In any event, Roman was not socially fluent, which made me feel a lot of empathy for him. In seminar, he would become upset when people told him ways in which his behavior was entitled and offensive, which was not only a very Con reaction, but also contrary to the very aims of the course. But I reflected how difficult it must be to be without strong social capacities, so I became his friend.
This proved difficult. Partly because my peer network kept giving me Con votes for bringing Roman to social occasions, impacting on my holoscore very negatively. But also because Roman, for whatever reasons, also kept giving me Con ratings! I don’t understand why he would give me a Pro rating one night and a Con the next, inasmuch as we spent all our time the same way, which was with me listening while Roman expressed his anger. Roman did have a lot of anger. To confront someone about their Pro/Con votes is, of course, a very Con behavior, but when I hinted at my feelings, Roman said:
“What, you think you’re special, Sophie? You think you deserve some kind of reward for hanging out with me? Is that what you’re trying to say?”
I told Roman I didn’t think I was special, and what I enjoyed about him was his honesty.
At which he said, “Well, I think you’re full of s**t, how’s that for honesty? But whatever.”
Which was the kind of thing Roman often said to me.
This was when we were hanging out in his room almost every night, eating pizza and talking about Roman’s feelings. And that was where we were one Saturday night, when Roman suddenly got a funny look. Now by this time, confessedly, my Pro/Con Holistic Score was not so green as previous. I had brought Roman to several events with my peer network, where he experienced issues related to inappropriate touching. So I was beginning to be conflicted about the friendship. Also, it may be that my sensitivity, though usually high, was not so high as ordinarily. In any event, when Roman did what he did, I reacted uncharacteristically, which I mean, by getting scared and kicking him in the face.
These are the words Roman said to me, that night, which I quote here not to be adverse, but only in the spirit of veracity.
“B***h, what the f**k? Crazy t**t, you come here every night, playing on me, then I finally get the balls to make a move, you shoot me down? Seriously? Motherf**king c**kteasing c**t.”
As noted, I have set all this down not to cause hurt, but because it is in fact what Roman said to me.
But the upshot is, after this incident, my Pro/Con Holistic Score took a gigantic hit. And it was because Roman kept giving me Con votes! I tried to engage with him constructively about it, but he only told me I had “played him,” and how the worst thing a girl can do to a guy is give him those kinds of mixed signals. Then he told other guys I had “set him up,” and they all gave me Con votes, too! So I was receiving Con votes every day, and this, plus a few other, unrelated factors, was, as people say, “the perfect storm,” which made my holoscore begin to drop.
All this was what I explained to Mr. Barraine.
But Mr. Barraine said that wasn’t what he wanted to talk about, which was actually more regarding my academic records.
At which point he pulled up a file and said, “Sophie, now tell me honestly, do you know where this is going?”
At this time I was grateful no one else could see my face. Because in the file were the requirements for my major, which included my Peer Education Program.
“We have a problem, don’t we?” said Mr. Barraine.
The problem was, for years, my Peer Education score had been going up and up, until it was very Pro, and then in the fifth year it began to go down, until it was very Con.
But I told Mr. Barraine I could explain, because this was in fact what I was trying to express to him.
And the thing I explained was, firstly, how much I appreciated the innovative spirit of our institution. Because a student goes to college to learn, correct? But who do students learn from most? Our peers, indubitably! So I thought it was very credible of our institution to demand a full six years of Peer Education courses, which not only cuts down on the need for expensive professors, but is also empowering for the younger generation.
The problem was, in my fifth year Peer Education course, I had been put in a workshop with Damaris Fierte, who, as everyone knows, is known for her unstinting efforts at peer education.
Now, at the time, Damaris Fierte had a deep green holoscore, whereas I, thanks to Roman, had only a pale green holoscore. So it was justifiable for her to educate me.
But still.
The workshop was on Personal Profile Management, in which we had to critique each other’s Perma-Me profiles. And it was my turn to be critiqued. And the first thing Damaris Fierte critiqued about my Perma-Me profile was how I had devoted so much of my time to associating with a person like Roman Cheryshev.
“He’s a predator. An abuser. I mean, I don’t want to say this, but looking at your profile, Sophie, a person could get the impression—an employer, a potential contact—I mean, they could see you as some kind of enabler.”
At which I felt concerned, and explained how I had only felt sorry for Roman, and was trying to be his friend.
At which Damaris said, “So you brought him to my friend’s party? Where he inappropriately touched people? This was someone you wanted for a friend?”
At which I said, I didn’t consider Roman a close friend, exactly, but more like a—
“What?” said Damaris. “If he wasn’t your friend, what did you want from him? Just to use him? Just for the Pro votes?”
I was now beginning to see some of the workshop participants looking at me very problematically.
Then Damaris said, “I think this is an important lesson in Profile Management, guys. Because when people look at your Personal Profile, an employer, a recruiter, what they want to see most is authenticity. If it seems like you’re taking on too many charity projects, or being nice to unpopular people just for the pity votes, I do think that can reflect on you very adversely.”
And in the final analysis, the workshop ended up giving me a strong critique.
But what I want to say is what happened after.
