The Entropy Sessions

by Novo Dé

  But the texture is something unique.

  Definitely not a bruise.

  The skin is slightly raised, maybe a millimeter, and coarse, rough, making a somewhat circular, polygonal shape.

  It’s that texture of old again. I won’t forget that feeling anytime soon.

  I reach farther back for further investigation, only to be met with more and more of these lesion-like structures, simply littered throughout my back, cascading and splintering off in all directions, but mostly clumped together in large groupings.

  But.

  Now this time, this time, doesn’t make any sense, because I know I’m not hallucinating, because, because, I haven’t even had a no-name yet.

  I must’ve gotten a rash or something, or maybe it’s an allergic reaction to, to...I don’t know. Can’t think of a thing that could’ve caused this.

  Knowing I have to eventually gaze upon this mysterious abomination on my body, I take my time to position myself properly, turning a little more than ninety degrees to the left, twisting my trunk in the same direction, and then looking over my right shoulder at myself in the mirror, afraid of what comes next.

  I pull up the back of my shirt slowly, revealing the reality of the lesions to my eyes, each about a half-dollar in size, cluttered together in groupings, just like I felt, scouring over about half of my lower and mid back, slowly making its way to covering the right side.

  Each lesion looks weathered, old, crusting on the edges, dark, black, grey, and tan, with hints of blue toward the middle. I allow my fingers to glide over them again and again, as I stare and analyze.

  I can’t seem to stop touching them, feeling them.

  My trance, however, is quickly broken as I hear the boom of music from the main corridor fly into the room, the sound penetrating as two young professionals enter, laughing and joking about of what they just did, and probably will never do again. My shirt is already down at my waist again as the two men walk behind me to the urinals. They continue on with their banter as they urinate next to each other, laughing, joking, and as quickly as they entered the room, they’re out again, off to their next adventure, never to pay me any mind.

  Alone again, I stare at myself in the mirror once more, fearing that upon my second viewing, that there’ll be no lesions, and a realization that the drugs have done far worse to my mind than I could have ever imagined, now affecting my psyche during complete sobriety.

  I turn my body again, pulling the shirt up slowly, fearful of, well, really both possible outcomes, and look over my shoulder once more.

  Much to my surprise, however, the lesions remain, scouring my back with the same pattern as before. I drop the shirt and just remain, motionless, thinking.

  ‘I’m not going crazy after all,’ I say in my inner mind’s monologue. ‘But what could these be?’ My initial conclusion is that the lesions are due to some sort of rapid allergic reaction to something. But what? My mind scours my memory throughout the day, and the previous days, but nothing comes up.

  There’s no light bulb. No epiphany to explain what I’m seeing here. I just keep coming up short. I can’t think of anything that could of lead to this.

  And a feeling of anxiety begins to creep in; the strange calm, beginning to fade.

  I begin to breath heavy, and realize that a full blown panic-attack is coming on, the boiling inside growing, equally realizing that I need to restrain myself, bring myself down again, and soon, or I’m about to make a ‘scene’ in the one place I don’t want to make a ‘scene’ in. I’m not exactly sure what I need, or what to do, but I know I need something, or better yet, someone.

  And Lydia flashes in my mind.

  I need Lydia. She’ll know what to do. Hopefully I can find her in Limbo.

  I quickly pick at my shirt to even it out, followed by a comb of my fingers through my hair, repeatedly, trying to look somewhat presentable again as I venture back into the House to find Lydia, minimizing any look of distress.

  Trying not to waste any time, I scurry out of the room, to find that the House is now packed with people. ‘How the fuck I’m gonna find her now?’ I think. Standing at the door to the Men’s Room, I begin to scan the room, my head moving to the left and to the right, to the left and to the right, repeatedly, robotically, sometimes making shifting square formations. But I can’t spot her. I walk a couple of paces in and try again. Nothing. I walk a couple of more paces in, sliding between groups of people, my head darting between the crowd again. Still nothing. And then I try what we all do in a similar circumstance: I begin to walk on my tip-toes, my head extended, swaying back and forth, as I venture farther in, hoping to get a hint of something, anything.

  And then I see it – a hint of pink in the opposite corner of the room. ‘That’s gotta be her,’ I think. It’s gotta be that pink cardigan. Only she would keep that kind of shit on in here.

  So I make my way through the corridor to who I think is Lydia, pushing and squeezing my way through the crowds, parrying my way through groups and groups of people, repeatedly saying ‘excuse me,’ ‘’scuse me,’ ‘pardon me,’ ‘sorry,’ ‘sorry,’ ‘’scuse me,’ as I venture forward.

  Once the hint of pink is closer to my field of vision, in a proximity of more clarity, I see that it is indeed her, and I let out a brief sigh of relief.

  Oh thank god.

  When I get close enough, I reach out a hand to her shoulder, and as she turns around, I say...

  “Lydia, hey, I’ve been lookin’ everywhere for you.”

  But she looks at me with bewilderment.

  “Wait, what? You ok Tybalt?”

  “Yeah, I ah, I mean, I don’t know, I actually do need some help, need you to take a look at something for me. You’re really the only person I know in here so umm…”

  “Of course, sure, what’s up?”

