by J. N. Chaney
Manson spoke in the same shout he had used at the base of the bleachers but within a few inches of my face. “Transfer student, Gil. Mid-semester. You know what that means?”
Gil swayed at the hips, making tiny gyrations at my right ear and dipping down toward my head with each thrust. “Sounds like something real bad went down. Think he slugged a student or snogged a teacher?”
Simpletons, the both of them, easily riled by insults. Better to stay calm.
Manson pushed in even closer, switching to what I assumed was his best menacing whisper. “I think you got that the other way around. Looks to me like the type that acts out at authority.”
He carried himself on his left leg, placing too much of his weight with no sense as to the balance. If I wanted, I could capitalize on that.
Gil slapped his extended knee with his forward hand, leaving the one behind me unseen. Each slap got a little louder as he staccato-style fired off his next taunt. “Gotta be something stupid. Strike policies and all.”
Manson wiped his nose with the fraying sleeve and then flicked it across my face and chest.
I still pretended the two didn’t exist as I sat there quietly.
Gil broke out in hysterics and slapped me on the back a few times. “Oh, Manson. I don’t know that’ll come out in a wash.” He punctuated his statement by pinching his right nostril and blowing a wad of gunk onto my pants.
It was Manson’s turn to laugh and slap me, each time a little harder. “Probably best if you get out of these dirty rags as quick as possible, eh?”
I kept a calm appearance, acting as though I hadn’t noticed the freshly thrown snot on my clothes. “I’m glad you’re so concerned about my well-being,” I remarked, feigning a smile. “It’s nice to be treated so well on my first day, but try not to worry too much about me. The staff seems to be monitoring the gym, though, which means we’re all safe and sound. Isn’t that nice of them?”
“Monitoring?” echoed Gil. He looked around, but saw no sign of any teachers. “What are you talking about?”
I nodded to the wall with the exit door, near one of the offices. “Just over there, do you see it? There’s a small camera,” I said, as though it should be obvious. “It must be new if you’re unaware of it.” I let out a sigh and smiled warmly. “It’s so nice that the staff cares enough to keep us safe, don’t you think?”
Manson swung back to me, an embarrassed look on his face. “Crap,” he muttered. “When did they install that?”
Before Gil could answer, another voice rang out, speeding up the bleachers. “You two idiots looking to fail out again?”
They both snapped their heads in the direction of the approaching student. It was a fair-haired boy that seemed a bit older than either of them. He had a lanky build but held his posture with an elasticity. He seemed almost to be made out of rubber the way he swayed and bobbed as he came up the rows, sporting a cocky grin while wearing a simple shirt and pants outfit with bright-colored athletic shoes. He was self-possessed and alert in comparison to the other two and their wincing gazes.
Manson sat me up with his back hand and scooted away a bit. “Just introducing ourselves to the new guy, Vance.”
Gil bounced to the side, keeping more than a row distance between himself and Vance. “We were updating him about the dress code here.”
Vance nodded. “I see that. You want me to get you the answers for Balner’s chem test the end of the week? You can’t be doing a disciplinary before. They’ll force you to solo proctor it.”
The two self-styled thugs moved further away and started to retreat down the bleacher rows. Manson turned back and fixed me with an intense but unconvincing glare. “We’ll see you later.” He turned his attention to Vance. “We want those answers. Tomorrow. This one can have a bit before we get back around.”
Vance gave a dismissive wave. “Yeah, yeah. We get it. Just see I don’t hear anything out of you two before next week or you might find yourselves relying on your own brains to pass a class. Dark thought, my friends.”
He offered a cloth and sat down a few seats to the side of me. “I’m Vance, if you didn’t catch that. They were Manson and Gil. They aren’t all bad, just examples of what happens when you buy into the idea that there needs to be a hierarchy in boarding school.”
I took the cloth and did what I could to remove the biological material that had been left behind. “My last academy had disciplinary staff and security. I don’t think people like them lasted long.”
Vance smiled. “Sounds like a story to hear. Look, they aren’t criminals, just forceful and a little stupid. You’ll learn to get on their good side, or at least stay off their bad side. No security here to help you other than the curfew watch, and they won’t step in to help, except to take you all up for a disciplinary when the dust settles. Around here, you have to learn how to handle your own.”
Vance had a way of talking that was engrossing and made you want to listen and pay attention. Charisma, some people called it, and it poured from him. His word choices left me wondering where the sentence was going, and the sound of his voice was inviting without becoming snide.
“I’ll do what I can,” I said, keeping my answer short and simple. Saying what I knew was what had landed me here and I needed time to learn more about my surroundings and the people in them.
Vance gestured to Manson and Gil on the other side of the gym. They were presently getting physical with another student. “Some people will always look for trouble to get into. What’s your story? Mid-semester transfer does raise some red flags.”
Despite thinking I should keep more to myself a moment ago, something about Vance was trustworthy. Maybe it was the open and inviting attitude or that he clearly knew more than he was letting on. The way he stepped in suggested he was opportunistic but not conniving.
