Jaime spent the rest of the color lesson giving her full attention. The thought of getting publicly called out for being distracted filled her with a heavy dread. More than that she found she actually was learning. It didn't seem right, shouldn't she already know what all the colors were or what happens when you mixed them? It was easy enough to understand once the sim teacher explained it.
"UNINTENDED ALTERATION OF NEUTAL PATTERNS ASSOCIATED WITH KNOWLEDGE OF COLOR HAS PRODUCED POTENTIALLY USEFUL DATA. SUBJECT SCHULTZ HAS CEASED MOST OFF TOPIC THOUGHT AND SEEMS MORE ENGAGED WITH SUBJECT MATTER TARGETED TO TERRANS UNDER EARLY CHILDHOOD CONDITION. IF SUCH ALTERATIONS COULD BE REPEATED IN OTHER AREAS SUBJECT SCHULTZ MAY BECOME MORE SUITABLE EXAMPLE OF CONDITION IN ADDITION TO REMOVING ANY REMAINING VIOLENT TENDANCIES."
Eventually the color lesson ended and Jaime relaxed slightly as the subject shifted to basic math. Though she felt her adrenaline spike as the sim teacher once again singled her out.
"Miss Jaime could you please show me how high you can count?"
With all eyes turning back to her, Jaime swallowed then confidently began, "One, two, three, four..."
"ATTEMPTING TO IMPLEMENT NEURAL RECONFIGURATION OF MATH SKILLS."
Jaime went wide eyed for a minute before remembering the trick to counting. Looking to her figures she quickly counted back up to four then continued hoping no one noticed her brief confusion, "....five...six...seven...eight...nine...ten...uh I don't knowwhat comes next."
"Very good Miss Jaime," the sim teacher said clapping again, "That's a very good place to start. Does anyone else think they can go a little higher."
Relief washed over Jaime at not failing again, but it still felt off. Especially as the one sim kid, Henry, managed to get up to twenty. Shouldn't she be able to count to wat bigger numbers? After all she was older than 10, so shouldn't she be able to count up to that?
Once again Jaime found herself forced to pay attention as the sim teacher went over counting tricks and harder things called addition and subtraction. They were kind of confusing at first, but after a little bit Jaime was kind of getting them. So that should make her feel better right? Except she should have probably already been good at them because she should know way more advanced things. Like what? She racked her brain, but couldn't think of anything maybe addition and subtraction were the only kind of math.
It seems that her struggles weren't limited to colors and math. Every time the sim teacher switched to a new topic it would play out the same; Jaime would find herself put on the spot and demonstrate only a partial grasp of the subject only to be shown up by Henry.
When it came to reading she knew almost all her letters, though her hand writing could use some approvement, and could sound out words, Henry knew them all and could long words and those weird ones that weren't spelled how they sounded. She was actually pretty good with shapes, though the trick question about squares being rectangles but rectangles not being squares still confused her but not Henry.
She thought she'd do better when they were going over a safety demonstration on ship protocols, but remembering which alert was for what and how to bavigate the ship seemed much harder than expected. That didn't seem right at first she couldn't believe that military training camp hadn't taught her those, but then she realized that she wasn't sure what camping had to do with space ships. At least she knew the answer to whose instructions you needed to follow she knew the answer first came the capt...Nanny Bot then came any of the grown ups.
By the time class was wrapping up, Jaime was exhausted. Learning so much in one day was draining. The unsettling feeling that had stuck with her during it was still there, but she was still unable to place it. Maybe it was just from being turned into a little girl, even in a simulation her body just felt so...
"ADDITIONAL ERROR IN SUBJECT'S COGNITION ATTEMPTING TO ADJUST NERAL PATTERNS TO COMPENSATE. ALTERATION COMPLETE HOWEVER ARTIFICIAL REALITY PROGRAM BEING DISENGAGED PREPARING TO OBSERVE NEW SUBJECT SCHULTZ'S BEHAVIOR FOLLOWING NEURAL RECONFIGURATIONS."
...normal. It was hard to even imagine being a grown up let alone a boy. Whenever she thought of something she had done before, she remembered it from the perspective of her current body. That obviously didn't make sense. Everyone couldn't have always towered over her like she remembered. She also couldn't have accomplished things like carrying injured soldiers away from the...the...uh place where soldiers went and got hurt.
The nagging thought there was a word that she couldn't quite recall vanished as she suddenly found herself back in the pod. She had to squint against the light as the pod opened and felt the weird tingling sensation that came with feeling returning to her limbs. That at least she was used to from all those training sims she had done, since she had only suffered injuries to her pride she didn't feel the relief that came when things like skinned knees went away. How she got so many boo-boos in those she couldn't imagine, she also couldn't remember what those training sims were actually like but if they were anything like Kindergarten they must have been tough.
Once she was able, Jaime climbed out of the pod and saw Chloe doing the same. The Nanny Bot didn't seem to be in the room anymore, so Jaime wasn't sure what they were supposed to do. Glancing around all she saw of note was a screen with her and Chloe's names on them. It was labeled 'perf-orm-anc-e' and said Chloe was 'ex-cept-ion-al' and Jaime was 'Av-er-ag-e'. Whatever those meant. Jaime would never understand why all the ship's computers had to use big words most people didn't even know.
"Are you alride?" Chloe said startling Jaime.
"What? Oh yes I'm fine why?"
"You were mouding oud da words on da scween."
What a weird thing to point out. Wasn't that how everyone tried to figure out words? Or was that just her? Did that long 'a' word mean dumb?