Northawken High, Northawken, PA. Fourth Period: Geometry.
Mr. Brown, the teaching associate, has just stepped out for
an illegal smoke. As a result, all hell is breaking loose.
Over in the back corner the Martians have landed. Deb Sway
is streaming Orson Welles via Mubi on her cellphone.
Five seats in front of her Jed Moonfeather is checking in on
his stocks.
Directly to Deb's right and three students over, Josh
Williams is playing DeathHockey with some student in some
other class, maybe even some other high school miles away
and in a totally different time zone.
Two seats in front of him, Cynthia Nickello is using her
desk InterConnect to create a wicked
etch–a–sketch of the Tasmanian Devil, complete
with cartoon sound effects.
Most of the other students have plugged in an earbud and are
downloading a good dose of iHigh, the current digital drug
of choice. The earbuds receive the iHigh signal from a local
illegal transmission station, and at the same time highjack
part of the information the wearer's subcutaneous RFID chip
is sending out. The two signals are mixed and shunted to the
inner ear where the hairs vibrate at a higher rate than
usual. The vibrations are amplified by the surrounding
Pharyngeal apparati, eventually traveling beyond the
mandibular bone to where the brain finally picks them up and
realizes something is going on. It erroneously thinks the
organism (the teenager in Mr. Brown's fourth period geometry
class) is in pain and orders the pituitary gland to send out
an increased supply of endorphins to relieve the suffering.
Since no suffering other than a slight elevated tingle in
the ear hairs is being experienced, the teenager gets a
quick high. If the teenager is really radical and brave, he
or she is tuned to channel44, the turbocharged version of
iHigh that induces hallucinations. People have been known to
die while imbibing channel44, so few kids do it. Still,
there's always one who has something to prove and winds up a
statistic.
Up in front of the students, the huge, wall–wide Dell
Calcuscreen is illustrating the age–old Pythagorean
Theorem. It squares the hypotenuse, but hardly anyone is
paying attention.
Just like any regulation maelstrom, a pool of calm exists in
the center of the classroom. As the rest of the room quickly
spins out of control, there in the eye of the storm, Justin
Blaine, May Sedley, and Elsa Webb embark on a more subdued
drama.
Half–way to the back, Elsa sits in rapt attention to
the Calcuscreen. She taps her teeth with her fingernails as
she watches the action up front. Two rows over May, her best
friend, attempts to pay attention as well. In between the
two, Justin Blaine is sleeping. He snores a tiny snore.
Only May and Elsa hear it. They turn to look at him. May is
bored and glad for the entertainment. Elsa, perhaps the only
student in school that actually likes geometry, watches but
does not comprehend as her mind is still on the hypotenuse
up on the screen.
At the very moment Elsa and May turn to look at Justin,
Jamie Rector, sitting directly in front of Justin, turns and
aims an electronic pulser at Justin's forehead. He clicks
the trigger, shooting just enough high–pressure air to
throw the sleeping boy ever so slightly off balance.
Justin's neck muscles catch and overcompensate, pitching his
head too fast and too far. He ends up slumping forward with
his head at a right angle over his textbook open to the page
on triangles. A string of drool soon connects his fleshy lip
to the text. A perfect Pythagorean moment.
Because of who she is and how her mind works, Elsa thinks of
Newton and his reactive forces.
Watching from Justin's other side, May is less impressed
with the physical forces. She does not care for math or
physics and can't get past the drool. She remarks on that
instead of the equal and opposite reaction. "Eew!" she says.
At just that moment, Mr. Brown returns.
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