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DANIEL WHEATLEY

when it snapped back into life. “Very well. I’ll escort you to your
classroom. Don’t touch my lamps.”
She dropped her hand with a little yip. “Okay.”
e lamps took her back to the entrance hall with the olive
trees and down a dierent hallway, not saying anything until
they stopped at an intersection. “To the right is Mathematics
101,” the lamps said. “In the future, all students outside of a
classroom during study hours must have a hall pass.”
“I didn’t know.”
“Well, now you do.” e lamps turned. “Stay out of trouble
now.”
ere was no door to the classroom. A hazy, shimmering
curtain like a liquid mirror separated it from the hallway. Zanna
touched the privacy screen experimentally, only dipping the
smallest bit of her pinky into it. Nothing happened, and so she
stepped through into a classroom she had never seen the likes
of before.
It was a neat square, with all four sides gently sloping down
to a stage in the center. Benches of decorated marble sat around
the room, and the ceiling was open to the sky, though some-
how the sunlight was pleasant and mellow, as if there were an
invisible screen stretched overhead that calmed the harsh light
down a little. On the back wall, she could make out the faded
remains of a large painting in the plaster, depicting a roomful
of toga-clad men come to take in a lecture. Beneath it, in block
capital letters, was an inscription: MATHEMA.
“Divisible by three! I said so! Come on, come on!”
So amazed she was by the classroom that it took Zanna a
moment to register that someone was talking to her. A woman
stood on the stage in the center of the room and beckoned to
Zanna, pointing to a boy and girl sitting on one of the nearby

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