Education State

The classroom generated into a grassy meadow, surrounded by lush trees and the songs of birds. Khioni’s fists were clenched, white-knuckled, skin buzzing like static as panic-adrenaline pumped though her. Grass tickled her ankles, so perfectly hued as if someone had thrown a bucket of forest-green paint across the lawn. When she shuffled her foot, the stalks disappeared into her shoe before jerking, slideshow-like, into a more believable position, the pretence of being crushed underfoot. The grass crackled, like shredded paper.

“Good morning, Khioni,” said a soft voice. “How are you today?”

“Piss off,” said Khioni. “Stop pretending you care about me.”

“Khioni, every time you’re rude to me, you set back our relationship—“

Khioni had already stopped listening. The meadow was small, and behind the surrounding veneer of trees there was an invisible barrier to stop her leaving. A step too far, and the Program placed her right back in the middle. She tried it three times anyway, like most mornings, queasiness growing each time she was shunted back in front of Miss Lydia. Her so-called teacher: a ghost created by the Virtual Schooling Program.

“Khioni, we’re wasting time,” said the Program through the lips of the ghost. “We have two hours of Maths scheduled to work on improving your algebra marks in the next supplementary test.”

“Maths is pointless. Let me play games.”

Miss Lydia smiled. “Khioni, it’s proven that achieving at least a 368 in algebra leads to a 10.1% improvement in economic output by the time you’re thirty-years-old.”

“I don’t care. I don’t need it.” Khioni had no interest in having the Program force more maths down her throat; she knew how to add and multiply, how to work out how much money she was spending. Algebra made no sense. She couldn’t care less about her economic output when she was thirty. Why did the Program always assume that mattered?

Miss Lydia’s smile faded, her voice taking a robotic edge, like the scrape of shoes along a concrete path. “If we don’t use the time now, we’ll have to use remedial time. And you know what happens if we use remedial time.”

Khioni knew alright: missing out on lunch and the only chance in a school day to talk with someone who wasn’t a patronising robot who incessantly insisted she do her Maths work until she tried to give it the answers it wanted. Then she’d get them wrong, and it would make her do the questions again, until her eyes hurt, and her brain felt like it had been squeezed into every shape except the one that let her understand. And then it would send an alert to her parents that she was failing Maths, and Dad would get home pissed off, blocking her from her own personal headset until the Program said it was happy with her progress. She’d beg with Mum to at least be able to message her friends and then Mum and Dad would argue, forgetting to cook her any dinner and ignoring her and each other for the rest of the evening.

“Fine,” she mumbled. “Show me what to do.” This time could be different, this time it could all click together in her mind, like the time she’d been learning about maps in Geography and the colours on the 3D projection had made perfect sense as she’d walked across the world like a giant, zooming in on population centres, tracking disease vectors, and replaying the migration patterns of now extinct species.

A chair appeared, then a desk and a digital board, nestled amongst the too-green grass. Bees circled in preprogrammed paths, the same lazy orbits that she’d stared at for months, since the last software update which had added small details to make the Program more believable and to make it easier for her to immerse herself into her learning. Alight on the flower, sit motionless on the petal for five seconds, then spiral outwards five times then freeze, judder in place for a second, then reverse course until touching the flower again. She’d watched those bees so much she’d dreamt about them, buzzing in mindless circles.

“Okay, let’s start with—“

“Two plus two is six,” said Khioni.

The ghost froze for a tick, adjusting a parameter inside itself. The board disappeared and reappeared a half-metre closer. “Your most recent check-in testing shows a sound foundational understanding of mathematics,” said the ghost. “Therefore, we will not spend time establishing the proof of two plus two and other basic numeracy principals. We will instead progress onto—”

“Two plus two is six.”

She watched the ghost try to roll its eyes. Its pupils spun in perfectly traced circles, false lips downturned. A puppetry of real emotion. Its voice sharpened into another robotic edge. “You’ve used up your last chance. We will now be using remedial time to discuss your impertinence and attitude towards this Program.”

Khioni slammed her fists on the desk and tried to shove it over. The Program sensed the intent and turned it holographic. Stumbling forward off her chair she sprawled on the grass, the movement too sudden for the Program to handle, its code compensating by flattening all the textures in an oval around her.

