Avilien

First day back

The idea of attending a proper school blew Brit's mind as she thought of the wonderful things she had seen in documentaries online. From drama plays, sports, festivals, and loads of playground fights...which happened to be most of what was posted on NowTube. As she thought long and hard on how she might fit in with Luke and his friends, she never stopped for a second to even ask about his friends—not that Luke had any, besides Nebs. Brushing her hair with her fingers, she tried her best to look ready and presentable as other students walking down the street stared at her. She had slept rough for two nights and still looked in good health.

On the far outskirts of town, overlooking a steep decline into a network of twisting roads through a hilly valley, was Islington High. The view from the school was as impressive as the one from the old country road that Luke loved. Without a pair of GTs, the school could be considered bland; a giant two-story building that taught a thousand kids and had over a hundred classrooms. On the outside, it looked like a prison—grey and old. Gothic architecture some would even say. Inside was the same grey décor, unless you had a pair of augmented glasses.

Standing at the open black steel gates, students hurried past Brit and Luke and followed the slabbed path overlooked by trees to the main door of the school. A large electronic glass door with a few hologram projectors stood at either side—one of the headmaster and one of the deputy headmaster.

Brit stared in shock as other students banged into her to pass by. Luke expected as much...when he borrowed the Rifts from the school reception, the entire school and town in the distance looked different, thanks to the augments. People didn't decorate as frequently as they used to, thanks to augmentation. If you fancied a wall being a different colour, it could be done in seconds using a paint augment and that was what the school had done.

No one in the school went without wearing GTs, so they didn't understand how drab their surroundings were. With that said, businesses and homes saved a fortune on decorating. There were laws and rules put into place so that you couldn't augment other people's possessions or buildings without permission, as that used to be a massive thing, mainly due to the fact that augmented reality ran on one server. Brit doesn't have a pair of GTs either, so the school must look like a prison to her, thought Luke, yet he couldn't have been more wrong.

"This is so cool! My first day at a proper highschool and not in a dining room or at a piano," said Brit as she jumped up and down, getting all excited and making other students stare at her with weird expressions.

Luke shook his head and followed the path down to the main entrance. Inside was the reception area, a large open space filled with vending machines, a circular wooden reception desk with televisions hanging all around it from the ceiling, and cabinets filled with trophies. Apart from a few corridors leading off around the school, most of the brown doors in the area led into teachers' private offices. The headmaster's office was off down the left corridor, along with the vice headmaster. They were the only two teachers to take up an entire corridor by themselves.

Acting in true Brit fashion as students funnelled through the reception towards their classrooms, she poked, prodded, and touched every glass cabinet in sight. It made Ms. Lait, who stood behind the reception counter, tilt her GTs and snap her stylus, a small pen-like object for using on touchscreen items like the tablet she had resting on her desk. Taking that tablet to one side, she stood up out of her chair, her eyes glued to Brit like a bird of prey.

Ms. Lait taught science and in the early morning, she hosted the reception desk. In her mid-forties, she was considered one of the strictest teachers in the school. Tall, weedy with frayed brown hair, she dressed in a black iron-pressed blazer and skirt so that she matched the children's uniforms. Most of the teachers did this, too.