Miss Laegeland: Interrogate your ex
Rosemary wasn't generally renowned for good moods, but here she was in a notoriously foul one. A shame to start off the new year like this - normally, she would be more optimistic than ever to have a fresh beginning (and with a much tidier paycheck, to boot), or at least as optimistic as she got, but no, that was now ruined. Simply put: it was going to be a long, long year.
She had just been setting up her workspace; distributing pens around her desk so that she could always find one, preparing her lessons for the upcoming week, and placing forms in convenient places. And then she happened to check the names of students in her class. The first shock made her jaw drop. A familiar name, Roxy Lalonde. The daughter of a very familiar face, if one she hadn't seen in years. Sufficient familiarity could compensate for the distance of time, and she could picture clearly in her mind's eye the face that she full well intended to slap any second now.
The second shock rocked her to the core. 'Rose Lalonde', read the electronic register. Uncomfortably close to her own name, it incensed curiosity in her. Thanks to the marvels of technology, she was able to bring up the student's details on her computer, even check the photo assigned to her.
She found herself wishing she hadn't,
Miss Laegeland had a strong composure, but by the time her mind had consciously processed the image her heart was pounding, whether with fear or an intense desire to have a loud rant at someone over this. It was her face, like a younger version of herself had been plucked out of the timestream for some kind of macabre photoshoot (which, after all her years teaching at Skaianet-sponsored facilities, wouldn't normally be out of the question, but then why wouldn't she remember it). Of course, the reality was even worse - it was a machine, an android sculpted into an flagrantly unnatural mockery of her own form. Some kind of replacement goldfish to fill a wound. She wasn't sure whether she should faint, puke, or kill someone. The latter still wasn't out of the question, though.
Rosemary wasn't prone to physical violence (she much preferred to stab at the psyche, preferably in a passive-aggressive manner), but in a rare exception for her she slammed the door to Roxanna's chemistry lab shut firmly behind her. "They never told me you would be here. I am a professional, however - I would have dealt with it maturely, and perhaps reconciled a friendship between us. But you have done things that make this...difficult. The machine." Her voice bristled with anger as though a thorn bush of rusty blades and edges. Both hands placed themselves on the front of her desk hard enough to make an audible slap, and if she wasn't wired with adrenaline she might have yelped in pain. "You built a machine to replace me."
