their friends.

The school worked not just because of the high bandwidth, the strength of the communications channels, supporting a great flow of information, it also worked because of this flow of academic passion. The urges to satisfy the friends who had urges to satisfy their teachers drew everyone together, making the whole school gain interests in what might otherwise be passed off as just schoolwork.

Graduates who had gone on to university had the same effect. John, Grace, Clarity and their friends at Columbia were still connected to the school. As graduates and university students they had a high prestige amongst those still in school. A college student’s natural interests in academic subjects also generated passions for learning in the students they influenced.

Without being quite conscious of what she was doing, going just on intuition, Sally had set a precedent by giving John Calder one of the prototype social tech hardware devices. Now they were routinely given to all graduates of the school, treating them as if they still belonged to the community. Indeed, they did.

But there were desirable links which just didn’t exist. Sally Aston, principal of the school and mathematics teacher not only shared a link with sociology teacher Ellen Smith, but with two extremely compatible students, who inherited Sally’s passion for a certain kind of mathematics and influenced their friends with it. The other members of the Tech Fantasies Trio were not quite so well linked, to each other or to the school. The three were close, but not nearly as close as the individual links within the school.

The three had worked together when employed by a software company in Vancouver, learning from work that they were compatible, then becoming friends. More than friends. Drake had been intimate with each of the women, sometimes with both of the women, who remained friends, with no apparent jealousy.

Very close, yes, but if measured on the standard logarithmic scale, their friendships might have registered at about Level Four, each being the best friendship candidate out of ten to the fourth power others.

In linking together the school, friendships closer than Level Five were found for each new student or teacher, each person linked to someone else who was as close as the best out of ten to the fifth power.

So both Ann Kelly and Drake Phillips should have tighter ties to the school. They may have felt that their link with Sally was a sufficient one, however, because neither pushed the issue. Nor did various other people important to the school.

It was Sarah Rivers, now a member of the school board of directors, who first decided that this must not continue.

“Link me in. There has to be a way. Find or create links between me and someone in the school”, she told Sally, imperiously.

Sally wasn’t sure she could, but said she would try. Using a supercomputer with terabytes of RAM memory, she constructed a huge graph, what we might call a network, with the probability of a link being formed based on mutual compatibility. To a graph theory person it might sound like a simple enough problem, to be solved with a Minimum Spanning Tree algorithm. But questions of context made it much harder. Two people will typically be more compatible if linked between specific others.

Finally, working with Ann and using some elaborate relaxation algorithms, Sally was eventually to find a few possible paths or chains, people acting as stepping stones, to join Sarah Rivers to a student already in the schools population. Sarah was satisfied. But no, she was not, she wanted her daughter Beth linked in, too.

Sally groaned. Linking in Sarah had been easy enough, though almost impossible, because she had looked only at local links, teachers or students who could be added to the school, one of whom could spend time with Sarah outside of school hours.

“Video walls”, Sarah said, when Sally explained the problem to her. “Teleconferencing writ large. Beth has been working on them for a while. I have one here. I don’t know who’s available, but someone will be.”

It turned out that the only person she could reach easily was her son Arthur, the other business-oriented member of her family.

Like his sister Beth, he was a young teenager attending the University of California at Berkeley. Arthur shared an apartment with another young boy, a less admirable member of the Green family, but unlike his half-brother, Arthur was usually at home in that part of the apartment which served him as an office. There he had a video wall.

“These are more than just large video screens, Sally”, Sarah explained. “What makes them unique is arrangement of multiple cameras around the edges of the screen and the powerful computer which processes the outputs of the various cameras. This avoids the exaggerated perspective you get with a single lens. Arthur please walk towards us, right up to the screen, to show Dr. Aston.”

Arthur did so. Sally saw how perfectly in proportion his image remained, even when he was almost touching the screen. “That’s amazing.”

“You have to experience it in action, Sally. It is a 2-d screen, of course, but it works in a way no ordinary video conferencing system does.”

“So we could use this to link up Beth to the school, through some number of links.”

“I’d appreciate it if you could do the same for me, Mom”, Arthur said, surprising them both. Neither thought him the kind of person who would value social links into the school. But of course. They were more than social links. Arthur did need to be included.

Providing video walls was easy and quickly done, though they were costly. The computers which combined the various signals were powerful units with lots of analog and digital processing ability. Not cheap.

Sally begged for more and more of the wonderful walls, wanting them in all the classrooms. Every one she got made her argue her case more strongly. Sarah passed the request on to Ken Green, who had almost limitless resources.

Yes, it could be done. Every classroom already had a large video screen behind the teacher’s desk. Each of these was removed and the whole back wall turned into one of the special video walls. Some small rooms were also equipped with walls intended for the use of the single students who would link important outsiders into the school.

Identical units were in several remote locations already, but more were installed. Project Match leaders had several, Green family members had several, and a few were allocated to special friends or business associates.

That was actually the easy part. Now Sally, vice-principal Dr. Paul Grey and a few other teachers had the difficult task of finding short chains of students to link in the outsiders.

A student named Mara Tableton was the link to Beth Green. Mara regularly used one of the schools special video conferencing rooms to communicate with Beth. Mara was 17, and her link into the school was her boyfriend George. George was linked into the school through his best friend, Silvio. Silvio in turn was linked to a girl, Janice, who not only had a best friend of her own gender but a fully compatible link to a teacher.

Would this long chain of links degrade the effects of the school’s magic? Nobody knew for sure, but Mara, George, Silvio and Janice went to the school every day, fully experiencing its advantages.

They participated in the remarkable classes where every student was significantly compatible with every single other one and with the teacher. They also read books chosen specifically for each class and individually for themselves. Each did have one strong link, Level Five or above.

Mara was in every way a student of the school, thoroughly tied in. Her teleconferencing-friendship with Beth would be that strong as well, tying the younger girl tightly to the school.

There was only one problem. Mara and all other students, up to and including Janice would graduate the following spring. They would remain part of the greater school community, perhaps for the rest of their lives, but would no longer be in the intense school environment. Indeed, Mara herself planned to leave the city altogether, going to MIT.

Various members of the Green family were soon linked to the school, but were not in general close to one another, compatibility between family members being not much more than between random individuals.

Various people within the Project Match leadership were linked in, but that project was devoted to matching individuals to their social environments, not creating a completely connected structure like the school.

All of these external connections were like trailing arms or antennae leading off from the school, which remained the only tightly linked structure known to the three coordinated software matching services. Probably the only one in the world.

With each technological innovation added, it became even more so. Powerful social matching software. Personal social tech devices. Video walls.

The school was not just becoming closer, it was becoming larger, with more cross-linking happening as well. A buzz of passionate discussion was heard everywhere. Apparently satisfied, nobody complained.

Except Sarah Rivers. The aggressive woman wanted to push things to a new level, literally.

“It’s a wonder, Sally, an ongoing miracle. But in a world with a billion English speaking people in it, most of them young, probably 10 million suitable candidates for our school, Level Five is not good enough. Not anymore.”

“Not anymore?”

“It was different when we were talking about there being many schools. It was Arthur who insisted on that and was sure we needed to charge fees, make the school self-supporting, so there could be many of them.”

“Smart kid, your Arthur, but now we are thinking in terms of just the one. We could bring in students from around the world, subsidize them. Is that what you mean? Spend money to try to ensure there is only one? I liked the idea better when it was just a theoretical prospect. We might be the nexus, the only one, at least so far. Now to force the issue? I don’t know, Sarah.”

“We can discuss it, we must discuss it, sure. I didn’t mean it the way you are thinking, though. Not to do anything to actively discourage competion, no, that wasn’t at all what I had in mind. Just to ensure stronger connections.”

“Using Ken Green’s money.”

“He has a lot, you know, billions, but even then, if a whole country decided to spend a significant amount of their resources, what we have would be nothing.”

