The Dazzling Heights

The cat jumped onto the desk of the girl in the front row who’d spoken earlier. She let out an involuntary squeal of shock. “Movement,” Xiayne went on, ignoring the scattered laughter. “The movements of anything living must be rendered with perfect relation to any viewer, no matter where he or she is located with respect to the holo. Which is why Sir Jared is called the father of modern holography.”

Xiayne went on for a while about light and distance, about the calculations needed to make something seem larger to the viewers who were closer to it, but smaller to those farther away. Rylin tried to listen, but it was hard to focus with Cord’s dark head right in front of her. She willed herself not to stare. A couple of times she saw Leda looking at her out of the corner of her eye, and she knew the other girl was missing none of it.

When the bell finally rang to signal the end of class, Xiayne quickly changed tack. “Don’t forget that your next project is in pairs, and is due in just two weeks. So you all need to find a partner if you haven’t already.”

The room burst into a hum as everyone began pairing off. Suddenly, Rylin was seized by a terrible, overwhelming fear that she might somehow end up with Cord. She thought of the way he’d looked at her earlier this week, resentful and hurt. No matter what, she could not be partnered with him.

The sounds of the room seemed to be growing louder, making Rylin almost dizzy with the pressure of it. She did the only thing she could think of.

“Partners?” she asked, turning to Leda.

Leda blinked at her in disbelief. “You’re kidding,” she said flatly.

Rylin forced a smile. She had a feeling she would regret this. “What have you got to lose?” she asked.

Leda glanced from Rylin to Cord and back again. “Fine,” she said after a moment, with a flash of reluctant respect. “Just don’t expect me to do all the work for you.”

Rylin started to reply, but the other girl had already stood up to gather her things.

Rylin bit back a sigh and started toward the front of the classroom. She might as well introduce herself to the professor and ask what this assignment was.

“Professor Radimajdi,” she ventured as Cord walked silently out the door. He’d probably partnered with one of the senior girls. That was for the best, Rylin told herself. At least this way she wouldn’t look like a fool. “I just joined the class. Can you tell me about the assignment?”

“Rylin, right?” There was something unusual about the way he said her name, as if it were the word for something delicious and wicked in a foreign language. For some reason it made her shiver. “The other students all know this already, but please, call me Xiayne.”

“Okay,” was all Rylin could think to say. He gestured to the chair before his desk, and she sank into it, pulling her bag awkwardly onto her lap.

“Sorry, it gets so hot in here,” he muttered, and shrugged off his zippered black jacket.

Rylin nodded, her eyes widening at the sight of Xiayne’s arms. Inktats covered every square centimeter of skin—beautiful, abstract shapes in a dizzying array of colors. They gathered like fabric over his biceps, swirled down his muscled arms to finish in a visual kaleidoscope at his wrists. Rylin found her gaze drawn to those wrists, watching them bend and flatten, the inktats shifting in anticipation of his every moment. They were the kind of inktats that went nerve-deep: the micropigment shards had been blasted into his skin with a fibrojet, lined with astrocytes that would sink deep into his tissue and cleave irrevocably to the nerve cells, enabling them to shift with constant movement. By far the most painful, and therefore the most badass, kind of inktat.

Xiayne leaned forward and she caught a hint of more ink at his neck, disappearing into the collar of his shirt. She felt herself redden as she imagined what the rest of it looked like, on his chest.

“Did you design them yourself?” she ventured, gesturing to the inktats.

“Oh, years ago,” he said lightly, “at a place called Black Lotus. As you might imagine, the school isn’t thrilled about them, so I try to wear sleeves during class hours.”

“Black Lotus?” Rylin repeated. “You don’t mean the one down on the thirty-fifth floor?” Rylin had gone there with her friends once, several years ago, back when her mom was still alive. She’d inked a tiny bird on her back, right at the waistband of her jeans, the one place her mom wouldn’t see. The pain was excruciating, but it was worth it—she loved the way the bird responded to her movements; flapping its wings when she was walking, tilting its head beneath a wing when she was asleep.

Xiayne blinked at her in surprise. “You know it?”

Suddenly Rylin wished she were wearing a hoodie and sneakers instead of this starched uniform skirt. She wanted to feel more like herself. “I actually live on the thirty-second floor. I’m here on scholarship.”

“The Eris Dodd-Radson award.”

“I get it, okay?” Rylin snapped—and winced. “I’m sorry,” she said haltingly. “It’s just that everyone has been saying that all week, like I’m some kind of weird reminder of her. It’s already uncomfortable enough for me, that I’m here because a girl died. But I’m not here as a sort of”—she swallowed—“replacement for her.”

An indecipherable expression darted across Xiayne’s features. Rylin realized that his eyes were lighter than she’d thought at first, a deep gray-green that stood out shockingly against the smooth darkness of his skin. “I understand. That must be difficult.” Then he broke out into a smile. “But I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little excited, to be teaching someone different. It’s refreshing. Nostalgic for me, even.”

Rylin felt puzzled and flattered all at once. “What do you mean?”

“You’re from my old neighborhood. I went to P.S. 1073.”

“That was my rival school!” Rylin couldn’t help laughing at the unexpectedness of it all. For the first time since walking in the front doors on Monday, she didn’t feel like she was being judged.

“And what do you think of Berkeley so far?” he asked, seeming to sense her thoughts.

“It’s … an adjustment,” Rylin admitted.

Xiayne nodded. “There are good parts and bad parts, as with most things in life. But I think you’ll find that after a time, the good outweighs the bad.” Rylin didn’t agree, but she wasn’t sure she wanted to protest, and anyway, Xiayne was already reaching into a cabinet in the corner. “Have you ever used a vid-cam before?” he asked, pulling out a shining silver sphere, about the size of a grape.

“No.” Rylin had never even seen one.

Xiayne opened his hand, releasing the sphere gently upward. It floated to hover in the air a few centimeters above his palm. He twirled his index finger in a circle, and the vid-cam spun, mirroring his movements. “This is a 360-degree vid-cam, equipped with powerful spatial processors and a microcomputer,” he explained. “In other words, it records in every direction, no matter which way the viewer turns.”

“So you just turn on the camera and it starts recording an immersive holo?” That didn’t sound difficult.

“It’s harder than you’d guess,” Xiayne said, understanding her meaning. “There’s an artistry to it—staging the scene, making sure it’s perfect in each direction, then removing yourself from it all before you film. Unless you decide to edit yourself out in postproduction.”

“You can do that?”

“Of course. Once you really get the hang of it, you can edit different takes together into a single view. That’s how I got the midnight sunrise in Metropolis. You know, the one that Gloria watches from the rooftop at the end of the movie?” He sighed a little. “I stitched that together from about three hundred takes, pixel by goddamned pixel. Took me two months.”

“Right,” Rylin breathed, since she didn’t know the scene he was talking about. “So, what exactly did we need to film for the assignment?”

“Something interesting.” He snatched the camera from midair and held it toward her, palm outstretched. “Surprise me, Rylin.”