Teleabsence

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Tony put on the spex and scrunched his hands into the tight datagloves. He pushed a button on the right earpiece, and the world around him changed.

He had been sitting in his little room, with tom clothes scattered about, a broken dresser, and a dirty window that looked out onto a brick wall. Now he found himself in a classroom. The floor was clean and the walls were a bright yellow. Tony counted fifteen desks arranged in a roomy and orderly fashion, fewer desks than he had ever seen in a classroom before.

Tony had jacked in at a few minutes before nine so he’d have a chance to explore before anyone else showed up, and he started with the windows. These windows weren’t broken, like those at his own school, and it looked as if morning sunlight actually streamed in from a clear blue sky. He opened one and stuck his head out to see an incredibly large playground a few stories down; nothing like the old broken-down one in his neighborhood, where Mom never let him go, even in the middle of the day. Not that Tony was about to do so, ever; he was just as scared of the gunfire as his Mom was.

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