“I can’t help but think you might have a secret agenda here, Sarah, if I can say so without offending you. By bringing in the most compatible students from around the world, you might be trying to defuse that possibility.”

“So no amount of government money could duplicate what we have, so we could remain unique? The thought had crossed my mind. Would that be so bad?”

Sometimes an idea is too fragile, delicate, not quite ready to put into words. Maybe it had already been said aloud, too soon. Ann Kelly wasn’t sure. None of them wanted to pull it apart though, so they just left. A few words of small talk, then Ann got in her car and drove back towards her home in Princeton.

Halfway there she turned around and went back. During the summer school, which Ann had attended occasionally to enjoy the flow of shared activity and endless unstructured conversations, the software had thrown her together with a few students. Now she felt a need to spend time with one of them. On a device built into the console of her car, Ann punched in a five key sequence which had requesting contact. It took only a moment to get permission to drop by for coffee.

Zenda Miller was from a rich, well-educated family in the Southeast, not far from Atlanta. A casual charm disguised a brilliant mind. The 16 year old had insights few adults ever would.

Unlike most students who were from New York City, or at least the Tri-State region, Zenda had come north from Georgia for one reason, to attend Social Tech High. Her family knew that she was running around with boys back home and thought she should at least be with a compatible one. They’d talked her into using Tech Fantasies, which knew the school had a shortage of girls intentionally linked with boys. It recommended Zenda, who was quickly linked to a senior boy and found herself an adequate link to another girl.

Not good enough to meet the school’s official link standard, her friend Sissy did provide Zenda with a best friend. Having a small apartment of her own, paid for by her indulgent parents, Zenda often had people over, most especially her friend Sissy, but spent most of her home-time in bed with Phil Gerald.

When Ann contacted her, Zenda and Sissy were enjoying an illicit beer, but were quite sober, so far.

“Dr. Kelly! Come in.” The beer had disappeared. Ann smelled it on Zenda’s breath, but didn’t care.

It took only a moment to get to the point. “I know about you”, Ann said. “You are social, not like me. Even before you came here, you made friends, you were connected.”

“That’s me.”

“Zenda, did the people way down in Brookwood know about us, here. You searched, using our software, but did people know already? Was the school ever talked about?”

“Sure it was. People knew, there was a buzz about it. Just because something happens in New York doesn’t make it beneath our contempt, you know.”

“Was it just talk? Did you have friends who thought it was going to be good for you here?”

“I know what you want to hear, don’t I. You are being way too obvious about it. Sorry, Dr. Kelly, but you just can’t trust anything I tell you now, you’ve given me just what I need to fool you.”

“You won’t though, will you? You know I’m not testing you, I really want to hear what you say.”

“Yeah, well, let’s pretend I’m telling you the truth. Sure, they all said it would be great.”

“I believe you.”

“So, what’s up? You aren’t here for me to tell you what I just said.”

“No. There’s an idea floating around. I just can’t put my finger on it. Do you know what a nexus is?”

“Well, it’s a link, right, a connection. But more than that. A bundle of connections, no, uh, the centre of bundle of connection, a core of something, maybe the centre of a network.”

“Good. Sassy, hi, do you think you and Zenda might be part of a nexus?”

“Sure we are”, Zenda answered for her, but Sassy did nod. Sassy was not actually the sassy type. Shy in contrast to her friend, one who would never volunteer anything and would be hesitant even to answer. But honest. That nod did mean something.

Ann sat back, thinking. Finally she asked, “whatever the plural of nexus is, I’m wondering if there are more.”

“More like how? Nothing like what we have. It’s amazing here, better than what we’d thought back home. I would have heard. My parents thought about a lot of places before getting me to use your matcher to find a place. I’d already heard about it, but figured they’d never go for it, you know, because of the sex thing. With the machine’s recommendation to back me up, though, they let me come. Maybe it was because of the sex thing, I don’t know. I’d not just be screwing around, but be with one guy. I am, too.”

“I’m sure. So the school could be a nexus, a core, a centre, and might, just might, be the only one.”

Sassy poked Zenda in the side and whispered to her. “Oh, yeah, the sweater. Right. Dr. Kelly. Sas knits. She actually knits. A while back she did something neat.  Want to see? Here, she gave it to me.”

 Zenda went to a corner shelf and picked up a fuzzy pink ball. “Look at this.”

Ann held the ball in her hand. It was about six inches around. When she looked closely, she could see the surface of the ball between threads of yarn. It was a globe, a representation of the Earth. The Earth, wearing a sweater.

Zenda waved towards herself, to get it back. Holding it loosely, she grabbed a pinch of it and pulled, fairly hard. The nearby threads stretched a bit, the ones further away a bit more. Ann couldn’t see it, but knew that all of the threads were being stretched a little bit.

“Hey, this is good, I get it. That’s a nexus, pulling all the threads. Thanks, Sassy, Zenda, that’s wonderful. So what about there being only one?”

 “Here, Sas, rest it on your hand.” Obediently the girl reached out a hand. Ann put the sweater-wrapped globe into it. Zenda looked at Ann, “Now pinch and pull like I did.” When Ann grabbed one side of the fuzzy globe, Zenda grabbed the other. They both pulled.

“What do you see?”, asked Zenda.

“I see the knitted fabric being pulled in two directions. Two, uh, more than one nexus.”

“Yeah, I don’t know the plural either. See the knots or loops or whatever at the, uh, meridian, no, what would be the equator if we were pulling on the north and south poles. Let’s call it the equator”. Zenda was a smart girl, that didn’t mean she had a way with words.

“They don’t move.”

“Right. Now let’s move our fingers about a bit, around, and around, pull harder or not so hard. See?”

“Some nodes move closer to your end, some to mine. I get it. I’ll arrange for Sally to put you at the head of the class.”

“I’m already at the head of my class. I thought that’s why you came to see me.”

“No, just enjoyed talking to you in the summer. So, OK, there are knots moving back and forth between us. The undecided. Vote for me, no, me. That’s a terrible metaphor, Zenda, just awful. We don’t want power. We don’t want to rule the world from a single nexus or fight over it with someone else. I hate this idea.”

“You gave me the idea. Don’t you remember? We were talking about flat surfaces, but you also said it would apply to different topologies. You said you remember talking to me — do you remember what we talked about? It was almost a class, a few people sitting around while you talked math. That’s what you do, Dr. Kelly, you talk math. Any chance you get.”

“Yes, that’s true, what did we talk about? Lots of things.”

“Transformations. Don’t think we are pulling on a point, moving it. Think about it the other way. The world changes, it undergoes a transformation.”

“Damn you’re a smart kid, Zenda. I get it. You are talking fixed-points.  The fixed-point theorem. That is what we talked about in the summer, deformations of the plane.”

“I’m right aren’t I? I know I am. It’s a sphere, not a plane, but that’s OK, right? We almost talked about spheres, maybe we did, but you said that any transformation like that had a fixed-point. And there’d be only one, right.”

“Well, yes, and no, but yes. I have to think about this. It would have to be continuous tranformations, or the point might jump about wildly, but yes. Damn. I don’t know why the school might always be at the centre of the transformations, nothing in the theory … well, there could be. I have to think. Suppose the transformations … they represent what, I have to think.”

“So think about it, Dr. Kelly. Sassy, can I give her the fuzzy ball you made for me?” Sassy nodded, always the quiet one, but smiled, a bit of pride in that smile.

Zenda held out her hands in a dramatic way, and bowed towards Ann.

“Girls, girls, thank you so much. I came here with a little intuition, which I couldn’t explain to myself. I’ve got to go talk to some people. They might have had the same intuition, but I don’t think any of us could put words to it. Now I know where to start.”

Ann left to drive home. In doing so she was in fact driving to Princeton, home of the best university for mathematics in the country. She had friends there, some found by the software. Not the closest of friends but some were perfect for fleshing out an idea like this, now that it was an actual idea, not just a glimmer of a hint of a little itch in her mind.

