There aren't that many schools for Eclipsed out there; it doesn't take long for Maggie and her parents to look at most of them and talk about curricula, employment statistics, and ease of visiting home. The start of term at Selene sees Maggie getting off a bus at the edge of campus, braid swinging over one shoulder and suitcase dangling from the other hand.

A staffperson is there to show her to her hall! Her hall is occupied by, according to the door signs, "Myeisha", "Janet", "Isabella", "Victor", "Roger", and "Jackson". She gets her room to herself.

Single rooms, that's nice. Means there's no obvious person to meet first, but she's sure to meet them all eventually. She unpacks her clothes and toothbrush and her shelf of books (mostly popular nonfiction plus a couple on programming). What does the class-registration situation look like?

She has some placement tests to take first! After that she may partake of whatever she qualifies for modulo gen ed requirements in this handy dandy handbook dandbook.

She'll flip through the sections on math and science and engineering classes, getting a general sense of the prerequisites for stuff, then if placement tests aren't on a drop-in basis she'll take a book on the history of cryptography and go see if this hall has a common area.

She can drop in for the tests!

Then the history of cryptography can wait, except for how she's reading it while walking to the test location. She puts it back in her purse when she gets there.

The tests are computerized and adaptive (they get harder when you answer things correctly).

Then they will quickly get pretty hard. She knows substantially more math and science than the average fifteen-year-old, and a little more English and history. Are those all the subjects they test on?

She may optionally also take tests on foreign languages if she thinks she might place in any.

Sadly not. If the tests are computerized she should be able to get her results now, right?

Yup! She qualifies for some things!

Then she will head back to her dorm to sign up for things! She knows you're not supposed to load up on classes so you have time for magic; she'll take the first math class she didn't test out of, a programming class, chemistry, and econ.

Thusly she is signed up!

If she looks for a common room, she will find a shared living space and kitchen shared by the whole floor, which is four halls.

She brings her book to the common area. Is anyone else in there and looking sociable?

Sub with long dreadlocks doing homework, dom with a cane waiting for the microwave.

She'll smile and nod at them as she walks in, then find a table to sit at and people-watch and think about magic.

Dom with the cane gets her tupperware full of leftover pasta out of the microwave and plops down to eat it. "New person," she comments.

"Yes, I just got here. I'm a psion. You?"

"Also a psion. Isabella. What's your name?"

"Maggie. Nice to meet you, Isabella. Magic is great; got any ideas what you want to do with it?"

"I'm doing eidetic memory and then I'm going precog. How about you?"

"Mental speedup and then I'm going into psionic tech once I've got the background knowledge. There are lots of things in the field that haven't really been explored yet."

"Speedup's a good one to frontload in theory but you're not gonna hit adulthood marketable like that."

"Maybe I'll focus on learning to run a VR first, that will let me get a job while I work on speed and my moonshot projects."

"Yup. Always need people to run the virtualities. Do tell about your moonshots."

Maggie's lights up a bit. "I'm interested in brain-computer interfaces. Things for augmented memory, say, that could work on non-psions. But the real holy grail would be the ability to store a person's brain on a computer. You could get scaleable immortality without repeated mage de-aging that way, and backups so even if you got in a fatal accident you'd just be out a day's memory."

"Considering the current quality of virtual existence you might have some uptake problems but I guess people could hang around waiting for upgrades."

"Well, I'm more imagining robot bodies that interface with a non-virtual world, but yeah. Either way, better waiting around than dead."

"Less prior art on robot bodies with decent sensoria."

"Yeah, it'll be a lot of research on the magic side and on the engineering side wherever I end up going with it. Fortunately I like doing both."

"Sounds great! I hope you get somewhere with it, it'd be nice if eternal life were more accessible."

"Yeah. Of course you won't need to worry about it, precogs are super useful, you'll be able to afford de-aging for sure."

"That is my cunning plan!"

She giggles. "Putting it like that makes you sound like a supervillain. 'I am going to . . . prevent various disasters! Muhahaha.'"

"Bwahahaha!" Isabella cackles.

Maggie smiles and fidgets with the end of her braid. Isabella does an excellent cackle.

"So, um, what classes are you taking in between working on your cunning plan?"

