The Sonic Breach

by Victor Appleton

  I glanced around as Mr. Wilkins projected the test questions on the main board. Despite the scattered moans, many of the students were already set for the quiz. Was the pop-quiz trend so predictable that kids just assumed there would be one as soon as they got to class?

  The quiz was about the Napoleonic Wars and wasn’t too difficult. Luckily, I had retained most of what I’d read the night before. I know I didn’t ace the quiz, but I’m sure I passed.

  When the quiz was over, Mr. Wilkins cleared the screen and brought up a map of North America. “Please turn to page nighty-eight of your textbooks. Now, even though we in the United States see the War of 1812 as its own war, Europeans see it as more of a footnote in the Napoleonic Wars.”

  As I dug my book out of my backpack, something strange happened. Several high-pitched chirps sounded all around me. It was as if a bunch of phones received a text at once. A group of students must have timed an alert to go off.

  Surely this was some kind of group prank for the teacher. I leaned back to watch the show.

  “Many historians have speculated why Napoleon seemed to get the short end of the stick with the Louisiana Purchase,” Mr. Wilkins continued. He didn’t even skip a beat. Either Mr. Wilkins had an excellent poker face or he truly didn’t notice the cacophony of tones.

  Then it hit me. The chirps I heard must’ve been mosquito ringtones.

  Speaking of trends, mosquito ringtones were a big deal with students a while back. It turns out that most adults over the age of thirty can’t hear higher audio frequencies. Most of my friends made their text alerts what they call a “mosquito ringtone,” so adults wouldn’t hear when they’d received a text. Even I had one for a bit.

  Little known fact: This audio discovery was originally made by a company in England. They created a speaker system that emitted an annoying high-pitched sound that kept kids from loitering in front of shops, but wouldn’t bother the adult customers. But when mosquito ringtones came along, the kids got to turn the tables on the adults.

  It was weird that everyone had received a text at the same time, though. I thought for sure it would’ve been a prank. That’s when I noticed several students pulling out their phones. They each stealthily checked their screens before returning their phones to a pocket, purse, or backpack.

  I turned to Amy to see if she had seen what I saw, but she was busy taking notes. The girl had a photographic memory, but she took taking notes very seriously. I didn’t get it, but I wasn’t going to bug her.

  I scanned the class again and noticed several students had slipped out their tablets. I recognized pages from textbooks from other classes.

  Deena Bittick sat in the row next to me, opposite Amy. She carefully hid her tablet behind her history textbook. She scanned through what looked like her algebra digital textbook.

  I leaned across the aisle. “What’s wrong?” I asked in a whisper. “Napoleon not exciting enough for you?”

  Deena frowned at me. “I have a pop quiz next period,” she whispered.

  “Probably,” I joked. “Anyone who’s anyone is doing it.”

  “I know I am,” Deena said. “Pop Chop told me.”

  Pop Chop? Who was she talking about? Several students had weird nicknames around the school. There was a Scooter, a Woody, and even a Stinky—Steve Krieger was never going to live down that failed chemistry experiment. But I had never heard of Pop Chop.

  “I’m sorry. Who told you?” I asked.

  “Not a who,” Deena explained. “Pop Chop’s an app.”

  I must’ve had a puzzled expression on my face because Deena sighed and slipped out her phone. She switched it on and pulled up a colorful loading screen. A cartoon hatchet sliced through a piece of paper with a red F- printed on it.

  I reached for her phone. “Where did you . . .”

  “Mr. Swift, do you have something to add?” asked Mr. Wilkins.

  Startled, I jerked my hand back. I felt my face flush as everyone turned in my direction, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw Deena ease her phone back into her pocket with the sleight of hand of a skilled magician. If I weren’t so embarrassed at the moment, I’d be downright impressed.

  “Uh . . . ,” I said, wringing my hands. “Napoleon wasn’t actually short like everyone thinks.” It was the first thing that popped into my head. “He was actually five feet, eight inches tall. Average height for that time period.”