Yes. Social Tech High was almost designed to be a fixed point, to remain in place while the info-sphere writhed around it.

Every attempt was made to keep the school community from undergoing drastic upheavals, but the breakup and remaking of families did occur. There were also a significant number of new families about to be formed. Throughout late spring, with June on the horizon, an unusual number of engagements occurred between members of the senior class.

The school was so linked up by now that gossip flew around it like magic, nothing could be kept a secret. The first couple to get engaged prompted a wave of others to follow their example. John Calder and Grace Ling were not the first but certainly among the first few.

All it took was a look. They had each heard the news of the first couple while in their separate classes. When they met during the break, he looked at her. She blushed, looked down for a moment, then back up and into his eyes.

“Grace.”

“John.”

“Nothing would make me happier. You are my life, Grace.”

“Are you sure?”

“Grace, I could not live without you, I love you. Please become my wife.  Grace Ling, will you marry me.”

“I love you too, John. I’ve wanted to be your wife since the day I met you. Yes, John, yes.”

It was not quite so easy to persuade their parents. John was 18 now, Grace a couple of weeks older. Her parents were very conscious of what might happen, that the two might tie themselves together. Speaking to John’s mother earlier they had discussed what seemed inevitable, hoping for at least a delay.

But Grace had been picked out of many possible candidates as a match for John. They’d been unusually compatible, almost a one in 100,000 match, a Level 5 match on the school’s logarithmic scale. Once together they at first began to drift apart a bit, but then this trend had reverse, bringing them together. Perhaps because of their successful joint project and the social glue provided by Abby James, they were now closer than ever.

Not the first to get engaged, John and Grace were the first to marry, not waiting for a traditional June wedding. Nor did they pick the traditional Saturday morning. Their ceremony was not in a church, either. It was held in school, right after classes ended, in a large main hallway. That was where they wanted to be, amongst the many teachers and students of the school they loved.

Being married in the school became something of a tradition, though there were exceptions. It just seemed the right place.

It felt very odd to be away from school for the week the happy couple took as a short honeymoon. Others in their classes missed them.

Leaving Friday, after a dinner reception, also at the school, the two had a weekend to themselves in the Hampshires, plus the following week and weekend, returning to class Monday morning. Long enough. They had missed their classmates too. Married or not, they wanted to be at school.

During late spring, when many seniors did get engaged to be married, they also sought out places for their college education. Some just had to be at MIT, some chose Princeton or Yale, not too far from New York by train, but most chose somewhere in the city. Columbia and NYU were favourites. Few would be too far away from the high school which had so changed their lives.

John and Grace had been at Social Tech High a full calendar year, but many seniors had not even been there for the academic year. Regardless of how much time they’d actually spent at the school, they felt it their own.

It was Clarity Bond who explained this at the graduation ceremony in June. “The school has linked every one of us with an astonishingly compatible person, forming a lifetime friendship. Almost all of us have two such connections. They are worth more than gold to us. We are not united because we go to the same school, we are united because the school united us, selected us individually. Under the inspired leadership of Dr. Sally Aston, the school has also reached out to our families, changing a whole community of people. We cannot be too grateful to Dr. Aston and the other teachers, those fine people who have done so much for ourselves, our families, and our friends.”

The school would go on, continuing in September, but for the senior class it was over. Or was it?

In the summer, the school stayed open, going into the same kind of unscheduled and unorganized state it had over the winter holidays. It would be more accurate to say that it went into an entirely self-organizing state, because to the eyes of visitors it seemed to function in an orderly way, without evidence of discord.

In fact some students were incompatible with others. That was inevitable. But everyone had compatible links to offset the other kind. There were no cliques, either, because the school was a connected structure. No group of a few people was ever isolated from the others.

Still present in the school were most of the graduates, maintaining their connections with younger students and helping out in various ways. The school was already expanding, so there was much work to be done. Come September, the senior class would finally disperse, though Alma Renwick bet Sally a dollar they’d show up again on some weekends, no matter how intense their college work got.

During the summer the school was open to parents, family members and friends, filled to capacity. Though it remained unscheduled and not officially organized except by casual and common consent, the school software was busily churning out suggestions for social contacts. These suggestions were made only to those who agreed to put their names forward, but most did.

Here was not just the school in action, but a significant part of the community as well.

There were two unexpected temporary additions to the school this summer. Sarah Rivers had obtained a position on the Tech Fantasies board of directors and decided to spend time in New York getting to know the organization better. She brought with her a 14 year old girl, claiming to be “almost 15”, the prodigious Beth Green. With Beth had come her inseparable half-sister, Esmeralda.

Beth did not know it, but both girls would start university in California soon. This would be their last chance to spend time in the school environment, even though it would be the unusual summer one.

Beth had arrived with a piece of social hardware, full of special software of course, but obtaining its power from the large synthetic neural network on an experimental chip set.

“What is it for, Beth?”, Ann Kelly asked. She was participating in the summer school, taking advantage her close relationship with Sally.

“It interfaces with a lot of different computers, Dr. Kelly, yours, ours and some belonging to Project Match, but mostly to the school’s computers. It also has voice recognition and some video abilities, though it won’t record either unless I give it special permission to, in the presence of someone who has given me special permission to. It has GPS and a detailed map of the school – the city, too, actually.”

“And why?”

“It’s inductive, picking up information wherever it can, without actually spying on people. It keeps an eye on what is happening in the school, in the city and with me. It gives me hints about things.”

“OK, it gives you hints. Go on. What kinds of hints?”

“Hints about being more human. Hints about where to go, what to see, what to do. How to fit in better. I am not very good at being social, Dr. Kelly.”

“What is it saying right now? Talk to Dr. Ann Kelly and tell her how your toy works?”

“No. It says I should hang around some event, not trying to analyze it. It’s pointing me in the direction of a play to be performed by a few students, in about 5 minutes or so.”

“Is it almost intelligent, Beth, an AI?”

“No, it is an extremely efficient and powerful data collection device, a first-rate data miner, with a built in model of what it can learn of my environment, plus a snazzy model of my humble self.”

“I see. Maybe.”

“Mommy has one too. They communicate, more than I really want them to, but that’s parents for you. Hers tries to influence mine to keep me out of trouble. I’ve programmed mine to tell hers that I am keeping out of trouble.”

“What about your sister?”

“Oh, she has one too. Thinks it’s turned off.”

“Beth! Your best friend!”

“I know. But I have to make sure she keeps out of trouble. Or at least doesn’t get into more than I do.”

“You mean boys.”

“Boys. I want one. Essie wants one. Daddy can never know.”

Summer did end at last. Beth and Esmeralda went home with Beth’s mother. They had not gotten what they wanted, though they’d met some boys who seemed to like them in that way.

John and Grace went to Columbia along with Clarity and over a dozen others. They would try to maintain their connections there. And yes, they did plan to revisit Social Tech High again and again.

Despite all their planning, despite the careful invitations given out to new students to fill up the lowest grade, it was still a shock when the seniors were finally gone.

Not far away at Columbia, John Calder still spent sometime with his former math teacher, Sally Aston, but he was just not there, no longer at the school, day after day. He and Grace had joined Tech Fantasies, providing additional reasons for contact, but it never seemed enough.

Near the end of September a large box from Vancouver arrived for Ann Kelly. She got her husband to open it, not sure what to expect. Mitch handed her a carefully wrapped package and a note.

“Here’s a hundred of them, a test batch. Beta. If you can find some people to test them, I’d appreciate it. — Beth.” One hundred of those nice toys.

Ann called Sally. It shouldn’t be hard to find some willing volunteers.

Many teachers took only a few days off during the winter break, and more than a few teachers invited their most compatible students to spend some time with them on the actual holidays themselves.

