The bully and his cronies went quiet, then stared at Sean in revulsion.
“Fine,” the bully said slowly. “Let’s blow this scene, guys.”
They retreated.
Noel crossed his arms as they went.
“I don’t think I like it here,” he confided in Sean.
Chapter 19
Sean and Noel continued to wander through the school, almost aimlessly looking for the new defective person. Eventually, Noel slipped into the library to make further adjustments to his magic wand. Sean followed and started to steal library books by shoving them into his waistband, earning him sharp glances from the attending librarians, but nothing more severe than that.
Two adult men were loitering by a bookshelf near the front of the room. One of them pulled out a book, read a few lines, then snapped it shut and stuck his tongue out.
“Oh god,” he said. “This is almost as bad as Andrew Stanek’s writing.”
“Andrew Stanek with a pen is like a psycho with a razor,” agreed the other man. “I read one of his serious books, and it was a week before my eyes stopped bleeding.”
“I cut off my right arm to stop myself reading.”
“Well, I cut off his right arm to stop him writing.”
“I beat him up.”
“I killed him!”
“I burned and salted his corpse, then covered it with garlic so he can’t come back to life.”
They were shushed by the librarian before leaving the library, conversing in hushed tones.
“I hear Andrew Stanek’s next book is going to be about a dystopian alternate universe in which Donald Trump is President of the United States,” one whispered as he left.
Meanwhile, Sean had grown bored stealing the books around him and pulled out the only book on his person that was technically his, the Humancorp corporate handbook. Coincidentally, he opened it to the section on theft.
“If caught stealing company property, you will be fired or have the value of the stolen items deducted from your paycheck,” it said, “so we recommend not getting caught. Here’s a handy tip: blame it on your enemies within the company! Or offer to do the inventory. This will give you a chance to steal more office supplies while at the same time concealing that you are doing it by letting you falsify inventory reports.”
Sean scratched his head and turned to a different page. It seemed to have to do with illegal drug use.
“Company policy requires you to rat out and snitch on any employees you suspect of drug use,” it said. “That said, you’re not a narc, are you?”
Flipping through more pages, Sean found a new chapter. This was part of the section on benefits, which was worryingly entitled “Employees with Benefits,” accompanied by a large, winking emoji.
“Maternity leave,” it said. “If you’re a man, you can’t have any, but if you’re a woman, you can only have none.”
Below that, it started to talk about vacations.
“You can have all the vacation you want as long as you keep doing your job and coming into the office for a full day every day,” it said. “In short, take your vacation on your own time.”
Sean scratched his head.
Noel tinkered with his magic defective-person-detecting wand, then slammed it against the table a few times in frustration.
“It’s not working,” he said after he did this.
“Is that because you just slammed it against the table really hard?” asked Sean.
“No. I don’t know why. It just up and died on me, and I didn’t even give it any suicide pills.”
Noel threw the magic wand aside, then crossed his arms.
“I don’t get it,” Noel said. “We know there’s a defective person somewhere in this school, but usually the influence of a defective person is felt over the entire area. He ought to be someone of central importance, like Mr. Eats was to the Café de Food.”
“So, someone like the principal,” Sean suggested.
“Could be,” Noel said. “I also would have expected a defective person to show himself by now with some kind of flamboyant defective behavior, like throwing water balloons filled with Worcester sauce at pigeons outside the wolf enclosure, or something.” Noel crossed his arms and tapped his foot, then shrugged.
“So...?” Sean prompted.
“We’ll just have to keep looking and hope we find someone,” said Noel. “Otherwise, I don’t really know what more we can do here.”
They left the school library and drifted by a computer room.
“Hello and welcome,” said a female teacher as they peeked inside. “As you can see, UMHES has state-of-the-art computer systems. We engage students by providing them with educational video games to allow them to learn and have fun at the same time!”
“They’re playing Grand Theft Auto,” observed Sean, as one of the nearby students ran over a virtual police officer with a truck.
“Yes, and it teaches them lots of important lessons about life,” said the teacher. “For example, that the police will stop chasing you if you drive eight or nine blocks, and that you can steal a car by approaching one stopped in traffic, opening the door, and throwing out the driver.”
“I don’t think anyone here is disputing that those are important lessons, but is that kind of thing really what you want to be teaching children?” asked Noel.
“It’s true that parents traditionally tell their children about automotive theft when they’re a little older than this,” conceded the educator. “However, we believe children should be exposed to realistic, factual information about stealing cars when they’re younger. These days, with the internet, children are likely to be exposed to media that exaggerates and glorifies automobiles and beating a man to death with a bat, and it’s better they hear it from us first. Otherwise, when they reach high school or college, they’ll have a distorted, unrealistic idea of carjacking that might not square with the scientific reality, and before you know it, they’ll be shooting cops on the streetcorner expecting to seize control of a Ferrari instead of something more reasonable, like a Ford Fiesta, or a Smart Car.”
There was a pause.
“Also, you know, they’ll probably end up having sex in the back of a truck, and we want them to know about that,” the teacher said.