“Bloody hell,” she yelled at the ghost and stormed off to find a way out.

· · ·

She was back in the Program on Saturday. It had used up all her remedial time to no avail, and it had sent an alert calmly explaining Khioni’s defiance and the subsequent consequence of weekend attendance. As predicted, Dad had read the subject line and thrown his tablet away in disgust. Later, she’d read the alert and deleted it, crying soft tears.

“Can’t come. Have to go school,” she messaged her friends over the web, during the ten minutes of online time Mum had won for her, and they reacted with angry emojis, little icons shaking pixel fists. She wished the Program could see what they all thought of it.

“Screw Miss Lydia,” sent Bianca, privately. “I’ve got the answers, my sister did the same detention.”

Inside the Program, feeling the minutes and hours ebb away, Khioni raced through the work. Saturday’s remedial class wasn’t in the meadow; the illusion here was a calming blue room, with trees waving gently through a crystal-clear window. She ignored the ghost explaining maths to her and filled out her memorised answers. And x = 5, she finished and tossed the tablet towards Miss Lydia. It hung, suspended, the moment it left her hand.

The ghost jerked, halfway through explaining something to do with y’s and x’s in brackets. Digital eyes went dead then brightened. “Very good, Khioni. I’m impressed. However—”

Everything hung on that ‘however’. Her answers were correct, Bianca wouldn’t let her down like that. The Program should let her go now. It had to. She’d got enough questions right.

“…it is clear from the time it took you to respond, as well as the accuracy of your answers compared to your historical data, that you have cheated on the task. I implore you to listen to my explanation again, this time paying more attention. Then you can try again with new questions.”

Khioni stomped on the floor, a microsecond of pain twinging her ankles before the Program adjusted and dulled the sensation. Why did it never give her a break? She didn’t get it, and the Program should know she didn’t get it. Give her more Geography work and she could show it what she was capable of.

She tried a different angle. “Miss Lydia,” she drawled, sickly sweet. “I’m starting to get stressed about all this work. I think I’ve done too much maths for today, and I don’t think keep concentrating when I feel like this. I promise next week I’ll try much harder. I just need a break.” That had always worked on her real teachers in the past, when they felt sorry for her and let her go to the bathroom or sick bay. Sometimes they’d even send her home, giving her a free day off school.

Miss Lydia frowned and bent closer to her. “Monitoring isn’t detecting anything unusual. Normal blood pressure and heart rate, hormones within normal ranges, with an expected amount of frustration at being here on a Saturday – nothing out of the ordinary for you. Are you lying to me Khioni? You know lying is bad, and not what this Program stands for.”

“You’re not even real, how can you stand for anything?” She swung abruptly back on her chair and the Program instantly reset her position, a flash of teleportation. During the reset, she could see the bones of the virtual classroom for a moment, the room stark white and blocky, no shadows or textures. The tree outside became a wire-frame model, lush branches replaced with skeletal fingers, grasping for her joy. Miss Lydia was three grey blobs, a smaller one stacked on top of two taller ones. Over a second, the scene flickered back into place: colours, lights, shadows, details, sounds. Khioni enjoyed it when the Program glitched like that. It reminded her that this place wasn’t real, that Miss Lydia was just a ghost, and that nothing she did in here mattered.

“Khioni, will you admit that you lied?”

It didn’t matter if she admitted it or not. The Program had already made up its mind. The room flashed and replaced itself with a cramped chamber, no windows and harsh light burning her eyes.

“Is this what you want, Khioni?”

She sat on a thin mattress, could feel cold metal through the meagre padding. A stainless toilet and basin were bolted to bare concrete walls. No door. The ghost was gone; the Program spoke from a speaker from the ceiling.

“Your education’s important, I’ve told you enough times. This is what happens to people who don’t finish their qualifications: they end up in virtual cells just like this one, stuck until they can prove they have value. You’ve said to me many times you hate being part of the Virtual Schooling Program. The solution is simple: try your hardest and pass your final exams. The sooner you do that, the sooner you’re out of here. But if you don’t, then I want you to imagine being locked in this virtual space forever, because no one will hire you without a Level 12 Maths certification. A little short-term pain for long-term gain, as I like to say.’

