Ms. Torres could see the divide in her classroom and it broke her heart.
The enhanced kids—about a third of the class—sat in the front. Not because they were told to but because they processed faster and asked questions the other students hadn’t reached yet. Their parents paid for neural tutoring supplements that cost more per month than some of the other families earned.
Jackson, enhanced, was working on calculus. He was twelve. His implant didn’t do the math for him—it sharpened his working memory and processing speed so that the math felt intuitive, the way reading feels intuitive to an adult but miraculous to a child first learning.
Rosa, unenhanced, was working on fractions. She was also twelve. She was bright, hard-working, and falling behind at a rate that would become permanent within two years, because cognitive enhancement compounded like interest: each year of advantage built on the last.
Ms. Torres taught them both. She differentiated instruction. She used AI tutoring tools for Rosa that were free and good but not as good as Jackson’s paid neural supplement. She told herself the gap could be closed.
She was lying. She knew she was lying. Jackson knew she was lying. Rosa didn’t know yet, and that was the cruelest part.