Noel shrugged and poked around with his magic wand-typed device for a while, but there were no signs of any defective people. Puzzled, he withdrew.
Out in the hallway, a gaggle of proud parents were standing around with embarrassed-looking kids, boasting.
“My daughter’s an honor student,” said one man, hugging a blushing twelve-year old girl close to himself.
“Oh yeah?” said another parent. “Well, my son’s an AP student.”
“Pff,” said a third. “My daughter’s an investment banker.”
“Yeah, that’s pretty good,” a man said, leaning back on a hall bench. “But, you know, my daughter’s plotting a coup against the government and is going to take over the entire state through force of arms next year.”
A short distance away from them, a seedier, less well-dressed group of parents were having a similar conversation.
“Oh yeah?” one parent with a beer gut said. “Well, my son got a C in economics!”
“Yeah, well my son’s a quarterback,” said another, “and he got a D in economics.”
“That’s nothing,” scoffed another. “Not only did my son fail economics, he burned down the department and accidentally created a modernized model of the Philips Curve that incorporates long-term inflation expectations and sticky pricing in the process! He’s getting his Nobel Prize in a month.”
Noel brandished his device at all these people, but none of them seemed to be the defective person either. Noel continued to frown at his magic wand and whack it with his hand.
“Is this thing even on?” he asked.
Meanwhile, a small boy had broken away from his father in the corner and wandered over to Noel, where he started to pick Noel’s pocket. This
was a completely futile exercise because Sean had already picked Noel’s pocket clean of his wallet and all other valuables, but the little boy didn’t know that.
Noel caught the boy by the arm and dragged him over to his father, outraged.
“Excuse me, sir,” Noel said to the father, who had greasy, dark hair and a narrow face. “I just caught your boy trying to steal from me.”
“Don’t you tell me how to raise my kids,” the father said, pointing threateningly at Noel. Then he beckoned his son over and patted him on the head. “Good boy, Jerry. You’ll take over the family gang some day.”
Noel raised an eyebrow, but after establishing these weren’t the defective people either, quickly moved on.
Meanwhile, Sean had poked his head into a nearby science classroom. A number of ten to twelve-year-old children were crowded around a blackboard with their parents while a teacher drew diagrams in chalk.
“Welcome to the advanced 6th grade biology class,” she said as she spotted Sean. “Today, we’re learning about the difference between a cat and a dog.”
She pointed at elaborate chalk diagrams of a cat and dog on the blackboard.
“Can anyone tell me the difference between a cat and a dog?” she said, turning to the class.
All the children stared at her blankly.
“The dog is a billionaire?” Sean guessed tentatively.
“No,” the teacher said brightly. “The cat goes ‘meow’, and the dog goes ‘moo.’”
“Er, I think I’m in the wrong place,” Sean said. “If this is the advanced class, where’s the basic class?”
“Just next door,” the woman said kindly.
“Thanks,” said Sean, and went through the door she indicated to a directly adjoining classroom. This had a teacher with a set of similarly-aged students in it, albeit they all looked a little thicker than the ones in the room he’d just left.
“Hello,” the teacher said as Sean approached. “This is the basic biology class. Today, we’re learning the difference between a cat and a rock.”
He indicated elaborate diagrams of a cat and a rock on a blackboard.
“Do you know the difference between a cat and a rock?” he asked Sean.
“The rock is a billionaire?” Sean guessed.
“Close,” the teacher said. “The cat goes ‘meow’ and the rock goes ‘moo.’ Also, if you throw a cat and a rock at someone, the rock will hurt more at first, but the cat will get angry and hurt more in the long run.”
Sean was very interested, but realizing he’d lost Noel, he blundered back into the hallway. Noel caught up with him by the door.
“Where were you?” Noel demanded.
“A biology lecture,” Sean said. “I learned a lot. Did you realize dogs go ‘moo?’”
“I’m gonna have to adjust that brain reprogrammer when I get back, because obviously something went wrong when I zapped you,” Noel said, peering at Sean. “You’re not supposed to be this stupid.”
“Hey, I’m not stupid,” Sean said.
“Sure,” Noel said dismissively. “Let’s check these other classrooms.”
He opened a door and they briefly walked into an unused geology classroom, which had a glass display case full of examples of igneous rocks.
“Look, a cat,” Sean said, pointing to one of the rocks.
“That’s a rock,” Noel said.
“Are you sure? Maybe we should throw it at someone to check.”
Noel thwacked him with the magic wand. As Noel did, it started to beep again.
“Lousy piece of malfunctioning garbage,” Noel muttered, adjusting it.
“Is it broken?” asked Sean.
“I was talking about you,” Noel told Sean.
“That’s not very nice of you to say,” said Sean, crossing his arms.
Noel rolled his eyes, and they walked out into the hallway, then hooked a right into an English classroom. Inside was a single male human teacher in a room that was otherwise entirely filled with chickens. Brown and white chickens were sitting in every seat, at little brown and white chicken desks.
Noel blinked at it, suspecting he’d gone insane, but he hadn’t, or at least, not in a way that makes you hallucinate chickens. He’d gone insane in an entirely different series of ways that made him synthesize suicide pills and construct anti- or pro-zebra trebuchets. In any event, the chickens were real.