  That was something I read on the Internet. I hoped it was right. Right or not, it got a laugh from the class.

  “Close,” Mr. Wilkins replied. “Five feet seven.” He took the opportunity to remove his glasses and wipe one of the lenses on his shirt. “Oddly enough, the current lecture isn’t about Napoleon’s height.” He replaced his glasses as chuckles rippled throughout the class. “It’s about his role in the War of 1812. Anything to add about that?”

  “No, sir,” I replied. “Sorry.”

  “To continue,” he said, turning to the projected map.

  It took me a while to tune back in to the lecture and actually start taking notes. All I could think about was that weird app. Did one of the Swift Academy students create it? There were some brilliant programmers at our school, but I didn’t think any of them had figured out a way to predict the future.

  3

  The Notification Escalation

  AS CLASS DISMISSED, I GATHERED my things and caught up with Amy out in the hall. We hadn’t seen a lot of Amy lately. She spent all of her free time fencing. The team was having tryouts soon and she wanted to get one of the limited spots.

  “Nice Napoleon trivia,” she said with a grin. “That was from Lilo’s Top Ten Historical Myths, wasn’t it?”

  “The first thing I thought of,” I admitted, rolling my eyes. No surprise that she had seen the same site and had it memorized, of course. “But hey, before I got busted, Deena was showing me this new app. It’s called Pop Chop, I think?”

  Amy smiled and was about to reply, but then froze. Her eyes cut up and to the left, as if remembering something. “Can you tell me about it later?” she asked. “I have to ask Mr. Jenkins a question before my next class.”

  “Sure,” I replied. “Talk to you later.”

  I pulled out my phone as Amy disappeared into the flow of migrating students. As I made my way to the stairs, I pulled up the App Store and entered “Pop Chop” in the search field. The app came up right away and I read the summary as I climbed the stairs.

  Are you tired of being caught off guard by pop quizzes? This crowdsourced app will subtly alert you if there is a pop quiz in your immediate future. Simply enter your school, class schedule, and alert schedule. Then let Pop Chop do the rest! But don’t forget to log any pop quiz you encounter. Pop Chop only works if we all work together!

  As I reached the second floor, I scrolled back to the top of the sales page, checking for the price. To my surprise, the app was free. I was curious to learn more, so my thumb instinctively shot to the Download button.

  Then I paused. The app seemed kind of like cheating to me. I didn’t think I’d get in trouble for simply having the app installed on my phone, but something about it didn’t seem right. Instead of downloading it, I switched off my phone and slid it back into my pocket.

  When I got to the computer lab, Noah was already there. I grabbed my usual seat at the computer beside his.

  “Are you getting all kinds of Arnold jokes?” he asked.

  “Oh yeah,” I replied. I told him about the “crappa” one. It was too good not to share.

  Noah shook his head. “I don’t care. I don’t want to change the name. It still makes me laugh.”

  “We’ll return the Choppa name to its former glory once we figure out what went wrong,” I said. We hadn’t had the chance to work on our robot since its embarrassing meltdown.

  “I have some ideas about that,” said Noah.

  We tossed around some theories and possible ways to beef up the Choppa’s defenses before the bell rang. Once it did, the rest of the stude
nts settled in front of their assigned computers and logged in. Mr. Varma rose from his desk.

  “Okay, before we move on to our next exercise,” our programming teacher began, “we’re going to have a teensy little pop quiz on yesterday’s material.”

  “Here we go again,” I groaned.

  I glanced around for solidarity, but only three or four students seemed upset about the pop quiz. Granted, Mr. Varma’s melodic voice made almost any bad news sound cheery, but there should’ve been more grumblings from my fellow students. Were these quizzes so commonplace that everyone simply accepted the inevitable? Were they just a way of life now? My lips tightened as I shook my head. I didn’t think it was right.

  “Go to today’s folder and open the file labeled PQ47,” Mr. Varma instructed.

