"The gags?" asked Mitch. "The gags" agreed Benton. "Now come on, let's go," said Jody. -HIGH HIGH -Tales of Suburban Cyberpunk -Created by Stefan "Twoflower" Gagne -This part by David H. Siegel -Episode 8: Hate and Switch Seven hours later, in the pitch of night, the three friends ate chips in the Traffic Smasher. "Explain again," said Jody around a mouthful of crunchy starch-bits, "What you're contributing to this." Mitch brushed crumbs of assorted flavors off his shirt. "Look. You provide the technical know-how, Benton provides the aesthetic sense, and I provide the brain-brain-power." Benton spoke as both he and Jody raised eyebrows, "Oh? So you're the brains of the operation? That's a bit conceited, even for you." "I didn't mean it like that! Look. You know art, you know computers, and I know people. For instance, look at the campus. Steel fence, barbed wire, locked front gates, and probably a security system akin to that of a military installation. How do we get in?" Jody raised a gloved hand and started ticking off methods on her fingers. "I drive through the fence. No problem." "Security system. And unnecessarily destructive" "I hack the computer to open the gates." "Do you really think the front gates are computer controlled?" "We convince someone to let us in." "And they come right to us when they find out that someone just happened to pull a prank on the night that they let us in." "Fine then. How do we get in?" Mitch held up his own hand in imitation of Jody. "Item one: The main gate is over a footpath, and only about fifteen feet tall. Item two: The car gate leads to the parking area, towards the front of the campus. Item three: The cafeteria feeds EVERY student and EVERY faculty member, EVERY day. Item four: The cafeteria is towards the BACK of the campus, quite far from the parking area. And finally, most of the administrators seem to be completely out of their minds." "Meaning?" "Meaning we just sit and wait for a truck." "Like that one?" Benton asked, waving a hand at the unlit behemoth lumbering down the road that their less-lit, slightly less behemoth vehicle was parked alongside "Exactly. If you'd follow it, Jody." Jody hit the "Start Engine" button and yanked the Traffic Smasher into drive, pulling in just behind the huge delivery vehicle. Both rolled along silently except for the slight pair of subsonic rumbles, the truck taking the road around the school and the car-tank crossbreed following close behind. As both vehicles reached the back half of the campus, however, the truck turned towards the tall, unbroken fence surrounding the grounds and stopped short. "Ridiculous," murmured Mitch, "They must think we're in some kind of spy- thriller." Just like in a spy-thriller, a section of fence just ahead of the truck slid smoothly into the ground, allowing the truck to roll forward and dock with the back of the building. "Stupid, but good for us. Jody?" The Traffic-Smasher squealed in just behind the truck, neatly parking parallel to the wall exactly an open-door's-width away. A remarkably unhappy shadow followed close behind, barely avoiding the rising fence. "Huh. I should write something on the administration's inadequacy complex once I'm out of here. Alright. Everybody out of the car, into the building, and down. We want the basement." ----- Benton was the first in, and so the first to be struck dumb by the total silence and stillness of the normally hectic building. As is to be expected when a person stops without warning those running behind him, Jody plowed into him from behind, and Mitch only avoided the same fate by stopping to rhapsodize on the subject as soon as he was inside the door. "Like a clown on a Yttian-hybrid Harley. You probably don't realize that you brace yourself for the noise every time you come in here. Damn, it's quiet. Which way is down?" Benton rolled his eyes and pointed to the door clearly marked as the stairs. "Yes, Benton. I knew where the darkrooms are. But that's not where the climate controls are." "Climate controls?" Jody asked condescendingly, "How could that do anything but make tomorrow uncomfortable for everybody, including us?" "Unlike Benton and I," he replied, glancing at his already grinning partner in pranks, "You must not know about this building's climate control system." "And you," interjected a disembodied voice, "Must not know much about this building's security system." ----- Scrowl watched the three through the glass of the door. The girl had been a no- go, and the other guy, the psychological idiot wasn't a good target for getting at Benton. But if this was anything, this was a gag. A big one, too. B&E, and doubtless some kind of sabotage or destruction of school property coming up in just a few minutes, and getting caught would be very bad for poor little Benton. Not as subtle, perhaps, as his usual methods, but expulsion would certainly be a good start for Benton's personal hell. This would be easy. ----- "Wireless?" Jody hissed with surprise. "Of course. If you'll all look to the side of the doorjamb of room 103, you'll see the lens I'm watching you through." Mitch and Benton both began to look sickly and Benton spoke up weakly. "So we've been recorded? Suddenly, I don't feel so well..." "Of course not. You WOULD have been recorded, but you're being digitally erased instead." The two boys blinked, and Jody smiled. "Well, thanks. We all owe you." Wireless chuckled over the PA. "Glad to help you Jody. And," he paused for a moment as a door unbolted itself. "That