Excerpt: Yuri

Yuri picked up the instructor and placed it on her head. opening her eyes she found herself in the familiar hall of knowledge construct that she had loved since she was a child. She had an affinity for the ancient Greeks and their columned halls that none could explain. The instructor provided a different environment for each user and for some unexplainable or at least incomprehensible reason this was the environment that it had pulled from her mind when she had 1st put the device on. That had been 14 yrs ago and she hadn't stopped asking questions since. A fact that was a continual source of trouble for her. Women weren't supposed to ask so many questions. They were expected to simply accept what was and perform their duties as explained to them when old enough to understand. Yuri was the exception to the rule though. Always had been. And that was how she managed to find trouble more often than not. People would see a somewhat cute, petite, Asian girl coming towards them and before they knew it she would ask a question and find herself in trouble. There were some questions that a woman was not supposed to ask. Hence her early morning consult with the instructor. She had a question that no one would, or maybe it was could answer for her. So here she was a soon to be of age young woman sneaking into the hall of knowledge. Searching for an answer that might land her in even more trouble.

“Instructor, are you here?”

“Where else would I be child.”

She turned around to face the voice, and found herself staring into the kindly blue eyes of the Instructor. He appeared to be perhaps early middle age, slightly balding, and was dressed in a simple tunic and sandals of the period. Of course she knew he wasn't real, but when wearing the instructor on her head he seemed just as real as her own father was. Once when she was seven she had asked him to come out and play with her and had been inconsolable to learn that he couldn't do that. His knowledge of the world past and present was without peer, but he was just the representation of a computer program that was interacting with her own mind.

“What question's have you brought to me this time my child?”

The voice of the instructor drew her thoughts back to the present, and she turned to look at him.

“I'm sorry Instructor, I guess I was off in my own little world for a moment. I do have a question. How did the world begin?”

The instructor frowned, “I'm afraid you will have to be more specific child. Are you asking a question of cosmology or of history?”

She sighed. Knowledge beyond any human the instructor may have but you had to phrase your questions carefully lest you receive knowledge about a topic you weren't actually interested in.

“I am sorry Instructor. I meant how did my own culture begin. How did it come to be one where women are the property of men.”