EVERYONE SEEMED to be getting into the spirit of the thing, the mistress noted with pleasure, as various odd little sights changed while the group sauntered along the carpet towards a brighter room that seemed to have mobile light displays within.
'Ah, a nightclub exhibition,' Esper said as they entered.
'Are we expected to dance? I hear no music,' Dolly Bloomen declared and was about to attempt some rhythmic star jumps when a flickering screen attracted everyone's attention.
'Welcome,' a virtual figure said, some strange pointy-chinned individual in oval-shaped dark glasses that wound around a triangular head. A shock of pale hair flamed up behind the man's ears and he did everything he could to look like a severely insane scientist about to conduct live experiments on foolish schoolgirls now trapped in his laboratory.
'Hello,' Vetta said politely. 'I'm Vetta Mindal from the Blessed Hub of Poldorama.'
There was some cackling from among the girls and even the mistress stifled a snigger.
'It's a recording you buffoon,' Pirouette said, giving the girl a nudge.
Vetta turned to her.
'Yet still, being polite to this person, even if they are virtual, is a kindness,' she said. 'Papa says mindfulness even in the absence of others allows the feelings to follow a sure path all the time.'
'Besides,' Petal Mara added softly, 'we still speak kindly to the spirit of those who have passed, even though they are no longer with us,' remembering her grandmother who had died just before she started at Miss Plazenby's.
'Well, I hope everyone was listening to what Professor Saurel was telling us about the way our minds trick our perceptions due to pre-conceived notions implanted in us by the demands of society,' the mistress said quickly.
'Yes miss,' came an unconvincing chorus of replies.
'Who's Professor Saurel?' someone asked. 'The crazy exhibitator who dreamed up all this nonsense?'
'Who said that?' the mistress responded sternly.
'Could have been anyone,' Meresinth replied from a position very different from that where the irreverent question had been just asked.
'Ahem. Professor Saurel is merely the mouthpiece of the artist who planned this exhibit. The true identity of the individual has been concealed to add a layer of mystery to proceedings,' the mistress explained. 'What the virtual professor says is part of the deception.'
'Then perhaps we may be too?' Sharshua Dragonsong said with a gasp of self-doubt.
'Huh?'
'If,' the mischievous Meresinth jumped in eagerly, 'the identity of the exhibitator person is unknown, how do we know it's not one of us?'
'Huh?'
Everyone looked at everyone else then, like in a murder mystery, trying to figure out the guilty individual among them.
'Well, it's not me,' Pirouette Wrangely pointed out with a hand flutter. 'I would rather not be associated with such tasteless jokings we appear to be surrounded by.' She was looking at a floating screen as she spoke in which text scrolled so rapidly that patterns formed, then it juddered and words briefly froze, making sentences that bore no resemblance to the actual source text. 'I mean, who speed reads nowadays when there are info snacks available at all reliable on-grid outlets?'
Sharshua had begun raising her hand slowly as the girl from Perfecta was speaking but carefully lowered it again before anyone noticed.
'It could be though,' Meresinth pursued. 'Your words might be a deception.'
'How do we know if we are even here?' Dolly Bloomen burst forth, missing sunshine like crazy just then. Darkness was as abhorrent to her as to a sun-loving flower. Thankfully at night time she did not miss it so much by simply falling instantly to sleep only to awake with the dawn fully ready to consume energy for all of the daylight hours available.
'What is reality?' Meresinth added more confusion to the mix.
'Designer style,' Pinky Ponsonby, also from Perfecta, added what she felt to be the obvious answer to the Arbornica girl's philosophical question.