Andrew’s tour of the campus ended somewhere around the mid-day mark. He had a nice lunch. They were serving sloppy joes, sweet potato fries, and fried chicken. He ate enough for three people and washed it all down with an almost criminal amount of iced-tea.

As Andrew wandered through the campus he’d found himself deciding that he’d liked how today had gone. He’d enjoyed himself and he could now see other ways he could make better use of his new freedom.

Thus Andrew decided from henceforth, if a class couldn’t hold his interest, he wouldn’t personally attend unless absolutely necessary.

Andrew reported to his Intro to Mechanized Combat class, aka, the Intro to Robot Punching.

His decision to go to the Intro to Robot Punching class was rewarded because he’d barely switched places with his construct when ‘things’ started happening. Just as Andrew was getting settled, Professor Ramos clapped his hands and said,

“Good afternoon. Glad to see you’re all settled. Now get off yer arses because we’re gonna have a wee change of venue.”

Then the muscle-bound old orc strode out of the room, kicking the door open. Leaving the twenty something teenagers alone in the workshop. For a moment, everyone just stared at each other. It was the gnome, Emilia, who first decided to follow the professor. Andrew followed next and the rest trailed behind them.

The small procession of uniformed students made their way from the Wolfram Hall workshop. Andrew wasn’t bothered but he wonder if the professor had some reason to purposefully not not tell them that they’d be having class in another venue, or if he’d simply been to lazy to draft the email.

They ended up having to walk a little over two miles before the Professor finally pointed to a building for them to stop at. They didn’t stop at just any building. Their destination was a large building. Roughly bowl shaped at the top, tapering at its center as an indicator of the space manipulating tech being used inside, and broad at the base, like a massive chalice.

Andrew recognized the building as an open-air stadium. The air around the stadium glowed with the flickering faint blue light of a high-quality aetheric shield. Andrew read the building’s data and whistled as he saw that there were military-grade kinetic dampeners in place.

Professor Ramos lead his students up into the stands. His rough voice still issuing out as if the orc had some kind of speaker system hidden deep inside that broad, muscular, chest of his.

“Welcome to Blackvale Lesser-Stadium Two. We’ll be visiting this site on occasion. Some of you will find yourselves visiting this site a little more, and the best of you will find yourselves all but living here, because this is where the higher level mechanized combat classes are taught.” said the Professor.

Andrew looked down at the stage and saw that one half of the stage had slightly over a dozen L’il Bell Ends standing on it. The other half of the stage had been expanded into some kind of massive obstacle course with moving columns and shifting platforms.

“Alright, you lads and lassies. I can see you getting excited about what’s going on down on the stage, but for now that’s no concern of yours. Right now, we’re gonna start with the bane of many a mech operator. Paperwork. If you look on the class site you’ll notice a few additions in the assignment tab.”

The whole class groaned as Professor Ramos dashed their expectations. Even Andrew couldn’t help sighing aloud. They all were made to sit in the bleachers and use their sprites to access the class’s website.

“One of the assignments should be labelled something along the lines of ‘basic safety test’ if those damn TAs did their jobs. It’s a fifty question quiz, and I ‘will’ be grading you based on the results. But I doubt it’ll be a problem for you lot. After all, you all definitely did the readings I assigned last class, so passing should be a piece of cake.” said Professor Ramos. His words eliciting another groan from the class.

“You’ll have twenty-five minutes to complete the quiz. Starting ...now. Good luck. I’m off to go see where the bloody restroom is. Don’t try to cheat, there’s cameras feckin’ everywhere, and the school security AI are all programmed to flag those kind of things.” said the Professor. Chuckling as he walked off.

Andrew shook his head as he watched the man saunter off on his yet again, then Andrew turned his attention to the window floating in his view. He noted that opening the quiz would lock his sprite into an offline mode till he was ready to submit his answers.

“Tch, It’s like they don’t trust us.” muttered Andrew. Smirking at the school’s efforts to keep people from cheating.

Andrew opened the quiz’s applet and quickly scanned the test’s contents. He sighed with relief as he found that all his suppositions had been on point. The twenty multiple-choice questions were a breeze to answer and he was never in doubt as to which option was the correct answer. The five short answer questions were a little trickier but he never felt at a loss for things to say about a given issue.

It looked like Andrew’s future as a student of Blackvale was bound to be a bright one despite his deplorable work ethic.

Passively absorbing the data created by the Professors’ lectures, and absorbing information from the assigned texts and whatever he could find on the internet, was enough for Andrew to be fairly knowledgeable, if not expert level. Put plainly, it looked like his plan to automate the learning process was a resounding success.

Andrew had a thought and quickly created a new partition within his consciousness to leave in charge of such matters.

Now there was a part of his mind that would be dedicated to the task of collecting, archiving, and comprehending knowledge. This would take his plan to a new level and streamline his whole learning process.

“And… Submit.” said Andrew. Rubbing the back of his neck, as he completed the test.

A little pop-up window, and a cheerful beep, informed Andrew that his submission had gone through. All that was left was for the Professor to return. In the meantime, Andrew turned his attention inwards.

