I stared at him like he was insane. Even the Regius Professor looked shocked. I pursed my lips in a thin line, saying simply, " No. "
This seemed to cause the man to smirk slightly, "It isn't optional, ma'am."
I rolled my eyes, sighed and stood up, "Of course it is. The very idea of what you're asking is preposterous. Given the background of many of Oxford's students, I am absolutely certain you would never ask this of one of your other students. I really would have appreciated being told this... requirement prior to flying out here. I detest people wasting my time."
Dr Turner held out her hand and said, "Wait, maybe there is-"
However, she was interrupted by the other man who shook his head, "This is absolutely non-negotiable."
He had that fucking right. What a waste of time. I smiled at Dr Turner, "Apologies for wasting your time." Then I stared emotionlessly at the other man, who was kind of blocking my way out of the small conference room, "Sir, remove yourself from my path, and kindly go short to your own ground." I tested out a spacer insult that Hana learned, which had the same meaning as 'go fuck yourself.' I decided I quite liked it.
He sputtered a bit, but perhaps something about the way I was staring him down made him wise enough not to push the matter, and he stepped back two steps. As I left, I heard the barest beginnings of a conversation through the door. It was Dr Turner, saying, "Are you a fucking-"
I didn't stick around to eavesdrop because I was quite annoyed. Had this entire trip been a waste of time, then? Gram's secretary had asked me to inform them of how long I would need the house, so I sent her a quick text message stating that I would not need it anymore, at least after this morning.
I hadn't made it to my car before Gram's secretary called me, and I answered. He seemed concerned, "Miss Hebert. Was there something wrong with the house?"
I made a 'Tsk' noise and said, "No, there wasn't anything wrong with it. It's perfect. There's just something wrong with Oxford, though, and it seems like it won't work out." I then explained in simple terms what happened. He remained silent for a while, and I could hear the literal click-clacks of an actual mechanical keyboard, something I hadn't heard since Brockton Bay.
"Are you still in town?" he asked, and I indicated that I was, "Let me see if I can solve this issue. Sir Stewart perhaps didn't understand the request or your precise status. If all else fails, we can definitely arrange a similar degree-by-exam at Trinity College here in Dublin very rapidly," he said, sounding a little weary in the way that people often got weary at the world and at people who increased their workload. I didn't take it personally, though, and it seemed he was annoyed at the Dean, not me.
"Okay... that would be nice, too," I said, feeling a little better about the situation. Then, I had to ask, "Is that an actual mechanical keyboard I hear?"
His tone brightened, and he started talking with the zeal of a religious fanatic, "Oh! I knew there was something cultured about you!" He then went on for a good five to ten minutes about mechanical keyboards, the best kinds, which was a trick question because, apparently, the best kind was the kind you had to build for yourself. He took my recognition as interest and not amazement at hearing something I hadn't heard since 2011 or even earlier. Apparently, there was a sizable mechanical keyboard community on the net, and he forwarded me a few sites, which I saved.
Well, the clicky-clacks did sound nice, I supposed, and I remembered a satisfying clicking feeling to my fingers from computer class. However, with a high-end operating system, you could type as fast as you could think, which was quite hard to beat. This guy sounded like he just liked something because it was anachronistic, like a 20th-century version of the Society for Creative Anachronism. Keyboards instead of halberds.
I decided not to even keep walking to my car, and instead just turned around and returned to the Cairns library and decided to just look around. Although the entire John Radcliffe Hospital had been rebuilt in the wake of the Data Krash after a "rebellion" of automated surgical bots resulted in the buildings being mostly demolished, almost all of the books were preserved. I didn't have the authority to check anything out, but I could still look through some of the reference books here, which were kind of interesting.
I was in Oxford, so I had to read at least a few entries from the "Oxford English Dictionary" after all. By the time I got a call, I had moved on to the older chemistry reference books and was looking at the SI units of magnetic properties. The call came from the Dean again. Grinning a little, I answered the call before my Agent could screen it, but I answered it slightly brusquely, with a simple, "Hebert."
