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Description
Claire's eyes fluttered open as the hum of her alarm became audible. The Dream Pod takes notice and colors cascaded across the glass pane arched over her bed. She awoke to visions of the geometric patterns that she had studied at school the day before. Her retinas brought the variegated visions into focus; they whirled about in a beautiful flourish before splashing together and leaving a message in their wake.
"I'm at that meeting I told you about last night, sweetheart. I'll be back this afternoon to take you to the equestrian center. –Mom"
Her eyelids wide slightly upon internalizing this message, at which point the message dissolves into a flicker of stars pointing downwards towards the door, though by the time Claire noticed this, she was already on her way there.
As her feet danced across the Center Room floor in a pattern she was taught last week, the room filled with sounds normally associated with morning, quickly muffled by a distinct clip-clopping of the 3-beat canter that she will be teaching her pony this afternoon.
She approaches the Kitchen Monitor. The five embedded sensors quickly align to her eyes once she is within two feet of it; two to measure each eye's direction, and one for pupil dilation. The Monitor catches her staring at the word "Breakfast" on the screen, and quickly begins cycling through her allotted choices. Based on her recent nutritional intake and expected caloric output for the day, the Monitor displays a plate of child-sized scrambled eggs and sausage with a glass of milk and various condiments arrayed around it. Her eyes linger on the bottle of maple syrup in the background, and the Monitor quickly shuffled to a similar picture with a plate of pancakes on the side coated in maple syrup. This picture lingered for some time before the Monitor notices her eyes drooping as they neared the glass of milk, and quickly changes it into a glass of apple juice and adds some cheese into the eggs. Her eyes squint as she smiles and nods. The Monitor flashes a brilliant green and fades into a pair of word: "Turn around"
By the time she complies, the Wardrobe Wall has already offered her outfit for the day: a frilly bright blue dress lightly embroidered with thin yet vivid red lace with an interlaced triquetra pattern around the edges. The same female voice chimes from the Wardrobe, "quickly now, your friends are waiting!"
After getting dressed, she prances into the Transport and slowly ascends to meet her friends for breakfast. During this time, the Transport reminds her that she shouldn't share any of her pancakes or syrup with Leah, who has diabetes, and to avoid asking Leah about lest there be an emotional encounter. Diya, on the other hand, will be very interested in the embroidery on Claire's dress, which she will learn to sew into fabric tomorrow.
The ceiling above her opens and she rises into a wide courtyard with an image of the sun shining in a sky sprinkled with fluffy clouds. Her friends entered the Recreation Chamber in a similar manner on either side of her. She looked at each of them and curtsied before running in order into the PlayPath.
The first platform as always, is the PathMaker, to ensure the girls are in a proper psychological mindset for the day's lessons. The black surface spawns bursts of light at every footstep, each of which shot streaks of light where the PathMaker calculates wherever their center of gravity was headed based on their weight distribution and momentum. Accounting for their relative bodily proportions, the PathMaker shoots light beyond their next steps. The walls of the platform are all glass panels that display colors in a manner similar to Claire's Dream Pod, though these draw the viewers' eyes downward to keep them on task. With every misstep, the colors and music waned, encouraging them to stay in rhythm to the music that played in time to their footfalls.
The PathMaker leads Claire into a quick, skippy pattern circling the other two in a clean 3-beat pattern.
Diya is following a very geometric path of interlaced triquetras with a specific color palette from the next portion of the painting she will be inspired to continue drawing this evening. Leah conveniently catches Diya's triquetras in the corner of her eye as the lights stop stretching out before her so she may stare for a bit. She absentmindedly grazes her foot along the floor, half-heartedly following Diya's movements until a sparkle of light on the wall finally catches her eye before swooping in an arc around the PlayPath in a trail surrounded by faint shimmering algebraic equations and back down to her feet, which were now at the origin of a faint two-dimensional cartesian plane. Her feet rhythmically followed the path of a familiar equation. As she dances along, Claire's ears pick up her first exposure to the melody of a chorus that she will sing at a recital in four years, three months, and eighteen days; however, the PathMaker noted that she tilted her head seven eighteenths of a second beyond a preset confidence interval. Having calculated the probability of her having missed the first note, the full chorus played again with the beginning accentuated. Claire's stride shrank and the light panels dimmed her sensory input in sync with the music such that the first note now had a 27.33% higher chance of being equally as inspired as the rest of the chorus.
