The sun was barely peeking over the horizon when my journal chimed to wake me.  The steady rocking of the train had ensured that I’d slept well on my journey.  I rubbed my eyes and glanced out of the window, the familiar skyline of the city was fast approaching and I began to gather my things.  As the train began to slow for my stop, my grip on the bag slung over my shoulder tightened and the comforting thrill of coming home filled me.  Only, I wasn’t coming home.  I was returning to school.

    While most of my fellow students had spent the holiday with their families, attending lavish parties and socializing, I’d been doing research on the historical influence of the Intergalactic Planetary Alliance Home Planet Educational Decree in revitalization zones.  The work had been exhausting, but well worth the time invested since it was one of many extra curricula trips that I’d done in order to accelerate my education.  I’d found some very interesting trends that I was anxious to study further. 

    The school hadn’t changed while I was gone; it never did.  The campus had the feel of a ghost town at this early hour.  Nearly all of the students would be returning much later in the day, as classes didn’t start until tomorrow morning.  There were a few of us that had taken advantage of the accelerated learning opportunities that were offered and had already returned to campus.  My dorm was empty; there was nothing to distract me from unpacking my things and settling at my desk with my journal. 

    I spent the day reviewing my notes and working on the report that I would submit to my Guide the following day.  Occasional interruptions from other girls as they trickled back into the dorm from their holiday didn’t interfere with my work.  I had so little in common with most of them that there was very little to be said between us.

    They were all here because their families could afford the exorbitant fees associated with the more formal and specialized education that our school provided.  I was here because the Intergalactic Planetary Alliance Educational Authority decided that my brainpower would be wasted in a provincial school and so they offered me a scholarship to attend.  That didn’t happen very often, so there weren’t many of us economically disadvantaged but brilliant students around.  I didn’t mind the economically disadvantaged part, I could deal with being poorer than my fellow students; the lack of brilliant minds got to me sometimes.

    I’d always envisioned leaving the farm for school and being surrounded by intellectual, constantly learning and questioning.  For the most part, my fellow students were more concerned with the social streams and who was doing what and with whom.  The course work was mostly a challenge, if you questioned the facts instead of blindly accepting them.  It wasn’t the most endearing way to approach learning, but I’d made it work for me thus far and could only hope that it would be enough to allow me to choose my own path for the next step in my education.

    Before leaving on my working holiday, I’d received information on three different paths that were open to me.  Tomorrow morning, I’d discuss them with my Guide and together we would develop my course load for this term.  Of course, I’d thought about my options extensively while I’d been on holiday.  Every spare minute, I’d gone over the brochures.

    As the chimes sounded for lights out, I crawled under the covers of my bed and logged into my journal to review the brochures yet again.  I’d nearly memorized them by now, and yet I still hadn’t made a decision as to which option I wanted to take.  There was no guarantee that I would be accepted into any of the programs, these were just the three that I was most likely to find success with, given my educational history up to this point.

    The bold emblem of two planets circling a third drew my eye once again and I opened the file.  The Intergalactic Planetary Alliance Planet Reclamation and Resettlement Program (IPA-PRRP) seemed like more than I should hope for.  It was an opportunity to broaden my area of education to include xenobiology, planetary development, educational establishment, and government, by far, the most ambitious of my three options.  It was an opportunity to travel to a new planet, possibly even one that hadn’t been settled at all, and to begin my life outside the influence of my family.

    It had been years since I’d been back to see my family.  They’d not wanted me to accept the scholarship and leave their farm for school.  I didn’t think they understood just how stifling the farm had been to me.  They were afraid of me leaving and never coming back, and they were justified.  I’d never considered going back after my last trip home.  My father had tried to convince me again that staying with them was better for me than continuing with my education.  I’d never understood his disdain for the education system, and I probably never would. 

    My second option, Home Planet Revitalization, was almost surely not what I would choose.  It would mean doing the job that my parents did for the most part.  I considered it to be a complete waste of my time here at school.  If I’d wanted to be a farmer, I could have stayed home and done that.  I didn’t even know why this option had been offered to me.  Everyone knew that this was the option that was offered to the marginal students.  I could see my future in this field as a very dark and miserable place and knew that there was no way that I would be discussing this option with my Guide.

    The other valid option that had been offered to me was with the Intergalactic Planetary Alliance Educational Authority.  It had the potential to be a very exciting choice, but there was no guarantee that I wouldn’t be assigned to teach at some backwoods school in rural Asia here on Earth.  The subjects were varied, and the possibility existed that I could be placed on a different planet as a teacher, at any educational level.  It was the pathway towards becoming a Guide.  I wasn’t opposed to the idea, I just wasn’t certain.  My uncertainty followed me into sleep and I had a fitful night’s rest. 

My Guide, Madame Blancehefleur, was waiting for me when I arrived at her office.  My file was spread out on her desk, and her welcoming smile was in place as I took a seat across from her.  This meeting, though much more important, felt just like any of the other weekly meetings that I’d had with her up to this point.  As my Guide, she was responsible for keeping me on track with my studies and ensuring that I was mentally coping with my course load.  Initially, she’d had to offer much more support for my adjustment to this life.  I’d been so used to being the smartest and quickest student that my ego took a beating my first few weeks at school.  I was still one of the smartest and quickest, but I no longer doubted myself if someone else was smarter or quicker.

