B-2

He made a mental note of the facts he had on hand.

Min. Pshi Academy. Modern Evolution. Beta Tester. Gaia.

He started with what was most important. He tapped the tabletop and a faint screen appeared over the table. He was connected to the academy server, and through it to the wide net. He opened Sigma, a browser with a simple interface, and searched for Pshi Academy. There was enough information on the wide net about the academy. He opened the academy page that was uploaded on the wide net. The class of Modern Evolution was listed, but he didn't find the information he sought. Realising his mistake, he pulled up the Modern Evolution page on the Academy server. He found the list of students. And among them, he found his name.

Min Naiv.

He clicked on the name and his student profile filled the screen.

**

Student Name: Min Naiv

Age: 18 years

Guardian: Topher Grace

Overall academic grade: A

Special mentions:

a. 100 percentile in mathematics

b. Editorial recognition for the piece, 'Linear math of non-linear human interactions'

c. Scouted for the program - Modern Evolution

Academic projects:

a. Beta Tester - Gaia

b. Regression analytics on declining traditional societal norms

c. Diagrametics

Intelligence: Visual mathematician, 99 percentile in IQ

High school grades:

Mathematics A+

Languages A

Science B

Social Studies B

Art B

PE C

Positions of authority held: None

Member of clubs: None

Research project: Enhanced consciousness

**

The student profile didn't feel like all of him. He felt the profile drew an incomplete sketch. Probably because he didn't understand all of it.

Firstly, who was Topher Grace?

A quick search on the academy server revealed that Topher Grace was the academy sponsorship program, started by an alumni of the academy named Topher. After graduating from the academy, she started a human welfare organisation that operated across borders. In association with the academy, her organisation started the sponsorship program.

Sponsorship differed from Scholarship in the fundamental principle. Scholarship was the academy offering help with the tuition for students with high academic grades who could use the aid. Sponsorship was the academy covering all expenses for orphans eligible to study at the academy.

Purugs, the scholarship program, imposed requirements on the recipients. Topher Grace recommended recipients have expectations of themselves.

Min understood he had no family. That gave some more clarity.

He next searched Diagrametics. What he found confused him all the more because it made sense. Diagrametics was representing people and ideas and even vague concepts as two dimensional figures on a chart. He couldn't understand how someone could make sense of such an idea enough to prepare an entire project on it.

And then of course, there was Modern Evolution.

There was a video on the academy server. Of a student introducing the subject to a group of middle schoolers as the teacher-in-charge, Mr Brogz, looked on with pride. Modern Evolution dealt with the impact and the importance of sociology on wide area augmented reality for an accurate representation of the real world so that separation of virtual and real became increasingly impossible. He read the name of the student addressing the middle schoolers underneath the video. Kexin. The granddaughter of the Vice-Principal of the academy, and the star of the department of sociology.

He could see how being a student of the subject would enable him join the Beta Testers of Gaia. He didn't have complete clarity yet, but he at least had the outline.

He began reading all there was about Min on the academy server.