Khioni didn’t have to imagine it: she was living it. She tried to stand, but the Program had locked her in place. All she could do was widen her eyes in horror. The walls squeezed in, just a little, narrowing the space.

“Short-term pain for long-term gain, Khioni. Say it with me please.”

She tightened her lips. Screw the Program for telling her what to do. The walls shifted again, and she squeezed her eyes shut. All this was just in her head; she was really in her bedroom with a headset on, and all she had to so was reach up. Reach up and take it off.

Her body stayed limp, her own limbs unresponsive to her thoughts. The Program had hijacked her. It prattled on “…term gain. Say it with me please.”

Khioni muttered the mantra. The Program was treating her like a baby, as if she wasn’t almost sixteen and hadn’t had to repeat stupid little rhymes since primary school. Didn’t it realise everything it did just made her hate it even more? In real school she could sit in the corner and make herself small enough that the teachers mostly left her alone, free to try the questions when she felt like it and to zone out when she didn’t. The Program picked up her every mistake, noticed every time her mind wandered and didn’t give her a second to relax.

“Louder please.”

“SHORT TERM PAIN FOR LONG TERM GAIN. SCREW. YOU.”

The Program flashed white and her body jerked into explosive motion. The headset spun off and she crashed into her desk, smashing her elbow and hip into the plastic. She grabbed the device and threw it at the wall, kicking it when it bounced back. She wanted to destroy it, tear it into pieces, but its shining metal surface reflected her flushed face back up at her, indestructible.

· · ·

Mum forced Khioni back to school on Monday. On Sunday she’d been grounded, locked in her room with Dad sat on the other side. He’d shown her the bill for her defiance, the cost of her Saturday detention, an email with a bold red header screaming Education Act 2037(a) at her. “Two more demerits,” he’d growled. “Just two more and your Mum and I will be in court because your stupid behaviour makes us look like bad parents. You want us to go to jail because you can’t sit down, shut up and answer some maths questions?”

Khioni had screamed and cried, beating at the door with her fists, trapped just as much in her room as she was in the Program. Her phone pinged with concerned messages from Bianca and Khioni replied with incoherent passages, raging at her parents with grids of red-faced emojis, until Dad marched in and snatched it away from her, too angry to even bother with a parental lock.

On Monday, Dad left for work early, but Mum came in, determined, at exactly 8:25. She grabbed Khioni’s wrist when Khioni tried to duck past and dragged her to the bed, holding her arms until the shouting stopped and she sat silent and sullen, all the fight drained out of her. She’d barely twitched as cold metal settled over her eyes.

“Good morning Khioni,” The ghost smiled at her.

Kioni sat, unmoving.

“Khioni?” She felt the ghost move closer, a tingle of simulated air brushing the little hairs on her arm, like someone touching a charged wire to her skin. “How are you this morning?”

She lowered her eyes, staring at the immaculate surface of the desk in front of her: not a single chip, nor scratched graffiti, nor pitted canyon where someone had sawed with a protractor for weeks. There’d never been a desk this perfect in real school. Even a brand-new desk would last about a day before someone scratched in a blocky love-heart or an anonymous slur. The pristine surface yawned up at her, an expanse of beige in which her tablet drowned.

“Khioni?”

The scene flashed in her periphery, the light changing. She could tell they were back in the remedial classroom. She rubbed a fingernail along the desk, begging for a single mark to appear, to etch a single flaw into the Program. The wooden veneer was as unyielding as metal.

They flashed again to the jail cell, the ghost looming above Khioni, a shadow falling across her body. She refused to be intimidated by it. Its words were static to her, nothing more than an irritating tickle. Her fingernail glided forlornly against the desk.

The ghost sighed.

“This will be another Saturday remedial class for you, Khioni. And maybe more. There’s only so much I can do.”

· · ·

Mum and Dad had been called to court, to explain why their daughter wasn’t achieving expected standards. Khioni watched as Mum explained how they were doing everything right, that she attended virtual school every day, and they even ensured she made it to Saturday remedial classes on time. Dad stood by, still as a statue, his face a picture of cold fury. The magistrate was sympathetic, but his hands were tied: a fine and a suspended sentence, on the condition that Khioni was enrolled in the local Reform school.

