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THE INSTITUTE

My test results come when I am practicing my cultural recognition and accent modulation with Matteo in our high-rise penthouse. We have a view of the city, the setting sun behind. I’m midway through a clever retort about the Yorkton Supernova fauxWar sports club when my datapad beeps with a priority message sent to my datapad stream. I almost spill my coffee.

“My datapad has been slaved by another,” I said. “It’s the Board of Quality Control.”

Matteo shoots up from his chair. “We have perhaps four minutes.” He runs into the suite’s library, where Harmony is reading on an ergocouch. She jumps up and is down and out of the suite in less than three breaths. I make sure that the holopictures of me with my fake family are arranged in my bedroom and throughout the penthouse. Four hired servants—Browns and a Pink—go about domestic tasks in the penthouse. They wear the Pegasus livery of my fake family.

One of the Browns goes to the kitchen. The other, a Pink woman, massages my shoulders. Matteo shines my shoes in my room. Of course there are machines to do these things, but an Aureate would never use a machine for something a person could do. There is no power in that.

The towncraft appears like a distant dragonfly. It grows as it buzzes closer and hovers outside my penthouse window. Its boarding door slides open and a man in a Copper suit gives a bow of formality. I let my datapad open the duroglass window and the man floats in. Three Whites are with him. Each has a white Sigil upon their hands. Members of the Academians and a Copper bureaucrat.

“Do I have the pleasure of addressing one Darrow au Andromedus, son of the recently deceased Linus au Andromedus and Lexus au Andromedus?”

“You have the honor.”

The bureaucrat looks me up and down in a very deferential, but impatient manner. “I am Bondilus cu Tancrus of the Institute’s Board of Quality Control. There are some questions we must beg to ask of you.”

We sit across from one another at my oak kitchen table. There, they hook my finger to a machine and one of the Whites dons a pair of glasses that will analyze my pupils and other physiological reactions. They will be able to tell if I am lying.

“We will start with a control question to assess your normal reaction when telling truths. Are you of the Family Androme

dus?”

“Yes.”

“Are you of the Aureate genus?”

“Yes.” I lie through my teeth, ruining their control questions.

“Did you cheat in your admissions test two months prior?”

“No.”

“Did you use nervenucleic to stimulate high comprehension and analytical functions during the test itself?”

“No.”

“Did you use a networkwidget to aggregate or synthesize outside resources in real time?”

“No.” I sigh impatiently. “There was a jammer in the room, ergo it would have been impossible. I’m glad you’ve done your research and are not wasting my time, Copper.”

His smile is bureaucratic.

“Did you have prior knowledge of the questions?”

“No.” I deem an angry response proper at this point. “And what is this about? I’m not accustomed to being called a liar by someone of your ilk.”

“It is procedure with all elite scorers, Lord Aureate. I beg your understanding,” the bureaucrat drones. “Any upward outlier far removed from the standard deviation is subject to inquiry. Did you slave your widget to that of another individual during the test?”

“No. As I said, there was a jammer. Thank you for keeping up, pennyhead.”

They take a sample of my blood and scan my brain. The results are instantaneous, but the bureaucrat will not share them. “Protocol,” he reminds me. “You will have your results in two weeks.”

We receive them in four. I pass the Quality Control examination. I did not cheat. Then comes my exam score, two months after I took the damn thing, and I realize why they thought I did cheat. I missed one question. Just one. Out of hundreds. When I share the results with Dancer, Harmony, and Matteo, they simply stare at me. Dancer falls into a chair and begins to laugh; it’s an hysterical sort.

“Bloodyhell,” he swears. “We’ve done it.”

“He did it,” Matteo corrects.