The video opened with a drone shot of the woods surrounding the campus, beautiful pine forest that entirely filled the screen to start with.

Rushing over the forest, the drone made it clear quickly just how remote this location must be before bursting out past the treeline and over a high stone wall, elegantly designed and shaped, and across a large lawn.

At the same time it started to rise up, so that a wider and wider view of the campus was clear; the big, eighteenth-century main building, elegant in black stone and white detailing, the sleek modern dormitory buildings to either side, the glass surround of the swimming pool, the stables, and the sports field behind it.

There was someone standing on the glossy red gravel driveway, directly in front of the large double doors at the centre of the hall, but at this point in the video they were too far away to make out much else.

And then the drone swooped forward toward them, almost racing up the driveway itself. The figure resolved itself, new details becoming clear one by one: that they wore black; that they were a redhead whose hair had been arranged into elaborate curls; that they were a woman; lastly, that her clothes weren’t black but a deep navy blue, the severity of the business pantsuit she wore having given a misleading impression.

She smiled. “Hi,” she said. “My name is Jocelyn Russell, and I’m a proud alumna of the Northrop Finishing School for Accomplished Women.” She gestured back toward the building behind her, a genteel but welcoming motion encompassing the caption. “There are those who would say the concept of a finishing school is outdated,” she continued, “especially those who think the college experience is suitable for all.

“I would argue against that. For one thing, it’s become clear in the past decades that college is not necessary for many career paths, and in fact it can hinder progress. For another, these institutions do not teach you the soft skills.”

The video cut to one of the hall’s seminar rooms. Seven immaculately turned out young women were discussing something, though it was Jocelyn’s voiceover which carried over the top. “Northrop is a selective school. For over a hundred years now it has taken in women from prestigious families and women with potential, in order to provide them with the polish they need to take their first steps onto a larger stage.

“Alumni of the Finishing School are often in the spotlight, moving among the rich and powerful, acting as hostesses and more at gatherings where international policies are decided. This positioning gives Northrop girls an insight that can’t be matched, and the lessons taught here can help us apply that influence effectively.

“Take me, for example.” She brought the hand she’d gestured with back to her chest, resting fingertips against herself, the palm held just above. “I was born Jocelyn Melton, but I usually went by Josie.

“Like many of you watching this, my parents weren’t rich. I went to a pretty good school, but nothing special. But I worked hard, I got good grades, I went in for sports. I made a lot of friendships, some of them with girls I had nothing in common with.

“I worked hard, but I was lucky, too - and that probably describes you, too.” Her smile was warm, confident, welcoming. “Because our mutual luck came in the form of someone bringing us to the Northrop Finishing School’s attention. They extended an invitation.

“I nearly went off to college instead. Only my parents telling me they couldn’t afford the fees stopped me.” Her smile changed slightly. “Of course, if you’re not an American, the limits on your choices will be different. But there are still limits there.

“Northrop represents an opportunity to step beyond your limits. My fellow alumni have joined the rich and famous; my contact book has details for the private lives of presidents overseas, of multinational CEOs, of oil tycoons from the Middle East.

“And me? Thanks to Northrop, I met Michael Russell.” At this point in the video she paused to let that sink in, knowing everyone would recognise the name. Somewhere in the world’s top ten richest, he’d made headlines when his company made a huge breakthrough in medical technology. Following the initial breakout success, he’d pushed harder, becoming the face of affordable medical innovation. This had quickly converted into major political capital as well as a significant financial base.

“Thanks to the skills I learned at Northrop,” she continued, “I married Michael Russell. Now we share a vision for the future and our goals are aligned.

“The School did that for me, and it can do the same for you.

“You’ll still learn many of the things people expect from the college educated. You won’t just appear knowledgeable - you’ll be knowledgeable, ready to walk the walk as well as just talking the talk.

“For the people you’ll be moving among, faking it is not an option. You have to be the real thing, and that’s exactly what Northrop will help you become.” She smiled. “Beautiful, accomplished, and talented in all the ways that matter.

