Free Psion Beta by Jacob Gowans

it.”
    Jeffie, Natalia, and Kawai grinned at each other when Byron turned his attention to Brickert and Sammy.
    “ The boxes you carry contain your communicators. Or coms, as you probably call them. You can use those for texting or to speak to me and anyone else in the building. It will not make outside calls, but it will hold your daily schedule. Follow it as best as you can. The different simulators and classrooms are scheduled in rotation to allow everyone equal use during the day. If you have an emergency—medical or otherwise—just say your name and ‘emergency.’ It will activate the program. The personal statistics menu will show your rank based on your simulation performance in comparison to others. I feel competition and feedback tends to increase individual performance. If you do not wish to know your rank, that is fine, too. Any questions?”
    Among all the little curiosities bouncing in his brain, one stuck out to Sammy. “Why are there no rooms on the inner walls?”
    “ Of course—thank you—I almost forgot. The whole inner part of the building is the Arena. You will learn more about that soon. Any others?” he asked, looking around. “No? Then, I will take my leave, and you can get yourselves settled in your rooms. They will be marked for you.”
    With one last glance at the girls, Sammy went down the stairwell to the first floor with Brickert behind him, banging his suitcase on each step. Sammy eye-scanned himself and Brickert into the dormitory floor. Like everywhere else, the layout was a perfect square, and each hallway had several doors on the outer wall.
    “ What’s in the bag?” Sammy asked Brickert. Unlike the others, he had no luggage and was curious to see what Brickert had brought.
    “ Clothes. Pictures. Some other personal stuff. Where’s yours?”
    “ I didn’t need to bring stuff from home,” Sammy lied to avoid awkward questions.
    Brickert muttered something under his breath that Sammy couldn’t quite hear. They walked the hall in silence looking for their rooms. After a moment, Sammy realized he had not been listening properly when Brickert had introduced himself. His mind had been on other things.
    “ Where are you from again?”
    “ I’m from the Irish Territory,” Brickert answered, and for the first time Sammy noticed a slight accent in Brickert’s voice. “Near Killarny.” His words came tumbling out, giving Sammy the impression Brickert had been eagerly waiting for a chance to talk about home. “My parents were shocked when they found out about all this. My dad had more than half a mind to not let me come here, I’ll tell you, but my mom insisted that one of her children amount to something more than a factory worker.”
    “ How many children are in your family?” Sammy asked.
    “ I’m the ninth of ten children,” Brickert replied.
    Sammy swore loudly. “Ten kids?”
    Brickert made it sound like everyone had ten kids. Sammy’s parents had tried to have more children after him, but he had never met anyone from such a large family.
    “ Yeah, it’s kind of a lot, huh?” Brickert admitted with an embarrassed look.
    Sammy stopped walking when he realized he had made Brickert uncomfortable. “I mean . . .” he hurried to say, “ . . . there’s nothing wrong with that. I was an only child, so . . . you know, anything more than one seems big to me.”
    “ Really? No brothers or sisters?” Sammy heard more than a hint of jealousy in Brickert’s voice. “That must be really nice.”
    “ Actually I always wanted a little brother,” Sammy told him. “You know, to play sports with or chess or something. I had friends, but sometimes I only had my parents for that stuff.”
    “ You can have one of mine . . .”
    They continued walking again. Many of the rooms in the dormitory were vacant. The halls were all white, just like everywhere else, except near one room where a large chunk of wall sported a mural of two boys wearing VR helmets faced off in some