John Calder and Grace Ling were both invited to spend some time on Christmas day with John’s most compatible teacher, his math teacher, Sally Aston. They also spent some time with Grace’s favourite teacher, Mr. Alvaro.

Mr. Alvaro was Catholic and could not entirely approve of John and Grace’s obviously sexual relationship, but he was also Hispanic, and somehow his culture seemed more tolerant of men having sex before marriage. Mr. Alvaro was also extremely compatible with Grace – in an appropriate non-sexual way, so he could not think the less of her for being with John.

The two lovers enjoyed dinner with Mr. and Mrs. Alvaro, and their five children. The eldest was a boy who would turn 18 in a week, on New Years day. Tony Alvaro badly wanted to go to the school, but a compatible link for him had not been found before the school filled up.

Tony’s younger sister, Maria, had been offered a place in the school, but Mr. Alvaro had refused to let his 15 year old daughter link up with the boy who would have been that link.

The Alvaro’s didn’t know it, but the girl had used the Tech Fantasies software herself, searching for a boy who was compatible with her and was probably in the school. It had taken three exchanged e-mails to find the right boy, but she was sure he was the one she would have been in school with.

Maria’s secret plan was to bring the boy over for visits or perhaps dinner, to get the family used to him. Then maybe her parents would learn to accept him. Or her father would kill him. She wasn’t sure which.

Except for such social occasions and a little rest time, many teachers and students were at school over the break, entirely unscheduled and unorganized. They just wanted to be there. With their friends. Some were helping with renovations to the building.

Having had the experience of a school operating at full intended first-stage capacity for over a month, Sally consulted with the teachers about expansion questions when school resumed normal operation in January.

“Our major donors have agreed to fund expansions provided the school’s operating costs remain covered by school fees. What do you think?”

“I would like to see some lower grades included”, Alma Renwick said at once, hoping to eventually have a chance to teach at her preferred level, Grade 7.

“Very difficult because of the underage sex problem, Alma, but perhaps we could work something out. Let’s think it over. Any other ideas?”

“Perhaps a Grade 13, for graduates who want more education but have no college plans”, Paul Grey suggested.

“I’d rather not give anyone a reason to avoid going to college on graduation, Paul. We must encourage them all to find a good college or university, but I suppose we could offer some advanced education for new students, or existing students who have good academic capabilities but just cannot further their education any other way. We can consider it.”

Dr. Elliot said what most were thinking. “Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it? A lateral expansion, more classes. The building has more than enough room to double the size of the school. We could build up the school population gradually as before, and have a double-sized school before June.”

“That’s what I had in mind too, Avery”, Sally responded.

The other options were talked about, but just adding classes in the grades already represented, 9 through 12, seemed most popular.

“There is another issue”, Sally said. “The school is not just the school anymore. Many parents have been following their kids’ work so closely that they are almost a part of the school, without meeting the schools compatibility requirements. I don’t think there is much we can do about it, though.”

Alma Renwick disagreed. “Let us pretend we get to the point where we have 1,000 parents involved. I don’t know how many students that would mean. It would probably only be possible if we were in the midst of yet another expansion, which would fill the building completely. Do you see where I am going with this?”

“Yes, of course. You are thinking of matching parents to parents. Finding the best one-in-a-thousand match between parents is not bad. That’s Level Three on our logarithmic scale. Not bad at all.”

It took but a moment for all the teachers to get the idea, but a few of them groaned. This could be a social nightmare.

Paul Grey didn’t say so, but he had the same thoughts many others did. He knew that the eventual effect of good matching was to reduce the divorce rate drastically, but the immediate effect could be the opposite, breaking up families once the adults discovered that they had more compatible matches. In the tight-knit greater community around the school, a lot of this might happen, disrupting families and the students in them.

Apparently oblivious to this, Sally pushed on, thinking out loud. “OK, Alma, let’s extend this further. Let us call it the school community, all family members and friends of our actual students. Perhaps even the friends of those people. Add them, and suppose we really have filled up the building. Then we might have an extended school community of 10,000 people. Level Four matches would be typical, some less, but some even better ones, just by accident.”

Avery Elliot grimaced. “Ouch, Sally, remember the under-age sex problem!”

“OK, then let us pass the matching suggestions directly to all the adult members of this extended community, so they can do what they wish with respect to their own children. That would lower the mean or typical match level considerably, but it would still be good. Worth doing.”

Alma Renwick liked the idea. “What are we waiting for, then? I agree, Sally. Let’s do it. Do it now.”

Still oblivious to some of the problems this might raise, Sally was enthusiastic.

Finally the vice-principal and English teacher, Dr. Paul Grey, a quiet and thoughtful man, felt he had to give voice to his objections.

“I’m sorry to have to disagree with you, we see eye-to-eye on so many things, Sally. But this is could almost destroy the school. The school community would have a much higher density of matching-software users. There might be family breakups, not an unusual short term consequence. People suddenly discover better matches nearby, and go for those greener pastures. Families breaking up could ruin the lives of our students.”

Once again a problem was emerging. There was a bold new idea, but it could threaten the school community. Perhaps it would threaten the school and the people associated with it, even if Social Tech High did nothing, as Grace’s history teacher pointed out.

“Dr. Aston, you and colleagues did a wonderful thing when you created the Technological Fantasies organization. We use only a tiny bit of what you provide, not much more than the matching software. But within the school community it is well known. Everyone has heard of it, I am sure many use it. What Dr. Grey fears may already be happening.”

“Oh.”

Sally called an emergency meeting, to be held at the school. Invited were the two other members of the original Tech Fantasies Trio, Ann and Drake; Paul Grey and Alma Renwick; Antonio Alvaro, because he had pointed out the problem; Ken Green and his daughter Beth, because he was the major donor and she the prodigy behind the throne; Don and Helen Walker.

Helen did not come, she was pregnant and experiencing morning sickness. Ken Green had asked to bring another of his children, and showed up with Beth’s half-sister Esmeralda, who sat in on the meeting with out saying much. She sketched something on pads of paper while the others talked.

Sally opened the meeting by expressing the idea which she and Alma found so fascinating. Paul Grey told of his fears, then Antonio Alvaro gave an expanded version of his earlier comments.

There was much discussion, but nothing resembling a conclusion emerged until the meeting resumed for one last hour, following a short break.

During each break, the three Greens went off by themselves. Beth and Esmeralda were seen to be in a corner of the room, in rapid dialogue, with their father moderating. When they returned after the last break of the day, Ken spoke on behalf of his children.

“The kids have come up with a tentative solution. Here, look at this.” He showed the group a network diagram apparently drawn by Esmeralda. Then he turned over the page and showed a tangled mess, recognizable as the first diagram distorted by severe changes.

“Beth says she can write software to turn out diagrams like this for any circumstance that can arise, automatically, whenever they might be needed. The software can turn them into sequences, making videos of them, to let people see the networks evolving over time. The girls see it as an educational problem, for everyone in the community. People can be shown the probable effects of their actions and be able to make changes in small increments.”

Beth took over, explaining the idea with obvious enthusiasm. “If everybody finds a better partner and gets divorced all at once, chaos results. If our software can model the changes, make them visual, producing teaching aids from them, then maybe people will act more rationally. I’m just a kid, but I am 14 now, so I think I understand about irrational urges. I know they can be overcome with the right information at the right time.”

“Irrational urges? Even you?”, Don Walker asked, smiling.

“Yes. Even me. A boy my age came to see me a couple of months ago. Real handsome, as smart as I am, the beast, bringing me some high tech presents. I was almost swept off my feet, but calmly and rationally agreed with him that we were too similar to be compatible. When he saw me pouting, he made me look us up, and when the system proved he was right, I calmly and rationally let him get away. That didn’t stop me from daydreaming about him for a long time, which proves I really do know all about irrational urges.”

They all laughed, amused at the girl who was as much a prodigy as ever, even while becoming a woman.