“As you watch this video, you’ll be faced with a decision; where will you go in your first years as an adult? It’s not unfair to say that what you choose will change your life. You could go to college, or you could embrace the potential seen in you, and come to Northrop, where you’ll become something special.” She smiles warmly at the camera. “I can promise you, you’ll never regret it.”

*

The pitch had seemed too good to be true, Robin had thought. Fresh out of high school, her only options without further qualifications had been big-box retail, fast food night shift, or the giant cheese packing plant that was Hapgood, Wisconsin’s biggest employer. Her dad was willing to subsidise her, but willing didn’t magically create more money. And there was no sports scholarship waiting for her, the way there had been for big brother Reggie.

Now, sat in the back of the Northrop SUV that had picked her and three others up from the nearest airport, and having driven through dense woodland for the last half hour at this point with no breaks, she wondered if it still was too good to be true.

Karen - who must have been one of the last girls to be given that name before it took on its new meaning - and Angie were still chatting away, but Robin and Eva had fallen silent. They were now entertaining themselves by shooting meaningful glances at one another whenever Karen or Angie said something they found particularly cringeworthy.

The blonde and the redhead didn’t seem to notice, and Robin doubted they would have cared anyway; they’d hit it off together from the start, and didn’t seem to have even noticed the other girls in the back weren’t still involved in the conversation.

Robin had hopes of Eva, though. They seemed to have the same sense of humour, and neither of them was foolish enough to laugh in someone’s face when that might turn into drama.

She pulled out her phone, swiped the screen, looked for notifications. None.

She frowned. She’d not checked it since they entered the woods; that was more than enough time, usually, for at least a couple of events to fire. She lined up her face with the camera, tapped for the face recognition check, unlocked her phone.

“We’ve got no signal here,” she said, surprised.

The conversation immediately stalled out. The other three women produced their phones, finding the same thing.

“My God,” Angie said, wide-eyed. “How remote is this place, anyway?”

Robin opened her mouth to answer - she’d googled the place before she signed up, after all - but before she spoke, it occurred to her that the other women had probably looked at the map as well. Nowhere seemed quite so remote on a map as some places actually were.

The drive from the nearest airport was three hours. The nearest town was an hour away by car. On its own, that wasn’t so weird or intimidating. But when you added in the forest, the sheer unrelenting nature of it, it felt even further away.

“I haven’t seen a single vehicle going the other way on this road in an hour,” Eva said. “Maybe that’s the time of day, but I’d expect something.”

Karen pursed her lips and nodded, evaluating this. “We’re really doing this, huh?” she asked. The four girls started smiling among themselves. Robin felt an actual connection to Karen and Angie for the first time.

Ten minutes later, they did finally pass a vehicle going the other way; another SUV in Northrop branding, this one empty except for the driver, off to meet the next flight in and collect the next crop of girls.

*

Once they arrived, they were shown to their rooms, and Robin was relieved to confirm that each of them had individual rooms in the big dormitory blocks, with en-suite showers to boot. Another reason to be glad she’d chosen this over college, she thought; she wouldn’t be sharing with anyone.

“Freshen up, ladies,” they were told by Karl, a cheery groundsman who was acting as porter. “There are a few others already here. No formal introductions until this evening, when the new class have all arrived. Your time’s your own until then. Mingle, shower, walk the grounds, nap - whatever you prefer.”

He touched his forehead in the most casual salute Robin had ever seen, grinningly refused the tip Eva offered him, and was gone.

Robin exhaled. “You know, I was thinking about taking a walk to see the place for myself,” she said. “But then he had to go and say ‘nap’ and that sounds like a really good idea.” She’d spent the entire day so far in one seat after another, but it had all been travel, and travel always had that effect on her.

“Yeah,” Karen agreed. “Same.”

Eva departed, looking to walk the grounds, and Angie, with a pout, followed her. Robin wondered whether that arrangement would go well for either of them, but she took herself off to lie down.