Because I went to Damaris after class and said did she really have to give me such a strong critique? And I wasn’t trying to say my Perma-Me profile wasn’t in need of improvement. But given there was a need for improvement, couldn’t there be a more constructive way to go about it?
This was when Damaris unloaded on me.
What she said was she had always had concerns. She said she could tell right away what kind of person I was, how I always overpromoted myself and my abilities. She said it was pathetic, how I talked, all the big words I tried to use, and when she looked at my Perma-Me profile, she didn’t think I belonged here at all, in this kind of prestigious institution. She said in fact we both knew exactly why I was here. And if there was one thing she didn’t like, Damaris said, it was a Yellow who acts like a Green, or a Red who thinks she’s a Yellow.
At this point I began to have strong feelings. Because I remembered a day, weeks ago, when we had critiqued Damaris’s Perma-Me profile. Which was, admittedly, the best profile I ever saw. Damaris was from New York City, and she went to a private school, and had a huge Child Development Team, and lots of money since she was born. In her profile, there were so many extra classes and volunteer jobs and enrichment programs, I wondered how her Child Development Team could have found time to plan so many activities.
But there was one part of her Perma-Me profile that Damaris kept trying to skip, even though the class kept wanting to go back to it. It was a video of Damaris auditioning for the college’s summer LEO business mentorship program. Which under the video, Damaris had written:
DIDN’T GET IN, OH WELL, I’M JUST SO HAPPY TO HAVE HAD THE CHANCE FOR SUCH A GREAT AND FUN AUDITION!!!!
But if you looked at the video, Damaris did not look happy. If you have ever spent a lot of time throwing up, from nerves or any other reason, let me tell you, you know the signs.
T
he strong feelings were because I remembered my own time in the LEO program. And how I hadn’t even auditioned for it, but instead got in by special appointment. The coordinators had to rush me through the enrollment process, then the training process, until I was the last one to get on the rocket. Even then, when I was sitting in my flight seat, strapping in, I could hardly believe I had gotten this far, me, Sophie Lee, a tourist in space.
When we got past the boost phase, into Low Earth Orbit, the program leader took us into the viewing chamber, and showed us the Earth so far below. The purpose of the program was to join business leaders on a trip to outer space, he said, and learn from their insights and leadership experience. It was business-sponsored, so it was a big honor. The program director had a company in financial services, and he said we had been chosen for this opportunity because of a time in our lives when we demonstrated exceptional leadership. Now was a chance for us to look down and think about the planet we might one day be leading, and what he wondered was, did any of us have anything we’d like to say?
At this point, I began to get a weird feeling in my stomach, and I unbuckled my harness and floated to the viewscreen, and looked down on the continents below.
Then I turned and looked at the business leaders buckled into their flight chairs, and what I said was that the main thing I was thinking was not how small the Earth seemed from up here, but how big.
At this, the business leaders all smiled and nodded.
I said it made me feel humble, thinking about what a challenge it must be, being a leader to such a huge place.
The business leaders now smiled and nodded very strongly.
But I kept feeling weird, and I said it seemed like such a big challenge, it actually seemed like an impossible challenge, like it was crazy to think you could try and control what was happening down there, or even really understand it.
At this point some of the business leaders stopped smiling and nodding, and I sensed it was time to go back to my seat and enjoy the complimentary low-grav spherical cocktails. But I still felt weird, so I kept talking.
What I said was, when you thought about it, to the Earth, human beings were basically like bugs, no more special than any other species, whether endangered or no.
What I said was, if you looked at it that way, what could an individual person, however accomplished, really count for?
What I said was, didn’t it almost seem crazy, all the way up here, for any one person to be richer or more important than another, and if you thought about it, if something were to unfortunately happen, and our spaceship were to explode on reentry, would it even make a difference to anyone down there, except of course our families?
After I said all this, none of the business leaders were smiling and nodding at all, and a lot of the other students were letting go of their cocktail spheres and looking at me, like, What’s the matter with you? Then, when we got back to Earth, I discovered my holoscore had dropped almost twenty percent, and all the business leaders had marked me down as being ‘definitely not leadership material.’
So that was what I told Damaris Fierte. And I said she was right about me. How I knew I didn’t belong here, in such a prestigious institution. In fact, what I said was that I envied her, because what I now realized was, the LEO business mentorship program was as big a risk as an opportunity, and in my case, having utterly blown it, I had totally tanked my holoscore.
At this Damaris looked at me a long time, and I could see her feelings had changed. Finally she said, “Sophie, you know, I think that’s the most honest thing I ever heard you say.”
But I blew it.
Because, the more I thought about it, the more I realized Damaris was right. How all this time, in college, even in my Childhood Development Program, I had been trying to be someone I was not, and to seem smarter than I was. And I was ashamed of myself.
So I said, “Damaris, the thing is, you really are a smart and amazing person. And you’re right, I don’t belong here, but you really do. And you should have been the one to go on the LEO trip, not me, because I truly believe one day you could be a great leader.”
At which she said, “No, no,” and looked sick again, shaking her head.
But I said, “No, seriously, I truly believe that.” And then I said what was probably the stupidest thing I ever said in my whole life, which was, “How come we’ve never been friends?”
