“Grace Victoria Partneux” the voice called out, and from our remaining number, a slight woman with red-pearlescent-violet hair stepped out. I had her marked down as “Major defense contractor—mother” in my little database. She was dressed in an elegant and shimmery two-piece suit, likely from some exclusive designer or even personal fashion line. Like the others before her, she approached the dais, stepped up the two steps, and then knelt on the small padded structure placed there directly for the purpose.

Next to her, the master of ceremonies intoned the line he’d spoken so many times before:

“Grace Victoria Partneux, do you formally accept the offer to enroll at the Imperial Excellence Institute?”

Grace, pausing for a moment and breathing deeply, continued the script like so many had done before her in a clear and concise tone.

“I, Grace Victoria Partneux, accept, and hereby dedicate the summation of my efforts in pursuit of upholding and exceeding this Institution’s great expectations. May my legacy one day be recorded in the Hall. Glory to the Imperium.”

Then, with golden fingers, the master of ceremonies reached forwards, and deftly traced the shimmering ink onto the kneeling woman’s face, depositing a small triangle of gold on each of her cheekbones. Finished with his anointment, he straightened, and concluded Grace’s induction.

“Congratulations Grace Victoria Partneux, you are now enrolled at this great Institution and have been bestowed the rank of Neophyte. Wear this title with honor, for even obtaining it is a grand achievement.”

“Glory to the Imperium.”

He gave a standard, one-handed imperial salute which Grace echoed back at him, before she stepped backwards away from the kneeler and then, descending from the dais, retreated to where the already-inducted students were assembled.

I knew what was coming next—with how small our group was, it was unlikely that there’d be someone between “pa” and “py”. Then, it happened:

“Issa Pyxis” was called out, and almost automatically, I found myself following the path of those who’d already been called. I tried to avoid thinking about the many eyes, physical and virtual, that must be tracing my every move, yet I couldn’t keep those thoughts completely out of my head. Then, before I even knew how I’d gotten there, I was are crouching down and placing my knees on the soft white pillow of the kneeler.

Inevitably, my eyes looked up and scanned the crowd, which was a mistake.

I mean, I’d spent my whole post-childhood life performing acts with definitions that firmly fell on the wrong side of the Imperial legal codex, yet here I was: within line-of-sight to the seat of the Imperial Government.

What am I doing!?

The feelings, and my internal monologue only got worse as I scanned the crowd of attendees. Sure, most were IEI students and people whose public tags identified them as Institute faculty and staff, yet there were also people who I presumed were dignitaries, parents, or alumni scattered through the crowd.

For example, that man’s tag says he’s “Head of Security, Capitol Sector 8”.

I shuddered, trying to keep it all mental, but the problem was, that the smattering of high-ranking-whoevers weren’t those that really scared me. No, floating above the crowd were a handful of virtual focus indicators that made it clear this whole ceremony was being broadcast—to places unknown and potentially unknowable. Exactly who’s watching this?

A small shift to my right recaptured my attention, and I became keenly aware of how the proceedings directly around me had slipped from it. Rewinding my internal logs for a couple seconds, I saw the issue and winced. I had a role to play, and, while sure, I could back out now…

“I, Issa Pyxis, accept, and hereby dedicate the summation of my efforts in pursuit of upholding and exceeding this Institution’s great expectations.”

Brief pause, deep breath.

“May my legacy one day be recorded in the Hall. G lory to the Imperium.”

As far as oath deliveries went, it was okay. I didn’t stutter, didn’t slip up. Still, I knew without even checking my logs or an external viewpoint that my recital of the line hadn’t been anything impressive when compared to some of the specimens that had come before me.

I didn’t have a perfect voice, engineered to deliver pitch-perfect lyrical stanzas or be practically spilling over with charismatic political potential like many of the others.

