The first lecture in events since the landing gave a brief account of the crossing from Earth. It was accompanied by recordings displayed on the wall monitor. The lecture started with the conditions that preceded the construction of the colony ship and ended with the ship’s touchdown on the landing pad constructed by the advance ship.

  The Speedwell crossed interstellar space connected to the Swiftsure by a long tether. The two ships spun on the ends of the tether to produce artificial gravity for the passengers of the Speedwell. In the final approach the tether was cut and the Swiftsure continued on at full speed, becoming the advance ship by arriving in the system ahead of the Speedwell. The Speedwell’s engines fired, slowing its approach and producing apparent gravity for its passengers. The Swiftsure fired its engines late, producing a higher acceleration that would have been damaging to an organic crew. The entirely automated ship picked the colony site and built the Speedwell’s landing pad. It essentially consumed itself in the process.

  The class was held in one of the smaller rooms on the side of a large educational machine room. These rooms were designed for content to be presented by an instructor or for a small group to work together on a lesson. A series of desks all faced the wall with the large display screen. The seating was provided by benches strong enough to support an adult selkie.

  “For the rest of this term we will concentrate on known events that occurred after the landing. The scattering of the landing generation into the structure has caused a lot of events to become lost, or poorly understood. If any of you have knowledge different from what is presented here or in addition to it, please speak up and share your insights with the class,” Engineer Whitman told them.

  The second lecture covered the development of the automated fields and mines around the Speedwell. It followed the desperate efforts to complete the windmills on the northern slopes, before the ship's internal power supply failed.

  The third lecture talked about the discovery of the first square with a protection crystal, Londontown, and the taming of wildspace to form the settlement of Chicago. While the fourth lecture was about the land grants that led to the building of the eastern villages.

  The fifth lecture talked about the Wizard's War. The version presented by Engineer Whitman was wildly different from what any of the structure students learned from their parents. This fifth lecture was extended to the sixth class, where Engineer Whitman took the time to explain how the Londontown and Chicago views of the build up to the war weren't wrong, simply limited in their view.

  “I have taken the time to explore the result of viewpoint in the recording of history because it is always a factor. The version of the Wizard's War I first presented is also shadowed by viewpoint. Only in that lecture I never told you who’s viewpoint it was,” Engineer Whitman said.

  “Who’s viewpoint is it?” a student asked.

  “Mine,” Engineering Whitman replied, “with some input from Instructor Valin who was in Redfalls at the time of the battle. And Instructor Elizabeth who was in Chicago when refugees from Redfalls fled there after the battle when the crystal failed.”

  “How could instructor Valin have been in Redfalls?” Phil asked. “Valin is… well non-human. None of the Wizard's War stories mention any non-humans.” He signed up for events since the landing because the description promised to talk about the Wizard's War. Phil loved stories about the war, with their tales of sacrifice and honor.

  “Instructor Valin is a powerful wizard. Here on the Speedwell, outside the area of influence of the structure, he is forced to reveal his true form. He was not so limited during the war,” Engineer Whitman revealed. Phil couldn’t see a powerful wizard in the little sparkly Instructor. Me-Ti-Fa shifted a bit nervously where she sat in the front of the room.

  Me-Ti-Fa was the youngest selkie at the school. Her grandmother was the elder of Seagrass. There were nine selkie at the Speedwell Academy this session. Eight students and one residential advisor. Me-Ti-Fa signed up for the class to learn more about the newcomers. Her mother told her to pay particular attention to their history, since knowing a person’s past could help predict what they would do in the future.

  “Even my version is suspect. The events themselves are accurate to my memory, but the motivations I describe anyone other than myself having are suspect. At the time I thought something almost entirely different was driving these events. It was only later discoveries, including Valin and Lizzy’s insights that have brought me to this version,” Engineer Whitman explained. “My experience with how the past changes with a viewpoint is why I want to instill that knowledge into you.”

  “Were you at Redfalls during the battle?” Phil asked. He was the youngest student in the room. It was his youth that allowed him to ask that question.

  “No,” Engineer Whitman replied. “I left the night before, with Ellen’s group traveling north to the new square that became Ellensburg.” Which still left a lot of questions. By Engineer Whitman’s own description, Ian Black, one of the Speedwell captain’s sons and leader of Redfalls, was killed the night before the battle by a compatriot. Even Phil was not bold enough to ask the obvious question.

