Ariadne Black Week 2 Part 4

Alan sat on the bed beside Ariadne. The new body still sounded like the serpentine creature he liked, which helped. It looked like neither of the women he'd known — somewhere between the Crawler and the depressed baseline who had never once looked comfortable in her own skin. Close enough now that their legs could touch. Still guarded, and still dressed for going out.

"I've heard you're a teacher, out in the real world," Alan said after a long pause between files. "What do you teach?"

"Oh, it's not a lot like your education." Ariadne smiled. "Most of my students are Stargazers. Usually they're troubled girls who exhaust the patience of their parents."

"I would've thought they'd just get mindfucked," Alan admitted.

"That depends on the parents." Ariadne frowned. "There are endless perspectives on when to alter and when to guide. I believe the goal of education is to make someone who can act independently of your support. Given the social nature of the human animal, that is not a philosophy held by everyone. There are those who believe that children are extensions of households, or of some nasty and artificial institution such as a nation state or a corporation. Some of the products of such work are functional, and others are not."

"How do you even start with an idea like that?" Alan tried to think about it.

"Psychedelics." Ariadne's voice betrayed a hint of concern as she said it.

"Is that a joke?" Alan thought about his grandmother. "No, stupid question." Then the rest of it caught up with him, and his voice went flat. "You're dosing babies."

"What they do is hold a door open while language is forming. The science is complex. You have the same chemistry on your Earth, but none of the supporting evidence, none of the research, and none of the medical capability that I used in Mary Stuart's School for the Gifted and Promising." Ariadne's tone was defensive.

Alan didn't say anything.

"With proper dosage and guidance, they expand creativity," Ariadne continued. "When a developing brain is exposed at the right stage, the outcomes in creativity and focus improve dramatically. At preschool and kindergarten age, it's phased out entirely, in favor of language, literacy, and stories. Math and logic are properly taught as extensions of language, not in isolation. When my classes left elementary school for middle school, the system was personalized based on their interests and goals."

Alan sat with that for a moment. He didn't like it. He wasn't sure he was allowed to.

"Does it work?" he asked finally.

"Yes." Ariadne flashed small, human teeth. Alan noticed they were much less white than he'd expected from the glow-up — a healthy yellow that hinted at an age the body didn't have.

Another folder appeared out of the air.

"This is Vanessa." Ariadne showed him an image of a blonde woman with a spear, standing over a dead lion. "Absolutely a little shit who grew up into a total bitch, but you can drop her into the Neolithic and she'll bash their sexist skulls together and get them to the moon in forty years. She's not even a Signal-host."

"Oh." Alan could see that Ariadne was excited, and proud.

"Oh, Jules!" Ariadne pulled another picture from the folder. A woman with metal spikes where her eyes should have been lay tanning on a beach beside a Crawler. "She's one of Tess's friends. Became a warship. The spikes are from when she was practicing some masochistic rites to prepare herself for the transformation. She leads a heretical schism of Hermit Warships now."

"Are all of your students like this?" Alan smiled, a little impressed despite his worry.

"I mean, Vivian just wants to marry her boyfriend and start a family." Ariadne pulled out another image. An Asian person of unclear gender stood underneath an enormous tripod supporting a transparent window, behind which sat a section of brain tissue larger than their head.

Ariadne did not clarify which of the two was Vivian.

Then she sighed and pulled out a picture of Laurel standing beside a small Crawler, only about four feet long. The Crawler had yellow scales. Laurel was wearing a blonde wig.

"You have to pay it forward," Ariadne muttered.

"Oh." Alan looked at the picture for a while. Laurel was beaming. So, he assumed, was the costumed Ariadne.

"I forgot I had that one in there." Ariadne shook her head. "That was Halloween. About two years before she became a host."

"What was she like?"

"Brave." Ariadne nodded at the picture. "That's the lesson I got from her, and it's the one she wanted to teach me."

The two were silent for a while after that, and Skynet arrived with hotdogs to give them an excuse to stay quiet a little longer.

They appreciated it.