Then, golden-slicked fingers dipped down in front of my face, and fighting a flinch and a shudder at the skin-contact, I let the man draw the two triangular symbols on each of my cheekbones, and desperately tried to think about anything other than being the center of attention. Instead, I focused on the man’s immaculate suit, which, hell, that just reminds me how underdressed I must appear, and endured the uncomfortably slick extremities on my face.

At that moment, I wished I wasn’t so alone. Even my Issa-copies, for all that they weren’t really different people from me, would’ve at least made me feel like I wasn’t kneeling and surrounded entirely by enemies.

“Congratulations Issa Pyxis, you are now enrolled at this great Institution and have been bestowed the rank of Neophyte. Wear this title with honor, for even obtaining it is a grand achievement.”

“Glory to the Imperium.”

I stood, and fighting to keep an iron grip on any external tells, repeated the salute back at him. Then, I performed a measured-yet-hasty retreat back to where the inducted students were waiting in a small crowd.

This time, unlike when I’d arrived in the shuttle, I actually got more than a look of acknowledgement from my now triangle-adorned peers. Several gently inclined their heads in greeting, and I figured that, despite not doing more than reciting the oath and letting someone fingerpaint my face with golden ink, I’d now passed some sort of respect threshold. That’s when I noticed my new accesses.

Now that I was officially a student—Neophyte—of the Institute, I had access to its internal network and information system. A system, which while not providing all the detail possible, did allow all students to see some basic information about all other students. Now I could look at those around me and get a definitive match on their names, ages, and chosen subjects of study.

I checked my own public profile:

> Name: Issa Pyxis (She/Her)

> Age: 21

> Lineage: N/a

> Rank: Neophyte

> Merit Points: 5

> Focus: Software Engineering

> Appellations: [Full Merit Scholarship]

Not many surprises there—although I hadn’t noticed that I turned 21 within the past couple months. Besides that though, the rest of the more confusing parts of my public student profile quickly cleared themselves up with liberal usage of the inbuilt help-function. For example, were I a member of the highborn nobility, the Lineage field would have some information in it.

More interesting though, and what I suspected had caused the slightly respectful acknowledgment among my peers, had been the “Appellations” category. Apparently, certain tasks or academic challenges could result in receiving one, and most awarded the semi-enigmatic “Merit Points”. I, for scoring well enough in my standardized assessments to be invited to IEI even from a nobody-background, had been given the “Full Merit Scholarship” title, along with five merit points.

The system also helpfully informed me that going “above and beyond” by scoring higher on certain examinations could result in additional appellations and merit points. As for what the merit points could be used for? Well, that was rather enigmatic. The system would only tell me that these points would be determined “…to recognize and reward academic achievement…”. Something I need to figure out I guess.

Then, with my new-found abilities, I started looking up the profiles of the people near me.

> Name: Magdeline Ardentsworth (She/Her)

> Age: 22

> Lineage: Branch-Ardentsworth

> Rank: Neophyte

> Merit Points: 3

> Focus: Architecture, Civil Engineering

> Appellations: [Merit Scholarship] [Portfolio Project]

Huh.

I could guess what “Merit Scholarship” designated based off of my “Full Merit Scholarship” but what did “Portfolio Project” mean? Investigating closer revealed that the title linked to some files, and after pulling them up and taking a look, it became clear as I put together some of the clues that I hadn’t managed to place while I’d been working on how to get IEI to notice me.

Apparently, doing a “Portfolio Project” was one of the unwritten suggestions that, among the progeny of the wealthy elite, signaled that they’d like to be invited to IEI. In Magdeline’s case, she’d utilized her architecture skills to design a small rural governmental administration center and then utilized her family’s bottomless reserves of financial might to have the thing actually built.

Truth be told though, I thought as I looked at a 3d-representation of the building in question, it’s not half bad actually.