This school was far different from the kind I’d previously attended. Less security, more potential enemies. Having a friend like Vance might do me some good. At the very least, I could observe and learn from him.
I gave myself another pat down with Vance’s cloth and then offered it back to him.
“You should probably toss that. No reason to allow anything those two had to incubate,” Vance said with a smile that I returned.
I set it aside. “I’m here because I said the wrong thing to my former headmaster,” I admitted.
Vance smirked. “So Manson wasn’t far off, eh?”
I bristled at that, the idea that Manson was in the same planetary system to the truth. “No. It wasn’t disciplinary, more the wrong kind of help. I let him know about a teacher stealing and his wife cheating.”
Vance sat upright and feigned a whistle. “Nobody likes a rat . . . what’s your name?”
“Alphonse, Alphonse Malloy.”
“Well, Alphonse Malloy.” He paused. “We’ll have to do something about that, but for now, know that people don’t like uncomfortable truths. You gotta know when to leave it alone. Never tell a man his wife’s cheating. That is shoot-the-messenger kinda news.”
I nodded, but it was clear my acceptance wasn’t enough.
“It’s the principle. You tell a person something they don’t know about their own lives, then you step over a boundary, right? You tell them that they don’t have secrets. You start seeing through people like that and they will do anything to keep you away. Understand?” He stood up and offered his hand.
I took it and let him pull me up. “I don’t know why anyone wouldn’t want to know the truth. Knowing is everything.”
Vance pulled me in tightly and clapped me on the back. “Alpha, we’re going to have to learn that right out of you.”
6
The rest of the week went smoothly, and midway through the following week, Manson and Gil had yet to live up to their initial threat. My adjustment to the environment of Quintell Academy was outwardly easy. I attended my classes, did my work, and returned to my room. Aside from conversations with Vance, I had little social interaction.
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The curriculum was no different from my previous school’s. The curriculum in general was set by mandates through the Union Educational Ministry and teachers were more guides than instructors. Their synchronicity was such that the only material I missed was my day of travel.
The extended day/night cycle of Meridian was considered the human ideal. Thirty hours provided a more useful balance between activities and the sleep schedule was considered optimal for rest without falling into waste. This was also the standard schedule for those living aboard starships. My previous planet swung low at twenty-two in a cycle. A week in and I was fairly well acclimated, with several extra hours in each day to try and occupy myself.
I settled on using my newfound time to tackle the Mr. Black question. This took two forms. The first was to find a way to truthfully answer his final question, what I wanted for a future. The second was the question of Mr. Black himself. Who was he? Who did he actually work for?
I bided my time learning what I could about the school and its inner workings. First came the technical aspects of the layout. Once I had access to the academy network, it took little effort to learn the pertinent details about the buildings, their layouts, and their hours.
Most of the campus was open beyond class hours, with students encouraged to use the facilities to pursue diverse interests. The athletic buildings saw the most use, with links to the network from private rooms the next most common. The history and science buildings were limited in facilities. While the applied physics lab was open and commonly visited, the chemistry supplies were rationed only to qualified student paths.
Between brief conversations and the profiles listed on the network, it took me only half of the day to access the back end of the academy’s files. Work histories, disciplinary reports, and performance reviews for each of the staff revealed nothing out of the ordinary.
The student files were accessed once I had the headmaster’s information down. I learned what I could about each of the other kids I had already encountered and gathered brief details about their records in case our paths crossed. I was no hacker, but my parents had been proficient programmers and I understood the principles of informational technologies. Still, none of it had held any real interest for me. I had learned these skills because I saw the value in them as a means of self-preservation, and raw data was always a powerful weapon.
I knew that access could be monitored, so I used special access from the headmaster’s account and labeled it with the name of a donor I found in the registry. I then shifted the access point to the history building. Once my digital cover was in place, I could read through files with some confidence that my actions wouldn’t be immediately flagged as anything more than routine.
I went back in the files as far as twenty years prior. That was the point the academy had swapped a network protocol, which meant anything before that was beyond my reach.
There were a few references to various Mr. Blacks in the system, but none that matched the man I had met. No files referenced a Mr. Black working for Quintell. He was not a donor, a staff member, or an instructor. He didn’t show up in mentions of the history or private lives of any other students or faculty members. There were some mentions through the news archives of the surrounding city, but they were nothing more than red herrings and dead ends.
My intuition told me that no such person worked for the school and that my interview in Corrin’s office had been for a different purpose outside of the transfer itself.
Two questions circled in my mind, despite all of my digging. First, what was the purpose of the interview? Second, who was Mr. Black, if not a member of the school faculty?
With the trail at an impasse, I moved on to learning more about the social workings of Quintell.
Manson was my first deep dig. He had been at the academy since his twelfth year. He was transferred from a junior academy and had spent his whole life in boarding schools, and yet, according the records, his parents lived barely ten kilometers away on this very planet. Most strange, considering how most of the other children were at least a few systems removed from their home planets.
