3

She calls her father. He appears in her mind’s eye. Laughing as always. The reception is terrible as always. Her parents cannot work the stripped-down Holophin she sent them just to make calls. They appear in her head, laughing and apologising. As she has been too busy to visit for - can it really be? - a year now Hatsuka has actually taken to writing to her parents.

As well as a seat of learning, the school is the sole manufacturer and retailer of Takin Industrial’s Holophins. Holophins have the appearance of small holographic dolphin-shaped stickers. They are equipped with advanced artificial intelligence and can communicate wirelessly with any computer terminal or network. They produce sound through a tiny internal speaker which can be amplified by its proximity to certain surfaces. Primarily, though, the Holophin speaks directly into your auditory centre. There are countless independent software producers working on new functions for the Holophin. In the last five years they have branched into every sector. Health. Finance. Education. Admin. Among the most popular functions are perception and personality modulators.

You can see coloured stars bursting out of everyone’s mouths when they talk. You can make everyone prettier. By following the Holophin’s training you can make yourself up to 45% more charming, 20% more patient in every social interaction. On the fringes of this are the memory inflectors – the most impressive and the most unpredictable. Anecdotally there are reports of users left permanently psycho- and physiologically affected by memory modulation. There is no evidence for this yet, but the software is not recommended. Holophins are charged by being stuck on the flesh of their owner. A high carb diet is recommended.

Hatsuka blinks, closes her eyes and thumbs through a batch of 200 photographs. Holophin tattoos. Holophins stitched directly into the flesh. A Holophin beneath the skin. She is looking for the least unattractive for the vote next week. The mandatory Holophin implant is one of the more controversial policies of the Takin International School, but it has shown such extraordinary results with sex offenders, murderers and criminals of every stripe that they are currently working on several penitentiary contracts.

Student accommodation is paid for by the students’ own research and development, which leads to a hierarchy between lab partners. Hatsuka and Max, something of a power couple among their year-group, live in a luxury condo [see Drs Helen and A. Ambrose Meols’ Infant Cohabitation with Minimum Supervision]. Animatronics is all practice. Mindless busy work when compared to the Holophins. Max’s current coursework is embedding them with a sense of Status Anxiety. Hatsuka is collaborating on this while undertaking her own pet project in ad hominem attacks. The Holophins are unusually receptive to this. There’s something gleefully malevolent about them. Already her test-Holophins are accusing one another of misapplying the term ad hominem. ‘It doesn’t just mean getting personal, you moron! It has to undermine the argument!’ Tim Takin, the headmaster and CEO, is being interviewed on the news. Dinner tonight is white fish substitute in white sauce served with kelp. Max leaves his kelp.