(A BL science fiction story concluded)
.03
Jackheads!
We knew them on sight. Knew their dripping mouths and dead white
eyes, sightless as boiled eggs, their spindly arms and ragged claws. They were
tween-agers like us but not like us. Not civilized or sane. Maybe not even
human anymore.Seizing vines, they crawled lizard-like down the gym walls.
Our Teachers—Gysin, Ballantine, Eccles—bundled us to our feet.
Meanwhile, birds swirled out the door to flap squawking down the hallway.
We followed behind them.
The jackheads scuttled after us.
We ran hard. We knew what the jackheads wanted because we knew what the jackheads were: they were tweens unlucky enough to have been plugged into the worldweb when the Blow-Up happened, sending a shockwave through the system that turned them in one cybernetic hit into addicts. Digital junkies. We had seen them hotwire car batteries directly into their brain ports for the sizzling electric thrill.
Now they wanted what was still in our heads. They wanted our cerebral implants.
We ran faster.
Some of us made it into the library. Our teachers did not.
We didn’t have time to think about it. We barely had time to heap a barricade. Two computer kiosks spilled their contents when we overturned them and propped them against the shuddering library doors.
That was how we found the dusty hardware. Wires, a motherboard, a vid-screen, an intra-web node from the end of the last century. But it was the birds and the lesson that Teacher Gysin had once taught us about the way entire flocks seemed to change directional flight patterns, as if linked by an invisible field, that gave us the idea.
We applied what we had learned. Without a Teacher, we collaborated. Improvised. We knew technology. We were tween-agers, after all, fourth generation digital natives. So that when the jackheads thrust through our barricade the device was almost ready.
The creatures huddled in a clump. Exposed under shattered skylights, skylights through which the birds had flown, they didn’t look like monsters anymore. They looked more like lost children. One of them mewled beseechingly. Another picked at its dirty implant hole. We felt sorry for them.
Until we saw their teeth. Their knives.
Until their heads swung toward us, sensing the current they craved.
And we gave it to them.
We clicked a switch on the black plastic node.
There was no surge or crackle or spark to indicate the sudden field of energy.
The jackheads simply dropped, paralyzed. Invisible currents trickled into the pleasure centers of their brains. Their eyes rolled. Their claws curled. Lost in a joy that only the digi-addict knows, they smiled blissful, dreamy smiles.
Smiles tinged with irony when they showed on the faces of three hooded figures who passed into the library. Inexplicably, like deleted computer files, the jackheads glowed before they flickered out of existence as our Teachers strode past or through them.
Except they weren’t our teachers, the robed figures who now stood facing us. Not exactly.
Their spectacles—not glasses after all, but virtual reality meta-lenses—glowed, too. The glow spread to their robes. We watched in wide-eyed bewilderment as the apple-shaped symbol on all three robes changed into a familiar logo. Then the robes themselves changed, morphed, transformed into form-fitting corporate uniforms.
Well done, students, said the one we had known as Gysin, clapping softly.
You have acquitted yourselves admirably, said the other we had called Eccles, tapping brisk notes on a touchpad.
We at Edusoft want to thank you for participating in this random field test, intoned the third we had called Ballantine. Your compliance will be rewarded. This virtual simulation has yielded much data for us to analyze as we work to continuously improve the engaging learning system that you currently enjoy.
We gaped at each other.
A system catering to your individual needs, they chanted in unison, hands reverently touching the company logo on their chests.
Our minds reeled. But before we could voice our confusion, the library disintegrated into pixels. Pixels erupted into static. Then the static resolved back into the bustling, everyday world we had known before the Blow-Up.
We woke from a mutual and controlled hallucination.
We sat in coffee shops and shopping malls, normal tween-agers jacked into the worldweb. Crowds drifted past us on automated city slidewalks. Outrage flared inside us. We reached to try to unplug the cables from our heads.
Then Edusoft recalibrated. Rebooted.
Our fingers dropped away from our digital brain ports.
And we smiled blissful, dreamy smiles...