He wasn’t sure, but he suspected he was experiencing something like indigestion. This was worrying because his current body’s digestive tract was supposed to be capable of totally dissolving and absorbing substances as durable as aether-enriched titanium and deep space diamonds.

Andrew figured it was just nerves from having to take his first test of the year. Even if ‘he’ thought he’d done well, it wouldn’t mean anything till he got his grade back.

The grade was returned shortly before the Professor returned. The quick turnaround wasn’t too surprising. Teaching AIs had been a thing for decades, and even if higher quality institutions didn’t use them in classrooms that didn’t mean they couldn’t use them as teacher-assistants.

“Just an A? Good enough.” said Andrew. Furrowing his brow and trying to puzzle out why he hadn’t done better, before deciding he didn’t care because he neither needed or wanted the attention that getting nothing but straight A-pluses would gather.

“Alright, you lot. Times up. If you haven’t finished already, too bloody bad. Good luck next time. Either way, best submit those answers before you flunk by default.” said Professor Ramos.

There were groans from more than a few students who’d struggled as the minutes ticked by. Once all the quizzes had been submitted, the professor clapped his hands again, making everyone jump.

Andrew frowned because even he had been caught unawares this time. He imagined it had something to do with how taking standardized tests could put one in a different state of mind. Either that, or months of living as a human was finally making him go soft.

“Okay, paperwork time is over… Hooray for those of you who passed and for those of you who failed...Well, it’s just the first quiz o’ many, and if it makes you feel any better I never held any expectations for the results, so you haven’t disappointed me, yet.” said Professor Ramos.

“Now, I want all of you to march down to that stage.” said Professor Ramos.

The class rose as one and did as the old Orc commanded. Andrew found himself filled with a nervous anticipation because he knew what was coming next.

“There’s a line of Little Bell Ends in front of you. On the back of the mechs you’ll see there’s a big barcode that your sprites can scan to open a web browser page with simple as your mum, plain as day, instructions for how to climb into mechs. You shouldn’t need them of course. After all, everyone here ‘definitely’ did the readings and you definitely all got a reminder from the material on that easy as pie quiz you just took. But if you should find your memories suddenly going foggy...the instructions are there.” said the Professor.

“I don’t need to say the rest, right? You’re Blackvale students. You can’t be that slow. Anywho...Form into lines and get up there. Get in the mechs. I’ve rigged them so that they’ll just lock up instead of exploding if you screw up. If you can get in the mechs and maybe take a few steps without hurting anything, that’s an A-plus from me for the day. Then if you decide to reach for the stars and successfully do the obstacle course, you not only instantly pass this course, I’ll push you ahead to the next one because they’re not paying me to waste everyone’s time. One warning though, for the sake of dissuading the incompetant from overestimating themselves I’m going to add a penalty for failing the obstacle course and wasting ‘my’ time. A fifty page report on operator safety, sounds about right.” said Professor Ramos.

“Well, then...I’ve said my bit. Get to it.” said the Professor. Plopping himself down on a bench that happened to be located near the stage.

*************************************************************************************************************

Andrew’s turn at the Bell End came eventually. He pressed the port at the mech’s back, revealing a hatch. He pulled the handle on the hatch and that revealed two safety clamps he had to all pull before the air within the mech decompressed and the suit would finally open.

The hard part of climbing inside a mech wasn’t the actual process of climbing inside the mech. There were actually a number of mechs that had this process automated.

The hard part came when one was fully inside the mech surrounded by the deep well of darkness that was born from the enchantments within the insides of the mech. Mechs didn’t come with cockpits. Instead they were largely empty inside. The mechs were essentially just walking coffins filled with endless darkness.

The operator’s first task was to use their aether and the complex enchantments built into the mech to create a cockpit.

In the early days, when the technology was new, it wasn’t uncommon for young operators to simply go missing. It was even more common for people to operators to panic while submerged within the impenetrable black, and in their panic cause an explosive malfunction.

Fortunately, for Andrew that wasn’t what happened in his case. He ran a pencil-thin tendril of aether into the enchantments that were built into the mech. His power flowed into the enchantments like thread running through the eye of a needle.

Then before he knew it, instead of floating in a vague blackness, Andrew was now in a chamber lit with bright screens and neon-colored user interfaces. Floating above a floor made of transparent crystal with his body covered in threads of glowing gossamer.

This transformation had little to do with Andrew’s eidolon nature, anyone who knew how to competently control aether and actually read the assigned readings would know how to make a cockpit and boot up their Bell End. The professor was right about this being both a simple task and a difficult one.

More than a third of the class failed completely, the operator chamber of the mech’s opening automatically and booting them out after five to ten minutes of flailing in the dark. The remaining two-thirds had half fail on the boot up stage. The last third technically succeeded but only a third of that third were up for the task of going through the obstacle course.

Of the entire class, on Emilia, Andrew, and one other student would try out the obstacle course. The gnome girl, and the eidolon succeeded. The other student ended up falling off one of the shifting platforms half-way through.

The obstacle course itself was nothing to write home about for those who knew how to properly sync their mind and bodies with their machines. For everyone else, it was a bit like trying to control a game that was coded for complex pc controls with a three button arcade controller. Clunky, and uncomfortable, with great deal left to good old fashioned RNG.