My caseworker, Jerome, was considerate enough to express his desire to meet through a medium I was familiar and comfortable with - email - instead of any of the more recent variations on instant messaging. I'd actually died some time after the creation of IRC, AIM, and later such protocols, but some other cryonicists hadn't, and since I found asynchronous forms of communication less stressful than conversations demanding instant responses, I was willing to ride along with the habits he'd developed to handle other people. Even when I was using such forms to plan the most quintessential form of synchronous, instant communication: a face-to-face conversation.

Since I didn't have to worry about my pale skin sunburning, just staying within my chassis's fairly generous recommended operating temperatures, I drove Lexx (as I'd dubbed my RV-conversion maid-bot) through the local public transportation system (which consisted of sending something like a text-message indicating where I wanted to arrive and when, and having directions automatically sent to Lexx's autopilot about where to wait for a motorized vehicle), and ended up at a park with a view of a modest waterfall (Okay, /I/ thought it was modest, but I'd used to live ten miles from Niagara Falls.) where Jerome was already passing the time by passing a frisbee back and forth with a Golden Retriever, who bid him goodbye at my arrival and trotted off. I set Lexx's autopilot to 'walk and talk' with Jerome as the indicated conversational partner, and trusting that the newfangled algorithms of The Future had been sufficiently bug-proofed, pulled myself out of Lexx's head-cockpit and perched on her shoulder, so I could gab without having to do so through her eye-windows.

After exchanging a few pleasantries, we began the interesting part of the conversation.

"I can see you've been studying and trying to catch up with modern educational standards, which is good and praiseworthy. But I've also seen your test scores, and frankly, I have to admit that I'm concerned with your rate of progress."

"Well, birch."

"Pardon?"

"I don't like swearing, especially in public, and apparently just about everywhere is public these days. But the urge still occasionally exists, so I'm trying out swearing by trees - they're supposed to be fairly reliable."

"I understand. And you needn't worry; remedial programs are available that can help you achieve the peak performance you're capable of, no matter what form of brain damage was unable to be corrected during your revival."

I managed to avoid face-palming, but only just. "That's not what I was swearing about."

"Hm?"

"An idea from my time that I still think is useful, even if it seems to have less cachet today, is that there is a good amount of social good by giving people the opportunity to try things, and fail at those things, in a way where they won't have any social consequences for that failure."

"I'm afraid I don't follow."

"I thought I was taking those practice tests in /private/."

"Why would you think that?"

"Because the whole point of a practice test is to fail in private so you can figure out how to succeed in public?"

"Then why did you take them on an external server?"

"Because... that's where they were?"

We paused for a moment, having achieved a certain level of mutual incomprehension. Eventually, Jerome said, "Okay. I'm here to provide whatever help I can, that you think you can use. Is there anything in particular that you feel you're having trouble with, education-wise?"

"Eh, it's not hard to pin down my troubles to two things, one more obvious than the other. The obvious one is that I'm decent enough at any topic that existed before I died, or that I can work out the specifics of from general principles. That mostly leaves out the unpredictable twists and turns of the events of history since I died, and getting a better hold of that is mostly going to be a matter of taking the time to read up on it all."

"That's understandable," he soothed. "And the other thing?"

"I don't know if it's some sort of extension of the Flynn effect, or the mental-social shifts that accompanied movie scenes getting shorter over decades, but any tests that involve time limits on answers barely seem to give me enough time to read the question, let alone think about which answer to pick. ... Okay, maybe I'm exaggerating a bit, but only a bit."

"That's interesting. Without breaking any confidences, I don't recall any other revivals having a similar issue. By any chance, did you deal with anything of the sort before you were preserved?"

"Not particularly. I'd even say the opposite - when I was in school, at least in some subjects, I could often finish a test well before anyone else did. Sometimes I even lost marks because I'd work out the answer in my head and just write it down, instead of showing the work on paper the way the teacher wanted. I've gotta admit, after being used to school going that way, I'm... not happy about discovering that, by current standards, I seem to simply be... slow-minded."

"Speed isn't everything," Jerome conciliated. "Depth of understanding is also valuable."

"Tell that to the non-private practice tests I've been taking."

"Hm. ... Do you mind if I try asking a few questions?"

"Shoot."

