It was never enough that Jessica attended public school. Her early days of rebellion were some of her best, why they carried on so vividly in her memory, including that bizarrely angsty time as an 8-year-old.

"I was there yesterday, and Ms. Camargo, again, complained about all the work she won't do." Jessica's mom, despite looking tired most of the time, had a certain youthfulness to her. The way her shoulders peaked from her black blazer made her broad and imposing, more so whenever those bronze hands clenched her hips. High brows over sharp brown eyes penetrated little Jessica's juvenile spirit. Jessica would inherit those eyelashes, including the blackness of the ponytail her mom tied before every excursion. The scariest thing was learned and not bred, and that was the woman's posture.

"Es por tu bien," Stephanie Leibniz said at the end of every lecture. She checked her watch. "I'll be late for class."

"Mein Liebling, I'll get to the bottom of this bleak issue." Jessica's father entered with kingly admonitions. "You don't have to be late."

"I hope you can!" said Mrs. Leibniz. She grabbed her satchel and stomped through the sliding door connecting the kitchen to the foyer.

Jessica sat at the stool of a reflective counter, cross-armed and stern with puffy cheeks, looking down. Her father leered from the seat across. Gerald Leibniz, to her, stood monumental at six feet. His dirty-blonde hair was almost long enough for a man-bun, his eyes his most calming feature. Their hue of sea blue always carried wisdom waiting to breathe through his word. Every time she looked into them, they seemed older than the rest of him, though she could never explain that feeling.

"What do you do in class, Yess?" he started, pulling up a stool.

"Nothing!" she exclaimed with finality.

"How much of 'nothing' per day?"

"Nothing to the power of pi!"

"Then why all these assignments your teacher keeps sending to your mother?"

Viscerally, Jessica recollected all the sheets and displays that ever fell under her thumb in the magnet classroom. "I can divide, multiply, draw, free-writes. But when I asked Mrs. Camargo about polynomials, she said not everyone can do it yet. I asked her why. She says is 'cause they can't. Argh!"

Jessica's father sighed. "I see where this is going. You know, the reason we put you in a school with other children, Yess, is so that you would grow up with social skills."

"But I'm not a child!" Jessica protested, then made an L sign on her forehead.

He grinned. "In many ways, no. But you are eight and not an adult, meaning, you won't always know what's best until you are blindsided."

"What's that mean?"

"It means you can't always solve for X by yourself."

"Oh... Why not?"

"Because even though time is constant, the factors that come with it are not."

"You are confusing me, dad."

"That just proves my point!" After conjuring two tablets out of nowhere, Mr. Leibniz handed one to Jess. He took his own and began tapping the screen. Jessica's Vit thus beeped and illuminated:

01001000 01101111 01110111 00100000 01100001 01100010 01101111 01110101

01110100 00100000 01101010 01110101 01110011 01110100 00100000 01101100

01101001 01110011 01110100 01100101 01101110 01101001 01101110 01100111

00100000 01110100 01101111 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 01110010

00100000 01110100 01100101 01100001 01100011 01101000 01100101 01110010

00111111.

So Jessica pulled up the keypad on her tablet and, likewise, tapped with two fingers in tandem, almost as quickly as her father, before hitting send:

01001001 01110100 00100111 01110011 00100000 01110100 01101111 01110010

01110100 01110101 01110010 01100101 00100000 01100001 01101110 01100100

00100000 01100010 01101111 01110010 01101001 01101110 01100111

Mr. Leibniz chuckled. But Jessica continued typing something else, a time-consuming message, then hit send:

01000101 01110110 01100101 01110010 01111001 01101111 01101110 01100101

00100000 01100101 01101100 01110011 01100101 00100000 01101001 01110011

00100000 01100100 01110101 01101101 01100010 00101110 00100000 01010100

01101000 01100001 01110100 00100000 01100100 01101111 01100101 01110011

01101110 00100111 01110100 00100000 01101101 01100101 01100001 01101110

00100000 01001001 00100000 01101000 01100001 01110110 01100101 00100000

01110100 01101111 00100000 01100010 01100101 00100001

"I don't like that," he said sternly. "Knowing more doesn't make everyone dumb, Yessica. And it does not make you better. That is not the object of knowledge." Jessica began typing with her little fingers again, but her father brushed the tablet aside and made eye contact. "Whether or not you know more than your peers, whether or not they know less, whether they struggle, or you try harder, or their brains don't function like yours, information is there to educate, not discriminate."

Jessica's grimace spoke loudly. Her misty eyes veered from her father. "Is this being blindsided?" she sniveled.

Mr. Leibniz sighed. "It's a start."

"Okay."

"Let's try this: help your friends with their homework in class after you have finished yours. If the teacher reports better class averages, we go to the observatory in the Summer. And... camping."

Jessica's face lit up like a Jack-o-lantern. "One-hundred percent?" she said, afraid to uphold hope.

"One-hundred percent."

Jessica pushed herself off the stool and scrambled to the other side of the counter, arms outspread. As her father lifted her up to hold her properly, she spread a wide smile from ear to ear that colored her rosy cheeks. "I love you, dad."

"I love you, too, Yess."

***

Jessica tore herself from the graves, to peer at the distant green ridge that almost touched the sky. Above the tree line, above the distant rock foundations of the park, a white dome peaked above the horizon. On Tuesdays, the observatory was one of the most peaceful places in the world. She remembered that much. After musing for a while, she turned back to the graves.

"I still get blindsided every now and again, but I found people to help me solve for X. And I think you'd like them..." Somber, she walked out of the cemetery, her feet stopping at the terminus of grass and beginning of tarmac.

Summer clothes and compact smart cars on the road. Laughter and companionship were the constant vignette in New Sumer Park, which hosted its share of university students. Publicly owned smart cars carried pairs, available to any citizen in reserved parking lots. Perfect strangers frequented the open world, shoulder to shoulder. Outside Eden may have been a different story.

For Azareans, Summer clothing did not exist.

One of their cars passed overhead, and Jessica witnessed a pair of them look down their noses at the other humans. Always, no matter the season, aliens wore glasses and long collars. The present pair owned a sporty hovercar: blue sleekness, black windows, two doors, and an engine silent enough to sneak up on someone. From how they lingered, Jessica, if she knew any better, would have thought they were ogling the female college students.

A beep later, she checked her watch. No reason to stick around, she uttered "McFly" then dropped her board on the roadside. She skated beyond the grove of shrouded memories.