The bell rang and the class started filling itself with students. Pat drummed on his desk with his fingers. He never liked school. Why should you go to a place and listen to people talk about thing when you could be out here, doing the very thing they were talking to you about. Humans were made to take risks, get scratches and wounds, and try again. They weren't like the Gemoids. They were strong.
Movements next to him made the boy's head turn, the desk on his right moving a bit as a girl sat on the chair. She turned her head around and got out her tablet and pen, smiling brightly, her braces shining slightly with the bright light of the neons on the ceiling. “Like they say: new day, new life, huh?” Pat smiled back and took out his tablet and pen as well. He opened the device, the logo of the school appearing on the white screen, shining in all of its glory. “I just hope we won't get another one of those weird teachers who make us go on fieldtrips. Like Mr. Johnson.” The girl continued, replacing her blonde hair behind her ear. “What's the point of going outside in the forest? We have everything we need right here. Going outside is a Gemoid’s job.” She sighed and turned her tablet on. Mr Johnson… wasn't that the teacher who was fired after being seen talking with a Gemoid? He remembered seeing a teacher in the news a few weeks ago. Pat nodded in approval. “Well, don't worry, I heard that teacher was fired during the summer. He was probably a traitor or something.” he said nonchalantly. Suddenly, the door opened and a man came in, his shoes tapping on the ceramic tiles of the floor loudly with each of his steps, his long but firm legs guiding his straight and autoritary body to his desk in the front of the class. He removed his hat and placed it carefully on the top right corner of the desk, replacing his glistening raven black hair on his head by passing a fine and long hand over it. He then turned to the big screen behind him and took out a pen. The screen lit up as soon as the man touched it with the tip of the pen, and he started writing on it. When he was finished, he turned around and looked at the class. Pat’s tablet screen lit up and he looked at it. The same words the teacher had written on the board had appeared on his tablet. Gemoids.
Pat sighed. “Not again” he thought, looking at the girl beside her to try and find support in his misery, and she looked back at him with the same exhausted and helpless expression. The teacher started talking, and has he was doing so, Pat decided to analyze the man standing in front of the class, try to see what kind of personality he had, and guess if the school year would be fun. The man looked like he came from the ancient times, with his black suit and bowtie, and little mustache glued to his grey skin. He didn't wear any gloves, but moved his hands a lot when he talked, his long spaghetti-like fingers flailing around, slamming his hands a few times on his desk to catch the attention of the students more. He had a severe look on his face, his small squinted eyes frantically looking around the room. But he seemed very confident, his back straight and his head held up high whenever he wasn't talking. He seemed like he was going to be a very interesting teacher.
A hand was suddenly raised in the crowd, and the man turned his head and stopped talking.
“Yes?” He said in a very friendly voice.
A boy stood up, seemingly a bit nervous by the fact that he played with the hem of his shirt and looked down while talking. “I have a question… and I am terribly sorry if it's a bad question but… why would the Gemoids be inferior to us? They can talk and they look like us…” a few scoffs and groans were heard all across the room, and the boy braced himself for the impact and for the pain his question was about to unleash, but the teacher stayed silent, and grinned. “You're very brave to ask this. I understand it must be hard to say something like this in front of such a large crowd. But do not worry, my friend, I will provide you with the answer you seek.” The teacher had a very odd way of speaking, but it gave him a certain charm, and fitted well with his personality and attire. He turned back to face the class and cleared his throat. “Us humans are special, as you might've probably noticed. We have not only the ability to talk, but also to think, which is something that the Gemoids do not possess. We have the reptilian, limbic and neocortex, and while they also have this, their brains are less developed than ours, and this actually why they are inferior to us.”.
The boy nodded and sat down, and the teacher cleared his throat.
"I wasn't finished, Boy." The teacher's voice became a bit more stern.
The boy stood back up nervously, a few laughs being heard in the classroom as he did. "Y-YES SIR??"
The teacher smiled gently. "It is not to say that they are stupid. They simply cannot understand the world like we do. As you've all learned in your fifth grade history, after we first discovered their existence, they refused to cooperate and help us, instead attacking us to keep the land for themselves. Gemoids are selfish, you understand?"