"Ah, Miss Hebert... this is John Stewart. I want to apologise on behalf of myself and my assistant earlier today. I'd be lying if I said this request hadn't irritated me, but I assure you we did not intend to drive you away through overly-onerous requirements... my man just could tell I was a bit irritated and decided on some initiative."
I raised a single eyebrow, which was a hard gesture to do and it had taken me a lot of practice over the years I had been in Night City to perfect it, "Like... 'Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?"
That caused a genuine chuckle to come from the older man who nodded, "Yes, precisely!"
I grinned, "Thomas Becket was canonised if I recall. What compensation could I expect?"
This caused the man to cough, "Ah, yes... well, you see, we haven't had the best relationship with the Holy See since the Reformation, you see, so I don't think I can guarantee you canonisation. Plus, you'd definitely have to die." He was razzing me now but seemed a lot more friendly than the last time I had spoken with him.
I decided to play along, "Well, I don't like that part, at all. I suppose there's nothing to do about it."
"That's probably for the best. However, if you're still in town, you can start your assessment today. While my assistant's demand was a bit much, there will need to be some way to verify that you aren't consulting any reference materials you have saved in your implants," he sounded slightly apologetic about it.
I tilted my head to the side, about to take offense again but stopped. Really, his request wasn't that out of the ordinary. While I was sure that regular students didn't have such stringent requirements, they also had five or six years for professors to individually gauge their progress. Personally, I thought that it was a bit old-fashioned to even proscribe the use of reference materials for an exam, but this was an old-fashioned place.
I sighed and thought about this for a good fourteen hundred milliseconds of objective time before I offered, "I can scroll a virtu of myself taking the exams. That would include, obviously, my HUD, and it would be possible to verify that I wasn't pulling up any saved reference materials. But I would not agree to scroll the thought track." A BD's "thought track" didn't really correlate entirely with a person's inner monologue, so you couldn't actually "hear" someone's thoughts precisely, but it wasn't that far off, either. You'd experience their emotions, and you could, with practice, kind of intuit what they were thinking about, so I considered it confidential.
Plus, I had already tested only recording one-third of my "thoughts", and I would have come across as very flightly, almost ditzy. It would appear kind of like someone with really bad ADHD, thinking of very random things. The Dean considered this for a moment before nodding, "Yes, that would definitely be sufficient. Dr Turner is still in the Cairns library if you're able to return today."
"I'm here, as well. I figured that if I am in Oxford, then I had to at least read a few entries from the Oxford English Dictionary," I said amusedly.
He tilted his head to the side and said, "If you pass all of the tests, I'd be willing to show you one of the first editions, the first fascicle printed. I believe it took them five years to write from A to Ant."
That would be very interesting, so I inclined my head. I had thought this man would be an enemy, but it turned out that he was just an overworked asshole. That was fine, there were plenty of people like him, and I would just have to demonstrate that I wasn't actually wasting his time. I thanked him and disconnected before retracing my steps and finding the same study room.
I did notice that it was just the Professor this time, and the Dean's assistant was nowhere to be seen. Although he had been incredibly irritating, I hoped he didn't have to flee the country like the knights who had ridden King Henry of his turbulent priest. The Regius Professor smiled at me as I approached and said, "Ah, I just spoke with the Dean. If you like, you can begin your exams immediately."
So we were just ignoring the previous unpleasantness. Yes, I could do that. I walked with her to a room further into the library. It was quite small, and I immediately recognised that I was in a Faraday cage as soon as I entered it. She said, "Please take a seat, and you can select whichever exam you want to pursue first. There's no particular order you have to proceed through."
She then tilted her head to the side, "If you'll wait a moment, though." After a few more minutes, someone entered the room and connected something small to one of the hardwired data connections directly behind me. I coughed and said, "Do you mind connecting that device to that jack?" I pointed to the one that was ninety degrees to my left rather than directly behind me.