But right away I could see I had majorly screwed up. Because Damaris stood back, and her mouth was open and she was panting, and she looked angrier than I’ve ever seen anyone get angry.
And she said, “Sophie, see, this is exactly what I’m talking about! Everything you do, it always has to be a big calculation. You say all these nice things, and I really believed you, and now I see you’re just manipulating me to join your stupid peer network and boost your holoscore!”
At which I didn’t say anything, because I was so surprised.
“This is truly shameful,” Damaris said as she walked away. “Truly, truly shameful. I can’t even educate you in how shameful this is.”
And when I checked, I saw what I feared, which was that every person in Damaris’s peer network had given me an enormous Con vote.
Now, coming from someone with Damaris’s score, that meant something.
But when I told all this to Mr. Barraine, he shook his head.
“No, Sophie,” he said. “The Peer Education stuff, that’s only a sidebar. What we’re here about today is your major, especially your literature courses. And I have to tell you we’ve been noticing some very troubling signs.”
At this I was surprised, because, since entering college I have become, as my Student Career Coach likes to say, a “true lover of the word.”
But Mr. Barraine used his palmscreen to display some different records, which I didn’t recognize, and he said, “Does this mean anything to you?” And when I said, “No,” he said, “Are you sure?”
Then he came around his desk, and pulled up a chair.
He said, “Sophie, do you know what the global rank of this institution is?”
I did, and I told him.
Mr. Barraine said, “Do you know why we are ranked so high?”
I said it must be because of the university’s immense positive contributions to society.
Mr. Barraine smiled. “Do you know what the Ivy League graduate enrollment rate among our alumni is? The first-year employment rate? The average salary at ten years? The estimated value of our name as an attractor of venture capital? The alumni fundraising score? Or how about this?”
He brought up another chart, which covered almost a whole wall, and this one I definitely recognized.
“These are the private and public parties,” Mr. Barraine said, “who have agreed to invest in your education. Here’s the government’s contribution. Here’s AdverBetter. Here’s ThinkTrendTrack. Here are all the media and marketing groups that loaned money for your Student Development Team. They all contributed to the financing of your education, Sophie, because your holoscore positioned you, at the time, as an immensely high-potential individual. I think you know exactly what I’m talking about. The reason you’re in this school, Sophie, is because we don’t only educate students, here. We educate the whole person.”
Mr. Barraine drew a round shape in the air, a little too round, I thought, inasmuch as it was supposed to be me. But this was not a time, I sensed, for critical remarks.
“With my approval,” Mr. Barraine said, “you’ll soon be meeting with representatives of these parties for your Final Academic Review. They’ll be evaluating you for employment opportunities. And they’ll be interested in seeing, as early-access recruiters, what their investment in you has produced. You’ll tell them, I’m sure, all about your enjoyment of our rare animal handling workshops, our AI-training program, our maglev-equipped, five-story VR athletics facility. But you’ll also tell them, of course, about your passionate engagement in our many humanities classes specializing in improved empathetic response.
I believe you would agree that improving empathy is one of the major benefits of a liberal arts education. But Sophie, tell me, what do you think these people will say if they find out one of our top empathetic performers is, in fact, as it seems, deeply biased?”
I admit I responded inappropriately, by jumping out of my chair saying, “Biased? How?”
Mr. Barraine leaned back. “Do you really want to ask me that question, Sophie? Do you not see how going into specifics might, in fact, reify the very bias we’re discussing?” Then he pointed at the graphs and said, “These are your realtime empathetic assessments, which our team has been following closely.”
Now I was especially surprised, because realtime empathetic assessment has always been my favorite part of the literature major. In this time when the humanities are, as they say, “in crisis,” what better case could there be for the profound utility of the narrative arts? How many days have I whiled away in the scanning machines, resting my head in the EEG helmet, listening to the soothing flow of words or the images comporting vivaciously on the screen, and living along with the travails of Jane Eyre and Anna Karenina, of Sula and Nel, of Carrie and Charlotte and Miranda and Samantha? How often has it been a profound comfort to me to know that, in some small way, my empathetic responses to these great works will improve my positive contributions to society?
But as I communicated this to Mr. Barraine, he shook his head. “The trouble isn’t with your enthusiasm, Sophie. The trouble is the correlations. We’ve been looking at your neurological readings, and we’ve been noticing some problematic reactions. It’s not that you lack empathy. If anything, you have the opposite problem. You’ve been empathizing, I have to inform you, with some very unacceptable people.”
But I stood over him, feeling hopeful, and said, “Mr. Barraine, I can explain.”
And what I explained was how, when I’m in the scanning machines, engaging with all the powerful issues in the stories I’m experiencing, sometimes I start to worry I might have a problematic response. And at times, I get so worried that I make myself have the response, but only for the sake of understanding the response, as part of my ever-vigilant efforts not to have the response. So the realtime empathetic assessment machines, as I told Mr. Barraine, are probably only picking up evidence of my constant mental vigilance against such responses, and of my earnest and engaged grappling with even the possibility of such responses.
The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, Volume 12 Page 36
