There is a statue of Minerva in front of the church.

  I don’t know why the Roman goddess of wisdom would be decorating the front of a Catholic church, but whoever made it must have cared a lot. The piece is carved from that classic melange of earl grey marble, its style so indulgently Roman that everyone in the city knows its subject must be a goddess just by a fleeting glance. She sports an intricately detailed interpretation of ancient Roman regalia, a spear in her right hand jutting up from her square platform like a flagpole without its flag, her other arm bearing a massive circular shield that always makes me wonder how the hell the Romans carried those things. Its grand, slightly curving surface is decorated with symbols and patterns, depictions of monsters and gods and beasts of labor, every line giving it depth beyond depth, texture in defiance of its material.

  It was commissioned in 2051 (says on the plaque), and sculpted by one Seriah Rosco (2011–2074), and it was located in front of the local church by request upon its completion in 2072. Rumor has it that in the twenty-one years she spent carving the final and generally-considered greatest piece of her life, not once did she step outside to so much as buy the groceries, surviving on Innova’s trademark “canned meals”. It’s an absolutely baffling amount of time, over two decades holed up in a studio just working, sleeping, eating canned beans, working some more. Longer than it took Odysseus to find his way back to Ithaca, longer than the average American these days spends in school, long enough for a baby to grow up and finish grade school and get depression and finish undergrad and get a job down the street from the bar she frequents after her shifts. No wonder it was her last piece.

  Every single part of Rosco’s grand finale is absolutely perfect, completely immaculate, not a single chip or dent cut the wrong way, not a single miscalculation in the entire thing. Every ripple of the fabric flowing down her chest and around her legs has been explored, considered, carefully laid out with intention and purpose. The casual way the marble ornaments decorating her arms, shoulders, neck, chest almost seem to gleam in the crisp late-winter sun like steel, tiny perfections no one but me would ever bother to notice.

  And yet, once again, I find my gaze almost violently yanked upward, reeled in to the one dazzling gem of color in the grey masterpiece. Or rather, two dazzling gems. I just can’t figure out why Rosco would give Minerva sapphire blue eyes. If they were meant to signify her autopilot, none of it is visible. Also, Minerva wouldn’t need extra techy-stuff, nor would she have wanted to become some particularly ornate billboard advertisement decorating a church courtyard. It’s not like Innova needs any advertising in the first place.

  Her piercing gaze stares impassively down at me — I know, most cliché sentence ever. I choose to interpret it this time as decisive agreement with my analysis, the ding ding ding! In my head letting me know I’m right and…

  Ding ding ding ding…

  … That I’m also going to be late for first period, apparently.

  I back away from the statue slowly at first, as if confronting a bear. My left foot hits nothing and I stumble backwards, the sidewalk having cliffed off to the smooth surface of the road. The ringing has stopped, and I have no idea if that was the first or second bell.

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  Please please please be the first bell, I pray silently. Not to anyone in particular. I’m agnostic.

  A short bout of flailing my arms gives way to the sound of other kids running, and then the thudding of my own boots and the books in my pack joins them. Saved! That was the first bell.

  These days, school is more of a courtesy to our older generations than anything we actually need for our own benefit. After middle school, they stop properly enforcing the States’ classic universal education, mainly because they can’t. Too hard to round up rowdy teens with wings and built in gaming consoles, much less herd them back to class and get them to pay attention. It’s every Zoomer’s grandpa’s nightmare: the internet has replaced our need for schooling, AI replaced essays and pretty much everything else school was good for, and kids’ attention spans became too short to focus on anything for more than five minutes, let alone an hour of lectures.

  The only saving grace, I would say, is that K-10 is still mandatory. Probably only because of the government regulations that require you to have a driver’s license for the real tech.

  I try to pay attention anyways. Calculus may not be my lifelong calling, but somebody (Mr. Wilfort) dedicated their life to teaching the subject, and they deserve respect for that. Sophomore year always tapers off in the second semester. They’re technically supposed to keep going, 16 or not, but it’s not like there are consequences for ditching. The classroom has a handful of lounging students when I walk in. I’m pretty sure that’s the fullest it’s going to get from here on out. My ears are immediately smacked by a chorus of annoying voices.

  “Hey, mannie.”

  “‘Sup, mannie nanny.”

  “Last one in, wingless.”

  “Jay and Layne, detention. That’s your third warning for using offensive language.”

  Well, the last one is less annoying. As Wilfort (or Guy, as he lets us call him sometimes) tries to wrangle the jerks into shutting up — I still have no idea why they even come anymore — I find my seat and pull out my tablet. The second bell rings, Guy doesn’t bother with attendance, and we fall into relative silence as we wait for him to pull up lesson 8.6 on the projector screen.

  Which stays very stubbornly offline.

  …

  “Power outage?” I hedge, knowing full well that the States hasn’t had one in half a century.

  Right on time, the alarm starts blaring. The old-fashioned ancient speaker alarms.

  Fuck.

  We stand up as one, some of my classmates discreetly shoving various things in their pockets against drill procedures.

  “This is not a drill,” the loudspeakers announce to everyone in a ten-mile radius.

  Guy screams something about lining up and keeping order, gives up, and starts shoveling kids out the door. I would be astounded if anyone actually went to the designated field, and at this point it would be stupid to stay and be the only one there. Even if I might be the safest person in my class for this one situation.

  No, screw that. I pick a random direction and bolt.

  All the while, that cursed mechanical voice follows me, the vibrations sending shivers up my spine.

  ?????

  I’m not sure how far I run. I was pretty firmly stuck in mediocre back when PE was required, and that can only have gotten worse. I can’t hear the loudspeakers anymore, but I have no idea if I’m still in the zone. Judging by the unfamiliar street names, I should be at least a mile away, but —

  Huh. The church is just a couple blocks away.

  Wasn’t I just staring at a street sign that read…? What did it say? I was just looking at it, and then. Hmm.

  My confusion freezes solid, a jagged block of ice on my spine.

  The statue of Minerva is staring down at me, and her sapphire eyes are grey.