Humancorp Incorporated

by Andrew Stanek

  Upper Middlesburg Homeopathic Elementary School (UMHES) had been starved for funding for years. They’d long since adopted the principle of homeopathy. Homeopathy states that the less concentrated select substances become, the more powerful they become. Using this reasoning, the Upper Middlesburg Elementary School declared itself homeopathic, bravely reasoning that the less money they received, the more they would be able to do, because money became more potent in smaller concentrations. This proud but foolhardy mistake cost them the remainder of their funding as the city council followed up with several desperately needed fact-finding missions to Hawaii and Tuscany. Despite embracing bold new ideas, like having the teachers teach without textbooks or classrooms, or having the students teach each other, or having the students teach the teachers, or just releasing all of the students onto the street and hoping nature took its course, test scores failed to improve. Consequently, UMHES is in its last year of full operation. Due to municipal budget cuts, UMHES won’t be able to educate any children next year, having eliminated classrooms, books, computers, lectures, school lunches, recess, physical education, science education, and pupils, but thanks to these wise economies, the school district won’t have to lay off any teachers. The next year, the teachers would, in lieu of students, start teaching chickens instead. Although the chickens would generally perform poorly on their exams, thus denying the school’s teachers a chance to reap their large performance based-bonuses, it would quickly emerge that virtually all chickens have learning disabilities, like attention deficit disorder, chronic disruptive birdseed cravings, and avian stupidity syndrome. Thus, government evaluators would determine that the teachers were not at fault for their pupils’ poor performance, and happily all the teachers would be able to keep their jobs for many years to come. The students, on the other hand, would be released into the wild to learn and fend for themselves and compete for resources, status, and rare internship opportunities, as nature intended, but the important thing is that the city council got to go to Tahiti.

  The donkey cart driver whipped the donkey until it condescended to take them right up to the entrance to the school, where it stopped in a disabled parking space. Noel and Sean piled out. As they got out, the cart driver caught Sean by the arm.

  “That was a good thing you did last time, making sure Mr. Eats got what he wanted,” the cart driver said quietly to Sean. “I know that Mr. Dinero told you to kill the defective people if you have to, but don’t. You’re better than that. Maybe find a way to help someone a second time.”

  “Sure, as long as I get to steal stuff,” Sean said cheerily, and clambered out of the cart.

  Then, together with Noel, he turned to face the school. They nodded to one another and advanced slowly into the campus.

  Chapter 18

  Upper Middlesburg Homeopathic Elementary School had once been a very nice school to look at. It used to have beautiful buildings, some tall and some long, attractive to the eye and sightly despite uniform coats of tan paint. There was an old, brick schoolhouse with one of those tall clocktowers, plus an unnaturally green field where children could play and frolic, and a sandbox with swings, and a jungle gym, and a bike shed for kids to get beaten up behind. Sadly, today, the school had deteriorated appreciably, and no one was getting beaten up behind anything anymore. The schoolhouse had gone to rot. Its high clocktower was dilapidated and unsafe, paint peeling. The clock stopped and the hands went missing as it crumbled over the playground. Other outbuildings had fared no better with the passage of time as they’d splintered and cracked under the constant onslaught of the elements and pre-teenage children, and were now in a state of borderline collapse. The once green field was yellowing for lack of care and overgrown with weeds, while the fixtures in the playground rusted and creaked uselessly. Graffiti had been painted over everything. The teachers had hurriedly tried to cover up the graffiti by slapping over it the large, sparkly motivational stickers that they used to reward good grades but had gone tragically unused because the standard of education was no longer good enough to allow any students to merit them. A handful of wild animals, like deer, skunks, cats, and fowl patrolled the grounds, going nuts and making strange noises at anyone who dared to approach them. Wolves preyed on these animals from their large dens in the field and art classrooms. Someone had strung razor wire across the top of the jungle gym to keep aggressive bobcats and the homeless from invading it, while the tetherball pole had been transformed into an impromptu sentry tower.

  Noel and Sean moved on the main school building cautiously. Above the graffiti-strewn main doors a banner had been strung reading “Parents Day!” in menacing, blocky script.

  Standing near the door was a smiling, young woman behind a makeshift podium.

  “Hello,” she said as they approached. “Welcome to Parents Day! You’ve arrived very late, but classes are still in session, so you haven’t missed everything. How old are your children?”

  “Oh, we’re not parents,” said Noel. “We’re agents of a shadowy megacorporation that have been sent here to kidnap people using this net.”

  Noel gestured to Sean, who was vigorously displaying the net while grinning.

  “You’re not on the list,” the woman said, frowning at her clipboard. “Am I to understand you’re not parents?”

  “No, we’re not parents,” Noel said. “But then again, neither are any of the other people who showed up to this parent-teacher day or whatever it is, because all of the children at this school were manufactured by Humancorp.”

  “Hm...” the woman said, still consulting her clipboard. “I still don’t see anything for you. Would you be willing to pretend to be the parents of some of the lonelier children with tragic backgrounds?”

  “Sure, if it’ll get you to let us in without searching the contents of our pockets for any sinister objects we might have on our persons,” Noel said, and thrust his hands into the pockets of his lab coat.

