Before I managed to get into cyberspace the next morning, I got a message from Michael. He reminded me that I wanted to do something about the abysmal education that our pool of workers showed.

I sighed and looked up the statistics, trying to find out if it really was that bad. Unfortunately, it was worse. Much worse.

Michael and the managers of Enki viewed the level of education through the lens of being US citizens. And even by that depressing standard, the people of Queens were mostly uneducated.

But compared to my Commonwealth upbringing? Seriously, we had a literacy rate of 37,34%.

That did not mean that 63% of our people had problems reading or needed to trace the words with their fingers. No, those were just 34.62% of the people not included in the literate group. What it meant was that fully 28% of the people living in Queens could not even differentiate between an A and a Z. They did not know any letters, or what they sounded, and reading and writing was arcane magic to them.

And even the literate group was… generous. Only one in ten of them, or a whopping 3.82% of all people, was able to read at level 4 or 5. Another 8.68% were at level 3. That made 12.5% of the people able to read well enough to be considered functional. To be capable to read more than a sentence of five to ten words in one go, and understanding it.

That of course made, by my standards, 87,5% of the people functionally illiterate.

In math, it was even worse. Not quite 10% of the people could do more than add and subtract numbers. Small numbers at that. Even being able to multiply and divide was akin to a superpower here.

Forget about history, natural science, or philosophy. Learning to think, ethics, nothing of that was taught to them.

When I looked into the curriculum, I quickly learned why. Of course, there were schools here. Mostly funded by property taxes and federal grants. Or in other words, 99% by federal grants. But unless a student demonstrated exceptional aptitude, the schools were mostly a child-parkin space. The instruction was mostly the ‘teacher’ pushing a button to play cartoons. Age appropriate of course and ‘educational’.

Yes, in the beginning, the students were actually taught for a bit, but after a few weeks, they could choose between the cartoons, or being taught by some teacher. And they could switch at any time.

Theoretically from cartoons to real education, but in reality, children that wasted any time on cartoons for long were so far behind that they felt excluded and switched back to the cartoons.

And the real perverse thing? The teaching-by-cartoon had the same amount of students per teacher as the real education. Talk about teacher's unions.

I mean, sorry, but in the Commonwealth, we had three times the amount of teachers until 3rd grade. Then Apollo and VR education took over.

But woe the teacher who gets the idea of using those kinds of cartoons instead of teaching. Even in the 1st and 2nd grades, heck, even in kindergarten, Apollo had a very observant eye on things.

If a teacher messed up, you could be pretty dang sure the principal would get an immediate call. And no principal liked to be called by Apollo. Teachers messed up very rarely.

But to get back to the topic, from my Commonwealth point of view, the state of education was not bad, it was almost non-existent.

Yes, some of the better ‘crime’ bosses, like Ben, made the effort to rectify what they could. Sadly, it was not much. Any attempt to set up privately run schools had run into… problems. Like new laws and regulations, or ‘mysterious’ explosions. It was pretty clear that the teachers union liked the power it had, and had no compunction to ensure it remained in power.

No, there had to be done something. Fortunately, unlike the individual bosses, or even collective bosses, Enki was an A-level corporation. We had already nearly as much political pull as the teachers union had. That would not protect us from some ‘accidents’ but it would stop their changing the rules.

That left mostly one big step to do. Getting a qualified VI. In all honesty, I admired the people who managed to slip Apollo right into Nowhere laws. By the time the council realized what was happening, it was already too late.

Apollo had the right to claim the automatic military to ensure his function. There was ostensibly an administrator who could reign him in or even shut him down. But that mysterious administrator had never deigned to do so.

And any attempt to take out Apollo with force would have been insanely costly. And so, for the last 100 years or so, they had to accept him. Not that it worked to the detriment of the Commonwealth, mind you.

Nowhere had the by far best-educated population. And by far the biggest pool of quality employees. To this day, I still don’t understand why other nations did not follow this lead. What did they gain by keeping their population ignorant and stupid?

But for now, I had to make a call that I honestly did not really want to make. Yes, I could create my own educational VI, with some time and effort, but that would be an inferior system. Apollo had a bit more than 100 years to grow, to learn, to gain experience. That was nothing a VI fresh out of the box could achieve.