Just before Ken Green left with his two daughters, the younger one, Esmeralda, presented Sally with some of the sketches she had been doing earlier in the day. They included drawings of the school the way it was, along with some illustrating proposed additions and alterations. Her drawing abilities and architectural insight was clearly as prodigious as Beth’s analysis, design and programming skills.

Ken mentioned that Esmeralda was Beth’s best friend and that together they could do anything. Sally wished they were in her school, but knew that Ken Green would never let them out of sight. His love for them was evident, his need for their abilities was almost as clear.

Sally wondered just how many children the man did have. How talented were the others? From words mentioned in passing, Sally began to grasp the fact that each child had several personal tutors, chosen to be as compatible as possible. What she did not know was that they had received this kind of attention almost from birth.

Sally herself was too involved with the school to take time away, but Ann Kelly agreed to go back to Vancouver when Ken invited her. Ann wanted to work with Beth, and was more than a little curious as to the environment in which the girl grew up.

Ann found a building with at least two dozen women in it, some who seemed to be tutors for the children, some who seemed to have an intimate relationship with Ken.

Still puzzled by the social environment, an apparently happy one with no visible discord, Ann accepted a luxurious visitor’s room on a lower floor, eating in a common room with other women. She worked with Beth and no fewer than three women who seemed to be tutors, a computer science generalist and two mathematicians.

The result was a totally new piece of social technology, capable of showing how a local or larger social network might evolve in time, depending on decisions made by the participants.

A brilliant pure mathematician who was also a brilliant computer programmer, Ann was almost left behind, able to make only small contributions. When she went home, still somewhat dazed by the experience, much of what she had known from her doctoral work now appeared less than insightful. From now on she would work harder, do better, try to catch up to that damn kid.

The new software made a difference right away. The school already had some profile information for parents who helped their kids with homework or had submitted information to Tech Fantasies for other reasons.

Sally sent each student home with a letter outlining the planned changes and a video showing how the school had evolved so far. The names of teachers and students were not given, just a basic overview. The letter asked for permission to get very limited access to Tech Fantasies’ files and requested that family members fill out profile questionnaires or engage in the usual online dialogues.

As soon as a response was obtained, updated models of the school community were obtained. When they indicated possible social problems, new videos were generated, showing the possible and probable changes, with and without the adults restricting themselves to modest incremental changes.

There were lots of responses right away, but it took a while to get a steady stream of information flowing in. As it arrived, some processing was done immediately, but full-scale matching in the bipartite sense, each person to exactly one other, would be impossible for a long time. Approximations were possible, though, so a steady stream of suggestions soon flowed outwards, accompanied in each case by generated videos showing the effects of changes.

Sally and her husband were impressed by how well this interpersonal matching was working, but Drake said, “Sally, this isn’t right. We are not doing enough. We should be taking advantage of the school being centre of this cluster, to connect the community to ideas and projects. We offer it through Tech Fantasies already, but you know we don’t get enough user density. Even here in New York City we don’t. The rest of the US and Canada are way behind.”

“Yes, I know. Here the school is giving us a real core project, something to drag in more and more people. But we aren’t doing enough with it because we limit ourselves.”

“Well, let’s just not limit ourselves, then, Sal. Take on the whole school community as a unified project. Instead of waiting for them to sign up for our other services, push them a bit. Be an employment service for the community. Handle real estate and moves, relocations. Find cultural stuff for them, books, music, movies, art, link them into clubs. Help them find other kinds of education and recreation. All the things we know how to do and do sporadically for people outside the school community, but focus on them.”

“This is going to be too big to spring on people all at once, Drakie. I think we have to start by giving classes on it, make the students understand it first. Let it leak out into the community. Let me start with a few students we know, see what happens. I’ll grab John and Grace and Clarity, throw them into a classroom, and start explaining. If I can’t get this past them, it’s not going to happen.” But they would understand, Sally knew. They were special.

“Do it, doll. The way the school is linked up, tell any kid anything, soon they all know it. Tell those three our crazy ideas, the rest of the school will be talking about them before lunch time.”

Before the first reorganization, when classes compositions and seating assignments had been revised, John Calder and Grace Ling shared a Behavioural Science class, which later became generalized into a Social Sciences class. After the shuffle, the loving couple were in separate classes.

“Dr. Elliot”, Grace said, speaking to her teacher between classes, “I am worried about what Clarity asked. Am I really becoming less compatible with John? Are we really learning each other’s mistakes?”

“Just tendencies to make mistakes, Grace. I think your error-covariance is rising – you should know that term by now. When John is wrong about something, you are likely to be wrong about it in the same way he is.”

“But, but, that would mean we are becoming less compatible. I don’t want to lose John, I love him.”

“Well, Grace, there is a way to make you grow closer again, I think. We need to get you working on a project together, adding a few more people. Not many, just a few. At least one.”

“How would that help?”

“Actually working on some project together would give you a different kind of relationship, and a opportunity to make different kinds of mistakes. Any other person we add to the project should be suitable to work with you and function as social glue.”

“Glue?”

“Compatible with you, compatible with him, but not compatible enough with either of you to interfere with your relationship.”

“OK, what project, and whom should we get to work with with us?”

“Let’s try and get the social tech software to answer that.”

“It can suggest projects?”

“Well, not exactly. It is not intelligent, not an AI, but it can give us some ideas.”

Dr. Elliot got the two kids together and had them engage in a dialogue with the machine.

“First, I am going to ask it a question. The natural language interface is limited, so what we will see on the screen is a series of sentence fragments. We click on them to piece together a query. That makes it easier for the machine to understand what we want than if we just typed in a query we made up. Here goes”. Dr. Elliot brought up a menu of basic noun phrases and clicked on “A project for” then “a few students, including”.

“Now we type in your names. Go ahead. It will use auto-completion, so you will only have to type in a few letters.”

Grace went first, then John. Moments later the assembled text read, “A project for a few students, including John Calder and Grace Ling … “

“Now, we could just say pick ‘using their skills to the best’, but let’s try that, adding ‘and’ then ‘to improve their mutual compatibility’. There. Done.”

With no hesitation, the program came back with ‘Use John’s; computer skills; to produce; a visualization of; some dataset; created by; Grace; based on her interest in; history; and; geography – each phrase written on a different line of the screen and clickable. 

Dr. Elliot explained. “Run it all together, you have a suggestion. Click on any phrase to have it present alternatives. Click on the button at the bottom of the screen when the statement says what you want it to say. It will then elaborate.”

The two looked at each other. They were still sufficiently compatible with one another for each to grasp what the other person was thinking without any words being exchanged. Catching just the slighted nod from Grace, John clicked the “Accept” button.

The online program then responded with a list entitled “Computer Projects in History and Geography, Suitable for John Calder and Grace Ling”.

Number 2 on the list was “A visualization of; American; historical; settlements; by date; and; location; using; maps.

Again, each phrase was a clickable item alone on one line. Taken together they described a project, but individual items could be clicked on to provide alternatives.

Grace clicked “American”. The program presented “United States”, North American”, “European”, “European and New World”, “World”.

“What do you think, John?”

“I’d say ‘European and New World’, Gracie, what do you think, Dr. Elliot?”

“Sounds like a wonderful project to me.”

Grace clicked “Accept”. The program responded with “Suggested Readings”, “Project Personnel”, and “Finished”,

John clicked the first buttons, one getting a printout of suggested books and papers. Asked about Project Personnel, the program asked for group size: “Just Two People, as Specified”, “Lower Limit”, “Upper Limit”, “Odd Number”, “Even Number”, “Best Guess for Stated Purpose”.

John typed in a lower limit of 3, an upper limit of 5, then at the machine’s prompting, asked for the best guess.

“Suggested number: 3; E-mail query anonymously to suggested person? (Yes or No); Modify Group Size?”