"Gen ed stuff and econ and history of psionics."

"I've got econ too, and precalculus and C++ and chemistry."

"Oh, when's your econ?"

"Tuesdays and Thursdays at one."

"That's not the same as mine, oh well."

"Too bad, it would've been nice to be in a class with someone from my hall. Maybe one of my other hallmates will overlap with me in something; I haven't met anybody else yet."

"Most of 'em are cool. That's Myeisha over there."

Myeisha waves.

"Uh, Jackson is less cool but he doesn't bother subs," Isabella goes on.

Maggie waves back at Myeisha. 

"That sounds troublesome, what sort of bothering does he do?"

"He kneels at people, mostly at mealtimes."

"At people, like, in their personal space? Awkward."

"He doesn't usually touch us but he gets really close and if we tell him to go away... well, he does, temporarily, but, you know."

"But he got you to tell him to do something." Disapproving headshake. "That sucks."

"Yup. Unfortunately, leaving when he's told to is enough that the faculty don't care to do anything about it."

"That's the trouble with institutions like schools, they have to come up with a set of rules that mostly works most of the time and then stick with it, instead of trying to get the right answer every time."

"That's a good way of putting it."

"Thanks. Sometimes I wonder if control training has a bad case of that. Not that I think anything could make it not stink, but I bet it could be made better for at least a subset of people if it didn't have to be so one-size-fits-all."

"Well, if you run a virtuality there can be more of them to choose from."

"Ooh, true."

"Maybe eventually they can be meaningfully distinct instead of one size fits all government stuff."

"Yes. Even just things like shorter exercise periods more often, or longer exercise periods more rarely. . . . Now I kind of want to take a physiology class at some point."

"Ooh, good thinking. I got pretty screwed up, they had to send me to a mage and I need the cane more than I used to anyway."

"I got a bit screwed up too, believe it or not I was even shorter when I went in and now I keep losing track of my knees and elbows."

"If it's any consolation you really pull off the cane as a fashion statement."

"Thanks." She gives it a little twirl.

(eee)

"So did you daydream about getting magic a lot as a kid?"

"Yup. Got the one I wanted too. Alex was so glad it wasn't him, I would have bossed him around."

"Congrats. I mostly daydreamed about being a mage and healing people and giving myself a unicorn horn, but I really liked getting psion. Who's Alex?"

"My twin brother."

"Oh, cool. I'm an only child; having a twin sounds nice."

"I like it. I miss him but I can telepathy him from here so it's okay."

"Neat! I take it that goes both ways?"

"Took longer to let him initiate conversations but I could hear him reply while I was trying from early on, yes."

"That sounds way more convenient than email."

"It's pretty great. I just bug him whenever I'm bored and don't have enough time to make it worth getting into magic practice mode."

"Nice. I just read tiny chunks of book at times like that." She gestures at the neglected history of cryptography.

"Am I keeping you from your book?"

"Oh, not at all, if I'd wanted to read instead of meeting people I'd've stayed in my room. Am I keeping you from anything?"

"Nope. I mean, I wouldn't be bereft if you had to run but nothing time-sensitive."

"Oh, good. Nope, my plan was just to hang around here and meet cool people until dinnertime and so far I am accomplishing both of those things!"

"Cool. Welcome to Selene."

"Thanks. Say, what times is the dining hall open? I could use some food that isn't bus snacks."

"Seven to nine, eleven to one thirty, five to seven thirty."

"Oh good, not too long then. And I bet a school for eclipsed has excellent cafeteria food."

"It's better than what I remember from middle school, it's not as good as a decent restaurant."

"I'll make sure to check out the local restaurants as soon as I've found a campus job, then."

"There's a good Mexican restaurant right by the bus stop you first reach as you go into town."

"Good to know!"

Isabella has finished her food; she starts washing her Tupperware. "The cafeteria lets you walk out with food, I think that's unusual, and you can stash it in the hall fridge for later, but label your containers with masking tape - it's over there hanging from the hook on the fridge next to the pen - and there's a fifty cent fine for letting something get moldy. There's also protein bars and other super dense stuff in the vending machines."

"Thanks!" Maggie gives Isabella a little wave as she walks away, and means back in her chair. If no further conversation materializes she can think about magic until it's time for dinner.

