ote: his skin was light, almost like enough to pass. But his hair short nap he and his nose was wide flat. His eyes are green with gold flecks. leonine.
Picts blew through the classmind like a breeze through the leaves of a tree, the Goople watermark barely visible in the backdrop of thought.
The classmind was the collective intelligence of the class, fused together by collaboration. There were all kinds of bigMinds, and each one had its own idiosyncratic archetypes, a kind of semiotic pidgin.
But Isaac couldn’t pay attention to the picts blowing through his thoughtnode. He had been up late again the night before, searching for readers in the dreamspace.
Now his alert flashed, and the teacher was asking him if he had his homework. He didn’t. Even if he’d had it, he was so distracted, he would have missed the call to turn it in. Fortunately, class was moving on, the teacher’s disapproving metemotions dispersing like a fading semitransparency.
As they got to their simulated operating, Isaac glanced over at Jethro, his new classmate, probing over toward him with his mind. He felt the firm intensity of determination beneath the raw unevenness of a beginning integro as Jethro took his turn guiding three food semis at the same time in the simulator.
Could Jethro be the data-index that Isaac needed?
Isaac looked at him again and remembered when he’d first walked into the class with his coal-stained clothes and work-hardened body. How long ago had that been now? A month?
Everything had stopped. It was good they had been in the simulator that day because Helen had dropped her vac suddenly, causing his hand to be sucked into the crushing factory gears, his real-seeming screams echoing through the simulator as the red-alarm code flashed in front of the Classmind’s consciousness. The laughter of several of the junior generals rang out at the sight of the man struggling to pull his hands from the gears.
The sim ended abruptly, and all turned toward the young man, who stood in cold defiance, returning their stares.
There was a susurration of loathing and fear rippling through the Classmind at this young man who was clearly of vac origin in their very real classroom. Everyone knows that vacs in meatspace, un-operated, can be unpredictable and dangerous. Isaac could feel some of his classmates reaching out to probe the newcomer for his off switch. There was a quick jerk of surprise as they realized that, in fact, this young man was not a vac but an integro, fully implanted up to their grade-level. The Mind let this feeling exist for a moment, replaced by the magnanimous feeling one has when welcoming an unequal to a round table.
Isaac allowed the feeling to pass through him while his reason calculated the strategy behind the Mind bringing this young man into his school.
The new thickways must be generating substantial processing power if the Mind could afford to crack the semantic codes of those raised apart from integration. But on the other hand, their opened minds formed outside of the Mind would be like little lights, shining into the darkness of the turbulent vac world.
There was another movement of surprise as the former vac addressed the Classmind, “I, Jethro.” The thought was crudely formed, like a man striking his chest, but audible enough. So he could communicate?
Isaac had felt a feeling of wonder, with as surge of fascination. The Mind gradually pressed the fascination into a dull sense of welcome.
But now Jethro was part of the classmind, and his picto was improving daily, thanks to the training in dreams. His mind was sharp and curious, yet totally alien.
Billy picted him an epic battle moment on their private line, backs together, axes flashing, Viking braids flying as they clove green-skinned lizard-men into slippery pieces. The pict broke him from his reverie and dropped him from the classmind.