  “It’s my back. I need you to take a look at my back. I’m breakin’ out into something and I’m kinda freakin’ out. It’s gotta be somethin I ate. It just came on so quick, I, I—”

  “Ok ok. Calm down. Lemme take a look,” she says with a non-threatening gesture of her hands.

  We make our way to the corner of the room with less density of people. Leading the two of us, she suddenly stops me with her hands, and begins to crouch down without uttering a word, pulling up at my shirt.

  Looking over my shoulder, I can see her scanning every inch of my back, taking her time to analyze the contents.

  “So. What do ya think?” I finally say.

  Lydia brings the shirt back to my waist, and comes to stand in front of me again. Facing each other, she says…

  “I think. I think you need to take a little break Tybalt.”

  “Break? Take a break from what—”

  “The No-Names. I think the No-Names are starting to, ah, mess with your head a little,” she says nodding, tapping at her temple.

  Laughing, I counter back.

  “Messing with my head...I, but I just got here. Haven’t even had my first No-Name yet. Got one still waitin’ for me back at the bar.” I say, motioning at the bar.

  And Lydia stares into my eyes, deep into my eyes, a look of sadness and pity over her face, her eyebrows having that mirrored decline juxtaposition.

  “Tybalt, honey,” she starts, shaking her head slowly. “You’ve been here all day.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah, you came in early, the late morning, not quite the afternoon yet, after some meeting you said you had. You’ve been here ever since, sometimes just hanging out by yourself, sometimes with new friends you met in the House. You don’t remember any of this.

  “I ah, I…” I’m at a loss for words.

  “Even us, we’ve been together for the last hour. You don’t remember any of that.”

  I shake my head no.

  “You don’t remember venturing into the deeper levels…with me…nothin.’”

  I shake my head ‘no.’

  “The deeper levels…” I say to myself, trailing off at the
end, pausing, thinking about what I’ve done, what I’ve gotten myself into. “I remember getting here, you checking me in, having a drink, and then having to go to the restroom. And then, I was in there for a while, found what I thought was a rash, and then found you.”

  “Honey, honey, well, you definitely went to the restroom just now, but you were in there for a maybe a minute or two. And there’s…no rash…”

  “Jesus. I, I…” and I trail off again, and then quickly realize the magnitude of my absence from the world above. “Wait, what time is it?”

  Lydia taps her NCL.

  “It’s almost midnight. 11:51.”

  “Fuck.”

  December 2nd, 2051

  “…y then, I just didn’t care anymore. I mean what was the point? They didn’t need me.”

  “Surely you didn’t feel that way in the beginning?” Cohen says back.

  “No. In the beginning, I actually tried. I mean, I didn’t go above n’ beyond or anything. But I did give…at least…half a shit. I‘d say I operated at the entry level standards of the position.”

  “Which were?”

  “The basics: I’d show up. Help with the lesson plans. Administer tests. Grade assignments. Tutoring as needed. Mentoring…”

  “But we all knew those self guiding programs were right around the corner,” I continue. “I’m shocked they held off as long as they did; I mean we were one of the last districts in the nation to comply after the mandate. And man, I didn’t realize how obsolete teachers were becoming until then. And that’s true now more than ever, especially with the help of NCLs. Whatta fuckin’ game changer that was.”

  “Take me through that,” Cohen says, leading again.

  “No more traditional lectures anymore off some slide presentation. No more reading to a room, hopin’ you’re gettin’ through to at least one of ‘em. The self guiding programs took out all the guesswork. It would analyze each of the individual kid’s DRI feeds to determine their specific learning needs, utilizing it to create a unique curriculum for each student, be it visual, aural, verbal, physical, logical, social, solitary, or any combination therein, ultimately creating their own unique learning experience.

  So what the students learn each week was the same, given the unit, but how they learned, was dramatically different from student to student.

  To learn the material, each kid utilizes a built-in tablet-like device at their workstation, and on it, the S-GET, the Self Guiding Education Tool application.

  It completely turned our education system on its head. Instead of a teacher giving lecture after lecture, it was the students that began to learn the material through their own means, at their own pace. We would simply come in on the back end, helping to fill in the gaps, when and where needed.

  Of course, to make sure the student’s learn a sense of team-work, comradery, we also incorporate group interaction from time to time, although rare in my opinion, be it group assignments, presentations, anything that would incorporate three or more.

  But much like the S-GETs, it’s up to the students to figure out how to tackle the group assignments, the subject matter, and come out the other side with the final product, whatever that may be…”

  And Cohen smiles, big and bright, tilting his head slightly to the right.

  “What?” I cut, acknowledging.

  “It’s, it’s just, I actually conducted some of the research for this very thing, the SGE-System, a long time ago now when it was in its infancy. At the time…just a blossoming idea. And now to see it today, hear you speak about it, is quite something.”

  “Really?” I say with astonishment.

  “Yessir, really. My research helped pave the way to the eradication of the standard teaching and education models in our country. I was one of the few that finally pushed the issue over the edge, especially on a national stage, to say that we ‘need to evolve.’”