Rapidly scanning through the rest of the students, I found that Magdeline was something of an anomaly: while the “Portfolio Project” appellation was near-ubiquitous, only a minority of the others had merit scholarships and only one had matched my full merit scholarship status. About half had nothing besides their projects at all—and thus only one merit point—while the other half had a smattering of various merit titles and a few even had military achievements of some flavor or another on their profiles.

In some ways, all this new information made me a bit proud. I’d made it on merit, where many of my peers had clearly simply burnt money in their “projects” aka “fancy bribes”. Then again, the idea that at least one of them had achieved similar academic—

Stop it Issa, and focus.

Right. I recentered my thoughts. I wasn’t attending IEI to be the best or join their fanciful “Hall”. I shouldn’t care about academic rankings—despite the fact that it unnerved me that someone had exhibited scholarly prowess similar to mine—no, I was here for one reason, and one reason only: I needed to build the Imperium’s trust of me. Specifically, I needed them to trust me so much, that I could gain access to an appropriate ship and escape. Nothing else mattered.

Although, isn’t stand-out achievement a path you could take…?

I wasn’t sure. Regardless though, the ceremony was wrapping up. The last and freshly-triangled Neophyte had joined our group, and the Master of Ceremonies was gave us a closing speech.

Later, after a short campus tour and being assigned into “student accommodations” which was a decently lavish single-room apartment, I stood in front of the vanity system and stared at my reflection.

The golden triangles that adorned my face were certainly eye-catching, and as I reached up and gently touched them, feeling what felt like a smooth layer of flexible metal adhered directly to my skin. Looking at myself—and not to be too narcissistic here—I looked good. Erudite. Imperial. Powerful. It wasn’t a big change, but similar to extreme contrast in the marbled skin of the highborn, it looked distinctive, and despite my feelings towards the Imperium as a whole, I had to admit that they’d successfully imprinted at least some of their stylistic preferences onto me.

Still, as good as they looked, during the tour around campus not all of the older students we encountered had been adorned in geometric facial markings, and many of those who were, had projected them there via personalized AR tags for—presumably—convenience sake.

Gripping one corner, and gently sliding my fingernail underneath, I wasn’t surprised to find that I was able to lift the whole thing off in one piece. I pulled off the second one, and then examining them in my hands just raised more questions—how had the Master of Ceremonies painted them so perfectly? The corners were sharp, the thickness perfectly even and the surface mirror-polish-smooth.

Except for the back, apparently.

Squinting at the side that’d been adhered to my face I’d noticed that the surface wasn’t quite smooth, and after ratcheting up the magnification level on my eyes a couple steps, I could see why:

On the back, printed in miniscule script, were lines of code.

I blinked in surprise. Huh.

Quickly scanning the code to make sure I understood it completely, I chuckled at what it was: the template for an AR tag. A template, that if I used it, would allow me to project two golden triangles on my face via the campus-net AR.

It was fantastically extra. Throwaway golden face paint that adhered effortlessly, dispensed seamlessly from the hands, self-assembled into a perfect shape… and formed intricate embossed lines of code on the back.

My chuckle died.

They’d casually smeared self-assembling nanotech onto my face. Nanotech, a substance which was categorically dangerous, versatile, and ludicrously expensive if it wasn’t hyperspecialized for a certain task. Producing the golden-colored one-time-use nanomachines that formed these two small golden decorations probably cost more than the equivalent mass in gold would by orders of magnitude.

I shuddered.

What have I gotten myself into?

It’s not like I could forget names, but there still was some disconnect that occurred because I only saw the others in my lectures so infrequently. As I walked into the lecture hall—which was still strange coming from spending compared to countless hours in virtual—I quickly homed in on a seat and casually acknowledged those around me. Getting nods in return, but nothing more, I sat, and waited for the lecture to begin.

Overall, I enjoyed them, as rare as they were subjectively. The lecturers were always extremely knowledgeable about their subjects, and because the caliber of people who attended IEI all had enough wealth and associated ‘ware to simply not forget things, the lectures focused on how to think and approach problems rather than something so base as rote memorization as some of my earlier experiences with education had been.

