“I also have some tea, if you’re thirsty.” The girl held out a small red pill.

Mistletoe wiped her mouth on the back of her hand. The instant rush of real sugar made her head swim. She eyed the pill. “No, thanks. I’m looking for Professor Deirdre O’Hanlon.”

“Oh! I didn’t realize you were a student. Did you check the directory?”

Mistletoe shrugged.

The girl looked confused. “Well, that’s okay.” She flipped her palm. A pale blue sphere appeared in the air between them, orbited by a thin planetary ring labeled ESCU DIRECTORY. Mistletoe blinked and tried to remain unimpressed, even though she’d never seen information externalized like this before. She remembered Ambrose trying in vain to get a signal below the canopy. Everyone up here probably did this palm flip a hundred times a day.

“Professor Deirdre O’Hanlon,” the girl said. She poked the sphere with her finger, and it changed shape to become a three-dimensional image of a smiling woman about Aunt Dita’s age. “Applied Unison Freelancing and Application Market Analysis. Is that her?”

“Um,” Mistletoe said.

“She keeps a fleshbound office here on campus. If you’re lucky, she’ll have office hours today.” The girl vapored away the directory and held out her hand. “If you authorize, I can transfer.”

Mistletoe crossed her arms. “Transfer what?”

“The directions? To her office?”

“You can just tell me how to get there.”

Fifteen minutes later, Mistletoe was standing next to a gray stone monument. It was a simple, unadorned cube, slightly taller than the trees and as wide as her subcanopy home. There were no doors or windows.

“Hello?” she called. At doorknob height in front of her, she noticed a handprint indented in the stone. She filled it with her hand. Nothing happened; she needed a hardcoded ID to proceed. She thought for a moment, then stepped back to mingle with the moving crowd on the path alongside the cube, strolling down and back without meeting the curious eyes of the holo-clothed students. She wondered if they were all rich like Ambrose.

When a boy with long dreadlocks tied back in a thick ponytail palmed open the cube, she rushed to squeeze in behind him.

Two steps through a narrow stone archway, she was shocked to find herself in the lobby of an enormous classroom building. The forest and surrounding atmoscrapers were gone. Gleaming walkways intersected above her head. A large glass box sat in the middle of the room, stuffed with armchairs and beds full of motionless students, hands clasped together. Others milled about the lobby and gathered around rows of silver boxes like the ones she’d seen last night.

Mistletoe crossed the lobby to a long row of blue doors: professors’ offices, according to the girl in the woods. She walked down the row, scanning the neat, rectangular name tags until she came to DEIRDRE O’HANLON.