The PathMaker eventually led them back together in the same order as they had entered and led them out a shimmering gate and into a sequence of obstacles designed for optimum physical fitness, interlaced with echoes of inspiration from the PathMaker.
While the trio of girls traversed the obstacle course, a square-shaped hole opens in the corner of the sky. A ladder spills out, and two fully grown men climbed down. The second man barely lets go of the ladder when an automatic mechanism shoots the ladder back up and completes the sky again.
The first man turned back slightly to address the second: "The government knows we can't house everyone like this. Why are we still maintaining these... man, I still can't even bring myself to think of them as living communities."
The second replied "Yeah... I have no idea, man. Part of me is terrified that they actually don't care. I mean, the people who live here are those who can can actually afford it, while the rest are exposed to the elements regularly. These people..." his eyes caught the girls' playground, but he avoided looking directly at them "... are too rich to be bothered with such details. Once we're gone, the only engineers good enough to serve as mechanics will already have their minds engineered." The end of this remark had a very foreboding drop in tone.
As the two maintenance workers slinked across the path along the side of the dome, the first grumbled again: "Well, if the moneybags even are willing to help fix the planet, it's going to take some serious creativity--"
For a small fraction of a second, he makes eye contact with Claire. His eyes reflexively dart back to the path before the cameras tracking his eyes can confirm that the event occurred.
An incredible coincidence happens. Claire's rhythm while climbing up a wall made of soft rope shifts slightly as she lifts herself over the bar at the top. The music wanes before rising into the next key, but not before a man simultaneously steps into the corner of her vision and grumbles into the edge of her earshot. She glances over at him, but then he suddenly looks away. Nonchalantly, she continues on her way, not entirely aware that her tongue is tracing a new word.
"--but even that is looking more bleak every day." The maintenance worker lowers and shakes his head as he exits the room, closely followed by his colleague.
Once Claire's mother has returned, she is summoned back to her Home. She bids her friends farewell and just exits the Transport when her mother pulls her back in. They are off to the Equestrian Center. On the way down, the Transport stops and the door opens to welcome Claire's tall horseback riding coach, Mr. Gunther. He bows slightly and slowly, smiling. "Hello, Claire."
"Hello, Mr. Gunther," she cheerfully chimes back. "I am very excited to ride today."
"Very good, my dear. I am sure you will do well."
As the door closes, he steps inside and greets Claire's mother casually.
Claire's mother presses a few buttons on her handheld device, and the wall in front of Claire's eyes lights up and begins a colorful and subtle vocabulary lesson as the two adults converse in a conversational pattern that Claire doesn't know well enough to follow, even if she weren't distracted.
"Those geneticists are really giving you a hard time, aren't they?" said Mr. Gunther to Claire's mother wearing a wry smile.
"As expected," she replies, "but realistically, it's only a matter of time. There are too many risks involved in letting environmental variables dominate everyone's lives for even one more generation." She pauses and glances at Claire. "Speaking of which, the next generation is looking brighter every day."
Mr. Gunther nods and smiles in agreement. "I'm already looking forward to the next step. If we can keep their behaviors consistent through puberty, that's all the evidence we'll need."
Claire's mother smiles broadly. "We'll put science fiction films to shame... like that one named with DNA nucleotides... what's it called again?
Mr. Gunther shrugs as the Transport opened into a vast seemingly outdoor expanse with a nearby stable. The conversation between Mr. Gunther and her mother continued as Claire immediately ran into the stable's changing room and donned her riding clothes. Diya showed up within a few minutes, and the two mount their horses before waiting quietly and patiently for Mr. Gunther. Towards the end of the adults' conversation, Mr. Gunther paused, then grumbled somberly "if only they could see the future beyond preserving creativity".
Claire suddenly looks her mother in the eye and asks "Mother, what is that?"
Her response is a slightly confused expression. "What's what, sweetheart?"
"Creativity."
Her mother's face softens and she smiles and sighs. "Nothing, dear. Now you three should get going."
Mr. Gunther nods, mounts his horse, and leads the two trials down the path. Claire steals a glance from Diya. "What is creativity?"
Diya shrugs, then noticed the pattern woven into Claire's saddle. With her forefinger, she traces three curves into a triangle with a circle through the center of each and smiles. It's a beautiful pattern.