The tech looked surprised and then glanced at where I was pointing before shrugging and nodding, unplugging it and plugging it into the jack I suggested.
Dr Turner looked like she wanted to ask why I made that request, but I was thankful that she did not. I assumed that this device was some kind of proxy that I would be scrolling my BD into, but the nondescript box was large enough to house a small-shaped charge in it as well. I didn't think it had one, but if it did, the hypothetical jet of molten metal would have been pointed directly at my back. Now it was set to destroy the data terminal I was about to use to take these tests, not my back. I might be burned a bit, but nothing too serious.
When everything was set up, Dr Turner said, "Well, I'll be leaving now. Feel free to take as many exams as you like, but we ask that you not leave this room in the middle of an exam. Feel free to take breaks in between them, though, as much as you like."
I nodded, "Thank you again for your assistant, Doctor." I then configured and started my BD scrolling, aiming it at the proxy that the tech had installed. I was told that an AI would be administering the exam, and it would likely be the same one that reviewed my BD.
I tapped on the data terminal, and it was already logged in and had an extensive list of exam choices. Each exam had a time limit, but there was apparently no time limit on how long I could take to complete the whole battery of tests, merely how much I could stand to do a day.
Well, I had to do all of them, so I might as well get the easy ones out of the way first. Rather than the test called 'Introduction to Human Body', which sounded dreadfully boring and was likely the first class all medical school students took, I selected Advanced Genetics, Cell Structure and Function from the list of tests and started the exam. The exam was interesting. It wasn't multi-choice at all like I was expecting. I could answer verbally or write my answer in the text box with the data terminal, and I assumed the AI was grading each answer personally. Nice. I didn't have to be brief, then.
When Grace had heard about the Dean setting up someone to test out of the entirety of the MBBS curriculum, she had been interested. She didn't know who this very young-looking girl was, but she knew the kind of horsepower one had to have to force Sir Stewart to budge on something like this, so she was shocked when that idiot personal assistant gave the girl the bum rush out of the library.
Who would ever agree to give anyone super-user access to their OS? Grace certainly wouldn't have. She wasn't surprised when she got a call shortly after that from the Dean and was just pleased that none of that splashed on her. Less than an hour later, the girl had already started on her exams, but to Grace's surprise, she didn't decide to take any of the common pre-reqs first, like higher maths or English composition; she jumped straight into the Phase IV electives and was taking tests out of order, taking the much harder higher level courses first and then working down the pre-reqs.
And she was burning through them rapidly! She had already taken three elective courses, each spending only about thirty minutes on each, when the time limit for each test was three hours. Gaping, Grace triggered an observe mode onto the BD that the girl was scrolling to see if maybe she was cheating somehow.
No, the only things she had open was a note-taking application which was blank and a small calculator app which she didn't appear to need to use. The AI was pretty insistent that there was almost zero chance she was cheating and that she was not switching into different styles of presentation or prose when answering questions. Everything was answered in "her" style.
How about that? Was this girl some sort of practising doctor that Special Branch was giving a new identity to? Some sort of spy? Fanciful tales of some doctor in North America who was also a sleeper agent, whose cover was now blown and was getting a new identity went through her head.
Wait... this girl was taking ALL of the electives? Didn't Grace explain to her that she only had to take a couple of them? Each Phase IV elective was supposed to be a mini-semester of about twelve weeks between Phase III and IV, and you only took two of them. This Taylor girl was taking exams for all of them, seeming to work through the most difficult and then proceeding to the easier classes over time.
Well... whatever.
I managed to clear through ten of the easy but still interesting classes on the first day, but after that, it was much more of a slog. I was keeping all of the tough classes, like Philosophy, Composition, History and Ethics, until the end and was just working through the more boring but easy medical ones.
Four days later, I had exhausted all of the easy classes and had to start taking the harder ones. The math classes were pretty simple, although I had the idea that I wouldn't have thought so before I had three brains to think about it. The chemistry classes were pretty simple because they all seemed focused on organic chem, which my power helped me with.