Dr. Elliot advised accepting the suggestion and asking the program to e-mail the suggestion.

Moments later, a geography student named Abby James got an e-mail message about a project to use computer visualization techniques to show the historical development of Europe and the New World. Abby was taking a computer graphics course, and found the project interesting. She replied that she would be willing to talk to the other people on the project.

The Social Tech High’s software quickly arranged a meeting between the three seniors. They recognized each other, since it was a small school and Grace had been in the same geography class Abby was before the big student shuffle. Abby had so often seen John and Grace in each others grasp that she knew them both.

John and Grace tried to explain the project to Abby, with a visit to Dr. Elliot to get his input as well. The girl understood perfectly.

“As a first cut”, she suggested, “let’s just find a database that lists the dates when various cities were founded.” That seemed like a good idea, so the three of them worked together to extract this data from a larger collection of information. The school kept some blocks of time for informal work such as projects. It was not free time, however, just time not assigned to a particular subject. Students did not have to stay in ordinary classrooms, if they were going to work on projects, but they were not completely unscheduled.

Though there had been some talk of it earlier, the idea had been first been enunciated by John Calder, when the Grade 12 students numbered 35, just over half the desired number.

“Dr. Aston, we have had a lot of informal time, more or less scheduled but not really organized. It’s been great. I’d hate to see it disappear.”

“What did you have in mind, John?”

“How about one hour a day, or one afternoon a week?”

“The others in Tech Fantasies have worried a bit about losing the informal time. Right now we do have some, partly because we don’t have enough students yet. I’ll try to keep some of it, if you’ll help me organize it.”

“I had hoped it wouldn’t be very organized.”

“It won’t be, John. Not exactly. What I had in mind was just putting a teacher or two in a room with some students, with some suggested topics written down, but nothing more. A talk session with no books. Everyone different.”

“Could we try it that way now?”

“If we can find a way to ask the software to give us the right arrangements.”

The number of teachers reached that planned for the first version of the school, 32, months before the number of students reached the desired 256. Until that time many teachers, especially in the lower grades, were teaching even smaller classes than intended, perhaps classes of five. The idea of sometimes putting two teachers in a room had seemed worth considering, but that could have caused conflict.

Now the idea of a special informal hour had come up. The software would be able to choose the best division of people into classes, regardless of whether they were teachers or students.

Not sure if she should mention the idea to a teacher or not, John’s girlfriend spoke of it to him after they had both recovered from a hot sexual encounter. The couple were usually able to complete their strenuous and often noisy exercises in a spare room in the basement of John’s house, finishing well before either of his parents came home from work.

“John, baby, about school. Uh, you know, about those special hours you got Dr. Aston to plan. Should we just divide up our grade, or divide up the whole school, regardless of grade. I mean, the computer is going to say where everyone goes. Why not give it more choices?”

“Ouch, that makes everything harder to program, you know. I am glad I don’t have to do it. Dr. Aston and her friends are real interested in the whole idea. They might go for it. How ’bout you come and talk to Sally with me?”

Grace was shy, but followed John into Sally Aston’s office. He explained Grace’s idea to his teacher, then offered to help even more than he had.

It was difficult to add this functionality to the Social Tech High software package, even with several people working on it, because it was an outrageous matching problem. Each person’s role in the resulting classes had to be estimated in the context of other people whose presence in the class might not have been established yet.

Still, it was done. In the third week of September, the whole school was divided into classes of nine, with no regard whatsoever for age range or topic. There was usually one teacher, but sometimes a senior sat at the teachers desk and worked with some mixture of younger students. Each person in the class had a list of the all the others, plus the courses they were taking and favourite topics of conversation, if known.

Nobody knew if it was going to work or not, but it did.

John Calder ended up as the only senior in a class of kids from grades 9 through 11. From the printouts, all showed an interest in computer programming. “So. Computer programming, everyone seems to like that. I guess that’s going to be the topic. Any ideas about what we are going to talk about?

“Programming languages”, said one boy. John looked at the list and saw what classes the boy was taking, but not at what level. What grade was this kid in, anyway?

 John had worked on setting up these special classes, but somehow assumed they’d know what grades the kids were in. “I guess it’s better not to know”, he thought, “no hierarchy in these classes.”

“Okay, programming languages. Any other ideas? No?”

“Python” said the girl sitting beside the boy who had made the suggestion. Probably his girlfriend.

“C”, said another student.

“Java.”

“Visual Basic.”

 The others had to be polled, but added no new languages to the list.

Then began the complaints.

“Object-oriented programming in C is possible, but ridiculous. C++ is too hard. It has to be Java. Maybe Visual Basic, but who wants to be a prisoner of Microsoft?”

“Java is sooo much harder than Python. Python.”

Around and around it went. New languages did emerge for consideration. Ruby. Scheme.

At the end of the hour, John emerged, shaken, having enjoyed that class enormously. The flow of ideas had been unusually heavy, even for this school, but they had fun, too.

Walking the halls during this hour, Sally Aston had heard the pleasant sounds of a small string orchestra in one room, something never before assembled in the school. There were music classes, but nothing like that.

Hesitantly the same kind of arrangement was tried two days later, with more warning and with the use of information from the first time.

Of course these classes discussed themselves. A wave of interest in scheduling passed through the classes, eventually turning into a specific suggestion. The classes should be held every day right after lunch, when students might otherwise be feeling a bit sleepy. Always exciting, these special hours would keep everyone awake.

Later, John, Grace and Abby voluntarily forsook the daily special classes to work on their own project, but by then the classes had been extended to occupy Friday afternoons, when it took something unusually interesting to catch the attention of the students. The three would leave aside their project for that one afternoon, to enjoy that full afternoon of intellectual fun, at least two hours of it, sometimes stretching into three as the more eager kids hated to leave in the middle of some heated discussion.

When the winter holidays finally arrived, John, Grace and many of the 254 other students in the school felt something unusual, a desire to stay in school when they didn’t have to.

The day the school finally did close for the summer, a shocking idea occurred to Grace Ling. “John, John, school is going to end in June. What are we going to do?”

“We are going to go to college, of course, you little idiot.”

“But, but. That will be so, so ordinary.”

John relayed this conversation to his teacher. “Trust me, John, you will go to college, at a real university, a good one, and a good university is never ordinary.”

“I think you have spoiled Grace and me. It is so much fun here, and we are learning so much. We all have compatible friends and teachers, something we won’t have at university.”

“Take some of your friends with you then. You, Grace, Clarity, some others, all of you go to the same place. You’ll have lots of choices.”

John knew she was right. He started to make plans right away, collecting information about possible colleges and universities to attend. Soon this became a topic to be discussed in the special classes. There would be life after Social Tech High.

 Two happy students entirely unaffected by the underage sex controversy were John Calder and Grace Ling. In the eyes of the law the two 17 year olds were adults, and though her parents were still unhappy about their growing passion, the two remained in school and would be a big part of it throughout their senior year.

John had been added to the school as a student for Sally Aston and would study math with her. He had already begun to spend short sessions with her when the school found little Grace Ling, who was probably going to be his girlfriend.

As we have seen, the compatible pair were soon an inseparable couple. To encourage that relationship and get some necessary work done, John and Clarity had been assigned to work sifting through the pile of possible school textbooks. Since he was tied to no other student, Anderson Simms did not join this exercise, but worked directly with his teacher, Dr. Ellen Smith.

As the school grew it added to its set of working textbooks. Making use of them was going to be difficult. The process had begun with those two students, John and Grace, in the summer before the school officially opened.

“This is going to take a lot of work, kids, but it’ll be worth it”, Sally had told them. “You’ll see.” She handed them questionnaires to fill out. They groaned.

“Now, now, none of that. Leaf through the books, scan them, get some clue as to what they contain and how they are written, then just answer the questions about the books. It will be easy.”