The boy nodded and sat back down, and the teacher finished his speech. The girl besides Pat leaned sideways, close to his ear, and whispered in it. “What a stupid question. He should know this by now, we had enough classes for him to remember something this simple.” Pat chuckled. “Wasting the teacher's time with stupid questions… Pschht...”
Pat looked at the girl. “What's your name?”. She smiled softly. “Name's Jane. You're… P-Patrick, right?” Pat nodded and smiled back, handing out his hand to shake hers. First day of college and he had already found a friend. They both turned back to listen to the teacher talk, and Pat smiled to himself. Things were looking up for him.
****
The bell rang for lunch and the students all got up, putting their tablets and pens in their small bags and starting to chat with each other. Pat pushed his chair and walked towards the door of the classroom, but suddenly felt something tug on his sleeve. Jane quickly catched up to him. “Hey, how about we go eat together! I sadly have no friends.” She pouted dramatically. Pat chuckled. “Yeah, sure, it turns out I also don't have any friends.” They both walked outside and Pat looked around the place. He spotted the cafeteria and both students walked inside. Pat took a plate and some food. He shot a quick glance at the kitchen, where a few Gemoids were running around in protective gear and cooking the food. The boy grimaced, wondering if by an unfortunate turn of event, there could be Gemoid germs all over the food, but then shrugged, thinking that that might be a bit too paranoid of him to think that. Usually if a Gemoid was sick, they were suspended from work until they got better, since their work could become sloppy or it could endanger humans.
Both humans walked to their designated table, each class having one table they had to sit in for the whole year. Pat looked around for a free place on the bench of his table and motioned towards it, Jane right behind him. They both sat and started eating. The food they ate in the establishment was dull and gray, but it was for good measures, so that people wouldn't like it too much and eat more than they were supposed to. The boy looked around the cafeteria. It seemed like there were more armed guards in here than in the previous schools he went to. Guards were mandatory in all government controlled facilities, to keep the order and act in case someone (or a Gemoid) would try and rebel. While the occasions were rare, it still happened once in a while. Jane chuckled and looked at him. “You seem really fond of this place, if I analyze how you keep gawking at every single detail.” She raised an eyebrow. “You're not from around here, are you?” Pat shook his head. “I got transferred to The Castle last year, after my father found a better paying job.” He looked at the high ceiling. “I didn't know you needed a tracker for school. In my old town only adults had trackers.” He poked the grey goo spread across his plate with his spoon. “And you only have one type of food. Where I lived they had three.” Jane took a bite out of her food. “It's what we need to minimize rebellions and anomalies.”
A few minutes passed as they ate their food, when suddenly the cafeteria doors all closed. A few students started panicking, while the others stayed calm and seated. The trackers on the student's necks beeped, the four little lights on them glowing red, flickering three times. All the lights went out and guards started walking around the tables. “So you all change the trackers at the very beginning of the year?” Pat whispered to Jane. She nodded. “Our trackers have a longer life expectancy so we only need to change them once.” She looked at Pat's neck and frowned. “Your tracker looks ancient! Have you ever needed to change it??” He shook his head. “I don't need to, at least for now. It still works perfectly well.”
“Huh, neat.” Jane said, before standing up straight as a guard approached her. He pulled up a small rectangular machine with three teeth, all of them the same size as the three holes on the trackers. The machine buzzed and the guard plugged the teeth into the holes in Jane's tracker. She winced in pain as the tracker was swiftly pulled out of her neck, not even a drop of blood falling from the hole that had been made after all the years of the flesh being expanded and stretched by the small machine. The guard took out a new tracker from a small box he had and plugged it back into Jane's neck. The machine’s lights blinked three times in blue and stayed that way. The guard looked at Pat, and then at his neck. Not flinching even a bit, he pressed on a button on his vest and two guards walked up to him. “This is an old tracker. Why hasn't it been changed?” One of them said in a monotone almost robotic voice. The first guard shrugged. “We should bring him to the principal's office, see what he thinks” he answered. Both guards stepped away and let Pat stand up. He shot a glance at Jane, who looked at him weirdly, before following the two guards, who walked through a door that was still open in the cafeteria and down the corridor that lead to the principal's office.
Comments (0)
See all