    I trusted Madame Blanchefleur to provide me with the same solid advice and guidance that she’d always provided to me.  She knew my personal goal of leaving Earth, and she knew that I would do anything to achieve my goal.  When I’d first started here, she’d hinted that she knew my family, though she was always quite vague as to how she knew them.  As far as I was aware, neither of my parents had ever left the farm on which I was raised.  I’d always felt a very special connection with Madame Blanchefleur, as she had also received her education as a scholarship student.  I thought that she was a pretty successful role model for me and I’d always tried to make her proud of my achievements.

    “Good morning Isolde,” she said.  “Where shall we begin?”

    “Good morning Madame Blanchefleur.  My holiday report isn’t quite ready for me to send to you.  I planned on putting the final touches on it during lunch and having it to you then.”

    “Very well.  You have three more days to get it in, as you well know.  Have you reviewed the brochures that were sent to you?”

    “Yes, I have.  I have narrowed it down to two that are very appealing to me.”

    “Let me guess,” she said to me, her smile reaching all the way to her words, “you were insulted by the HPR program brochure?”

    I fidgeted in my seat because it was true.  I had been slightly insulted that the easiest course of study of all of the options available had been included in my selections.  I had excellent grades and all of my aptitude evaluations indicated that I was very capable of handling difficult subjects.

    “It took some effort for me to have that included,” she told me, “and I hope that you’ve not completely discounted it.”

    “I just don’t think that I’m cut out for that,” I replied.

    She shifted the papers on her desk, a shadow of something crossing her face.  I didn’t understand why she had gone to any trouble to include a course of study that she knew that I would immediately discount.  She knew what my personal goals and dreams were and this seemed to go against everything that I’d ever told her.

    “I thought you might say that,” she said as she slid a plain folder across her desk to me. “I’ve put together some additional materials on each of your choices and taken the liberty of scheduling another meeting for us first thing tomorrow.  Review this new information carefully before you make your decision.”

    I took the folder and tucked it into my bag.  I was certain that my confusion was written all over my face.  We rarely, if ever, used printed materials.  Paper was just too valuable of a resource to waste.  It was one of the benefits of the advances in electronic communications and devices that we’d been able to virtually eliminate the use of paper.

    “Until tomorrow then, Isolde,” Madame Blanchefleur told me with her smile back in place.

    I left her office, and with our meeting not having been successful, had nowhere in particular to be.  I went to the library for the guarantee of quiet and privacy.  It would give me an opportunity to finish up my report on my holiday trip as well as allow me to look over the folder that I’d just received.

    The library was nothing more that a series of booths, arranged in a grid like pattern.  All of the information was available electronically from any location as long as you had your student credentials and verified device.  The library was used as a guarantee against interruption.  My favorite booth was available, and so I checked into it.  I made quick work of finishing up my report and sent a copy of it to Madame Blanchefleur earlier than I’d promised.  Something told me that the report wasn’t what she would be worried about.

    I pulled the folder from my bag and laid it on the desk in my booth.  Running my hand over it, just to verify that it was, in fact, real.  I hesitated to open it.  This felt like one of those moments where everything you know changes.  Actual paper sitting in front of me, filled with words that I wasn’t sure were going to help me with making a decision.

    I opened the folder, my eyes scanning the first page.  It was a form, an old form, and it contained detailed information about my mother.  I quickly devoured the information, learning more about my mother than I’d ever dreamed of learning.  She, like me, had been a scholarship student.  She also had chosen a field of study that took her from Earth.  As I flipped through the folder, information was missing; whole years of documentation were gone.  The last page of information on her listed her reassignment to Home Planet Revitalization (HPR). 

    I was stunned.  My mother had never once indicated that she had been off planet.  She had never hinted that being a farmer hadn’t always been her dream.  Was this the reason why she’d been so quick to agree with my father regarding my own attendance at school?  An anger like I’d never felt before welled up in me and I slammed the folder shut before reading any more.  I needed some time before I could see the rest of the contents of the folder.

    I checked out of my booth and went to the dining hall.  I hoped that hunger was fueling the bad attitude that I was carrying towards my mother.  I avoided the other students and ate in solitude, my nose buried in my journal reading over information from my holiday trip that I’d already memorized.  It was doing very little to put me at ease about what I’d already read about my mother, or what was to come in the folder.

    I went straight back to my booth at the library.  As much as I didn’t want to know any more, I had to read the rest of the file.  It felt like everything that I’d known about my life had been a lie.  My mother had never outright lied to me, but I felt that not telling me about her past when I’d been offered a scholarship was deceitful.  She could’ve shared her experiences with me and put me more at ease about my decision.

    I opened the folder again and quickly flipped through the pages on my mother.  It was much less shocking to find pages on my father.  I had expected that he would be included in the folder.  I wasn’t sure why Madame Blanchefleur wanted me to see this.  I couldn’t figure out how my parents’ inability to cope with their chosen fields of study had to do with my own decision.