  Phil would spend the next six days debating with his friends Daisy and Me-Ti-Fa if Grandmother killed Ian.

  “Engineer Whitman wouldn’t kill him. She is way too nice. She is a builder, not a destroyer,” Daisy argued.

  “The Elder would remove him if he was a danger to the Chicago settlement,” Me-Ti-Fa countered firmly. “She protects those she cares about.” Phil was undecided.

  “Why do you call Engineer Whitman the Elder?” Phil asked. He thought the different form of address might be a clue to his friend's different opinion.

  “We show her respect because she is a tier six,” Me-Ti-Fa responded.

  “That seems weird to me,” Daisy said. “She’s always been the Engineer in the villages.”

  Phil realized that this was another example of what Grandmother called points of view. The selkie saw a powerful wizard. The villagers saw a worker who repaired the machines. In Londontown she was Irene the mad queen’s youngest daughter. Somehow the description for the queen slipped onto Irene. Almost everyone saw her as powerful but illogical.

  “Now that we’ve finished with the battle of Redfalls and the founding of Ellensburg, I want to move on to the establishment of the warehouse trading posts in the eastern villages,” Engineer Whitman said at the beginning of the seventh lecture. Daisy sat forward in her seat. As a native of the villages she was always more interested in the events there.

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  Daisy signed up for the class almost by accident. She needed a three hour class block filled in. After signing up for everything related to crafting, she picked her last class at random.

  “What are coins?” Engineer Whitman asked the class.

  “Structure coins or Speedwell coins?” one of the other students asked.

  “Either,” Whitman asked. She fished a couple coins out of her pocket and flicked one of them into the air. The coin was a greenish copper. She caught that coin and flicked up another, slightly larger coin in iron. The first coin was a green. It was worth thirty six silver and was a fortune. Phil didn’t recognize the second coin. From the way Daisy reacted he suspected it was a high value Speedwell coin.

  “Wealth,” someone said.

  “Wealth!” Whitman exclaimed. “To me wealth is a full stomach and a good night's rest. If I eat this coin will I have a full belly? If I put it in my pocket will it keep animals away at night in the halls or snow off of me in the fields?” Several students laughed.

  “You can buy bread from the baker with it,” a student called.

  “You can rent a room in the inn,” Phil added.

  “Ah!” Engineer Whitman replied. “Now we are getting somewhere. So it isn’t the coin that is wealth. It’s the things I can trade that coin for. Is that correct?” The class grudgingly agreed, with a few hold outs keeping their view that it was the coins themselves that were wealth, since they represented possibility. The coins disappeared into a pocket. From another pocket Whitman produced a handful of rough iron chunks.

  “Can anyone tell me what these are?” She handed the iron pieces around the room.

  “This is iron scrap from blacksmithing,” Daisy reported when one reached her.

  “Very good,” Engineer Whitman said. “It is also what the villages used for coins before the warehouse trading posts were built. Can anyone think of why using ingot iron for coins might be a problem?”

  “Anything made out of it would be expensive,” Daisy said.

  “Indeed. Anything else?”

  “How did they buy more iron?” another student from the villages asked. “Since all iron comes from the warehouse?”

  “That was a difficulty,” Whitman agreed. “However the fact that all iron comes from the warehouse is also an advantage. If they picked something easy to get, like a stone, it would have been difficult to tell if a given stone was the result of a previous trade or was just picked up from the ground. A constant influx of unearned coins is another problem that we can address later. Does anyone see any other problems with this kind of coin?” Engineer Whitman asked.

  “It’s hard to carry,” Me-Ti-Fa offered.

  “Yes,” Engineer Whitman agreed, “and that is an important consideration. Since there is no ‘higher value’ coin you need a cart to carry large amounts. Anything else?” she asked the class. There was some quiet discussion among the students but no one spoke up.

  “Coins,” Engineer Whitman explained, “both structure coins, Speedwell coins and these iron weights are types of currency. Currency is a system of markers we use to enable the exchange of labor and goods. Let me give an example.

