Terence Green - Room 1786

Peter Zendahl was excited. He had been Selected. God, it felt good. It felt really good.

It had been 15 months since his last Selection. He could live with that. Everybody else did. But, as everyone knew, one needed these occasional rewards, these intermittent and meaningful bouquets of recognition. Not token gestures. Real gestures. Gestures with the guts left intact, with the challenge unspoiled.

It was the thing that he really liked about his teaching job—this chance to be Selected.

Every morning for four years, 300 days a year—since buying his condo in Pickering in 2052—he boarded the Transit, and with appropriate via-transfers arrived at the William Davis Metro Toronto Educational Centre. The hawk-like concrete structure guarded the Toronto waterfront. Rising in the elevator to the 17th floor, he strode out into the Communications Division: row upon row of metal desks, computer consoles, videotape facilities, surrounded by studio rooms, vast tape-filled wall units, illumined by soft recessed lighting which brightened the industrial tan broadloom.

This was where he prepared his lessons, along with the other 150 Communications Educators hired by the Division. This was where the tapes were conceived, written, produced, and annually modified; they were broadcast to the Domestic Educational Consoles in every home in Metro. On the 16th floor, below him, the Pure Sciences Division was similarly engaged, and below them Occupational Trades, Business Practices, then Social Sciences and so on down to the Main Floor Pre-School Division.

Peter Zendahl had slipped neatly into the cogs.

In every North American city children gathered, 300 days a year, in front of their DECs to view their lessons. The DECs in turn processed responses through the Ed Centre’s central Macrovac. All grades and diplomas were computer stored for easy recall.

But today, instead of preparing his lessons as the other teachers around him were doing, Peter Zendahl had been Selected. Today was special.

The effectiveness-level of his last month’s lessons had been in the top 5 per cent. Peter would be rewarded. He would be challenged.

Language as a Function of Time. It was his script and production of the lesson that had turned the trick. Students quickly absorbed the initial concept and were able to complete his Time-Space-Language coordinate charts in response. There had been a 30 per cent request for more work in the area. Nothing like this went unnoticed by the Macrovac.

Peter strode through the other teachers, heading to the far end of the room, to Room 1786.

“Way to go, Peter.”

“Lucky guy.” His back was slapped.

He had been Selected.

He paused at the door to Room 1786, composed himself, breathed deeply and turned the silently rolling handle. When he opened it, 20 pairs of eyes turned and gazed at him with overt curiosity.

He had been rewarded. He would be challenged.

Peter Zendahl had been selected to teach the Live Class this week—all week—before returning to his videotapes, computer consoles, studio rooms. There was only one such class per floor, only 18 such classes in the whole city. Twenty real live children as a class. This week they were his.

His chest filled with pride.

The children beamed.