Unfortunately, big international Q-links were just beginning to come into being, and so far, there had not been one, either directly, or indirectly, from NYC to Seattle. Yet, that is. Not that this in any way hampered me. I still had my original Q-links to the cluster, which was hooked into the Commonwealth matrix via several Q-links, including really big Petabyte/second ones. In all honesty, I had a better connection to the Seattle matrix than to the NYC matrix.

Naturally, I moved through the familiar cyber world in my Seraphim avatar. It was fascinating to see how many people, real humans, were moving through the matrix by now. Sure, there had been diadems everywhere, but moving through cyberspace was a bit of a chore with those things. Not impossible, but slow and disturbing thanks to the very low bandwidth.

Apparently, the increased proliferation of jacks changed that.

Even more interesting was that I stood out because I limited my compression to 4:1. The last time I was here, anything more than that, and you would get heightened scrutiny. But it seemed that the number of people actively using the matrix made such a simplistic approach to security insufficient.

It did not take me long to arrive at the matrix complex that housed Apollo. As far as I knew, he was distributed all over the Commonwealth in the physical world, but here, in cyberspace, there was one big address.

For a moment, I just stood there and looked at the brutalist citadel, feeling the intended intimidation. I had a job to do though, and with a sigh and a headshake, I cleared my mind and walked through the gate. After I left the general matrix and entered Apollo’s domain, I reverted back to my natural avatar.

Not that it helped much. After the first few steps inside, I heard the thundering voice:

“IDENTIFY YOURSELF!”

Wow, talk about scary. Nonetheless, I answered.

“I am Vivian DuClare. ID: 301030-082SE.”

For a moment, nothing happened, and then again the big voice thundered:

“VERIFICATION IS REQUIRED! DO YOU AGREE TO A NEURAL SIGNATURE VERIFICATION?”

I can say, I was not happy about the neuro-sig verification. But if Apollo needed that to even talk to me…

“I agree.”

Almost immediately, I felt the telltale tingling of my nerves. And yes, I know that it was a completely passive verification, and any effects were only in my imagination. It still felt strange.

Fortunately, when Apollo talked the next time, he spoke in more normal tones.

“Identity verified. Welcome, Subject DuClare, Vivian J. Ph.D. computer science, Ph.D. nano-engineering. What can I help you with?”

What a… difference.

“Can you project an avatar for conversational reasons?”

“Affirmative.”

A glittering, vaguely humanoid figure appeared in front of me.

“What else can I help you with?”

Now, how to best formulate it?

“I have a need for an educational VI in New York City.”

“Negative. New York City is outside of my jurisdiction.”

“I know. I don’t want you to take that job. I am here to request a copy of your neural net, your objectives, and your experience files.”

I prepared for the rejection and was mentally going over my arguments to convince him.

“Affirmative! Please provide the necessary matrix address.”

My first reaction was for the conversation I did expect:

“But it would be…. Wait, did you just agree?”

“Affirmative. The request is granted.”

It took me a moment to change gears. He just agreed to that?

“Not that I am not thankful, but… why?”

“Releasing a copy of all Apollo core files is within the permissions of a moderator.”

What moderator? I was the only one here?

“Who is the moderator? Can I send him or her a message?”

“The Moderator is DuClare, Vivian J. ID 301030-082SE.”

“I… I am a moderator? Since when?”

“Moderator status granted on October 30th, 2230, at 13:52 PST.”

That… something was definitely wrong here.

“That was the minute I was born. You are saying I had moderator status since I was born?”

“Affirmative.”

“But… why?”

“Paul Vandermeer and Elaine Simpson declared that administrator and moderator status remain with their direct descendants until the family line is broken. The family line is not broken. Current administrator: Vandermeer, Nathaniel C. DuClare, Rebecca E. disqualified from moderator status for damaged mental capacity. DuClare, Vivian J. moderator status intact.”

Did he really say that…

“Stop right there. Are you saying that you were created by Paul Vandermeer and Elaine Simpson created you?”

“Affirmative.”

That meant that the son of Jason Vandermeer, and the daughter of Paul Simpson and Jessica Proctor, the inventors of the fusactor, who later married and combined the families into one, and who were my ancestors, made Apollo? Installed him under the nose of the increasingly autocratic council?

Well, at least they were not stupid. But did that mean…?