  “Absolutely it will,” the woman said brightly. She handed Noel a piece of paper. “This is the list of children you can pretend to be the father of.”

  “You be the mother,” said Noel, thrusting the list at Sean.

  “No,” Sean said sternly. “Let me be the uncle. You be the mother.”

  “I’m the father,” Noel said decisively.

  “Great,” said the woman. “Right this way.”

  She showed them into the hall.

  “It’s late and there’s only one more class left in the day,” she said. “Parents of all the students are looking in on their childrens’ classes. Then, after school, we’ll have a parent-teacher meeting in the auditorium. Feel free to sit in on any of the classes you like, and ask me if you have any questions.”

  She retreated.

  A bell rang and students began to emerge from the classrooms, pursued closely by grownups who were hopefully in most cases their parents.

  “That bell must mean the last class of the day is about to start,” Noel said, peering at his schedule. After a little review, he stuffed the schedule into his pocket and brought out his magic wand, but it beeped in an indecisive manner as he brandished it into the sea of people who were filling the hall.

  “Blast,” he said. “I’m getting too much interference from you, Sean. We’ll have to go door to door and hope we can get closer to the defective person.”

  They waded forward into a gaggle of children.

  “Excuse me,” Noel said authoritatively to the students. “Make a path, please. I’m a corporate agent on a very important mission to kidnap people.”

  Sean smiled down at the children genially and patted the net over his shoulder.

  Noel kicked the children in the shins until he forced his way into the center of the hallway, where he looked around at the labels on the various doors. Sean, meanwhile, was covertly robbing children as he went.

  “This is a large school,” Noel observed. “Rather than just guessing, we should try to think about where a defective person might be.”

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nbsp; “Let’s check inside these water pipes,” Sean said, gesturing to some water pipes running along the ceiling.

  “Correction,” Noel said. “I’ll try to think about where a defective person might be, and you stay here and don’t lose track of the net.”

  Sean looked at the net attentively while Noel reached into his pocket and started to search through his smartphone.

  “There’s nothing in here about any unusual criminal incidents near the school,” said Noel. “A lot of the most defective people aren’t actually criminals, though. They’re usually just dysfunctional, like those germophobes who really obviously clean their hands after they touch you. No reports of school violence, or parental complaints that are out of the ordinary, or incidents of child abuse... That doesn’t give me much to go on.”

  He put his smartphone away. When he did, he found that Sean now had in his palms, instead of the net, a large handful of quarters and small bills.

  “Did you sell the net?” Noel guessed tentatively.

  “No, I’ve still got the net,” Sean said, patting his bag.

  Realizing the significance of the quarters, Noel quickly put two and two together.

  “You robbed the children,” he said.

  “The trick is to rob the bullies, because they’re the ones that have all the money,” Sean said happily as he shoved the cash into his pockets.

  “Stop stealing from children and help me look for a defective person. I mean, a more defective person than yourself.”

  “Why can’t I steal from the children?” Sean complained. “The city council has already stolen their futures. Why can’t I have a piece of the action?”

  Noel rolled his eyes and dragged Sean through the crowd of kids towards a location where he saw some adults clustered. They brushed up against a short, red-haired child with a large backpack as they did.

  “You stink, mister,” the kid said, turning up his nose at Noel.

  “Hey!” Noel exclaimed. “I don’t stink! He’s the one that stinks.” Noel jerked his thumb at Sean.

  “Yeah, it’s me!” Sean agreed emphatically.

  Further down the hall, two students were fighting, tumbling over each other and throwing punches while the crowd of adults that surrounded them cheered and placed bets.

  Noel looked at this skeptically, then brandished his magic wand at them. It didn’t beep.

  “Hrm,” he said. “I still don’t know who the defective person here might be. Let’s just hope it isn’t a pedophile.”

  He glanced around and caught sight of a brown-haired man in a brown jacket and a checkered tie slipping into a nearby classroom.

  “Let’s follow that man,” said Noel, nudging Sean and pointing to the brown-haired man.

  “Why?” Sean asked. “Is he a pedophile?”

  “Worse,” said Noel. “He’s a history teacher.”

  They stealthily shadowed him into the room, which was stuffed with children and parents eager to catch the last lecture of the day.

  The history teacher wrote his name, Mr. Oldennews, across the blackboard with a piece of chalk, then started to scribble the phrase, “Kings of England,” along the bottom of the board.

  “Today, we’ll be learning about the battle of Agincourt,” Mr. Oldennews told the assembled students and parents. “The Battle of Agincourt was fought in 1415 between King Henry V of England and the French forces of King Charles VI. However, because King Charles VI was insane, as was the fashion at the time, he was unable to lead the French army himself, so French forces, much larger than the English forces, were placed under the command of various French noblemen. Despite overwhelming numerical advantage, the French lost. 30,000 French noble knights and men-at-arms charged across a muddy field and were slaughtered, proving no match for Henry V’s 6,000 Welsh machine gunners.”

