The teacher was an inhuman mass of pixels.

Nadine reclined in her seat, dreaming of completing a great project at home she had wanted to do since he was a tot. She always wanted a robotic dog, but never got to have even the parts to make one until very recently. She could not afford a real pet, or at least that’s what her mother told her. The machine printed out the letters of the national anthem.

A female student, her name Brittney, woke him up. If anybody could be described as having a fake smile, it was her; it was fake enough to break glass. The other students, all roughly between thirteen and fourteen, got out their ereaders, flipping the page to the current assignment. But Richard kept drifting off into space. He worked on his robotic dog like it was a full time job, when according to his teachers his classwork should require just as much attention.

At the end of class, a bell rung, and the students rushed out of the classroom. Him preferring to imagine bringing his pet to school, to use that to get back at some of his school bullies, having it rip their balls off, was a matter of his preoccupation. But when he tried to get to class, his arm was gently tugged.

“Hey Wait, Richy!” Brittney said.

“My name is Nadine, not Richy; we’re going to be late.”

Nadine said. Brittney had never been one to pay attention to her gender issues, but also found Nadine to be to feminine for their apparent gender. “Does everything happen to be such a hurry Richard?”

Nadine tugged her arm out of Brittney’s grasp, but her ex girlfriend simply wasn’t aware of the problem it was that she would misgender her. Nadine would have to keep an eye on her at lunch, or she might steal her cookies. She had been this way sense she found out Nadine could bake.

Brittney was a whole five minutes late. The teacher, a super computer that recently replaced normal teachers, forcing the old educator class to find other jobs, printed out a tardy slip. With the fine print: Corporal punishment, Saturday morning,

Once she got in her seat, Brittney showed Nadine the slip. “How did you get that one, I thought they banned the practice.” Nadine asked.

“My father bribed the staff.” She brushed her brunette locks in Nadine’s direction. “You never talk to me anymore Richard, has something changed?”

Nadine remembered the last time they went out together. It was a movie theater trip with some of her school friends. Her then boyfriend Alex, with platinum locks, a pair of ovular glasses, who always carried a book of Shakeaspear’s plays with him, wanted to arrange a partnership with Nadine and her childhood friend.

They had lost touch sometime around fifth grade, and had not spoken much until very recently, when Nadine was first kicked off the flying wing schoolplane.

Nadine mostly talk with Alex during the times she was able to sneak a ride without the pilot realizing it, leading her to often being kicked to the curb. But that is a subject for another book blurb. “I’ve been busy lately.”

The computer beeped for class to stop talking. The rest of the day followed a similar pattern.

“Hey wait up Richard!” Brittney said. But it was to late to catch up with her. When she arrived at her second class, she got her second tardy slip.

Nadine rode a flying wing bus that day, in the same manner in which she would usually to do so. At a comfortable seat, she hunched over Alex’s shoulder, jokingly took the book of plays from his hands, and prompted to tease him about how Romeo and Juliet was dreck.

She wore a pair of head phones, and banged her ears to various Cybergoth bands. Among other things teenagers did in their long trip back home.

At home, he raised her smart phone to the door lock, then let herself inside. There was a can of mushroom soup waiting for her in the kitchen, with a post it note of her name on it. She opened the can, and threw it into the microwave, being lucky to not make a mess. She then slammed her backpack on the bed, slipped her socks off, and put on her Birkenstock clogs, then got out her kit to make her pet Robot dog.

Her phone buzzed. “Oh hey, Brit. I thought I told you not to call me again.”

She hung up, and muted Brittney’s number. She then sat at the table to finish the school work she didn’t complete in class. Then finally began to the real project she was waiting with, after she turned on the evening news on her computer.

Nadine recieved another phone call, while chilling out with her screwdriver. It was Juline. Her mom would often get home late during the evening, as the nature of her work required constant attendence in political meetings with different aristocrats. “Hey Richard, I have another meeting that will keep my busy until later this evening. Could you go ahead and put the mushroom soup in the Tuna cassatole?”

Nadine hated being called Richard, but hated her mother’s wrath even more, so she got out another can of mushroom soup to cover up her misdeed. “You sure will.”

“Thanks, take care sweety.” Juline hung up the phone.

Nadine got back to tending to her pet project. Her seat looked like it was made up wood, but was actually a form of industrial plastic. Most of the wood produced these days came from trees that were raised in giant farms, rather than natural lumber. Which meant that seats now had a certain stiffness that was completely unlike the pliableness she had grown up being used to during the 2090s. She would watch various channels from Alternet to Common Dreams, and generally avoided disaster networks like MSNBC or Fox News. She preferred to look at drawings of girls in wooden shoes.

Juline did not come home that night, and Nadine was starting to get worried. But she decided to not call 9/11. Instead she gave into sleep.