No further conversation materializes. Isabella's at the dining hall before she is, probably because Maggie hasn't been there before. Someone is kneeling at her and she is conspicuously ignoring him.

Must be that Jackson fellow. Perhaps she can get his side of the story, or at least understand what his deal is. She sits on the other side of him from Isabella, far enough over that she's in no danger of accidentally kicking his food.

"Hello again," she says to Isabella. "And hello to you too, I'm Maggie," she adds to Jackson.

"Jackson," says Jackson around a mouthful of macaroni.

"Hi," says Isabella, ignoring Jackson.

Oh boy, how does one have a three-cornered conversation when two of the corners aren't talking to each other. 

"Jackson, would you mind moving to a chair so I can talk to you more easily? Thanks," she says, aiming for "chipper because everything is fine and nothing is weird".

Jackson is nonplussed, but does in fact move to a chair.

Success! Maggie starts digging into her food.

"How's the macaroni?" She says a couple bites in. "I'm liking this stir fry, but I might want something else afterward."

"It's okay. It's hard to mess up macaroni," says Jackson.

Nod. Om nom stir fry.

"So, mage or psion?"

"Psion," says Jackson.

"I guess that makes this the psion table! I'm gonna run a virtuality and make psionic tech, you?"

"I'm gonna do virtuality too. Steady paycheck. I hear if you get good at it you can do it in your sleep."

"Ooh, really? That could be really good for something that pays by the hour. And if I ever learn to lucid dream, I can think about my psionic tech projects and get sleep and get paid all at the same time!"

"You can't do productive magic work in your sleep," says Isabella. "Dream logic sneaks in, what you think up won't work when you wake. It's for entertainment purposes only, but they're pretty great entertainment purposes."

"Ah, rats. But if you can sleep and run a virtuality I bet you can be awake and do magic work and run a virtuality. I shall simply have to content myself with doing two worthwhile things at any given time."

"Yup." Isabella gets up and goes back for seconds.

Maggie finishes her stir fry not long later and goes back for more food herself. Maybe she should avoid the macaroni given Jackson's rather tepid recommendation . . . nah, he gave virtuality-running a pretty tepid recommendation too, no need to prejudge the macaroni on his account. She'll take a scoop worth and an oatmeal raisin cookie.

The macaroni is fine. Isabella has meatloaf, potato salad, and a slice of chocolate cake. She appears to consider sitting at a different table but ultimately returns to her seat.

Maggie will eat her macaroni and cookie quietly and contemplate going back for more cookies, the first one was pretty good.

Isabella finishes eating at around the same time as Jackson and he takes her tray without asking if she'd like him to do that and brings it to where they collect used dishes. Isabella facepalms.

"Wow."

"I can't even, like, chase him or anything."

"I'm not even sure chasing him would have helped. Did my getting him to move to a chair make things less weird, should I try that again if he kneels at you again or just leave well enough alone?"

"Yeah, it was less weird, I appreciated it. I don't really want to sit with him at all and wasn't sure if, if I left, he'd follow me, but it was definitely better than him kneeling at me the whole time."

"Glad it helped. I have no particular desire to sit with him either."

"Well, thank you."

"You're welcome." She scoots back her chair and moves off to bus her own tray, and also grab that couple of cookies for a snack later.

Isabella loads up a couple tupperwares and heads back to the dorm, containers under the non-cane arm.

Maggie's a faster walker than Isabella, so she gets back to the dorm first and goes to her room to think about magic. It feels like pushing and pulling bits of something immaterial around.

Nobody disturbs her. The next morning she has a class schedule slipped under her door.

Her first class today is chemistry and it's stupidly early, so she hurries through the shower and gets to breakfast well before the main rush. She gets a bowl of brown sugar with some oatmeal in it, and a couple of bananas, and a chunk of cheese.

Myeisha is at breakfast that early but Isabella and Jackson aren't and Myeisha's sitting with friends. She can be on time to chem if she doesn't dawdle.

It is too early in the morning for conversation. She will eat her oatmeal and her cheese and walk out of the dining hall with two bananas and into chem with half a banana. 

Chem is a pretty good class taught at her tested-into level, with a teacher who is entirely too morning person.