Call Me Henny

2023 Daniel Verastiqui

Hell Week at Dahlstrom Academy meant a grueling series of exams meant to test everything the students had learned in the last six weeks. Whereas a normal university semester lasted sixteen weeks, the courses at Dahlstrom only lasted half that, thanks to a patented teaching system and some VR wetware magic. Students mainlined information for weeks straight, destroying and rebuilding synapses with computerized efficiency. Names, dates, places, motivations—the minutia of complex systems branded into their brains with fiery precision.

For Henny, Hell Week meant headaches—blinding, searing affairs that last all through the night and peaked in the minutes before each test. Only when he was transcribing data from his analog repository into the digital databank of the testing palette did the throbbing wane, though only slightly. A fog stayed with him whether the test was an hour or three. And when he was done, when all of his answers had bee...