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Hatsuka likes to get her homework done as quickly as possible, regardless of quality. If possible she will do it in the five minutes it takes the other students to put their books away and slide their chairs under the tables. Max will happily spend hours perfecting his work and is quite content to leave it until tomorrow. In this sense they are good lab partners. The Takin International School sets a lot of homework. Some of it is fun, such as Hatsuka’s project on the interactions between Mr Pibbs, her real cat, and Dr Pepper, a robot cat built in class. Both rub against her legs when she pauses in the hall. She has already sold the patent for a piece of moulting code which allows Dr Pepper to shed and regenerate his fur. She stirs red powder into a glass of milk and sits down at the table.

You can access the Holophin’s interface simply by closing your eyes: a hallway with doors and drop-down menus. You can customise its appearance from a limited set. Hatsuka favours the retro look of the first Holophins: a simple corridor made of purple vectors. You can wander down it in your mind’s eye. She enters Visual and selects a warm effulgence to emanate from every object. A sense of home. She opens her eyes.

Surrounded by a nimbus of golden light, Max goes to the window and takes out his clarinet. His Holophin beams the score to Rachmaninov’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini onto the glass. He clears his throat and starts to play. The taste of the reed makes him see bulrushes, a pond, wildfowl.

‘That’s from an advert. What’s it for?’ asks Hatsuka.

Max blows a sour note.

‘Your bum, I think,’ he says.

Hatsuka notices with irritation that he uses the English bum rather than his native butt. Half Japanese, half English, she adores the American accent. All the best cartoons were American and you never quite shook that off. A voice that entertains, legitimises, suspends your disbelief. Why on earth would an American want to sound English? He carries on playing. He has to practice for the Team Building Residential.

Max is not called Max. His given name is Immanuel. When Hatsuka was introduced to him on induction day she misheard Immanuel as Maximillian and said, ‘Can I call you Max?’

‘I guess so,’ said Immanuel, faintly baffled. The name stuck. Everyone calls him Max. The instructors and the students.

They both study at the Takin International School as boarders. In the mornings: Logic, Rhetoric and Grammar. In the afternoons: Nano-technology, Engineering and Marketing.