  “A woodworker spends all day making arrows. A hunter goes out with a bow and brings meat back to the settlement. The woodworker and hunter don’t need coins, or any kind of currency, to exchange meat for arrows. This simple exchange works well for them. The woodworker’s family can eat meat that evening and the hunter can go out again the next day with his new arrows.

  “It is more complicated when the woodworker needs a new shirt. The tailor doesn’t want arrows. They want food to feed their family. The woodworker now needs to trade arrows to a second hunter to get more meat, then take the meat over to the tailor to exchange for a shirt. Only it took the tailor six days to make the shirt, so they want at least six days of meat in exchange for it. If the woodworker trades arrows to six hunters to get meat and takes it to the tailor, the meat might spoil before it is all eaten. If the woodworker delivers the meat first, there is no guarantee the tailor will finish the shirt on the sixth day. If the tailor delivers the shirt first, there’s no guarantee the hunters will bring in any meat six days from now.

  “And it gets worse from here, because the woodworker and the tailor need more than meat. They need wood and fiber at a minimum. A system of exchanges can work for small communities with limited advanced products, but after a while it becomes cumbersome and people start going without rather than figure out a deal that will work.” Engineer Whitman picked up one of the iron weights that made it around the room and back to the front.

  “If we all agree that this has a certain value, say a day's worth of meat for a family of six, six arrows or one sixth of a shirt, all these complicated multiple party exchanges fall out into a series of simple single trades. I pay you for the arrows. You pay me for the meat. I pay for a shirt. The tailor pays the farmer or scavenger for fiber… and on and on,” Grandmother explained. “We call all those exchanges commerce. The network of them, how they tie people together and generate wealth, we call an economy. A strong economy generates wealth for many people, while a poor economy leaves most people living on the edge of survival. In this instance my definition of wealth is not only a full stomach and a good night's rest, but the survival of your children and the joy in your life.” Engineer Whitman gathered up all the iron weights and they disappeared into her pocket.

  “If you are interested in the concepts of coins, currency, commerce and economies, there are multiple modules on the educational machines on the subject of economics. Now that I’ve given you the bare bones, let's talk about the warehouse trading stations and their effect on the economy of the villages.”

  Phil’s head was spinning by the time the class was over. It was a familiar feeling.

  “Next time,” Engineer Whitman promised, “we will talk about humans' first contact with the selkie and how it went wrong. We will have a special guest lecturer to present the selkie point of view.”

  Me-Ti-Fa, Daisy and Phil walked together as a group within the class to the dining room. Events since the landing was a three hour morning class. They could eat a quick lunch now, or pick up one to eat later during their afternoon class. Phil’s next class was scavenging in the structure, while Daisy’s was earthen leatherworking. Me-Ti-Fa’s next class was hunting at the hunter’s camp.

  “I didn’t know that a lot of the stuff we bought from the warehouse actually comes from other villages,” Daisy commented as they rode the elevator to the dining deck. “I bet all those town folk don’t know either. I can’t imagine them ever selling directly to us Wildkin.”

  “Why not?” Phil asked.

  “They don’t think much of us,” Daisy replied. “It’s hard to explain. Especially here where Dean Benjamin insists everyone is treated equally.”

  After lunch they all headed off to their separate destinations. Phil and Me-Ti-Fa went to the shuttle pickup together, but got into different shuttles. Daisy went to the internal workshops for leatherworking.

  When Phil’s shuttle was full the vehicle closed itself up and started down the western road to the structure. The first few times they rode the shuttle an instructor did the driving. Phil was slightly alarmed the first time the shuttle left on its own.

  “You should see the big cultivators in the fields during the summer. They are ten times the size of this shuttle and they drive themselves,” Daisy told him once. Phil wanted to come back someday in the summer to see them.

  “What did you talk about today in events?” Alex asked. Phil sat with his scavenging group of Maria, Tam and Alex on the shuttle. Phil always gave them a brief summary of the class on the way out to the structure. Alex O’Rose was regretting not taking the course, even if it was being taught by Grandmother.

  “We talked about what wealth is,” Phil reported.

  “That’s easy,” Tam replied. “It is coins.”

  “But it isn’t,” Phil responded. “That is what makes it interesting.”

  “What is wealth then?” Maria demanded.

  “The joy in your life,” Phil responded. “Everything else is just survival.”