With the grace of saints

Sam woke up feeling refreshed as she always did after a session. She thanked herself again for having come up with the idea. Prior to her self-hypnosis, she was really quite a wreck if she was being honest with herself. But now, with just a click of a button, she was ready to face the world. Or in this case, her homework.

The current assignment was a lab on operating systems, specifically the drivers. This was the first assignment, so it was simple enough. Granted, the course was well into the comp sci curriculum -- no beginner stuff, but even then, the first assignment for any given course was always used as an introduction to the subject. Still, no excuse to dawdle or not give it her all. In fact, this project wasn’t even due for a week, but Sam had learned early on that doing things ahead of time was the best course.

Putting her nose to the grindstone, she started writing the required code. She already had a good idea before, but with her rested mind, the algorithms came easily to her. A little research here and there, an hour or two of coding, and voila, a program that passed ten of the twenty required tests the professor had given her. Not bad for a night’s work. No need to finish it all in one go. She’d pick it up again tomorrow night.

With a satisfied sigh, Sam reclined fully in her chair, head tilted idly towards the ceiling. The ceiling was off white, like the rest of the room, but with the ceiling light off and only the glow of the computer monitor, it took on a more sinister tone. She had been in more than one villain’s lair that resembled such. Ah. Not that she minded it. Just was the way it was, and she didn’t feel like turning on the lights at this point.

Her gaze flicked back towards the monitor. Her computer waited unblinking for her input. She could so very easily navigate back down the depths to her refuge. Click it and pass the rest of the night away without another thought.

But no, she had set for herself a once-a-night limit, and she wasn’t about to break her word on a passing fancy. She shoved down on the armrests and pushed herself up out of the chair. She was feeling a bit peckish, so naturally a light night snack was in the cards. She picked up her phone and put some earbuds in, pressing play on the podcast she had been listening to during her workout. It was episode eighty-seven of a long running series on economics. This one was about asteroid mining, which was interesting enough to keep her attention as she munched on some granola.

She tapped her phone again to start scrolling through a new feed when she noticed a notification. It was a missed message from her calendar. She put her hands on her head. Damn. She knew she was forgetting something. Clover was never going to let her live this down. Sam fired off a quick text saying she was sorry and that she'd make it up to her friend. Clover responded a minute later saying that they’d talk over lunch tomorrow.

Argh. Night ruined. She slumped over the kitchen table.

If only she could hypnotize Clover into forgiving her, or just forgetting the stupid dinner completely. A lot of problems could be solved with mind-control when you got down to it. But she could never use it on her dear friends against their wills. The very thought was horrifying. Thinking about thinking about it was horrifying.

She slapped her head lightly to clear her mind.

Looking at her phone’s clock, it was already eleven. She tossed the granola bar wrapper into the trash bin next to her and headed to the bathroom to brush her teeth. The usual two minute routine plus flossing and a quick change of clothes later and she was plopped in her bed under the covers.

For all that the missed meeting weighed on her mind, she didn’t find it hard to get to sleep. Just a few, short, quiet, peaceful minutes and she had fled to dreamland.

Yawn.

Sam stuffed her head against the pillow, yawning into its silken embrace. It was comfort personified, and a ritual in and of itself to voluntarily remove oneself from its presence. A few yawns later and she mustered up the willpower to sit up. Brushing the sleep out of her eyes, she gave one last yawn before getting out of bed and going through her morning routine. Her first class at eight in the morning (it was required and that was the only time slot available, or else she would have never taken such an early course) was in an hour, so she had time enough for everything.

Slinging the backpack on, she stepped outside the apartment door and made way to the college campus. Malibu U was only a fifteen minute walk away, and for one as physically fit as her, it was no great exertion.

Her first class, Operating Systems 405, was on the close side of campus. It was a bit more sparsely populated since the building was a bit out of the way, especially from the dorms, but there were still a few students milling about before classes started. A couple of people she knew from the Comp Sci club and class, but mostly other engineering students. Normally she would join in and talk a bit, but she was feeling more resolute than normal, just wanting to get inside and set up shop.

So it was of course that as soon as she stepped inside she was greeted with the mug of one Mandy, irritant extraordinaire.

“Like, did you forget to do your hair this morning?”

Of course that was the first thing Mandy remarked upon. She wasn’t wrong, but Sam had just no energy to care about it and had decided to skip. The result was a less than usual glossy hair style.

“What do you care?” Sam made to brush past the pest.

Mandy gasped, “ I’m just looking out for you.” She gestured to her own silky hair. “A woman’s hair is one of their most important features. And frankly, you don’t have much else.”

Sam stopped. She clenched her fists. “There’s more important things than just physical appearance, Mandy. I would think you’d have learned this by now.”

“Oh of course, of course. Don’t mind me.” Mandy smirked and turned around, heading to her biology class. She wasn't a med student, majoring in fashion as she was, but even the fashion students required some hard sciences to graduate.

Sam didn’t understand the girl. The two had fought together as spies even, when Mandy had been conscripted for a mission or two, and still she couldn’t let go of her cattishness. Like all of this mattered more than saving people’s lives. It was a mystery, but perhaps some people were just intrinsically bitchy.

