- HIGH HIGH - Tales of Suburban Cyberpunk - By Stefan "Twoflower" Gagne - Episode 4 : Poor Sport SUMMER'S OVER. A phrase of dread that is passed like a virus through the student body, as the inevitable conclusion of summer vacation arrives. Still, there is one last task to complete before the whip comes down and the peons of teens are driven back to the dark hole of High High, never to be seen again. Registration. Normal schools would have a calm morning where the incoming and established students gathered in front of little card tables, where they would present a list of desired classes and BAMF, be signed up. High High works in exactly the same way, with a few twists. "All classes rank in three categories," Mitch said, mostly because he liked to categorize things. "Requirements, Not Fun, and Fun. Everybody has Requirements, courses that you're garunteed a slot in because they're part of your major, like my psych classes and Benton's art class. To fill the rest of the slots, you can pick Fun classes or Not Fun." "Are these official labels?" Jody asked. "Of course not. Not Funs are things like studying the collective works of shakespear, the study of semi-sentient bacterial cultures or home economics. Funs are things like study hall, Video Game Programming, skeet shooting or the study of movies and pop culture." "So why would anybody bother taking a Not Fun?" "Because computer punks like you always hack in hours ahead of time and fill the slots for all the slack courses," Benton said. "Leaving the rest of us to wallow in work overload." "I choose not to take that as an insult," Jody said. "Okay, I see. That's why you wanted me to bring my computer over?" "Exactamundo," Mitch said. "Way I see it, with an advanced computer literate like you, I can get signed up for the easy courses and not burn out by mid-semester. And you can sign up too, I suppose." "Gee, might as well while I'm in there for you, Sahib," Jody mocked, pulling a patch cord out the back of her computer. "Okay, let's see. It's oppenheimer.edu, right?" "I don't know, I'm not much of a computer person," Mitch said. "I'll try that. Shouldn't be very hard to get into. How about you, Benton? Want to be signed up in advance?" "Naah," Benton said. "I'm in art. NOBODY wants to take art unless they absolutely have to. Since it takes up most of my day as is, no room for Not Fun or Funs." "Okay. It's for the best, anyway. From what I can tell here," Jody said, pointing to some virtual object only she could see mentally, "The place is TEEMING with people hacking in. I'll just follow the crowd, add Mitch and I, and get out quickquick." "Foo," Mitch said. "Then we have to drive down to school to register you. Come on, Benton, let's just add you by computer." "What, and miss Registration Day?" Benton said. "No way!" "What's so hot about it?" Mitch asked. "If you had gone last year instead of hiring someone to hack you in, you'd know," Benton said. --- Scrowl had a grudge to settle with life. So far, life hadn't cut him a very good deal. His name, for example, while being quite ala mode with colonists out in the far reaches of space, did not cut mustard back on the homeworld of Terra. Fronteir taste was never very compatible with reality. One look around his family's house would confirm that, from the puce carpeting right down to the strange chrome sculpture that dominated the living room. Decorations were trivial; his enrollment in High High was not. He did not particularly LIKE the school, which he found trivial and boring. He didn't bother doing most of his electronics assignments, since he already knew how to do them and didn't require further proof; being the son of a space station engineer went quite a way towards your home education. So, his grades slid, his parents were mad, and he didn't care one iota. They paid the bills anyway, hoping he'd turn into Super Student, and he put up with the idiocity with a grimace and a strong will. The only thing he had to do for fun was to ruin people's lives. It was quite a fufilling hobby, one which took hours of careful planning and setting up. He had successfully destroyed the hopes and dreams of six people last year, and was aiming to double that this year. The student body of High High had three rules to follow to deal with Scrowl and walk away happy : 1. Don't deal with him, 2. Don't get him mad at you under any circumstances, and 3. Don't call him 'The Ruiner' unless you're out of earshot. Scrowl didn't mind, since he needed to be alone to conduct his meticulously planned experiments into human despair. He went through the trivial motions of hiring a local computer nerd to register him for easy classes he could cut without damage, and set off on his last trap. This week's victim was a man named Randall, a toilet salesman from somewhere in the Richmond district of the suburbs. So far, Scrowl had gotten him divorced, estranged from his relatives, and now the poor fellow was going to lose his job for harassing an employee. It was brilliant. Scrowl managed to splice together video footage from several sources (some which required an adult to visit the curtained section of a local vidtape rental joint) with his Gear and had good old Randall doing things that a sailor would blush at. It was the final stroke in his master plan. Why did he do these things? Why not? Scrowl never bothered figuring out why he liked to destroy people. It just came naturally to him, like scratching an itch. He pedalled along on his cheesy mountain bike, spliced vidtape in the handlebar basket, pleased with himself. No regrets. Bye bye, Randall. He looked both directions across the street, playing the cautious pedestrian, and