"The parents' weekend has been an eye-opener for me," our class teacher Ms Jefferson told us. "From talking to your parents, your tutors and your teachers, I understand that, for a variety of reasons, there is a lot of conflict going on among the students in this Upper Fifth. The obvious remedy for that would be for you girls to get to know your classmates better. Not just your friends or the members of your clique, but all of your classmates. In order to give you the opportunity to do so, I have decided that we will all go on an excursion together, a few weeks from now. I have talked to Headmistress Stuart about this, and she agrees with my plan."

"An excursion, Miss?" Mallory asked. "Like, all of us spending another afternoon in London?"

"No, Carmichael, that is not what I have in mind." Ms Jefferson smiled. "We are going on a five- day trip to Wales, girls. We will live in a cabin in the woods, and we will go hiking, rafting and rock-climbing."

Upon hearing that, the majority of my classmates uttered groans of dismay.

"Hiking?" Eleanor Bradford moaned. "But why?"

"Not to speak of rafting and rock-climbing," Jessica Burns added glumly.

"Do we really have to go like, hiking?" Dorothy Barnett complained. "Our excursion ought to be fun, not hard work."

"Oh, it is going to be lots of fun," our teacher assured her. "Incidentally, during your PE lessons I noticed  that quite a few of you girls are badly out of shape. If a student gets out of breath just from jogging three laps in the gym, it is clear that she needs to work on her fitness."

"But we do not actually have to go out into the wilderness to do that," Carol Mellon observed, not unreasonably.

"No, we don't," Ms Jefferson admitted. "The reason why we are going out into the wilderness, as you put it, is that I want you girls to learn how to work together, to rely on each other, to stick together and to stand up for each other."

She glanced around the classroom. I guess our faces showed a marked lack of enthusiasm. Our teacher appeared to be unruffled by that.

"You are going to love it, girls. Just wait and see," she promised.

There was no verbal reply. Just a couple of resigned sighs.

"You need to get out of your comfort zone, girls. In more ways than one," our teacher insisted. "To help you achieve that, I have decided to have you work in teams on a new project."

There were more groans.

"Each of you will be assigned a partner to collaborate with," Ms Jefferson continued. "The task of each team will be to prepare a presentation on a topic in advanced physics, and to give a talk about your results a week from now, in front of the class."

"But Miss, why can't we each of us pick our partner, the way we usually do?" Erin Morgan complained.

"Because I do not want each of you to collaborate with your roommate or with your best friend or with somebody from your clique," our teacher patiently explained. "That's why I myself will set up the teams."

She consulted a sheet of paper that was lying in front of her on the teacher's desk.

"Morgan, you will work with Jennifer Turner. That's right, Turner, you are not going to collaborate with your twin, this time, and neither will you collaborate with Ndemba, Morgan. Ndemba and Lane will form another team. Similarly, Burns and Bradford. Langden, you will collaborate with Carmichael. And Mellon will work together with Fogg."

Natty made a face, but she really had no reason to complain. After all, Carol Mellon had been her roommate, at least for a few weeks or so. Until Carol had been driven out by my friend's insistence on playing the newest folk music on the small record player Natty kept in her room.

"Kerrington and Deborah Turner will be on team number six," Ms Jefferson announced. "Which leaves, for the last team ... let's see. That's right, Hart and Barnett."

'Oh no,' was all that I could think.

Ms Jefferson proceeded to write a list of topics for our projects on the blackboard. Meanwhile, pairs of girls assigned to work with each other met to discuss the situation. Nobody appeared to be very happy.

"Noether's knickers!" I swore. "Why on earth did she have to do that?"

"I don't know whose knickers you are talking about, but I totally agree with the sentiment," Dorothy Barnett told me. "As to why Jefferson did that: it's obvious, isn't it? She paired members of the Galads with girls whose applications to join the Galads were rejected, and with girls who are particularly outspoken in their criticism of our student society. Such as your roommate, or you yourself."