*

“That’s two sleeping now.”

“Monitor for REM. Run the introductory if you see it, but be ready to abort at the first sign of disturbance.”

“You got it, sir.”

*

As Robin slept, two panels in the wooden headboard of her bed slid open almost soundlessly. With a low, quiet whirr, nothing louder than a fan in the same room might give off, two thin rods gleaming with chrome emerged from the revealed spaces. Each one was hinged at a central point and tipped with a small sphere that looked like rubber.

The hinges bent, the tips of the rods swinging slowly inward until the balls touched her temples. Whatever material they were made of deformed at the slightest pressure as they came into contact with her body, making their touch so light it would not disturb anyone deeply enough asleep to have started to dream.

Electricity slid into the probes and a magnetic field sprang into existence between them, a loose ellipsoid that ran through Robin’s brain.

Her eyelids fluttered, and Robin dreamed.

The quality of her dreams shifted. She pictured herself in the main building’s dance hall - somewhere she had never yet been, had seen only briefly in the video. But as she stood among a line of other young women, dressed like them in white, she was looking in a direction the video hadn’t shown, and saw it clearly.

Music began to play, and men came forward, tall and short, bald and long-locked. For the most part they wore suits, but some sported the slacks and polo shirts of the modern tech founder.

Robin joined the group of women promenading in front of them, walking in front of each man, one at a time.

From time to time, one of the men would step up to the line and offer his hand to one of the women. They always accepted it and allowed him to lead them away from the group.

Little by little, the group Robin was in dwindled. A sense of dissatisfaction became noticeable, and then started to increase with each other woman - and, it therefore followed, each man - who disappeared.

Robin found herself envious of them, and matters became worse after a quick head count. There was one more of the women than there were the men; someone was going to be left out.

Robin, who had always prided herself on having an independent attitude, was genuinely shocked to realise how much she didn’t want to be the one left behind.

And yet the dream came to its inevitable conclusion, with the last of the faceless other women selected before her.

Robin came awake with a start, vaguely aware of the sound of a click somewhere nearby as she did. She looked around the room but all was as she left it, though the quality of sunlight streaming in through the window had changed. A couple of hours had passed, leaving them well into the afternoon.

She got up and went in search of a snack.

*

In the early evening, the new class at Northrop Academy gathered on the gravel in front of the main building. There were just over fifty of them, a fact that Robin found strangely reassuring - there had been only half so many in her dream. At first glance, she mused, someone might look at the group and think the only thing they had in common was their gender, with different colours, heights, and builds. Certainly they didn’t all have the long legs and ample bosom of Jocelyn Russell.

The more they mingled and chatted, and the more she looked around, the more commonalities did start to emerge. While there was variety in their figures, all of them could be called conventionally attractive without stretching the truth; too, all of them seemed bright and perceptive.

From the fragments of conversation she caught as she made her way around the others, she got the impression that they were all independently enough minded to quite welcome the solitude of their remote location. Nobody was expressing regret that they hadn’t been able to talk to their family yet, even though the wifi (surely there was wifi) hadn’t yet been made available to any of them and there was no other signal available.

It was just one day, of course - less than that - but still she would have expected at least one of the assembled women to be twitching that she hadn’t been able to let anyone know she’d got there safely.

Of course, it was always possible she’d just missed that conversation when it had come up for the others.

The sound of crystal being struck rang out, and the group turned to face the big double doors at the entrance to the School. Standing there was a tall, thin woman in a severe black business suit - not a pantsuit, unlike Jocelyn - who had just tapped a wineglass with what looked like a silver fountain pen, and behind her were three men and two women in dress pants, starched white shirts, and waistcoats, each of whom carried a tray with a selection of white and red wineglasses.

“Welcome, one and all,” she said, “to the Northrop Finishing School for Accomplished Women.” As she finished her sentence the waiting staff behind her swept forward, two heading into the centre of the group, two swinging out to the edges. Robin found herself impressed by the presentation.