dinged his bell as a warning to the nobody around him that Yes! he would be crossing the street. He was in the middle of the road when the squeal of protesting tires ripped through the morning silence, and the hideous metal beast skidded around a corner. Scrowl panicked. There was no way he could bike across the road fast enough to avoid being flattened. It was normal for his life to suck, so he accepted fate and didn't bother to brace for impact. The driver, however, was a sensible sort that did have something to live for. The car swerved to dodge the bike, and slammed into the back wheel at 78 MPH minimum. Scrowl's bike slammed into the asphalt, his protective helmet (manditory by law) and inflatable pads puffing up to a good PSI. He bounced off the pavement and rolled to a gentle halt on the other side of the road. Scrowl cursed and triggered the release on his helmet, deflating the pads. He felt for broken bones, found none, and turned to make sure his bike was okay. It wasn't. The bike was a tangled wreck of metal and cheap chrome. He didn't mind; the bike was a peice of crap anyway. But the tape, the precious tape that would conclude his current project was ripped, mangled and ruined. He could edit another one. But he didn't want to. Now he had bigger fish to fry. --- WHUMPH. "What was that?" Benton asked, leaning forward from his rear seat. "Felt like we hit a pothole." "Not sure," Jody said. "Looked like an orange blob at this speed. Probably a traffic cone." "This is NICE!" Mitch said, chuckling over the cheap 'printout' from Jody's computer. Since virtual reality based computers were never designed to produce hardcopy, the schedule was scribbled messily onto a slip of paper. "Psych 201, just like I'm supposed to have, PLUS Physics Demonstrations. I get to watch them light stuff on fire or make things crash into each other. Man, the papers I could write on audience reaction alone..." "Why are we going to school?" Jody asked. "Traffic wasn't as thick as I figured it would be. I could have gotten you signed up for art then." "See, neither of you two have BEEN to Registration Day," Benton grinned. "I have. I couldn't get someone to register me illegally freshman year, so I had to slug it out with the rest of the students. You've seen High Highers in action, wherever we go, chaos and mayhem follows. Now picture ALL of them under one roof, trying to be the first in line before the tables open up at eight am." "Lots of pushing and shoving?" Jody guessed. "Yeah, there's that too," Benton said. --- Scrowl hurled the warped remains of his bike down the stairs. Maybe he could scrap it for parts later; right now he had more important matters to deal with. He deactivated the laser security screens on the basement, as well as the spring loaded spinning blades and collapsable steps. His parents knew better than to go into his workroom, but you never know when some burglar would want to score big on the ultimate observation headquarters. Scrowl clicked the lights on, which in turn powered up the monitors. He had monitors tracking cameras all over suburbia... from ATMs to traffic monitors to direct video interceptions. If it had a lens, Scrowl could see through it. With his Gear, he could observe anything he wanted. He could pick and choose victims, watch as their lives fell apart, and record the event for later enjoyment. Plus, he could get blackmail material, more than that wuss-amateur Julie and her little black book. He tapped his touchscreen, calling up a traffic monitor on his main viewer. The car that wiped him out came from around THIS corner, which means it had to go past camera 56a... he accessed the running vidtape deck associated with that camera, and rewound the tape. There it was. Yttian Traffic Smasher model, about fourty years old. According to the enhanced zoom crosslinked to the motor vehicle registry, it was owned by a student at High High named Jody. This Jody was going to regret meddling in my plans, Scrowl thought, keying up his megar information file on Jody. NAME : JODY (HIGH HIGH : COMPUTER SCIENCE) AGE : 16 SEX : FEMALE SKILLS : COMPUTERS +1 COMPUTER CRIME +0 DRIVING +2 HAND TO HAND +1 ASSOCIATES : BENTON (HIGH HIGH : ART) MITCH (HIGH HIGH : PSYCHOLOGY) PHOBIAS : UNCONFIRMED, ESTIMATED 1 STRONG WEAKNESSES : UNCONFIRMED, ESTIMATED 1 WEAK Not much else. Hmm. He'd have to information-exchange with the gossip queen to update this file. Leaving unconfirmeds in your files was a bad idea, especially in areas where they could be useful. The urge hit Scrol. The urge was unexplainable, just a gut instinct Scowl had when selecting someone to play with, which caused his random nature. The urge currently told him that this Benton person would be more fun to ruin, and had a lot more to lose. Scrowl tapped the link to Benton. NAME : BENTION (HIGH HIGH : ART) AGE : 16 SEX : MALE SKILLS : ART +3 ASSOCIATES : JODY (HIGH HIGH : COMPUTER SCIENCE) MITCH (HIGH HIGH : PSYCHOLOGY) PHOBIAS : 0 WEAKNESSES : CONFIRMED 1 STRONG Hmmm. Confirmed strong was quite rare. He tapped the link. THE HIGH HIGH ART DEPARTMENT IS THE ONLY CHANCE BENTON HAS TO BE CONSIDERED A SERIOUS, HIGH-END ARTIST BY THE ART COMMUNITY. WITHOUT A DIPLOMA, ESTIMATED CHANCE OF BENTON BECOMING ANYTHING BETTER THAN A GREETING CARD DESIGNER IS %05. Scrowl grinned. All to easy. --- The Traffic Smasher approached the hulking figure of High High slowly. The speed limit hadn't been lowered... Jody was just apprehensive about approaching a place that radiated evil so. Perhaps if she was to cup an ear to the winds, she could hear the phrase 'EVIL! EVIL! EVIL!' being repeated to infinity. Or maybe not. Either way, the effect wasn't