The kids looked at one another. This did not seem like something that would be fun. Fun was what they did while naked in bed together, a subject increasingly on their minds.

John and Grace has both been lonely before coming to the school. Now they were in the most passionate relationship they could imagine, not just sexually fulfilled, but deeply in love.

It was the love that stabilized them so they could work together on almost anything and do well at it. But Dr. Aston had explicitly told them not to work together. They could sit together amongst the piles of books, but would not exchange comments about them. Each book should get a different review.

At first they worked from a prepared questionnaire, but when new teacher, Alma Renwick, had arrived to work with them, they had begun to switch over to a computerized dialogue approach, as used with both students after they they had answered questions about themselves.

Sally Aston, school principal and math teacher had introduced their new supervisor and co-worker while the two students were reading the first chapters of two different books.

“Mrs. Renwick, this is my student, John Calder, and his girlfriend, Grace Ling. We have not found a teacher for Grace yet, but we keep her busy. John and Grace, this is Mrs. Renwick. She is happiest teaching younger students, but knows everything about everything. If there is something in those books which might interest you and contribute to your education, she’ll help you find it.”

John and Grace looked at each other quickly, trying not to seem as disappointed at they felt. It had been so much fun working together. Happily, Alma Renwick was acute enough to sense their feelings.

“OK now. My office is just going to be down that hall and on the right side, near the end. I want you to come by whenever you want to, but whether you do or not, I’ll check in twice a day. If you can’t stand sitting around looking through books another minute and need to get some air, leave me a note, but I do want to see some signs that you are actually working.”

John and Grace exhaled as one. This was going to be OK.

“Now, out of every ten books you’ve looked through, give me the bottom nine. I want you to keep doing that until you have whittled the pile down to something plausible.”

Sally and Alma went off together, smiling at one another. They knew that John and Grace would keep busy and do good work, even if they did find someplace to go for a little recreation sometimes.

The next student after John, Andy and Grace was Clarity Bond.

Alma left Clarity in the main office, then spoke with Grace alone.

 “Grace, we are adding a new student, who will be helping you and John. I am going to suggest that at least one of you stay in the room at all times. I can guess your preferences, but I think you might consider leaving John on duty sometimes, while you and the new girl go for a walk. You know that we are organizing this school on the basis of compatibility. Don’t think of her as any threat to your relationship with John. She is likely to become your friend. Probably. If not, let me know.”

Grace understood. The two young people were introduced to the pretty, Clarity Bond, then it was the three of them going through the books.

All three had been asked to point out books that interested them, chapters that interested them, quirks of the authors, coverage of the topic, and so on.

This process would never stop. Every new student would spend some time going over the textbook pile. Sometimes Dr. Smith would drag Andy over to meet with the others and continue the process. There was obviously some meaning or purpose behind it, but it was not discussed until the second meeting of that original behavioural geography class.

When the students entered the room, each found two books on his or her desk. Everyone had a copy of “Basics of Behavioural Georgraphy”, by Tucker and Elmsworth. The other books were all different. John Calder had “An Introduction to Mathematical Sociology”. Grace had “History of the Behavioural Sciences”. Andy had an Introductory Psychology text, Clarity an Introductory Sociology text. The students recognized all of these books, which had survived the process of elimination during the summer.

Indeed, everyone in the class had two textbooks apiece, one that the whole class would study from, one for individual study.

This remained to school policy even after the it had finally reached full size. All classes now had eight students in them. Each class had a carefully selected textbook. Using the data input by the kids over the summer and early fall, the software had chosen the best possible text for the class as a whole. But it had done more than that. It had chosen the best possible individual texts, based on the student’s personal characteristics.

After the major reorganization which had shuffled the students between classes, the textbooks had also been changed in many classes, to reflect changes in class composition.

In other ways the policies of Social Tech High with respect to books were quite remarkable. A school with high fees, it also offered generous scholarships to worthy students. Whether a student’s books were paid for by school fees or by the donations funding scholarships, every kid in the class had not one but three copies of every text book. Paper may be going out in favour of online reading, but having a book to lay out on your desk in class or beside you while you did your homework was still the ideal way to go.

Of the three copies, one stayed at the school. Two copies were delivered to the student’s home by a teacher who spoke personally to the child’s parent or parents.

“We will be sending home two copies of each homework assignment answer sheet”, Dr. Paul Grey told the mother of one of his scholarship students, a poor woman who lived in a project highrise. “To go with them, these two big boxes contain two copies of each textbook your son uses. He studies eight different subjects, using 16 different books. So we are bringing you 32 books!”

“Thirty-two books, heavens, where am I going to put them?”

“Well, Mrs. Reed, that’s up to you, but Joey has a new friend now, who’d be glad to help.”

“Why so many books? I just don’t get it.”

“Half of them are for you, Mrs. Reed. You don’t have to use them, but we never want the lack of a book being a reason for not helping Joey. That’s also why we are sending you two copies of each answer sheet. We’d like you to try doing the homework yourself, whether you help Joey or not. If you don’t want to, that’s fine. If you can’t, that’s find. But we don’t want the lack of an extra answer sheet to keep you from helping your son. We’ll send you additional information and instructions, too, sometimes. Anything we can do to make sure your son gets something out of the work he does at home.”

Mrs. Reed remained confused, but said, “I don’t think my Joey needs my help. He is a smart boy, not like his momma.”

“Then let him teach you. Teaching another person is the best possible way to learn something.”

 “Oh, oh dear, well alright, for Joey, anything, I love him so much the dear.”

Satisfied Paul Grey walked to his car, brushing his hands together and smiling.

 Everything the brilliant English teacher had said was true, but there was another reason that additional books were being made available, and why duplicate copies of all answer sheets would be sent home. The staff at Social Tech High kept busy feeding answer sheets into scanners, putting the data into computers, where it was process by powerful programs.

These programs were designed to do a lot with this raw data. That included the analysis what each student did with their homework assignments, what help they had probably received, and some things about the parent who helped. Parents had a right to refuse, or could simply not participate, but the advantages of helping their kids was made clear, as were the advantages of letting such data be collected.

Given all of this information, it was possible to use the increasingly large database of test and homework questions to generated unique custom-tailored homework sets for each student.

Never would a teacher just say “Read chapter X from page A to B”. Now it was be “I’m just printing out your homework assignments now and and will give them to you as they come off the printer. You’ll find some hints about where in your books some help with the answers will be given.”

Books would continue to be used, and paper answer sheets would still be provided, but in addition, students could find homework online. The school site, http://SocialTechHigh.Org/ kept individual accounts for each student, where individualized information, instructions, homework and even some suggested recreations were provided. The school provided low-profile flat-screen computers in classrooms and special computer labs, all paid for by major donors.

The Social Tech High organization itself could not do all the programming needed to manage this, so the parent organization, http://TechnologicalFantasies.SocialTechnology.ca/ handled most of it, using a large corps of volunteers under the direction of a few paid staff members.

John Calder was the student of one of the original Tech Fantasies Trio. Utterly compatible and very close to her, in an appropriate way, John was fascinated by the Tech Fantasies organization and their dedication to imagining the advanced technology of the future. Sally hoped he would want to become part of the organization himself, but would not put any pressure on him.

In fact John did join Tech Fantasies, dragging Grace, Clarity and a few other kids with him — a chain of new people, new volunteers to work in an already large movement turning dreams into reality, as they were turning the dream of a new highschool into reality.

 It was in fact an angry Hendrik Schmitt who stormed into the school building and came up to the main office. He was told that both the principal and vice-principal were teaching at the moment. “It would not be fair to the students to disturb the classes, but if you come back at 2:30, Dr. Aston will be available.”

 Mr. Schmitt fumed and made threats, but was met with calm passive resistance. Finally he became bit too agitated. “I do have 911 on speed-dial and speakerphone, sir, but I am sure you are a reasonable man”, he was finally told, by the office worker who by then had considerable evidence that he was not a reasonable man. However, yes, it was his daughter he was concerned about, so his reactions could be understood.