  “And?”

  “And. Surprisingly, they did it. Almost overnight. It was clear that they were fed up with the greatest country in the world having the most poorly educated, and equally, desperate for change. You probably saw the national coverage on it. But what you didn’t know, was that the final ‘nail in the coffin' was presented maybe a week or two before that day…by me.

  And it worked. The numbers started to come up. Slowly at first of course; there was still a lot that needed to be changed obviously. But when the numbers changed, so did my research opportunities in the field, and eventually, I was met with a grant and a vision to help fulfill.

  I worked in parallel with a variety of other researchers, all across the country, to finally get a hold of our education problem. My first suggestion was to simply find the greatest education systems in the world and do what they did – So we did that.

  But they also wanted to expand on those ideas and that’s where my research came in, which eventually helped to shape our now present S-GET.”

  “Well look at this: I’m amongst fuckin’ national royalty practically,” I say with a smile.

  Cohen smiles in return.

  “So please, tell me more,” Cohen says, appearing genuinely intrigued. “I’ve never really had the opportunity to have any first-hand accounts like this, to hear how the system turned out.”

  “Alright, well ah, each class would start the same as it always has with attendance. No roll call, no, but fingerprints. The prints actually worked as a two-tier system. Confirm attendance and log the student into their S-GET.

  From there, I’d take questions on any of the previous lessons of the unit and/or, go over homework questions as needed. Y’see, the kids still benefited from that traditional student-teacher dynamic, to an extent; they just didn’t need to be inundated with the process for hours on end. Nevertheless, that part of the day always seemed to go by quick, especially since a lot of the answers meant referring them back to their S-GET, and because, well, let’s face it, these kids are still…just kids.

  Got bored easily. Low attention spans. All of that.

  Soon after, the students turned their respective NCLs if they had one to ‘School Mode,’ and off they were, left alone to journey through their S-GET to review a previous lesson or learn the new material for the day.

  The NCL ‘School Mode’ places the NCL in a kind of ‘Stand-By Mode,’ where it cuts off all distractions that usually manifest from the device, blocking almost all unnecessary content, allowing access only in rare or special cases, like an emergency, a family situation, possible dangerous weather conditions, et cetera.

  The material for the day is an ever-cycling series of subject matter – math, history, literature, geography, you name it – each taking up four equal parts of the day, whereas each subject is cycled through the curriculum each week, every two to three days, so no two days are the same in a given week, in part to keep the material exciting and fresh for the student, and to stray from the monotonous or mundane.

  The students are given an incredible amount of freedom as well, especially when compared to their predecessors. They are encouraged to take breaks as they need them, one being required in fact every hour. They get to come and go to the restrooms as they please, to get a bite to eat. No halls passes even exist anymore.

  No more standardized testing either. Unit testing is marginalized even. Homework is even less; they maybe get something like ten minutes a night, if that. There are no grades. No group discrimination. No extreme or overt competition. The kids are allowed…to just be kids for the most part.

  Of course, there is still a level of accountability that they have to uphold – there has to be. If the kids put in the work, participate, they move forward – Simple.

  For the ones that don’t however, they don’t get held back or punished per se, they get ‘special’ tutoring, and get placed in a different educational program if need be. For the ones that excel, they get rewarded, individually, without the need for any grand ceremony or special recognition.

  Now as the students are working through any given
lesson, it’s my job, as the teacher, to kind of walk the grounds of the classroom and assist the students as they move forward through the material, be it a technical question about the S-GET itself, such as navigating the system, to clarifications on the material while they’re learning it, especially if something on the S-GET becomes confusing.

  At the end of each lesson, we have kind of a ‘Round-Up,’ where I go over the main points of the material, and try to fill in the gaps for the students, so-to-speak, as I mentioned before, via, usually some sort of Q-and-A session. If, for some reason, the kids are still lost, confused, on some aspect of the subject matter, this is where one of the group elements comes in, where one student, who may have a firm grasp on the material, kind of teaches the class, bringing it down to their level, explaining it in a way that they would better understand.

  And then we repeat the process, for each of the subsequent lessons, where now an average day of school lasts about four or five hours.

  Less became…so much more doc. This new system, like I said, just, completely flipped the old on its head.”

  “Tybalt, I have to say, the system, though I imagine not perfect, sounds incredible, completely different than the picture you’ve painted in our previous sessions together. Your allusions, they paint a picture that’s—”

  “Not so good.” I finish the line for him as he would say it. I always seem to know what’s going to say before he even says it.

  “In a matter of speaking yes.”

  “Oh yeah, sure, I know how it sounds; sounds great on paper too. And we have our good days, and sometimes, even great days, but overall, the day-to-day reality is far different than me just explaining how we go through the motions.”

  “How so?” Cohen says with a supinated hand.

  “Don’t get me wrong doc, the system, the system has definitely helped. But it just ain't there yet. Because at the end of the day, these kids, like I said, are still just kids, for the good, and the very, very bad. I mean, us teachers, we still saw all the same stuff. There’s your loud ones. Your disruptive ones. Your straight up bad apples.