  I put my feelings of injustice aside and did as he said. Thirty questions filled my screen. I was relieved when I saw there were only true-or-false questions. Sweet! Fifty-fifty shot.

  Luckily, the test wasn’t very hard and I’m pretty sure I more than passed it. I could tell I wasn’t the only one who felt that way. It wasn’t long before most of the students had finished.

  “When you finish the quiz, go back to today’s folder,” Mr. Varma instructed. “Open today’s exercise and begin programming. I’ll be coming around to answer any questions and see how you’re doing.”

  Mr. Varma’s classes were usually pretty relaxed. He’d give us a programming problem to solve—create a timer or build a simple animation—and we’d use whichever programming language we were working on to solve that problem. With the tools we’d learned, everyone would come at the problem a little differently.

  A steady stream of tapping came from Noah’s nearby keyboard. My best friend was a programming machine. As usual, he’d have the problem solved in no time.

  I was so focused on the assignment that I had completely forgotten about the Pop Chop app. That was, until the next alert came through.

  Ding-ding. Ding-ding.

  The same high-pitched tones erupted all around me. They seemed to come from everyone’s phones at once. I glanced around and all the students seemed to ignore the sound—or at least pretended to ignore it. One by one, people began to secretively check their phones. Once again, the only adult in the room didn’t seem to hear anything. Mr. Varma continued to move about the lab, offering assistance.

  The chatter of Noah’s keyboard silenced like a faucet being shut off. The abrupt stillness from his area caught my attention. He was good, but surely he couldn’t be finished with the assignment already.

  To my surprise, Noah had slipped his phone from his backpack and was checking the Pop Chop app.

  “Dude,” I whispered. “You too?”

  Noah shrugged. “Me too what?”

  “That app,” I replied, pointing to his phone. “When did you start using that?”

  “Isn’t it cool?” asked Noah. His face lit as he spoke. “If you get surprised with a pop quiz, you log it in the app and it warns the next class of students that a quiz is coming.”

  “I know what it is,” I said. “Don’t you think that’s cheating?”

  “How?” asked Noah. “No one’s passing along the answers. It’s just a heads-up, you know? Almost everyone has it now. We’re fighting back against all these crazy pop quizzes.”

  “If everyone has it, why haven’t I heard about until now?” I asked.

  Noah shook his head. “I don’t know. Maybe people thought you’d report it to the teachers since . . . you know.”

  I frowned. “Because my name’s on the school, right? You know me better than that.”

  Noah pointed to his chest. “Yeah, I know, sure. But hey, I’m in the same boat. Ronny Jenkins just told me about it last period. I’m probably the last to know too, because we’re buds.”

  Suddenly this thing felt like a big conspiracy. Now it wasn’t just the teachers being kept in the dark about this, but me, too. I thought I’d gotten past that sort of bias with most of my classmates. I had worked hard to prove that I was just another student with no special privileges. I never ran to my dad with a complaint about a teacher or a low test score. I never used my name as a strategy to get special assignments or first use with new supplies or lab equipment. I took my grades as they came and waited in line with everyone else.

  “Who created this app, anyway?” I asked.

  “I have no idea,” Noah replied. “But I’m thinking it’s someone in our school.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Well, when you set up the app, it asks you to choose your school from a drop-down list,” Noah explained. “Except the Swift Academy is the only school listed. It’s like the app is set up for tons of others but ours is the only place it works for now.”

  “Maybe it’s still in the testing phase,” I suggested.

  Noah shrugged. “I don’t know, but it works for me. All these pop quizzes were starting to get to me.”

  I agreed with him there. A feeling of dread had been introduced into my school days since the pop-quiz trend had taken hold. The tests were so frequent that I usually felt like an ax was about to fall every time I stepped into a classroom. I’m sure the app creator saw it that way too. Maybe that’s where the app got its logo.

  Still, the whole thing made me feel uneasy.

