Oblivious to my feelings, Father gives me a quick course on using the typing glove. He runs me through the alphabet, then all the extra controls—like turning it off so I can move my hand without accidentally typing.

“Of course, this will all be much more natural once the implant’s sensors are reading your nervous system’s responses directly, but for now this will help you develop what they mistakenly term muscle memory. It’s actually all just brain memory, of course, but specialized in the motor cortex.”

I nod, absorbing the information. I need to know everything I can about how the implant works.

“As you become more familiar with the setup, try to type as much as you can. Use it to take notes in your classes, write down your conversations, and capture your thoughts. Anything that gets you typing. The more you do it, the easier your transition to the implant will be.”

I glance at his screen where my typing had appeared. He notices as the monitor showing my camera flashes with that same view. “Ah, yes, privacy. Don’t worry. Once we’re done here, the rig will be paired with your tablet alone. I won’t be peeking in on what you are looking at or writing down. You may have noticed that we don’t have cameras in any of the student buildings here. I think it’s very important for young people to have a sense of their own private space.”

Except for how you use your cleaning staff to spy us out anyway, I carefully don’t say. Instead I just nod.

“You’ll be able to share what you write with your tablet’s network connection to the campus network. You’ll submit your homework as normal, the training rig will just act as your keyboard and screen.”

“So this display can mirror the tablet screen?”

“Of course. I don’t usually lead with that, as it’s more disconcerting to the equilibrium than the simple text display that we started with, but yes. Let’s get your device paired and you can try it out.”

I fetch my tablet from my backpack and hand it to him. He types a series of arcane commands in one of his many windows. The screen of my tablet fills my view.

“There. Now you should never need to look at the tablet again until you graduate from your training rig. The touchscreen capabilities are replaced with eye tracking tools. I imagine you’ll get used to that part quite quickly, most of your siblings did.”

My eyes go funny for a little bit and I have to fight through another wave of nausea before I’m able to click one of my textbooks to life. I check his monitors. His view of my cameras and visual overlay have disappeared. I wonder how much I can trust what he said about privacy. He hasn’t lied to me yet, other than that one big one where he pretends not to be a murderer.

“Good, good!” Father declares proudly. I feel a little like a kid who just made a stick-figure finger painting and is getting praised for it. “Now practice, practice, practice. Hard work now will yield desirable results later.”

“I will, Father.”

“Off you go then. Take the rest of the day to play with your new toys, and don’t worry about your project work for the next week or so.”

“Thanks,” I tell him, and force a smile.

It feels awkward walking around with the headset on, both from the still-unnatural feeling of having the overlay in front of me and because I feel like everyone is staring at me. I give the kids kicking around a soccer ball on the commons a wave and they go back to their playing. I guess I’m not the first one to walk around campus looking like a refugee from a science fiction movie.

I hit the dorm commons and find most of the sibs from my class lounging on one of the pods of couches. Everyone but Jeff is there, chatting and tapping on their tablets.

“He’s got the headgear! And the power glove!” Marc exclaims as he sees me.

“Congratulations, Noah, this is an important step for you,” Chad says, rising to his feet. I wonder for a second if it would break the glove if I hit him with it.

“Yeah, he’s official, now,” Evan adds. “Our oldest brother, joining the water and power crew.”

Chad gets a dark look. Evan and Louise were right. He’s not at all happy that I’m the oldest. That’s probably why Evan likes to needle him with it whenever he can.

“Joining the what now?” I ask, flopping onto the couch next to my huge brother.

“Water and power,” Evan repeats. “That’s the way our class is going to save the world. Making sure the world has enough clean power and drinkable water. Like how Phil’s class is going to solve resource scarcity with nanotech mining. I thought you knew that, didn’t you? Isn’t that why you picked the water filter project?”

I laugh. “I just picked it cause it was kind of like yours, except it turned out that selective pollution removal is a totally different problem than your desalinators. So are we all supposed to be specialized?”

“Every class has an area of focus,” Chad explains using his know-it-all voice, “but only the oldest few classes have started specializing into their domains. Father has a master plan that he might choose to share with you, if he feels you are worthy.”

Oh yeah, he really hates that I’m older than he is. I’m glad a big chunk of my face is covered with the headset so it’s harder for any of them to see my reaction to Father as the judge of my worthiness. I need to make sure I keep control of my emotions. As far as they all need to know, I’m another good little disciple in the cult of Tom Butler.

“Anyway,” Evan says, “we were about to head to the rec room. Want in on some foosball?”

“Naw. I need to relearn how to type for a while. You all go have fun.”

“So, did he say how long it will be until he does the install?” Louise asks.

“Start of June is what he told me.”

“You’re lucky,” Marc says. “We all had to do the headgear for two months. I got the worst acne where the straps go. Do you think you’ll get that too?”

Andrea rolls her eyes and her graceful fingers dance. A question mark appears in the air, then gets a big red X through it.

“Yeah, no one wants to hear about your acne Marc,” Louise adds. “Later, Noah.”

I shake my head and watch them leave. He’s rushing me through the training. I really am just a guinea pig for him, someone to test his newest model of the implant on before he uses it on the kids he actually cares about. I hope he doesn’t wreck my brain. I really need it if I’m going to make him face justice for Mom. But whatever he’s doing is probably safe-ish. From his notes, he’s planning to do the same thing to my whole next class of siblings.

I focus on the overlay and do the weird eye-focus tricks to bring the tablet screen up front and center in my overlay. I eye-tap the new training app and start learning my ABC’s all over again.