“As some of you will already know,” the woman continued, “my name is Desdemona Gunderman, and I hold the position of Headmistress at this institution.” Her gaze swept the gathering, managing somehow to be both stern and affectionate at the same time. “We do not yet know one another, but we will become very well acquainted over the next three years.

“For the time being, I simply want to welcome you all and invite you to meet one another and match names to faces. One of the marks of an accomplished woman has always been her ability to make even acquaintances feel welcome, so I will tell you that tomorrow morning, each of you will be shown photographs of ten of your cohort and asked to provide their full name and an interesting fact about them, such as you might use in introducing two mutual friends to their mutual benefit.”

Robin sighed. That kind of memory for faces wasn’t her strong suit, not at all. She accepted a glass of wine.

“Tomorrow,” the headmistress continued, “the sophomores will return. Our upperclasswomen are already on campus, though you are unlikely to have met them yet. The first day of a new academic year is an important landmark for them, and one they are busy marking.” She paused for a moment. “You will have tomorrow morning to familiarise yourself with the grounds and the upperclasswomen before the sophomores return, so that you need not feel yourself at a disadvantage against them.

“Dinner will be served in the hall in one hour. You have been assigned seats; these will be changed in the next semester based on the staff’s observations and judgement.”

Whatever that meant, Robin thought, but she set it aside, aware she was being cynical in the face of an experience that should have been magical.

She was sure that in the weeks and months to come, the sight of this campus would come to feel utterly normal, dulled by familiarity. It just hadn’t happened yet.

The rest of the evening passed in a blur. By the time she went to bed, despite the nap earlier, she felt exhausted, but she was happy. She felt like, of the fellow freshers she’d had any meaningful conversation with, she liked somewhere over half of them.

She lay down and was asleep almost as soon as her head hit the pillow.

*

“How did the introductories take?”

“All three we administered twitched at the right moment in Gunderman’s speech.”

“That’s good. Put them onto the next set, start the others out.”

“Roger. Watching for REM.”

*

The first full day at Northrop felt like a tightrope. Robin got both name and fact right for just four of her ten - not the worst of the group, but not the best, either. Before lunchtime she and the rest of the freshers filed into one classroom, just large enough for fifty desks, which turned out to boast a surprising amount of computer equipment - and the equipment itself, once she inspected it, turned out to be even more surprising.

A place like this, in this classy old building, in the middle of nowhere, and they’d laid on VR headsets for learning?

“Isn’t this… you know… impersonal?” Romi asked. Romi, whose name Robin had forgotten less than an hour earlier, was a larger-than-life woman coming to Northrop a little later than most - she was in her mid-20s, having already had a taste of the service industry, but apparently a well-connected customer had referred her.

“Well, I won’t lie,” Professor Morten answered, her usual thin smile in place. “We’ve heard that comment before. We try to limit it, when we can, for just that reason. But I can assure you, there’s no faster way to offer everyone one-to-one tuition at once. And it makes for private one-on-ones, too.

“You’ll find your name on one of the screens. Sit down at that desk and we’ll help you into the headsets if that’s something you’re not comfortable with.”

Robin found herself sat next to Romi. They hadn’t had much to do with each other, but as they sat down, Romi happened to glance up and meet her eye. Robin nodded. “Thanks,” she said softly. “I was wondering the same thing.”

“Someone had to ask,” Romi agreed. “I’m happy to be the one myself.”

The headset, Robin discovered once she picked it up, was playing soft music; nothing she recognised, just gentle strings. It could as easily be a gentle pastoral or something dreamed up as a movie score.

Settling the headset into place, she had to fumble around on the desk for a few moments to find the controllers. The music was lovely, though; to her surprise, she really couldn’t hear anything from the outer room either. She figured the equipment had to be pretty much state of the art.

The visor showed her the Northrop logo, a stylised horse in silhouette in front of a green and gold shield. Not quite a crest, but reminiscent of one.