  “I don’t think that’s right,” Noel protested quietly to Sean. “Why would the French have launched a frontal attack against machine gunners?”

  Sean shrugged his shoulders.

  Mr. Oldennews ignored whispers of dissent from his audience and continued to lecture.

  “Today we will also discuss Henry VIII, who had six wives. He divorced two of them and beheaded two of them, all as part of a futile effort to prove he wasn’t gay,” said Oldennews. “Also as part of an attempt to prove his manhood, Henry VIII would raise an army to invade France. Launching attacks from the English enclave at Calais, he would meet with success at Boulogne until defeated at Agincourt by the forces of Henry V. Henry VIII also broke with the Catholic church and founded the Anglican church in England because he disagreed with the Pope’s stance on his own homosexuality.”

  There was more muttering from the parents, but Mr. Oldennews took no notice.

  “Other notable English Kings include Richard the Lionheart, who is remembered as a grand crusader and a much more effective king than his brother, John the Pigeonheart, who was so cowardly that he once agreed to sign the Magna Carta and form a framework for democracy in England just because the English nobles were about to kill him. Aethelred the Unready was another English King. Aethelred was completely blindsided and caught totally off-guard by the possibility of a Viking invasion even though he was a Viking invader himself. King James I & IV was so popular for his practice of witch trials that they made him a rare double king, twice as good as a regular king, and of course, I’m sure I don’t need to introduce King Arthur, who is famous for his invention of the circular table.”

  “Hey,” Noel said angrily. “I invented the circular table!”

  Parents and various students started to hurl things, like books and vegetables, at Mr. Oldennews, some of which hit him. He took notice of this.

  “Alright,” he conceded. “Suppose we switch subjects.”

  He scrawled the phrase, “American History,” across the top of the board.

  “The United States was brought forth by God as a personal favor to George Washington a little under 250 years ago, after George Washington confessed to cutting down God’s cherry tree in the Garden of Eden,” Mr. Oldennews said.

  By this point, Noel had taken out his magic wand and prodded it through the room, but there were no beeps.

  “This guy isn’t the defective person either,” conceded Noel. “He must just be really dumb.”

  Mr. Oldennews heard him and turned, frowning.

  “Excuse me, sir, but I’ll have you know that I have a degree in Homeopathic History from the internet. I will have to ask you to leave my classroom.”

  Noel shrugged and, dragging Sean with him, exited the room.

  The last thing they heard Mr. Oldennews say was, “now, after the US Constitution was handed to Washington by God on a set of stone tablets in 1787...”

  Noel slammed the door behind him.

  They briefly looked in on a chemistry classroom, where a teacher named Ms. Whizbang was teaching students about the four basic elements, fire, earth, water, and coal, before slinking back into the hallway. While standing in the hallway wondering what to do next, they were set upon by child bullies. A fat, muscle-bound twelve-year old approached them, cracking his knuckles as he did. Several smaller, younger cronies stood behind him to back him up.

  “Give me all your money,” he demanded of Sean.

  “Joke’s on you,” Sean said. “I’m fifty thousand dollars in debt.”

  The bully ignored him and turned to Noel.

  “Fine. Then you give me your money,” said the bully.

  “Why should I?” Noel demanded. “You can’t beat me up. I’m bigger than you.”

  “Because if you don’t give me all your money, I’ll make you feel bad emotionally until you cry like a little loser,” threatened the bully. “You disappointed your parents, didn’t you?”

  “They just didn’t appreciate my brilliance,” Noel said, taken aback. “They didn’t see why the world needed a better penguin catapult.”

  “And you’ve been stuck in your dead end job for years, haven’t you?” asked the bully.
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  “It’s not dead-end,” said Noel. “I’m the head of a whole department! I mean, I only have one person reporting to me, and that’s him-”

  He indicated Sean, who was presently trying to break into a locker on the side of the corridor with his shoe.

  “-but it’s still very important.”

  “Oh yeah? And you look like a nerd to me,” said the bully. “I’ll bet you don’t have a girlfriend.”

  “I work very long hours,” Noel said defensively. “I just need to find a woman who thinks intelligence and animal ballistic research is attractive, plus will tolerate me doing medical experimentation on her.”

  “Loser, loser, loser,” the bully’s cronies began to chant.

  “We can keep this up all day,” the bully warned. “We’ll keep taunting until you cry and then post it on YouTube, unless you give us your money.”

  “Gee, boys,” Noel said, scratching the back of his head. “I don’t have any money for you. All I have are these candies.”

  He poured out a handful of suicide pills into his palm.

  The bullies reached for them.

  “No!” Sean shouted, seeing this. He peeled himself away from the door of the locker he was trying to beat open with his shoe and slapped the suicide pills away. They rolled across the floor, and Sean scrambled to pick them up.

  “Hey, why’d you stop that guy from giving us drugs?” demanded the bully.

  “Yeah, you never let me kill anyone,” said Noel grumpily.

  “You kids leave us alone or we’ll claim to be your legal guardians and embarrass you in front of the other kids in class,” Sean said to the bullies. “We’ll pull your cheeks and show baby pictures of kids we’ll claim are you and stuff.”