She walked through the halls, up a floor, and into the classroom. Taking her usual seat (they weren’t assigned by the teacher, and so a just reward to those who got there early enough), she took out her laptop and opened up a blank page for note taking. The professor would arrive in around fifteen minutes so she had time to do whatever.

She reached into her bag and took out a notebook and pen. Sure she had her computer, but she had the notebook as backup too in case she forgot to charge it or it broke. She touched the pen in the center of the page, a dot of black ink. Sam closed her eyes, envisioning the dot in the white and blue grid-lined page. And on top of that, she saw a spinning shape, expanding out from the dot in an ever spiraling pattern, ink spewing forth unto creation.

She opened her eyes, seeing the paper matching her inner vision. She was a fair hand, having wanted to be an artist as a kid. In fact, she incorporated her drawings into the digital design, so especially with this particular graphic she was nonpareil.

“Groovy.” A feminine voice remarked to her left. She hadn’t noticed, entranced as she was in her drawing, that her usual seatmate had taken her own purchase. Chloe was a petite girl, mousy if you were being uncharitable, with dark brown hair and a pair of glasses from which she peered out. The only spot of color on her otherwise black ensemble was a rainbow heart pin on her cap. “Ever think of doing it for real?”

“Sometimes.”

“You do the assignment already?” Chloe was taking out her own computer.

“‘Bout half.”

“Thought so.” She left unsaid that she hadn’t even started, but Sam could intuit from past examples. Simple inductive reasoning. Chloe was a habitual procrastinator through and through. That and the fact that Chloe had opened up an editor and was staring at an empty file. Named, “cool_program.py”. She pressed a few keys halfheartedly before shutting the laptop. “Curse me for being me.”

“There are ways to fix that, you know.” Sam couldn’t help but be drawn into her half-friend’s problems.

“I don’t think there is. I’ve had doctors x-ray my brain. It’s incurable.”

“Oh, if ‘doctors’ said so, then who am I to argue?”

Chloe had the gall to look affronted. “You’re supposed to say, ‘Don’t worry, Chloe. I’ll find a cure, if it’s the last thing I do.’”

“Mhm.”

That seemed to end things for a while, as they settled into silence. Then, out of the blue, Chloe raised her phone into the air. It was all black and thin as a sheet of paper, one of the newer bot models.

“Do you know what some people are calling phones nowadays?”

“Phones?” Sam responded appropriately.

“That, and also, our second brains. It’s cool, right. Like to think about. We have our real brain, but phones are kind of like a brain too. They store data, which we retrieve and use and then deposit new information back in. Every time you create a todo list, that’s it.”

Sam pondered. “I don’t think that really fits.”

“It totally does.”

“But that’s simplifying things to an almost absurd degree. A phone, or the internet, like a wiki page or something, it’s really just a book. You wouldn’t call a book your second brain. A brain is so much more. It creates vast interlinking connections of the abstract, reifying the aetherial.”

Chloe pouted, sticking out her tongue. “Uh huh. Have fun with a little pop sci for once.”

“Sure, uh huh.”

Her seatmate put her phone back in her pocketbook. Just as she was about to try a different tactic, the door to the class opened and their professor entered, a little early judging by the clock hanging above the blackboard at the front of the class.

Ms. Ehrlich was a beautiful woman by any subjective measure. Such that even Sam, who preferred to judge past the physical, could not help but remark to herself whenever she saw her professor. And she wasn’t afraid to flaunt it either. The way her white blouse hugged her form, suggesting deeper, broader depths. The tight black pants. The bright red lipstick. The perfectly pale skin. The vestigial German accent. The knowing glint in her eyes and almost perpetual grin.

Sam may have almost been offended, were it not for the intellect that belied her teacher’s temptation. The fact that she was tenured at her relatively young age. Sam had read up on her teacher’s published works, as well as the committees and public repo’s that she maintained, and all of it was just flat out astounding for a late twenty-year old. If she was being fair, Mrs. Ehrlich even matched wits with some of the more genius (and mad genius) villains Sam had faced.

Said teacher spied two of her students looking up at her from their mid-row seats. She gave them a friendly little wave before taking her place up front at the desk.

A few other students trickled in behind her, and then the rest of the class minus a couple stragglers filled the room. Once a sufficient number were in, a few minutes after eight, the professor got up and tapped the chalkboard a few times, clearing her throat.

“Good morning, everyone. I’m glad to see you have the drive-r to be here today. As a quick re-intro, in person attendance is optional as all lectures are recorded and provided online in the school portal, but sometimes there’s no substitute for in person learning. We’re going to be going over the basics today, yes, still. This will help you in your lab, so please pay attention. Questions are, as always, appreciated, but please try to answer them in your head first before blurting them out.”

With that, Mrs. Ehrlich began drawing up an outline of registers and what sorts of information were stored where on the hardware. Sam knew this from reading ahead in the book, and from her own experience, but it didn’t hurt to reinforce things. She summarized the board and her teacher’s words on her computer, typing away for most of the class.

Before she knew it, the class was over, and she was busy gathering up her stuff. It was a bit of a walk to Psych 101, so she had to hurry to make it. Not that it was worth the effort. The class was criminally boring. The only upside was that lunch followed, so she could look forward to that. Normally she would. Now, she had to bear a half-an-hour of Clover messing with her. Augh.