After a couple more minutes the music quieted for a moment. Professor Morten’s voice cut in over it. “Alright,” she said. “We have everyone set up. We’re going to start the course shortly.

“You’re going to be shown photos of your colleagues, and you’ll have a list of possible names. This is the first phase in social memory training, so we hope you’re ready for it. Remember, it’s not just about the social cachet you’ll get for knowing everyone important in your life and what will please them most. We do memory training early to help you with a lot of our other mental courses, just as the fitness regimen will be starting tomorrow so we can get you all ready for dancing and deportment.”

Whatever deportment was. Robin made a mental note to look that up later, if she remembered.

“Here we go,” Professor Morten said. The school logo dissolved.

Robin was immediately faced with a headshot of one of her fellow students. Beside it was a list of names, exactly as predicted.

The music had changed, not strings anymore but a reedy woodwind sound that made her think of old movies set in the deserts. She took a deep breath and selected her first name, which lit up green.

Hopefully that means I got it right, she thought to herself, as a new picture popped up in its place. It was strange, but when presented with something like this, she wasn’t convinced she’d be certain she’d even got Romi or Eva’s name right.

Another face followed, and another. Some of them lit green, others red.

The red names were probably wrong. She liked them less.

After the tenth name, she had noticed that the right answer was often one of the top three. Her attention gradually slid away from the images, onto the answers. Even then, she was paying more attention to their position than the names,

The more answers that came out green, the better Robin felt. Even the music seemed to get more pleasant with each green answer; a tiny discordant note seemed to sound whenever she got it wrong. But there was a pattern, she had discovered by the thirtieth answer, and ten more answers in she had it.

She started just selecting in the right pattern, just as fast as she could - by that point it was clear that this wasn’t going to be a short class.

Pictures and words appeared, the words turning green, and were gone, all fast enough that she consciously took in none of them, losing herself in the rhythm.

*

“That’s three of them who’ve gone into pattern recognition.”

“Make the switch.”

“Roger.”

*

While Robin was moving through answers too fast to register what was on the screen, the images and words began to change, all unnoticed.

All the same, subliminally, words flickered through her consciousness.

Domestic… Pleasing… Sexy… Dutiful… Eager…

Before long they were looping. Other qualities, often opposed, appeared in the other lines for Robin to select against them.

Assertive… Strong… Disagreeable… Full of Conviction… Questioning…

Alongside each one of the headshots had become images of her own face, taken from on-campus cameras, showing her smiling when she selected a correct answer, and on the rare occasion that she fumbled and answered wrongly, images of her looking uncertain or quietly judgemental. Had they not been flashing by too quickly for conscious identification, Robin might have recognised many of these from the drive in, when Angie had been offering the opinions she disagreed with the most.

*

“How are we coming along?”

“Twenty-six in the loop now, sir. Three more just entering pattern recognition. We’ll make the switch shortly.”

“What about the other twenty-one?”

“If they don’t hit pattern recognition in the next fifteen minutes, we’ll have to mark them down for alternative starters.”

*

Her head was spinning, and Robin figured that had to be the speed she was answering at; there was something dizzying about the flicker.

It had crossed her mind that what she was doing wasn’t actually training her recall properly. At the same time, it just seemed like such a bizarre thing to focus on first, and she felt the Professor’s explanation had been little more than an excuse. She was comfortable knowing she’d pick the information up in time.

Besides, she thought, answering these so quickly might not be exactly the way of fulfilling her duty they’d intended, but fulfil her duty she still was. And it would certainly show eagerness.

If you had asked her why those concepts felt so important to her, Robin would not have been able to tell you, but she would certainly have agreed that both of them genuinely were important. In fact, she would have been surprised just how vehement she was on the topic.

When they broke for lunch, she felt exhausted. Looking around the class, she saw the same expression on all faces - a strange, drained kind of overwhelm. And yet as they met one another’s eyes, each of them offered a smile - a small smile, quickly flashing and gone, but genuine, heartfelt, and pleasing nonetheless.