Unfortunately, this also presented something of a problem for me: since I'd slipped into the role of being an academic overachiever, I had to maintain the level of quality that’d gotten me a spot at IEI in the first place. Essentially, perfect grades. I, unable to spread my attendance over multiple virtual copies of me, had to slog through days of back-to-back lectures and labs, all while physically present. That was only half of it though. From the outside, my academic record indicated that I attended as many lectures as possible without chronological issues, and on the next day, I’d have already internalized and mastered all the material from the previous day.

I’d maintained this pace for a whole three days before I folded. Tired to the bone, and weary of the workload that’d previously been shouldered by two or more virtual copies that couldn’t get exhausted, I’d decided to risk it. Carefully, and with liberal applications of my strongest personal encryption schemes, I’d dug a virtual tunnel from the local net all the way to my remote apartment. It was, of course, a risk. A big risk.

It was the obvious solution though, and while I’d maintained contact with the Issa-copies that were still spooking around the servers I’d left behind, being able to interact with them in virtual and merge with them. Doing so had been good for me. Suddenly, the memories of my emotional state hadn’t been a non-stop stream of stress, bursts of panic, and lingering fear that I’d be found out. Instead, there were calming memories in there, of me spending days relaxing or pursuing passion projects in virtual.

Once I’d established this connection and regained my ability to merge with and form copies of myself, I’d bounced back. Yes, attending all the lectures possible was still somewhat exhausting, but with help, I was able to renormalize and live comparatively stress-free. My system was simple:

I’d go to all the lectures, labs, and other activities always making sure to record everything at a high fidelity. Then, when all the scheduled tasks for the day were done, I’d go back to student accommodations, flop down on my bed, and split myself into as many virtual copies as my remote servers could handle, all of them armed with memories and recordings of the day’s activities.

After that, I—my physical self—would spend some time relaxing and reviewing the day’s material just so that any of my nosier peers wouldn’t start asking uncomfortable questions. Meanwhile, most of the virtual Issas would review the day’s lectures, learn the material, study, do the practice assignments, and so forth, while the maintain-Issa's-sanity contingent of copies relaxed, spent time playing games, or pursued various hobbies.

Then, in the morning, I’d quickly merge with my copies, quickly make a couple new ones, and then head off to face the day equipped with many extra days of knowledge.

It wasn’t all upsides though. Yes, managing the educational load became easily manageable when spread out over multiple people who didn’t have physical limitations and time spent relaxing helped, but as I looked around the room, the people were still strangers. From their perspectives, they’d last seen me some eight hours ago while from mine? Five days ish?

I’d also stalled on any next steps—planning on my part had mostly revolved around gaining a foothold in high society and slipping into the recruiting pool. Now that I was there though? I was unsure what to do next.

The classical answer would be to network, build connections, make influential friends, an so forth… but I had no idea how to do that. Great efforts had pursued on my part to specifically avoid the social wrangling that had gone on in the Emerald Ones, and those skills were exactly the ones I lacked now. This lack of agency, lack of initiative bothered me deeply.

Still, what was I to do? Regaining the upper hand and acting proactively was difficult and risky. I wasn’t sure what kind of profile the various recruiting agencies had of me, but while I was confident in my technical skills to manipulate, obscure, and obfuscate my digital trails and traces, I wasn’t confident at all in my base acting and intrapersonal manipulation skills. Compared to what my fellow Neophytes could likely do—all of them born-and-raised social predators—any attempt on my part at deceit would presumably be immediately obvious even if I thought I was doing a good job.

So I’ll have to be what? Honest?

There was a certain appeal to that strategy, even if it did have to be tempered by realism. Obviously my true goal needed to be obfuscated, but why would Issa Pyxis, no-name reclusive top student be interested in secret governmental work?

It was something I needed to think about.

Who knows. Maybe inspiration will strike one of me.