Description
Claire's eyes fluttered open as the hum of her alarm became audible. The Dream Pod takes notice and colors cascaded across the glass pane arched over her bed. She awoke to visions of the geometric patterns that she had studied at school the day before. Her retinas brought the variegated visions into focus; they whirled about in a beautiful flourish before splashing together and leaving a message in their wake.
"I'm at that meeting I told you about last night, sweetheart. I'll be back this afternoon to take you to the equestrian center. –Mom"
Her eyelids wide slightly upon internalizing this message, at which point the message dissolves into a flicker of stars pointing downwards towards the door, though by the time Claire noticed this, she was already on her way there.
As her feet danced across the Center Room floor in a pattern she was taught last week, the room filled with sounds normally associated with morning, quickly muffled by a distinct clip-clopping of the 3-beat canter that she will be teaching her pony this afternoon.
She approaches the Kitchen Monitor. The five embedded sensors quickly align to her eyes once she is within two feet of it; two to measure each eye's direction, and one for pupil dilation. The Monitor catches her staring at the word "Breakfast" on the screen, and quickly begins cycling through her allotted choices. Based on her recent nutritional intake and expected caloric output for the day, the Monitor displays a plate of child-sized scrambled eggs and sausage with a glass of milk and various condiments arrayed around it. Her eyes linger on the bottle of maple syrup in the background, and the Monitor quickly shuffled to a similar picture with a plate of pancakes on the side coated in maple syrup. This picture lingered for some time before the Monitor notices her eyes drooping as they neared the glass of milk, and quickly changes it into a glass of apple juice and adds some cheese into the eggs. Her eyes squint as she smiles and nods. The Monitor flashes a brilliant green and fades into a pair of word: "Turn around"
By the time she complies, the Wardrobe Wall has already offered her outfit for the day: a frilly bright blue dress lightly embroidered with thin yet vivid red lace with an interlaced triquetra pattern around the edges. The same female voice chimes from the Wardrobe, "quickly now, your friends are waiting!"
After getting dressed, she prances into the Transport and slowly ascends to meet her friends for breakfast. During this time, the Transport reminds her that she shouldn't share any of her pancakes or syrup with Leah, who has diabetes, and to avoid asking Leah about lest there be an emotional encounter. Diya, on the other hand, will be very interested in the embroidery on Claire's dress, which she will learn to sew into fabric tomorrow.
The ceiling above her opens and she rises into a wide courtyard with an image of the sun shining in a sky sprinkled with fluffy clouds. Her friends entered the Recreation Chamber in a similar manner on either side of her. She looked at each of them and curtsied before running in order into the PlayPath.
The first platform as always, is the PathMaker, to ensure the girls are in a proper psychological mindset for the day's lessons. The black surface spawns bursts of light at every footstep, each of which shot streaks of light where the PathMaker calculates wherever their center of gravity was headed based on their weight distribution and momentum. Accounting for their relative bodily proportions, the PathMaker shoots light beyond their next steps. The walls of the platform are all glass panels that display colors in a manner similar to Claire's Dream Pod, though these draw the viewers' eyes downward to keep them on task. With every misstep, the colors and music waned, encouraging them to stay in rhythm to the music that played in time to their footfalls.
The PathMaker leads Claire into a quick, skippy pattern circling the other two in a clean 3-beat pattern.
Diya is following a very geometric path of interlaced triquetras with a specific color palette from the next portion of the painting she will be inspired to continue drawing this evening. Leah conveniently catches Diya's triquetras in the corner of her eye as the lights stop stretching out before her so she may stare for a bit. She absentmindedly grazes her foot along the floor, half-heartedly following Diya's movements until a sparkle of light on the wall finally catches her eye before swooping in an arc around the PlayPath in a trail surrounded by faint shimmering algebraic equations and back down to her feet, which were now at the origin of a faint two-dimensional cartesian plane. Her feet rhythmically followed the path of a familiar equation. As she dances along, Claire's ears pick up her first exposure to the melody of a chorus that she will sing at a recital in four years, three months, and eighteen days; however, the PathMaker noted that she tilted her head seven eighteenths of a second beyond a preset confidence interval. Having calculated the probability of her having missed the first note, the full chorus played again with the beginning accentuated. Claire's stride shrank and the light panels dimmed her sensory input in sync with the music such that the first note now had a 27.33% higher chance of being equally as inspired as the rest of the chorus.