  4

  The Restoration Deliberation

  “I’M NOT EVEN GOING TO try to diagnose this here,” Noah said as he carefully unplugged the circuit board. “I’ll put in the backup board and work on the damaged one at home.”

  “Sounds good to me,” I said as I tested another relay. “But either way, we have to figure out how to protect it this time.”

  Noah had come over to my house after school and had dinner with my father and me. After that, we hauled the Choppa into the garage and took it apart on one of my dad’s big worktables.

  Sam was supposed to join us but she had a last-minute family obligation. They were visiting her aunt in the hospital. It didn’t sound like anything serious, but certainly more important than hanging out at a friend’s house working on a robot.

  Ding.

  That didn’t stop Sam from texting us any ideas she had. I put down the relay and picked up my phone.

  “Another text from Sam,” I said as I scrolled through her message. “She wonders if a foam piece around the board will help absorb some of the impact from attacks.”

  Noah nodded at the pile of foam sheets on the table. “I thought of that earlier. We’ll have to test it, though. The heat from the circuitry may melt it.”

  My thumbs flew across the screen as I quickly wrote her back. I put my phone down and moved on to the next relay.

  “You know, we have to protect it from attacks from the top as well as the sides,” I said. “Some of those grippers are going to be vicious.”

  Just like the shows on television, Mrs. Scott’s students had come up with a wide range of battling robots. There were flippers—robots with giant spatula-like devices made to flip other robots onto their backs. If a robot couldn’t right itself, it would lose. There were also wedges, which were fast robots shaped like a ramp. They could speed under the competition and flip them from underneath.

  We had to watch out for robots like ours—made for awesome destruction. Those, like Flailing Grade, struck their enemies with blunt objects like a flail or even a hammer. We were also concerned with the grippers and crushers. Those robots had powerful claws that could crush another robot’s outer shell. It was best just to keep out of their reach.

  Ping. It was Sam again.

  I snatched up my phone and read her latest text. “She wonders if the circuits could be suspended somehow,” I reported. “With something like little bungee cords.”

  Noah grabbed a handful of the micro bungee cords he had brought over. “You saw me bring these in, right? Already thought of it.”

  I read aloud as I texted Sam back. “Another good idea. Thanks.”

  “You keep telling her ‘good idea’ ?
” asked Noah. “I thought of those things already. Now she’s going to think she came up with everything.”

  “You both came up with those ideas,” I said. “Just not at the same time.”

  “Yeah, but she doesn’t know that,” said Noah. “Now she’s going to think that she came up with everything and I’m just the guy who drives the thing.”

  I pointed at the robot. “Hey, do you want me to help with this? Or would you rather I sit here all night typing out stuff like ‘That’s a good idea, Sam, but Noah already thought of it and even brought along a handful of mini bungee cords’?”

  Noah put his hands on his hips. “Maybe I would.”

  Ping.

  I sighed and pulled up her new text. “She also suggests some kind of crumple zone,” I reported. “Like they have in cars. Whatever material that will fold and absorb impact.”

  Noah stared at me, mouth agape. “Okay, that’s a really good idea,” he finally admitted. “I didn’t think of that one.”

  I pointed at my phone and raised my eyebrows. “Want me to tell her it’s a good idea? Because I can tell her you already thought of that one, too.”

  Noah pointed a screwdriver at my phone. “Just text her back already.”

  I read aloud as I typed once again. “ ‘Noah says best idea yet. Exclamation point. Exclamation point. Smiley face emoji.’ ”

  Noah rolled his eyes as he went back to work on the new circuit board.

  Ping.

  “They’re at the hospital,” I reported. “She’s done texting for the night.”

  We worked in silence for a while, Noah reinforcing all the connections to the backup circuit board while I finished checking the relays. I only had to replace one.

  “So, did you get it?” Noah asked.

  “Get what?” I asked back.

  “You know? The app,” he said.

  I sighed. “No. It sounds cool and all. But it just doesn’t seem right.”

  “I know you think that now,” Noah said, pointing at me with a screwdriver. “But when you try it . . .”