should be your door. See you in class, Jody." "See you then, Wireless." responded Jody as she slipped through the door with the others, once again followed by Scrowl on the hunt. ----- Two levels below, Mitch poked his head through the door. "No one here," he called back, "And I think that's the thermostat." "So why don't the two of you explain to me what's so special about the thermostat? Settings for rain? Bose condensate air conditioning? What?" Mitch and Benton turned towards each other as if synchronized and both in perfect time. "Let's just say," Mitch replied, "It's the only thermostat of use to an artist." "You've lost me." Mitch moved down the hallway, beckoning the others behind him. "Come on, you'll see. You'll have to get control first, of course." ----- The main building of the Oppenheimer School of Higher Order Thinking and Mental Development is three hundred by one hundred meters. Five stories tall, at three meters each, that makes four hundred and fifty thousand cubic meters of climate to control. Of course, because the Oppenheimer School of Higher Order Thinking and Mental Development always demands the best, the control is not a simple thermostat. It's anything but. Students arrive at school longing for their nice warm beds, so a well-heated morning is best for learning. Around the mid-afternoon, the always ticking circadian rhythms demand a nap, so cool air is useful to keep those thinkers thinking. Hot air rises, and the sun warms the top floors first, to say nothing of the east in the morning and the west in the afternoon, so every area and floor needs to be controlled individually. As always, High High went slightly overboard. ----- "HOW many?" "Over one hundred and fifty thousand. Each zone is one floor by one square meter. And look at this: Freezing is blue, fifty is red. Everything in between is shaded by half degrees." Jody stood up and shook her head. "Who decided that a school needed this?" Benton whistled softly. "Five fields, each three hundred by one hundred pixels. I prefer traditional media, but this'll do nicely anyway." He cracked his knuckles. "Any requests?" "You're the artist, buddy.' Jody just shrugged. "Clean slate? This is going to be fun." Three hours later, Mitch and Jody were moments from collapse, and Benton had transformed the school into five drawings on the subject of life at High High, composed entirely of shades of red and blue. A brain, an eggbeater, a frowny face with crossed-out eyes, a smiley face with swirly eyes, and finally the letters IQ writ large in red. "I wish I could get graded on this. I call it "Purgatory, Levels One Through Five". Funny. I never thought I'd do an installation." "Well, my artiste friend, it's brilliant. Now let's get out of here before the janitors show." Jody stretched. "Real nice, Benton. Now, c'mon." ----- As the three went up, Scrowl went down. When he sat, the seat was still warm from Benton. "Three hours for this? A bunch of drawings? Moron. Now, I could just sign his name. Expulsion's a good start. But, oh-ho..." Scrowl's hands flew over the control board. "Let me see...that's a nice pink, and a very cute powder blue... I hope Benton enjoys his descent into the pits of work with the rest of us as much as I will. Chuckles and keytaps filled the basement. ----- The next morning, the entire student population milled about on the campus of the school, the building empty. Quickly giving up on trying to ease the Traffic- Smasher through the gates, Jody simply parked by the road, not ten meters from her spot of the previous night. "We shut down the school? I thought they'd fix it in time." Mitch chewed on his lip. "That's a bit more than I wanted." Jody worried as well. "I didn't lock them out. It shouldn't have taken long at all to fix. And anyway: None of the temperatures I used were any more than uncomfortable. There shouldn't be this kind of problem." Benton was barely able to get out "Then what," before he was interrupted by the squeal of a megaphone. "EVERYONE! EVERYONE! COULD I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION PLEASE? DOES ANYONE KNOW WHERE ANNIE BARKINS IS?" "What? Why do they want Annie? Do they think she had something to do with this?" Mitch twitched. Things not making sense bothered him. Jody held up her left hand to quiet the psych student. In her right, she already held her palmtop. Five pictures filled the screen. Pictures mostly in pink and lighter blues, with the top floor in glowing red and the bottom in ice-cold blue. Not the pictures designed by Benton, but rather a motley collection of what seemed to be rabbits and baby ducks. Including, on the fourth floor, what appeared to be a duck-winged baby rabbit. In a low, surprised voice, Benton cursed. "Those aren't mine. And I can't imagine Annie getting into the controls. Or coming up with the idea of using the school as a canvas. But the administration's going to be sure it was her." A wailing Annie was led out of the crowd by a trio of faculty. Wailing for her mother, for her stuffed animals, and surprisingly for Mitch. Benton sighed. "This hasn't gone very well, Mitch." "You're telling me. I wish she wouldn't call my name like that." "That's not what I meant." "Oh?" ----- To be continued... Please? ----- Note: This was longer. But then my prereader found that I had conflated Scrowl with Wendel. Poof. There goes a good third of the chapter. This morning, another chunk poofed due to being worthless. This is the only releasable remains. Not very much, huh?