I glanced at her. "You know, you are probably right."

"So let me be perfectly honest here. I would never have picked you as my partner for that project, and I assume that you would not have considered to choose me, either."

"I most certainly wouldn't have considered you," I admitted. "But now it appears we are stuck with each other. So, let's try and make the best out of this."

"Right." Barnett scanned the listing of possible projects on the blackboard. "So which one of those topics do you fancy, Hart?"

I shrugged. "How about the Einstein-Podolski-Rosen effect?"

"Never heard of that one." She frowned. "You think it can be done within a reasonable amount of time?"

"Depends on what you would consider a reasonable amount of time, Barnett."

Dorothy considered that. "I kind of thought like, two hours?"

I rolled my eyes.

"Three hours, then?"

In the end, we settled on a discussion of the interpretation of the double slit experiment.

Later that afternoon, Natty and I talked to my Temporal Instructor Sara Jenkins and her grad student Mira on the ansible line. We were sitting in our dorm room at my desk, looking out into the park, with the ansible in front of us.

"So Taylor, Hampden and Clark did their job" Sara concluded. "That's good to know."

"Well yes, Mr Taylor did a reasonably good job at playing my dad at the parents' weekend," I grudgingly admitted. "Even though he overdid it a bit, at times."

"Be reasonable, Catherine," Sara admonished me. "From what you have told me, your headmistress confronted him with a long list of complaints about your behavior and attitude at her school."

"Maybe so," I grumbled.

"Cathy, I understand that it is important for you to blend in at your school and all that," Mira remarked. "But is it really necessary to provoke your teachers, prefects and tutors as much as you apparently do?"

"Cathy can't help it," Natty interjected. "Like myself, she is a rebel by inclination and by nature. Ouch!" She rubbed her shoulder where I had punched her.

"I am not a rebel by nature," I declared. "Nor by inclination. And even if I were, I would never have done that stupid dare if my dear classmates had not insisted on it."

"What dare?" Mira wanted to know.

"That is of no concern really." I hastened to change the subject. "But perhaps we ought to talk about that séance we did a few days ago. That was really spooky."

"I suspect that the alleged messages from the spirit world were mostly bits of inspired guesswork on the part of that Welsh girl," Sara commented, after Natty and I had told Mira and her about what had transpired on that full-moon night.

"I don't know about that," I objected. "The information that Morgan gave us was a bit too specific for that, in my opinion."

"Could it be that she was somehow reading our minds?" Natty suggested. "I mean, are there any experiments on mind-reading or extra-sensory perception in your 23rd century?"

"It's true that there people who are scientifically investigating that," Sara admitted. "But to my knowledge, the results have never been conclusive, one way or the other. If extra-sensory perception exists, and there are some indications that it does, it manifests itself only in extreme situations which tend to be difficult to reproduce in a controlled experimental environment. Anyhow, I do not see that we can conclude anything of relevance from those messages or predictions made by the Morgan girl. So, is there anything else we need to discuss today?"

"Nothing that I can think of," I said.

"I have a question, though." Natty sounded wistful. "Can't Cathy and I return to the 23rd century, now that this newspaper reporter has been here and taken his photograph of us?"

"We talked about that, Natalie. I have explained to you at some length why that is almost certainly not a good idea."

Sara sounded slightly exasperated. Natty tended to affect people like that.

"Incidentally, I do have some good news for you, Natalie. That paper about your solution of the Srivenhurst problem has been accepted for publication."

"Oh my god, really?" Natty's mood visibly improved on hearing that. "What's the name of the journal?"

A bit later, we said goodbye to Sara and Mira and terminated the connection.

Behind us, somebody cleared their throat.

We turned around to face Nancy Kerrington. She must have entered the room unnoticed by us. I noticed that Nancy appeared to be exhilarated rather than shocked.

"Guys, I think we need to talk," she declared.

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A / N : As always, thank you for reading this, and please consider adding your comments and/or voting.