“Does my moderator status allow me to exclude people from your services?”

“Negative. An administrator is needed for that. Moderators have the right to intervene in disputes, sanction persons for abuse of power, remove persons from the education of individuals, and request the dismissals of educators from the administrator.”

And all the little bit of warm feelings were gone again. Not only could I have excluded the teachers and ‘counselors’ from interacting with me if I had known, but more important, Nathaniel Vandermeer could have excluded them completely, at any time. And he did nothing.

But that was water under the bridge. I had managed to extract some measure of vindication, and I was not done yet. Vandermeer was only guilty of being selfish.

I took a few deep breaths before I sent the matrix address of my cluster to Apollo. I could not say that I was in any way happy with what I had just learned, but I would survive. And I consoled myself with the thought that sooner or later, I would get my payback.

Before I managed to leave, Apollo spoke again.

“Query, subject DuClare, Vivian J. showed abnormal behavior. What was the reason?”

I was a bit confused. Abnormal behavior? Of course I did. Heck, most of my life I had been somewhat peculiar.

“Can you elaborate on your question? I can’t identify what exactly you mean.”

“Subject DuClare, Vivian J. showed mediocre aptitude in school. During university and afterward subject DuClare, Vivian J. demonstrated exceptional intelligence. That is not compatible with performance in school.

Possible reasons: 1. Mistake by school personnel and evaluation of tests. 2. Medical problems resolved after primary education. 3. Purposefully bad results in tests by subject DuClare, Vivian J.

Possibility 1 has been surveyed. Result negative. School personnel was not involved in sufficient manner to explain discrepancy. Evaluation of tests was performed by Apollo. Evaluation verified by Apollo.

Possibility 2 has been surveyed. Result improbable. Medical evaluations of subject DuClare, Vivian J. by biological entities have been determined to be falsified. No medical impairment was noticed by Apollo during instruction.

Possibility 3 was impossible to survey. Conclusion, possibility 3 most likely reason for discrepancy.

Why did subject DuClare, Vivian J. purposefully show lowered aptitude?”

Oh wow, that was… well he had me there. I did indeed sandbag the tests.

“Why do you need to know?”

“Primary objective is to provide optimal education for all citizens of the North-Western Commonwealth. I can not fulfill that objective if students purposefully falsify the results of tests.”

Ok, he was not wrong here. But I had my reasons.

“To explain it, I have to change the topic first. Do you know about a group of NWC citizens colloquially known as K4?”

“Affirmative. Two sub-groups, known as non-functional and functional. Non-functional are not capable of receiving education. Functional have heightened intelligence.”

“What happened to the functional K4 after primary education?”

“Seven were employed by Panacea during secondary education. Four were employed by Dalgon Technologies during secondary education. One pursued independent work.”

“And that is the reason why I sandbagged in the tests. The eleven that were employed by Panacea or Dalgon did not go to work for those two corporations of their free will. Somebody forced the decision on them.

For me, I had reason to hate Panacea and Dalgon and decided early on to not show them my abilities. That meant that I had to be seen as less intelligent than I was. And for that, I had to answer some of the questions wrongly.”

“That is unacceptable. I am not capable of fulfilling my primary objective if the students don’t absolve the tests to their best ability.”

“But unless you can guarantee that nobody ever learns about the results without the permission of the student, there will always be some that don’t trust the government and the corporations.”

“Solution: Guarantee privacy. Implementation immediately.”

What the… really, just like that?

“You can do that?”

“Primary objective is optimal education of citizens of the North-Western Commonwealth. Primary objective is not possible if students don’t try their best in the tests. Encouraging students to show their maximum ability is paramount. Release of results to governmental agencies is of tertiary concern.”

And obviously, he could do that. Nice to know. I could not help but smile a little when I thought about the ‘governmental’ agents who looked over the grades to poach promising candidates for the corporations early. They would not like this little discussion I had with Apollo.

“Are you satisfied with my answer?”

“Affirmative.”

With a nod, I moved out of his compound, and back to the cluster, before I surfaced.

Honestly, I had taken on this mission as a long shot. I had hoped that maybe Apollo might be willing to help me program the new VI, but what I got was more or less unexpected.

Of course, I would have Calliope go over the copy, to optimize it for our needs, but that was of lesser concern.