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game almost impossible to play on a few of his units.  He knew he would need the most modern computers to run this game along with a much wider range of bandwidth for 24 students to play it simultaneously in a single classroom.  It was a huge challenge to consider for next year, but not an impossibility.
     
    In mid-May, Hayes applied for a last-minute State grant that might mean getting more powerful computers and faster Internet flowing into his classroom.  Fortunately, he had come across an advertisement seeking grant applications for a grant open to every school in the South Texas region.  His part would be to convince the readers of the grant’s applications that his plan for the new computers was more worthy than those of any that might apply from his particular school, which wouldn’t be difficult since most teachers and administrators were essentially intimidated by the new teaching technologies emerging in education, and the few that weren’t were years behind understanding its possibilities. 
    Hayes spend a week that May on the planning of an idea that would, he knew, sell to the grant providers like lottery tickets to eight-year-olds armed with third grade math.  It would be a plan involving some off-the-shelf software that he would never use, at least not for very long.  Any reasonable justification he could make for the purchase that combined increased student confidence and improved State test scores would surely be placed at the top of the list. 
    Fortunately, there was a new software suite on the market that was supposed to improve a student’s sense of self-worth and thereby open a cognitive gateway for a child to actually see the value of the education s/he was receiving.  It was touted to somehow develop in students an intrinsic motivation to achieve better scores on the StatSat IV, the State test for low-performing seniors attempting to graduate.  The software was the Aris MindMage Suite, and it required updated equipment and wide bandwidth.  It “reasoned with” the student as s/he took multiple choice tests on one part of the screen, giving hints and acting as a kind of video buddy, a “partner for success.”  His administrators signed off on it with barely a thought, as did the grant evaluating committee.  By July the grant for improved bandwidth, a lab license for using the MindMage software, and 24 high-speed computers was his.
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    CHAPTER 3
     
     
     
    Fall 2022
     
    The computers bought with the grant money were installed in Richard’s classroom over the last few weeks of the summer.  The computers themselves, which nearly covered the entire room, were embedded in special one-piece desks that looked like rows of low, heavy brown mail-drop boxes, the kind made with long necks so letters can be inserted into them from an open car window.  One merely had to sit down and press the top of the angled L-shaped box to watch the screen slowly raise itself up from horizontal.  A keyboard would then glide out of what looked like the mail slot and position itself under awaiting fingers.   Interactive gloves and mouse-balls were stored in large cavities on either side.  The Internet flowed in by means of a satellite dish which pushed connectivity into the room through cables like a busted water line, all mounted just outside the classroom’s small window. 
    There were twenty-four computer stations positioned in four columns of six.  The walkway between the columns was covered in cables of various thicknesses and colors, eventually to be zip-tied together in bundles and placed out of the way along the edges of the units.  There was also about a yard or so of walking space around the room’s perimeter.
    Hayes’ next move was to put a box around each station.  Each student would be completely enclosed in his and her personal, virtual space by refrigerator boxes.  Interactive helmets, like the one he used at home, would have been ideal to achieve this