"What caused the American Civil War?"

"Depending how far back you want to track the chain of causation - geology, in that some of the Cretaceous inland seas left behind soils which were exceptionally good for certain types of agriculture, which eventually led to the so-called 'Black belt', heavily planted in cotton, which led to the cotton-plantation owners finding it in their own self-interests to promulgate an economic system based around extracting value from workers in the form of chattel slavery, with sufficient wealth to continue to push their perceived self-interest to the point that it annoyed their industrial-focused neighbours through such mechanisms as the Fugitive Slave Act requiring those neighbours to actively assist in maintaining the slave system, at the point when industry became a more important factor to war-winning than simple manpower. Certain aspects of primate hierarchy impulses led to urges which, also later in the form of the Jim Crow laws-"

Jerome coughed. "... I was looking for more of a one-word answer."

"Ah. Then you were also probably looking for the word 'slavery'."

"Okay, let's try more of an essay question. Say that you had a brilliant new idea you wanted to bring to market. What would you do?"

"I'd avoid assuming that I was somehow the first person to assemble the pre-existing ideas, given that there's been plenty of incentive while I was dead for anyone else wanting to make a buck to look for better ways to put together any business plans based on the limited information I have access to. That said, if I could figure out some way to perform basic online searches without everyone and their cousin reading what I'm looking up, I just might try to double-check what sorts of business /had/ arisen from that idea, to try to calibrate how much I should trust myself when I come up with what seems like a brilliant new idea worth bringing to market. And given your previous question, you're probably looking for something a bit more direct, like 'file a business plan to prepare to apply for a loan'."

"Something, yes. Okay - here's a nice, easy, simple one. What's the proper way to greet a visiting Priapic Columnist?"

"Assuming that's some sort of person: Nod my head, say something along the lines of, 'It's a pleasure to meet you. Is there anything I can help you with?', and respond to whatever overtures are made appropriately."

"What?"

"Are you saying that, if I behaved that way, I would insult the person or suffer significant negative consequences?"

"Well - no, I guess not. It's just that the first answer in the FAQ is something else entirely - why would you /pick/ that answer?"

"A rule of thumb called 'pie with a fork', which derives in part from an idea similar to the Unix philosophy of being conservative in what you emit and being liberal in what you accept, in parallel with idea that there are certain baseline forms of politeness that have become widely accepted, and those forms can be estimated based on the idea that new ideas about purity have been becoming increasingly informed by our knowledge of how disease transmission can be limited by proper hygiene."

"... What's the square root of two hundred?"

"Fourteen point, mm, one and change - what's the number to be used for, how many decimal places do you need?"

"You're not even /trying/ to look any of this up, are you?"

"I left my phone inside Lexx. Want me to go get it?"

"Other than what's actually here, what's your overlay showing you right now?"

"I'm not sure what you mean."

"You... how... hrm. Okay. Have you plugged yourself in at least once to recharge, or have you been, I don't know, conserving your battery power like crazy?"

"I've recharged, yes. More than once."

"Hrm. Then I'm confused."

"So am I, I'll admit. This body only stores eighteen kilojoules - I've been thinking of essentially bolting on some armored plates around the ribcage, and stuffing ten or more times that much inside the empty space in there. And who builds a robot so that the only recharging socket also transmits data? There's no way to maintain a proper air-gap without going to all sorts of complicated trouble. The first time I charged, I literally had to nibble the cable and bite the data-lines in half, leaving just the power-carrying lines, before I built myself a decent adaptor-"

"Wait," Jerome lifted a hand. "You're saying that, when you've recharged, you haven't gotten any menu options at all. And all you see is what's in front of you. And nobody's bothered to ask you about your overlays, since you're obviously a robot already."

"To the extent I understand that, yes."

"Right. /I/ understand, now. Hm, gimme a sec, I'm going to take your practice tests, and put together a new scoring algorithm, based on the premise that you took them at iron-man difficulty... whew."

"What?"

"Well, let's just say that you're not going to have to worry about failing to achieve whatever educational certification you seek. But for now, let me check your manuals about how to activate your built-in augmented-reality overlays, which, yes, you can use to a certain degree without hurting your so-called 'air gap', and then we should probably talk a bit about how necessary that particular sort of defensive measure really is in your case..."