Gil’s story made more sense, however. Ward of the state after he lost his father to an off-world post. His father was Union military and his mother was listed as medically unfit to parent. He had been in the boarding system since his eighth year, not unlike me.
To my surprise, Vance’s file proved to be the most interesting. Vance was a deep agent from a galactic separatist unit. He was codenamed “Jack Sprat” and was proficient in all known arms and munitions. He had a confirmed kill count in the upper five figures, had escaped authorities in multiple systems, and was listed as DOA and MIA in a half dozen reports.
I found myself struggling not to laugh while reading the file. The syntax of many of the claims was off. The entire idea that he was both a deep cover agent—one that nobody was certain was alive—along with a list of his alleged accomplishments showing up in a file accessible by low-tier public administrators was ridiculous.
It was clear that Vance had accessed his own personnel file and had put in his creatively false backstory. The why was unimportant to me, but the how was something of interest. Anyone that could add to these files could also come back and read them—read any of them, for that matter. Vance probably knew quite a bit about his fellow students and faculty, the same as I now did.
I opened my own report and read through it quickly. The usual history lined up properly. Transferred in eighth year to a boarding academy, parents alive but indisposed for purposes of education and care. A note about full support from a fund set aside. Something I would have to check later.
The discrepancies started before the transfer. Listed as a severe disciplinary case from my thirteenth year. No changes to transcripts of classes or grades. Proximal reason for the transfer was special request by Headmaster Corrin.
The written report from Corrin had an interesting flaw. He mentioned a Quintell contact agreed to take me as a student. A line later, he stated a formal transfer guide was not needed. But in his closing, he left a note that the school’s guide had been rude and demanding. I assumed this was in reference to Mr. Black, despite there being no mention of his name.
There were no notes left about further discipline or intervening actions. Nothing to indicate that I wasn’t on track to complete my formal education within the next three years. Life at Quintell was different than before, but nothing about it was a burden.
After logging out of the network, I wrote my activity for the day in my student account. I kept the password easy to crack and reported uninteresting routine notes. Then I closed out my pad.
It had now been a full week since my arrival at Quintell, strange as it felt.
I left my room intent on heading to the athletics buildings. I would have preferred to hit the history and humanities building but needed to keep my distance after my diverted network activity.
I walked through the main entrance and headed up campus past the administration building. As I entered the cafeteria, I saw Vance heading my way. I kept walking until we were just outside the track area.
He shot me a broad grin and his signature greeting, “Alpha, my man.”
It had been a week of this nickname, and despite my protests, it didn’t seem to be going away. “Vance.”
He saw my lack of discomfort and seized the opportunity. “Really, Alphonse? One week and you’re done resisting? That shows poor form. I expected escalation, not retreat.” He resumed walking, quickening the pace so I was made to follow him to keep in the conversation.
“Escalation?” I repeated.
“They must have really had you dosed heavily at your last school. Yes, escalation. How else do you establish some dominance and fight for your role in the pecking order? Constant struggle is how we young men advance the species.” He adopted an exaggerated tall and straight-backed posture for this last part. His right hand clasped across his chest in salute. “We owe it to the future to be risk-takin
g idiots that leave cautionary tales and high-water marks.”
I winced a bit at this concept of the future, a subtle gesture that the sharp-eyed Vance was quick to seize on.
“Little Billy Troublemaker doesn’t like thinking of the future? More of an anarchist type, eh?” Vance shadowboxed against the sky playfully. “Take that, future generations. Alpha says you can kiss his!”
I briefly considered letting something slip from Vance’s “personnel file.” It wouldn’t make a good escalation, as it would tell him more about my activities than his. I struggled to find something suitable. “I don’t believe in futures.”
Vance stopped his boxing routine and slung an arm across my shoulder. “Too nihilist, not enough rebel. You’re hopeless at this.”
We continued walking together across the track and stopped at a fence at the far north edge of campus.
“Not much out here,” I observed. The athletic building and the humanities buildings left a blind spot to the rest of campus at this corner. A large tree blocked the southern exposure toward the faculty lodging where the on-campus staff lived.
“Good eye,” Vance said. “It is about time we worked on your rebel instincts, sorely missing as they are.” He closed his friendly shoulder grab into a headlock and issued a conspiratorial whisper. “We’re heading into the city tonight.”
I pushed Vance away, grateful that he relinquished the headlock without force. “Students aren’t allowed off campus grounds without authorization.”
Vance face-palmed. “Alpha, you don’t hone any rebel instincts seeking permission or quoting policy. I would say you just lost any points you had, but we both know you’re starting at zero.”
“Look, I know you think I’m some disciplinary case from off-world, but I don’t spend my time trying to upset people.”
Vance smirked. “I know, Alpha, you just come by it naturally. It’s what I like about you.” He pointed to the fence. “We’re going to sneak out.”