    My father’s pages looked very much like my mother’s.  He wasn’t a scholarship student though.  His family had been quite wealthy, though he’d been cut off from them for a reason that wasn’t included in his file.  There were the same gaps in reports and the same reassignment.  They’d each been to different planets and it was only upon reassignment that their paths crossed.

    My anger gave way to confusion as I finished reading the pages that were dedicated to my father.  The following pages were quite detailed, more details than were included in census information.  Every aspect of my parents’ lives was documented here.  Every trip that they’d ever made, every year’s harvest, every everything.  There was a list of people, friends of my parents, along with brief bits of information about them.

I skimmed through the pages, absorbing as much as I could.  My parents were under surveillance.  That was the only conclusion that I could reach.  There was no other way for the government to have this much information on them, and I was certain that this was from the government because the information was contained on the same forms that were used here at school for our evaluations.

What was I supposed to do with all of this information?  Why had Madame Blanchefleur gone to the trouble and risk of providing me with this folder?  I read back through everything, giving each page of the folder the attention that it deserved.  I was certain that there was something in this folder that I was missing.  There was some small, innocuous piece of information that would help me understand why this was so important for me to learn.

    I grew angry as I sat in my booth, angry with Madame Blanchefleur.  There was no point or purpose to this information that she’d given me.  This was just another test for me to pass or fail.  This was something that I’m certain was playing out with all of the final term students, a way for the government to test our dedication towards our choices.  It was too perfect to be anything other than a test.

    All of those official government reports, it only made sense that they would be faked.  Why would my Guide go to so much trouble to pass on to me things that shouldn’t be in my hands if not to test me?  I was going to pass this test.  I knew what I wanted from my life and it was more than disappearing into a nameless, faceless job that would age me early and most certainly bring me nothing but heartache and struggle.  My parents had made that choice and regardless of what the papers in the folder said, I knew that they’d willingly chosen the life that they led.  They thrived on it and enjoyed it, and I knew myself well enough to know that it was not the life for me.

    I shoved the folder into my bag, confident once more about the decision that I would share with Madame Blanchefleur tomorrow morning.  I would be applying to the Intergalactic Planetary Alliance Planet Reclamation and Resettlement Program.  There had been lotteries for settlers to coincide with the discovery of three new habitable planets and I wanted a part of that.  With the IPA-PRRP, I would help to educate and instruct the lottery winners to ensure a successful program.  I would travel with them; become a part of building a new world.

    The papers in my bag meant nothing.  These papers were no more than the testing answer key that had landed in my bag mysteriously during my first term at school.  It was a test now, as it had been then.  Fake papers, with false information, handed to me on a silver platter with no instructions to guide me.  I would do the same thing now that I had done then and completely ignore this information.  Oh, I wouldn’t go so far this time as to turn the papers back over to Madame Blanchefleur, like I had with the answer key.  These would stay in my bag, but they would have no influence on my decision.

    It was no surprise that my dreams were plagued with intrigue, other worlds and a desire to support my government against people hell bent on shutting down all of the work being done on resettlement.  I blamed my restless night on the folder full of papers that was still in my bag.  Cold water splashed on my face upon waking did little to invigorate me and so it was with bleary eyes that I left breakfast and went to Madame Blanchefleur’s office.

    “Good morning, Isolde.”

    “Good morning Madame,” I answered as I took the seat that she’d directed me towards.  “I’ve decided that I’d like to pursue the IPA-PRRP course of study.”

    Her eyes flicked to my bag then back to my face as she studied me.  The smile that was always on her face faltered briefly, perhaps due to my own imagination.  At this point in the test, I wasn’t sure what to expect.  I made no move to return the folder to her.  I simply sat in place, with my hands in my lap and waited on Madame Blanchefleur to explain the next step in this process of choosing my specialty area of study.  She made notations on her desktop without looking at me.

    “If you’re certain,” she said as she handed an electronic pad to me, “then all that’s needed is your biosignature.”

    I thumbed the pad, the prick extracting my blood barely palpable through my excitement.  I then raised the pad so that it could easily scan my retina.  The smile on my face was tremendous.  I couldn’t contain it.  This was the first step towards making the dream of a lifetime come true.

    “Thank you,” I said as I handed the pad back to Madame Blanchefleur.

    She took the pad, and put it away.  She made a few more notations on her desktop, and then studied it for less than five seconds before looking back up at me.

    “Congratulations, Isolde,” she said.  “You’ve been accepted and your course schedule has been forwarded to you already.  Best of luck on your studies and remember I am always here to provide guidance and support, should you need it.”

    “Thank you so much,” I told her.  Without her support, I probably would never have made it this far.

    “Isolde,” she said with a genuine smile, “you really should go pack.  This course of study will move you to the other side of campus with the other Intergalactic students.  The Code of Conduct is the same and I expect you to remember it and make us proud.”

    “I will!  Oh wow,” I exclaimed as I stood and gathered my bag, “I didn’t realize I’d have to move dorms.  I have to tell my parents.”

    I rushed out of Madame Blanchefleur’s office, intent on getting myself moved and settled as quickly as possible.