“What the heck?” he said, staring at them.
“This is next year’s class,” a passing administrator said.
Meanwhile, the teacher, a dark-haired man with a scarred face, was writing the words “AP English Literature,” on the board, speaking passionately to the class as he did.
“Yeah, maybe I’m just a down-on-his-luck English teacher who just lost his job, and maybe you’re just a bunch of screw-up chickens from the inner city, but do you want to know something? You’re going to take the AP exams and you’re going to pass them. Do you know why?” He started pounding his fist on the table. “Because I believe in you! No one else believes in you. No one thinks that chickens can pass an AP Literature exam, but I say every single one of you is going to pass, because I have faith in you, and I have confidence in you, and I know you can pass if you put your minds to it. You don’t want to spend the rest of your lives in the ghettos, do you? Well, to get out of here, you’re going to have to pass this exam. Alejandro, what’s the name of the captain’s sidekick in Moby Dick?”
“Bock bock,” the chicken replied, pecking at the desk and carpet.
“No,” shouted the teacher. “Re-read the whole book, Alejandro. Next, Sherman, what is the first line of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina?”
“Bwraackbockock,” a rooster replied as it flapped its wings at another chicken.
“That’s what you answer to everything, and no passing notes in class! Detention! Now, Rex, who wrote Mrs. Dalloway?”
“Jane Austen?” bocked the chicken uncertainly.
“Damnit, no Rex! You’re not even trying!”
“The teacher isn’t defective, but I can’t speak for the chickens,” Noel hissed to Sean. “Let’s move on.”
“Okay,” Sean agreed. He’d been stealing eggs, and yellow yoke was running down his shirt as they exited the classroom. “I don’t get it though,” he murmured as he looked at the chickens. “Wasn’t this an elementary school, not a high school?”
Noel confidently strutted into a nearby corridor that was labelled “Science Fair.”
“Welcome,” a female student in a lab coat said by the entrance. “This is our science fair, where we showcase the results of our work for our teachers and parents. Would you like a flier?”
“No,” Noel said harshly, looking around at a handful of exhibit tables with crudely made displays. “This isn’t a real science fair. Where are the hedgehog cannons? Where are the suicide pills? Where are the Turbodonkeys?”
“We don’t have any of that, but we do have Newton’s cradles and plants that we grew ourselves!”
Noel looked very unhappy as he led Sean into the room. A girl at the first table had a large clay model of a human brain that she had apparently made herself. All the different areas of the brain were intricately and correctly labelled.
“I want to be a neurosurgeon when I grow up,” said the girl.
“You stay off my turf,” Noel snapped aggressively, and started smashing up the stand.
The girl started to cry.
“This is the reason not a lot of girls become neurosurgeons,” Noel confided in Sean.
“Because you threatened them and smashed up their stuff?” Sean speculated.
“Yes, but also because they lack the quality most necessary to being a neurosurgeon: brute force. Also the trick to being a rocket scientist, by the way.”
“Are you even a neurosurgeon?” Sean asked curiously.
“I apply powerful electric shocks to people’s brains. Call it what you want.”
They stopped near another table where a young boy had made a baking so
da volcano.
“I’m gonna be an astronaut and go on a rocket to the moon,” he said, bright-eyed and grinning broadly.
“Well, I hate to break it to you kid, but you accidentally made a volcano out of paper mache and baking soda instead,” Noel said, examining the volcano. “A rocket is more of a thing that goes up. Keep trying, though. You’ll get it.”
This child started to cry too.
“Damn, it’s like the Accounting Department in here,” Noel said, glancing around at the crying children.
“Have you ever tried being nicer to people?” Sean asked, frowning at him.
“Tried it and hated it,” Noel said. “Besides, it’s against corporate policy. Just check the corporate handbook’s section on customer service.”
Sean took out the corporate handbook and flipped it open.
“Customer service is a process by which our customers become poorer and we become richer,” the Humancorp handbook said. “If any of our customers is anything less than a penniless hobo sleeping on the railroad tracks, bitterly swearing vengeance against you and all your kin to come for the next ten generations, you haven’t taken enough of his money. Remember also to mercilessly crush our competitors by lying to customers and telling them that all their problems come from using our competitors’ products. Then, we’ll send a van to their house with our competitors’ logo on it and smash up the place and leech the wifi. That should make the bastards think twice before buying something that wasn’t made by Humancorp!”
As Sean read, Noel was smashing up flower pots from the desks of students who had gone to the elaborate trouble of growing plants.
“It’s a good thing my father isn’t here,” Sean said, stopping by one crop of flowers before stuffing them down his shirt.
As they destroyed and stole things, Noel sighted someone who made him stop. There was a tall, handsome, blonde man in a neat suit and tie surrounded by a few younger children. Noel’s ears practically perked up when he saw the man, like a fox that’s just been offered a coupon to an all-you-can-eat rabbit buffet for its whole family.
Humancorp Incorporated Page 17
