Nor a Lender Be (Short Story)

Nor a Lender Be is a short story by James Van Pelt. It appears in Analog (1999), Strangers and Beggars (2002), and Curious Fictions (date). It earned 2nd place in Analog’s AnLab reader poll for stories appearing in the magazine in 1999 and made the preliminary Nebula ballot for 2000.

The title is a reference to a line from Hamlet which is quoted and referenced throughout the story.

Word Count: 7,436

Author's Note
From Curious Fictions:

''Although school districts beg the voters for money to buy computers or to replace crumbling buildings or to implement new testing programs, everyone knows that nothing is better for kids than a good teacher. What if technology discovered a way to put a perfect teacher in every classroom? What is a perfect teacher?''

Characters

 * William - a teacher

Then

 * Victoria Baseman - of the Reinhart Group
 * Isaac - Victoria's intern

Now

 * A little girl at the playground
 * A police officer who arrests William for teaching
 * A fellow prisoner who's uncle killed his father and married his mother

Summary
The story switches between William as an old man (told in present tense) and a younger version (told in past tense).

Past
With the privatization of schools thirty years earlier, Reinhart Group is one of the few corporations to have made money in education. Victoria and Issac observe William, an English teacher going over a lesson on Hamlet. At the conclusion of the lesson, Victoria tells William the corporation has determined he's a superstar teacher and they want to "buy [his] style". They take William to a nearby bar and convince him to sign the contracts. William's classroom is fitted with recording devices and he is injected with nanotech. At the end of three months the recorders and nanotech are removed, but William thinks he can still feel the nanotech.

At the start of his next class, William is served with an injunction. Because Reinhart Group purchased his style, he is no longer allowed to teach as a copyright violation. William spends everything he made from Reinhart in a legal battle against them, but loses. He finds ways to teach anyway, and is frequently arrested over the next two decades. In prison, he's not allowed to be around other prisoners to prevent him from teaching.

Present
Now an old man, William speaks to a little girl on the playground and teaches her the story of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. They are approached by a police offer who arrests William for teaching. William shares a cell with a young man who killed his uncle. The young man explains that the ghost of his father told him to, that his uncle killed his father to marry his mother. William teaches the young man about Hamlet.

Connections
This story and Teaching both feature a device called a DeskTop and a teacher named William. The stories are thematically similar.