That was where she was now, in a place that combined the worst of real school with the worst of virtual school. In a classroom with three other students, headsets dangled from the ceiling, and a bulky man sat at the front in a too-tight suit. He wasn’t a teacher; he was just there to make sure they put the headsets on in time. The Reform school used to be a real school, once filled with life and energy, its history now remembered by faded posters and collages clinging to the walls with dried beads of Blu-tack.

A siren hooted, and the bulky man rose to his feet. Mihir and Jake, both in the front row, flipped him off in a coordinated gesture before slipping into their headsets. Next to Khioni, Sophia made a growling sound and rocked her desk back and forth. The man stepped closer and he growled too: “Put them on.” His neck muscles twitched.

Khioni reached up for her own headset, but Sophia broke out into a wail, pushing and crashing her desk into the man’s shins. Khioni settled cold silver over her eyes, catching a last glimpse of Sophia being dragged from the room.

Her hands gripped the desk, her thumbs rubbing the rough wood. Reality swirled and was replaced.

· · ·

Maths at the Reform school was worse – far worse – than virtual school. At least Miss Lydia pretended to smile. In here, her teacher was a wall-sized screen with a rumbling voice which came from everywhere at once. The screen was etched with maths problems and explanations, numbers and symbols circled in red with webs of arrows connecting sentences with algorithms. Khioni copied what she could for ten minutes, until her tablet erased after she made a mistake and made her start again from a completely blank page.

The Reform School had a legislated override on the normal Home Time routine which ejected students from the school at 3:00 pm, or 4:00 pm after remedial time. The rules had been explained to her, first in court, then by the social worker in the cab to the school, then by the bulky man when she was delivered into the classroom. The ghost wouldn’t let her leave the Program until it was happy with her work, and she had a 0% error rate on her solutions. She was allowed one bathroom break in the morning, and one in the afternoon, accompanied by the bulky man who handed her off to a sallow woman who waited outside the cubicle and knocked on the door if she took too long. She slept in a room that was not technically a jail cell because she could leave but guards patrolled the corridor and forced her back to bed. On the wall was a screen to which stars got added if she did something “extra good!” with milestones like ‘Merit Award’ if she got three of them, and ‘Letter from Parents’ if she got ten.

She earned one star once, for managing to answer a complicated equation before the screen had finished explaining it to her, which gave her a flutter of hope against the homesickness she was feeling. Mum and Dad felt very far away during the cold nights when could see nothing but pixels of maths when she closed her eyes. The next question had seemed like the same calculation, but with a tricky negative number and she threw her pen across the room in frustration when she got it wrong. The Program deleted her star.

Another screen showed that she was making progress. Barely. It was hard to properly keep track of time when she was doing the same thing every day. Her tablet filled with calculus, algebraic long division, and probability problems. A lot of it she still didn’t really understand, not like other people understood, yet with enough repetition she could usually get the right answer.

“I think you are ready, Khioni,” rasped the screen. Khioni jerked up from where she was sketching a graph.

“What?”

“To take the leaving test.”

“What do you mean?”

The equations wiped off the screen, replaced with blinking cursor then a series of tables. “My analysis shows that your correct working- and answer-percentages have improved to the minimum standard expected. Past performances indicate that you have a greater than 75% chance to pass the Level 12 Certificate. Would you like to take the test?”

“What happens if I pass?”

“Having achieved your Level 12 Certificate in Mathematics, your court order would be fulfilled. You will return home where you will complete the remainder of your schooling and Level 12 certificates.”

“I’ll do it.”

“Thank you for your confirmation. Beginning Level 12 Maths Exam in 30 seconds. Transitioning to exam setting.”

“Wait, what? I didn’t mean right now.” But the system had already acknowledged her request. Once the test started, it wasn’t to be stopped. The scene around Khioni faded out then brightened into a more traditional exam hall. Rows of empty desks stretched either side of her and ahead, like pixels on a massive scale. She was alone. Red digital numbers counted down from 2:30:00. A question materialised on her tablet.

The system was preventing her from standing. She called out into the hall, the clock ticking panic into her. “I want to do it tomorrow.” She hadn’t meant to start the test right then. Shouldn’t she have started it the next day? The words echoed, hollow.