Robin felt strangely like she’d just had a workout with her old friend Heidi, left behind now, who always pushed herself and her friends harder than they would for themselves. Heidi had a knack for getting the best out of her; every time, she felt like she had been brought up against her limits. She also felt, satisfyingly, like she had pushed those limits.

It was that feeling which silenced her own internal doubts about the memory training aspect of the lesson. Just spotting a pattern and following it wouldn’t feel so impactful, so she must have learned something.

*

At lunch, they met the upperclasswomen for the first time. It felt like a look into the future, and like the lesson they’d just undergone, it really underlined how much work Northrop would put in to help its students change.

These women exuded poise. They carried themselves with confidence, and their smile was ready, welcoming, and genuine no matter what. They seemed polished.

For all that they had a year left of their academic calendar, they all seemed like finished articles, so far ahead on the path Robin and the others had embarked on that they seemed impossible, except that all of them had achieved it.

Robin felt a strange relief. All the upperclasswomen presented that same image. It wasn’t just Jocelyn Russell who made the most of Northrop; by the looks of things, it was everyone who attended.

Their teaching methods must have more to them than she’d realised, too.

The upperclasswomen were alike in another way, she noticed; aside from their heights, which were significantly variable, their figures were all within certain limits; their bodies athletic and fit with curves only in certain areas. All of them wore their hair long and loose; individual stylings varied widely but only within that specific set of boundaries.

Seeing all of them together, Robin mused, they were clearly individuals, even with all the similarities among them; all the same, she remembered the gossip magazines and channels she’d quietly enjoyed through her teens. She felt like if she read one now, she’d have a reasonable success rate in recognising Northrop alumni. There were certain things they just seemed to have in common.

Sophomores had also begun trickling in. Already friendly with the upperclasswomen, they welcomed the freshers in warmly, their smiles similar but all genuine.

Each one, Robin noticed, had the same peculiar knack for focusing on you while you exchanged names, as if you were the most interesting person in the world to them at that moment. The impact of that attention was immediate; finally for the first time she understood what her father had said once about how a saleswoman giving him the full focus of her attention could be strangely euphoric.

She recognised in that what was expected of the freshers, in the next few weeks. It wasn’t enough just to better remember people’s names and pleasures when you saw their faces (she was sure this concept had been introduced as something other than pleasures, but that was the only word her mind would supply in this context), it was also important to make that first meeting important.

Her scalp tingled at the thought, or perhaps just because of the attention she was receiving from each group of sophomores. Whatever else, they made her feel that she was special, and that her presence at Northrop was enough to prove it, to mark her aside from the rest of the world.

In the afternoon, for the first time, Coach Stanton took the freshers for physical exercise. This first class took place in the gymnasium but without much equipment out. Instead they were simply put through their paces while Stanton observed, making notes. “I like to know what I’m working with,” she had said. “You’re not going to be held up against one another, but we’ll do these once a month, and we’ll continue compiling your individual statistics.

“You’re competing against the version of you that isn’t a Northrop girl.”

Robin found that faintly ominous, but she was eager to do what she could, and also keen to please. She pushed herself hard to see what she could achieve.

*

“How are the new class shaping up?”

“Some better than others, but they’re all actually going pretty well so far. I think we can get them further along in the first semester than the last group.”

“We only need to get them far enough along that they accept being kept over the holidays.”

“We’ll be well past that. If we get to the end of the first week with the current rates of progress, we’ll have five ready for immediate implantation on Monday.”

“Any signs of suspicion?”

“Just irritation they can’t watch their TV. Nothing unusual.”

“Get them to the implant stage and they can. Headmistress?”

“Yes, Doctor?”

“Tell the freshers that internet privileges - and TV with them, if they want that - come for those who excel in their classes, and that this will be assessed starting in the second week.”

“Yes, Doctor. Thank you, Doctor.”

“There’s a good girl.”

“It is a pleasure to serve, Doctor.”