“No, I meant children’s books.”

“Oh…I loved Lewis Carroll. The Chronicles of Narnia. The Little House on the Prairie books. I cried when my mom told me the United States wasn’t that way anymore.”

I laughed. “No, it isn’t. Coming to the States, you probably feel as if you’ve tumbled down the rabbit hole with Alice.”

Abby smiled. “Yes, you might say that.”

I felt both sorry for her and envious of her. The wonders must never cease for her. But the emotional toll—both the culture shock and the recent loss of her village. I was surprised to find her seemingly coping so well…if it was so well. But she struck me as incapable of putting on a facade.

I checked the time. “I promised you a tour of the town. Shall we get going?”

“When did you decide on teaching history as a profession?” Abby asked as we hopped in the car.

“About sixteen.”

“That’s early to decide something like that, isn’t it?”

“Yes. Many people have no idea what direction they’ll take even after they get a degree.”

We drove through the campus. I could tell she wasn’t at ease in a car, but she seemed to bear it gamely.

“What led you toward history?”

“A book on American cultural history.”

I instructed the car to go to White Rock Lake, the most scenic part of town. The car changed lanes. Abby grimaced and looked around to make sure we weren’t going to hit anything. She settled back.

“Is that normal for teens to read that kind of thing?”

“No, hardly. My dad was a history nut, though, and I guess it rubbed off on me. He gave me Jacob P. Argyle’s Moving the Colossus: The American Cultural Revolution, 1960–2020. It enthralled me. I saw the movement of history in a whole new way. It wasn’t just about presidents and wars and all the headline stuff. It was about shifts in cultural attitudes. That became my passion.”

We switched lanes again, and Abby jumped again. I instructed the car to stay in the minimum number of lanes for the remainder of our trip. Abby looked over at me, and our eyes met.

“Thank you,” she said, looking relieved.

I smiled. “You’re welcome. I’m sorry I didn’t think of it earlier.”

She relaxed a bit and took in the Dallas landscape. “When did you start teaching?”

“After I finished my PhD in ’73 at North Carolina State.”

“What brought you here?”

“The teaching style. Very few universities have direct professor-student interaction. This is one of the few American universities that still offer classrooms, even in VR. For most college curricula, students simply download standardized lectures and watch them whenever they wish. Or they don’t even have to watch them. They can access the information anytime they want in fact form and use it in formulating questions for tests.”

“You mean formulating answers.”