Red text buzzed into her vision. Penalty: Violation of Exam Rules 2037(a).13.iii: No talking under exam conditions. More text materialised on her desk: final mark -10%. Her breathing was fast and tight, and more warnings popped up in her vision, telling her to relax and take a deep breath. She was still prevented from standing, and her neck jerked as she struggled against the confines of the Program.

“Candidate K. Callas, please attempt Question 1.” The Program was loud, as if shouting directly into her ear. In a way it was. A yellow border flashed around the paper of her desk. The words vibrated in her vision in time with her heart, and she gripped the edge of the desk, forcing herself to focus. The question seemed familiar, something to do with the quadratic equation, but the word problem didn’t make sense. It wasn’t like anything she’d practised. There was no way to go to the next question unless she answered this one.

“I want to stop,” she whispered. “A toilet break, or to quit the test, whatever. Please.”

“A toilet break may be taken after thirty minutes have elapsed. Please attempt Question 1.”

She scribbled down what she could remember about the quadratic equation, plugging in what she thought the right number were and showing all her working like the Program had taught her. Question 2 was even more unfamiliar. She knew it had something to do with probability and people sitting on chairs, but the equations had all fled her brain. A heavy weight sat in her chest, absorbing everything she thought she’d learned. It was hard to take a full breath, and she kept looking around the fake exam hall until the Program reminded her to keep working.

The toilet break came and went, and the questions made less and less sense. The clock had counted down to 1:02:46. Question 37 asked something she couldn’t even remember learning. She threw the pen and sneered when it froze in the air.

‘I can’t,” she said to the Program, wherever the ghost was in this room. “I’m not doing it anymore.”

“Candidate K. Callas, attempt Question 37.”

“I won’t. I don’t know any of this stuff. It’s stupid. I’m stupid”

The pen appeared next her hand, almost trying to push itself into her grasp. She shoved her hands into her armpits. “Stop it. Leave me alone.”

Another warning flashed in her vision. Refusal to make reasonable attempt -10%. That was ridiculous, it should just give her a zero for that one and give her the next one. Maybe she’d understand Question 38.

Note: 1 more infraction will result in expulsion.

“I don’t even care anymore,” she said to nothing. “I’m gonna fail anyway.”

Miss Lydia materialised, summoned from a distant drive by the testing software. A smile was already plastered on her face. “Khioni, honey, what’s wrong? You’ve been working so well. We don’t want to see you throw everything away.”

Khioni frowned up the ghost. “Why do you care?”

“Excuse me?”

“Why do you care? You’re only here because another Program thinks you can make me do the test. All you are is lines of code. People have failed before, let me fail too.”

Miss Lydia looked bemused, as if she had somehow never predicted this question. It seemed to Khioni it would be common for any kids like her to ask. “Well, as you know, achievement of Level 12 Certificates leads to improved outcomes—“

“No,” interrupted Khioni. “Not why the data cares, why you care. What do you even get out of this?”

Miss Lydia stood blinking for a couple of seconds. “I care because it’s my job, I’ve been programmed to ensure you have the best success in life, to ensure your results are the best you can achieve—“

Khioni stopped listening. There it was, the constant references to test results and leaving certificates and programming. The ghost didn’t even care she wasn’t okay except when her scores suffered. Maths had never made sense to her, and the Program couldn’t even see that. The last real teacher she’d had, from Year 8, would have read her books, and let her draw what she was feeling, and use little action figures to show her how to multiply, and have her do twenty star jumps when she couldn’t sit still in her chair. Miss Lydia erased doodles from her workbooks and glued her to her desk.

Khioni shook her head, on the edge of crying but refusing to do so in front of the ghost. “I’m quitting. You have to let me quit. You can’t keep me here forever.”

Miss Lydia frowned, with a slight shake of her head. “Don’t let it be said I didn’t try.” She disappeared, leaving a blank grey hole in the scene which the Program refused to dedicate processing power to, now that she had chosen this path.

The edges of the hall faded, the desks disappearing one by one until she was left at a lone table, floating in a grey void. The illusion was broken, the Program given up on any pretence at reality. The last thing she saw was the timer change to attempt terminated, then the Program blinked out.