The PathMaker eventually led them back together in the same order as they had entered and led them out a shimmering gate and into a sequence of obstacles designed for optimum physical fitness, interlaced with echoes of inspiration from the PathMaker.
While the trio of girls traversed the obstacle course, a square-shaped hole opens in the corner of the sky. A ladder spills out, and two fully grown men climbed down. The second man barely lets go of the ladder when an automatic mechanism shoots the ladder back up and completes the sky again.
The first man turned back slightly to address the second: "The government knows we can't house everyone like this. Why are we still maintaining these... man, I still can't even bring myself to think of them as living communities."
The second replied "Yeah... I have no idea, man. Part of me is terrified that they actually don't care. I mean, the people who live here are those who can can actually afford it, while the rest are exposed to the elements regularly. These people..." his eyes caught the girls' playground, but he avoided looking directly at them "... are too rich to be bothered with such details. Once we're gone, the only engineers good enough to serve as mechanics will already have their minds engineered." The end of this remark had a very foreboding drop in tone.
As the two maintenance workers slinked across the path along the side of the dome, the first grumbled again: "Well, if the moneybags even are willing to help fix the planet, it's going to take some serious creativity--"
For a small fraction of a second, he makes eye contact with Claire. His eyes reflexively dart back to the path before the cameras tracking his eyes can confirm that the event occurred.
An incredible coincidence happens. Claire's rhythm while climbing up a wall made of soft rope shifts slightly as she lifts herself over the bar at the top. The music wanes before rising into the next key, but not before a man simultaneously steps into the corner of her vision and grumbles into the edge of her earshot. She glances over at him, but then he suddenly looks away. Nonchalantly, she continues on her way, not entirely aware that her tongue is tracing a new word.
"--but even that is looking more bleak every day." The maintenance worker lowers and shakes his head as he exits the room, closely followed by his colleague.
Once Claire's mother has returned, she is summoned back to her Home. She bids her friends farewell and just exits the Transport when her mother pulls her back in. They are off to the Equestrian Center. On the way down, the Transport stops and the door opens to welcome Claire's tall horseback riding coach, Mr. Gunther. He bows slightly and slowly, smiling. "Hello, Claire."
"Hello, Mr. Gunther," she cheerfully chimes back. "I am very excited to ride today."
"Very good, my dear. I am sure you will do well."
As the door closes, he steps inside and greets Claire's mother casually.
Claire's mother presses a few buttons on her handheld device, and the wall in front of Claire's eyes lights up and begins a colorful and subtle vocabulary lesson as the two adults converse in a conversational pattern that Claire doesn't know well enough to follow, even if she weren't distracted.
"Those geneticists are really giving you a hard time, aren't they?" said Mr. Gunther to Claire's mother wearing a wry smile.
"As expected," she replies, "but realistically, it's only a matter of time. There are too many risks involved in letting environmental variables dominate everyone's lives for even one more generation." She pauses and glances at Claire. "Speaking of which, the next generation is looking brighter every day."
Mr. Gunther nods and smiles in agreement. "I'm already looking forward to the next step. If we can keep their behaviors consistent through puberty, that's all the evidence we'll need."
Claire's mother smiles broadly. "We'll put science fiction films to shame... like that one named with DNA nucleotides... what's it called again?
Mr. Gunther shrugs as the Transport opened into a vast seemingly outdoor expanse with a nearby stable. The conversation between Mr. Gunther and her mother continued as Claire immediately ran into the stable's changing room and donned her riding clothes. Diya showed up within a few minutes, and the two mount their horses before waiting quietly and patiently for Mr. Gunther. Towards the end of the adults' conversation, Mr. Gunther paused, then grumbled somberly "if only they could see the future beyond preserving creativity".
Claire suddenly looks her mother in the eye and asks "Mother, what is that?"
Her response is a slightly confused expression. "What's what, sweetheart?"
"Creativity."
Her mother's face softens and she smiles and sighs. "Nothing, dear. Now you three should get going."
Mr. Gunther nods, mounts his horse, and leads the two trials down the path. Claire steals a glance from Diya. "What is creativity?"
Diya shrugs, then noticed the pattern woven into Claire's saddle. With her forefinger, she traces three curves into a triangle with a circle through the center of each and smiles. It's a beautiful pattern.