“A gallerie is a portfolio of your skills and interests,” Michael explains. “Quorum is when apprentices present their galleries to the guildmasters for application to become journeymen. Your guild will provide you with all the necessary education, guidance, and resources for your artistic and scientific pursuits, and in turn, you will share your research and innovations with your guild.”

This all sounds complicated. I thought I’d done what I had to do to get into this school, but now I’ll also need to apply and be accepted to a guild? I feel the stirrings of the college admission trauma I thought I’d left behind.

Michael continues. “The five Genesis guilds are the Sophists, the Artisans, the Alchemists, the Ciphers, and Bioscience. Over the next few months, we’ll help you get acquainted with each so that you will be able to choose between your options at Quorum.”

I try my best to hide my abject horror at the intimidating nature of the list.

Bloche says, “As an apprentice, most of your needs will be provided for you, but you should have some currency for incidentals.” He reaches into a drawer and pulls out a pouch, which he hands to me. “That should be enough to tide you over until you collect a guild stipend.”

I peek inside the pouch and see gold coins, each a little smaller and thicker than a dime. Their shape and texture are imperfect, inconsistent, though they all have the same imprint, an intricate design of a circuit-like maze.

“Sense.” Michael names them for me.

“Cents, like pennies?”

“No, sense.” He taps his temple. “Like sensibility, and nonsense.”

“Hold on to those. They will be useful to you for more than currency,” Headmaster Bloche says.

“Can I exchange dollars for sense?” I ask, nervous now. I hadn’t considered that finances would be different.

“No, but you don’t need to,” Michael assures me. “You’ll receive an apprentice stipend from the institute, and all necessities are provided for free—sense is only needed to purchase luxuries.”

Necessities are free? When the most powerful country in the world can’t even provide affordable health care? Maybe this is Utopia after all.

But I can’t afford to think like that. Any whiff of utopian ideals only lasts as far as the boundaries of this island, and I need to prepare myself to be able to steal from these people.

The headmaster rises, so I assume I should too. He says to Michael, “I have to travel again, so I’ll ask you to cover some of my meetings that cannot be postponed, and someone on the island must have a council key for emergencies.”

Michael looks extremely uneasy. “Maybe one of the guildmasters—”