pleasant. "Spooky," Jody said, examining the stark grey building uneasily. "Kinda gothic," Benton said. "Therein lies more pain and misery than mortal man may yet comprehend..." "Tosh, it's not THAT bad," Mitch said. "Sure, the work can melt lesser minds into tapioca pudding and the librarians can bite your head off from across the room and the rows upon rows of identical classrooms can make you feel boxed in to the point of rendering you insane, but it's a good school." "Don't remind me," Benton said. "I'm just happy us art students have mauled our playroom into a more hospitable place. I don't see how you can handle those normal classrooms. They resemble morgues." "They grow on you," Mitch said. "Alright. Where's the reg... oh." Mitch rolled down his window (Jody had the convertible top up today in case of rain), observing the streams of kids lined up outside the cafeteria. "Looks fairly normal to me," Jody said. "Check the dashboard clock," Benton suggested. "The time is now eight fifty eight. We have a two minutes until the fun begins. I think I can tell what's going to happen... look. Second story, third window." "Looks like someone's wiring the room for cable," Jody said. "How'd he get inside if the building isn't open yet?" "Ladder," Benton theorized. "Okay, follow the wire. Goes right down to the doors. It's semi-transparent, but you can see it on the peeled parts of the paint... NINE AM!" The school bell rung, a sickly ding-a-ling, not unlike an axe murderer cruising around town in an ice cream truck. All the gymnasium doors swung inward, the rectangular portals inviting students inside to register. The huddled masses charged for the gymnasium doors, but didn't make any progress... something was stopping them. "The doors are open," Mitch said. "What's going on?" "Notice the green sparks near the doorframes," Benton said. "Someone's put a force field up over the doors. Also, notice on the side of the building where the power cables were being strung from, a few engineering students have put up a ladder and are sneaking inside. Of course, the students can't see it from this angle, but we can." "Clever," Jody nodded. "Oooh! Check it!" Benton grinned, pushing his head out the window. "Someone's noticed the ladder. EVERYBODY'S noticed the ladder. The culprits are scrambling up, trying to get inside before they're caught... looks like the mob got a few of them... there goes the ladder..." "I don't get it," Jody said, resting an elbow on the steering wheel and turning around to consult Benton. "Why hold up the students?" "Fun and Not Fun. Computer Science always wins most of the Funs, but it's a tossup as to who gets the remaining ones. I'm guessing Engineering is planning on claiming them this year by keeping everybody out while they register. Not very stealthy about it, though... looks like someone snipped the wire. Field's down." "Should we go inside?" Jody asked. "With THAT mob out there?!" Mitch gaped. "That's insane. Take it from an expert on insanity." "Don't worry," Benton smiled. "I'm registering for Art Workshop. NOBODY wants to take art but art majors. We can just sit back and watch for now, and go in once the crowd goes home." "No chance of Art filling up, huh?" Jody asked. "Of course not. The only way I couldn't get in would be if too FEW students sign up. High High policy states that any department must have at least three students in order to stay open. If I overslept or something, I could kiss my High High enrollment goodbye." --- Francis hadn't overslept. He was too busy realizing his vision. Francis gets a lot of visions, not all of which are influenced by chemical ingestion. Today's image dealt with mob rule and the singlemindedness of large groups. What better way to study this than to take his camera down to High High and film Registration Day? Already he had fifteen minutes of footage, starting with the brawl over the ladder and culminating for the push to the doors. He managed to get a NICE angle of the cord-snipping that removed the force field. He figured with some remixing and edits of pigs being slaughtered, that shot alone could take maybe sixty or seventy minutes to fully explore... "Nice camera." Francis turned around, keeping his handheld aimed at the fray. The student addressing him didn't have much stage presence... very understated, not entirely unlike someone trying not to look conspicuous. Far too subtle for common man to pick up. "Thank you," Francis said. "It's not much, just a palmtop transmitter cam with homebase--" "Vidtape station, yes, good for security work or time lapse," Scrowl nodded. "Why use such a primitive camera for filming work, however? Surely more accurate recorders are available..." "I want it to have a 7-11 feel." "A what?" "7-11. The noble impulse-buy store clerk, captured for hours on end with cheap equipment like this," Francis said, patting the camera. "THAT'S reality. I want this film to have a very real feel to it. At least before I mix in the images of barnyard slaughter and Australian soap operas." "Interesting theory," Scrowl said. "You're in the art department, aren't you?" "My alma matter," Francis nodded. "What do you do?" "Me? I ruin people's lives." "Unusual!" Francis said, in considerable awe. "Can I film a documentary about you?" "Perhaps later. For now, I need to shoot you with this stungun," Scrowl said, pulling the cheap Buck Rodgersesque gun from his coat pocket, connecting an electrical arc between the barrel and Francis's chest. "I see," Francis nodded, before collapsing. -=- Author's Note: This one's a bit truncated, so pick it up where it left off. Sorry to break up the 'episodic' feel it was having so far!