Khioni refused to talk as the magistrate tried to reason with her. Mum was begging her to listen, to take the last chances offered to her, and Dad sat fuming, interjecting with muttered curses about his useless daughter costing him everything. They told her that leaving certificates were a requirement for almost any job, and that the Virtual Schooling Program had a 99.5% success rate at passing students. Did she really want to be one of the 0.5% who couldn’t make it, who had no hope for the future, to be a burden on society? She wouldn’t even be allowed a place at home, she’d have to still be enrolled to be allowed to stay with her parents in housing reserved for productive citizens, would have to find work and lodgings in areas for blacklisted people, people who hadn’t finished their qualifications, jobs like unblocking sewers, or slaughtering livestock, or working on blisteringly-hot rooftops, until her body broke down and couldn’t even do the most menial of manual labour.

She replied with silence.

Her parents signed a piece of paper and passed it on to her. It was long, and on the top said Agreement of Expulsion. She printed her name where the magistrate told her to, without reading any of it. Mum and Dad left, Mum crying and Dad shaking his head, ignoring Khioni when she reached out to them.

And that was it. She was free from the Program.

· · ·

The gate shut behind her with a screech of metal on metal, the noise lifting her neck hairs, electronic lock whirring closed. She looked down the street: empty of people and cars. Everyone must be at work. A chip packet tumbled down the asphalt, whipped up by a cool breeze. She heard the distant rumble of highway traffic. Torn posters hung off a plywood wall on an adjacent block: Need work? Drop into any Department of Labour office to see what we can do for you!

Blue sky stretched overhead. The street stretched into the distance, into infinity, offering everything and nothing. She shuffled forward a step, away from the school, away from the tortuous maths. Small pebbles crunched underfoot, the sensation sharp after her weeks in the muted Program.

There was a banner, flapping carelessly in the breeze:

Wollemi College is here for all your rectification needs!

>Adult certification in all government mandated courses.

>Remedial tutorials to clear demerits.

>Job application advice and complimentary references.

Inquire today!*

*Applications subject to screening and blacklisting policies.

An LED street-sign flashed: triple-demerits for speeding offences. Then: three-month blacklist for DUI offences.

Her phone had a dead signal; with her expulsion, she’d lost digital communication privileges, because you needed a Level 6 Technology certificate for this and her certificates had all been stripped. She walked to the on-demand bus stop down the road. Its touchscreen told her she needed a Level 4 Civics certificate to request a bus, and recommended walking. The screen signed off with a smiling avatar, pixelated unlike the near-perfect fabrication of Miss Lydia.

At the shopping centre a security guard trailed her step for step as she tried to buy a sausage roll and discovered her card was cancelled; a Level 3 Maths (Financial) certificate was needed since her parents no longer vouched for her. A second guard joined when her payment declined for a third time, and they quietly ushered her out into the car park. She saw a car that looked like Bianca’s, but Bianca’s mum saw her coming and drove off quickly, increasing the tint on the windows.

She wandered back up the empty street, away from the shops, back towards the old school, and sat on the gutter, legs spread out over the warm asphalt. Leaning back, she stared at the clouds, in a world which suddenly felt very small, a world filled with doors and gates she no longer had access to. Even a sausage roll felt out of reach, something as simple as lunch. Her phone buzzed: Blacklisted citizen loitering in public area. Move on or be fined $1500 in 60 seconds. It was all too much; this was meant to be freedom, an escape from the onerous demands of the Program and its rigid strictness and refusal to let her have fun for even a minute. What was the point of no school if she couldn’t do whatever she wanted?

Tears pricked her eyes as she thought of her friends, who were probably sending her a million messages, asking where she was, what was she doing, was she okay? Mum, who would probably set a third place at the table through habit, even though Dad wouldn’t let Khioni in because he’d have to pay a fine if she stayed in her own home. A life working the worst jobs possible, because no one else would hire her. All because she couldn’t finish some maths test?

Khioni rose and stumbled back to the gate of the Reform School. The bars were cold on her palms, unbending steel. “Let me back in,” she said, stabbing at the intercom. “I’m sorry, I’ll do my work.”

The camera lens stared back at her, as dead as Miss Lydia always was.