 When Sally Aston finally faced Mr. Schmitt he raised his voice in anger.

“My daughter is 14. Fourteen. Now she has been used by this boy you found for her.”

 “Sir, we did not find any boy for her. She used the publicly available software and found one herself. Nor did we tell her the software was available for her use. She might have learned that from the other students, but it has also been written about in the mainstream media. She could have heard about it from anywhere.”

 “You have no business making software which a child can use!”

 “We do block that site for school computers, sir. We’ve reluctantly had to do some censorship. But she could have used some other computer, perhaps at home. Have you made an effort to block the site on your home computer, sir?”

 “No, dammit, but I shouldn’t have to do that!”

 “What exactly do you want from us, then, Mr. Schmitt?”

 “We are going to pull Karla from the school right now.”

 “Of course. We’ll be sorry to lose her, but if that is what you wish, it’s entirely up to you.”

 “And I am going to sue!”

 “Excellent. We need the publicity.”

 “You what?”

 “We have a large legal defence fund. Different circumstances may make us change our plans, but you see, even if Social Tech High were to lose a lawsuit, our parent organization, Technological Fantasies, would gain from the publicity. Who knows, the school might, too. It’s something we’ve been anxious to put to the test.”

 “This is outrageous! I’ll get restraining orders, I’ll sue the parent organization, I’ll shut you down!”

 “Please try, Mr. Schmitt. Our principal donor has deep pockets and good connections. It might even take appeals, but we’d win eventually. Meanwhile, the publicity would be very valuable.”

 Mr. Schmitt went away, still furious. He felt that his little girl had been violated, though she had brought it on herself and was now happier than she’d ever been.

 Despite her calm tone and quite certainty, Sally was upset. She didn’t like causing problems. Something needed to be done. Sally called the other members of the Tech Fantasies trio together to discuss the subject.

 “It’s a social problem, Sally”, Ann told her. “People evolved to seek the chance to breed as soon as they were physically able to do so. It is society which has tried to impose moral and legal obstacles to sex between young people. Maybe it is right to do so, maybe not. It’s not up to us to interfere.”

 “But we do interfere, Ann. We provide a service which undermines the socially established norms”, Drake pointed out. “We don’t have to do so. I could amend the software so that it will use data from user profiles to get the age of the user. They might lie about their age, but we could correct that disinformation from other evidence in the datasets. So, we could limit what suggestions we make to young people. If changes to the technology to keep kids from getting together are wanted, we can provide them.”

 “You’re right, Drakie”, Sally said. “We could. Should we? We could change our matching service to solve the problem. It is all a matter of software.”

 “Ah, Sally, it’s not that simple”, Ann pointed out. “It is not just us. There is the Green Family’s matching service, which appears under different names, but is easy to get at. And there is Project Match. Plus various free and commercial services. Some of those just ask the user to state for the record that they are over 18, without trying to check.”

 Drake nodded, “Right. I don’t know what to do about it. Better meet with the Greens and Project Match again, I guess.”

 Once again, Ken Green and his young daughter Beth arrived at the Walker house. This time Beth’s mother and brother stayed home.

 “We can all do what you are suggesting, Dr. Phillips”, Beth Green said. “No problem. No technical problem, that is. The social problems are harder to evaluate. I don’t think it is a something we can decide. It has to come from the legislators or the courts.”

 “I was afraid of that”, Don Walker said with a sigh. “Our legal system is social technology too, and medieval at best. Same with our government.”

 “I agree”, said Ken Green, thoughtfully. “Yes, law and government are social in nature. Social procedures such as those underlying procedural law are technologies, not exactly medieval, but close.”

 “Right”, Drake Phillips said. “That was something we have talked about. Our Technological Fantasies organization was never meant to be limited to matching problems, and we aren’t. We are devoted to imaging the advanced technology of the future, Mr. Green, and that includes the social technology for making law and government work. We have looked at ways to do that.”

 “I wish I was more up-to-date on what you’ve been working on. I am sorry we haven’t paid more attention.”

 “Oh, it’s not something we have made public. It’s our little secret, since it could be considered subversive.”

 “Oh, please, Dr. Phillips, tell us, please”, Beth asked with childlike enthusiasm. She was just a child, in fact, though a prodigy.

 “It’s completely legal, but devious. I don’t know if you’ve ever studied history, Beth. Probably not your field. Well, anyway, the British monarch still is the legal head of state with theoretically or technically a lot of power. But it is parliament which has the actual power. This is something which developed over time because it works. We envision a similar kind of change, in which the nominal powers of courts, legislators and executives are in fact given to something else. We don’t know what, yet.”

 “I get it. I can figure it out, I bet, but Dr. Phillips, what do we do right now? We can’t wait for something that might not happen until I am your age.”

 “That seems like a long time to wait, but it’s short on the social tech timescale, Bethie”, her father said. “But yes, we need to do something now.”

 “You should push on all fronts, Daddy. The legal system, and the government, whatever is there.”

 “That was more or less our plan”, Beth”, Ann Kelly agreed. “We need a lawsuit. We need someone to try to prosecute us in court. And we should probably try get petitions started in those states which can have a referendum placed on a ballot, if enough people ask for one.”

 “Let us ask our users”, Helen Walker proposed. “We depend much more on word of mouth than you do. If we quietly put around the suggestion that legal or legislative action was required, it would probably happen.”

 “So what are we going to ask for?”

 “Proposed: Social matching services be required to block usage by children under the age of X, for some integer X”, Helen replied.

 “Ouch. I hate sharp cut offs, non-linearities, Mrs. Walker”, Drake commented with a grimace. A day under 17 and having sex with the girl is a kind or rape, with heavy punishments. The next day it would be completely legal. That makes no sense. But sure, we could try to get your proposition tested as stated.”

 “Not to suggest that I would ever misbehave, Mrs. Walker, but could you suggest an X?”, Beth asked, curious.

 “Now Bethie, we’ve discussed this. You are to remain pure and chaste until you are married, 30 years old, or until my death, whichever comes later”, said her father, almost seriously.

 “X is thirty? It’ll never sell.”

 Sally spoke up. “The median age at which girls lose their virginity is 16, and has been since long before we offered any matching services. That would be a good cutoff point, though I don’t like drastic non-linearities any more than you do, Drake.”

 “Let’s go with that age”, Don Walker suggested. It is young enough to be controversial, not a foregone conclusion like some other age might make it.”

 “I don’t like the precedent”, Drake said, “since it might be the thin edge of the wedge. We don’t want the government or the courts to get the idea that we are entirely at their mercy, even if we are. But I don’t think we have the moral right to make the decision ourselves and shouldn’t wait for something to happen. Don, would you get it started for us, using your Project Match people?”

 Everyone ended up agreeing and the matter was left in the hands of the Walkers. They would all wait with various worries for the results, but knew it would take a while before anything happened to take the responsibility away from them.

 Before that happened, the school would be full. Full of kids made happy by close personal relationships, which most often included a sexual element.

 Sally had put in place a few relevant rules. Kids could not be more intimate than hugging or briefly kissing within the school building. Teachers would enforce that. Teachers would not comment when students talked about their sexual relationships, but would not suppress such discussions. What happened outside of school was no business of the school unless it involved teaching staff or school employees.

 The kids uniformly felt these rules unfair. They wanted more freedom. The parents were almost as unanimous in thinking the rules too liberal. But this was New York, so there were always a few open minded parents to argue the case for leaving the kids to decide for themselves, when parents met to discuss the issues.

 Was the school being at all devious when inviting parents to meet in the big 64 seat meeting room over a period of a few days, even suggesting which parents were to come on which night? Was it at all devious that the school suggested a seating arrangement? Sally assured the parents that this was just to promote good discussions within each group. Perhaps it was.