Fourth Form Ready Room
Professor Stephen M. Richardson Secondary School
University of Delgado

In which Theo goes to school and learns something helpful.

It’s the return of our old friend, The Scene Where The Heroine Looks In A Mirror. At least this one does a reasonable job of staying inside the viewpoint character’s head. (And now I’m trying to remember whether we’ve ever had a scene where any of the male characters looks in a mirror for the benefit of the readers. I don’t recall any, but I’m willing to believe that that’s a fault in my memory rather than in the story-telling.)

I’m not sure I approve of that clock. It would depend to some extent on whether everybody is given the same amount of time between the first announcement and the note being made in their file, and what happens to people who are genuinely incapable of getting out of bed quickly. Either way, it’s the first of several details in this chapter that are starting to build up a picture of Delgado as a society that pays really close attention to whether its citizens are doing What’s Good For Them.