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DALANI NEWS
Steve Michel's Journal of
Lateral Modernism********************** Vol. XI No.01-04 Winter 2010
Update: Haiti Disaster Relief
Turn your thoughts into actionand make a difference
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Fiction: Algebra Gang
Part 7:by Steve Michel
[I wrote this Science Fiction story a few years back: a somewhat pre-Obama slipstream narrative with old-school sensibilities.-advisory: non-escapist fiction with excessive social realism-]
"I just hope you're right and it's just a mix-up. What about got this bill for 400.00bucks for school library copyright use. We can't afford that shit boy."
"We need web6corp wifi connection for subscription school software access. Haven't you heard? They're locking down on open source apps." JB explained. Like he'd told his dad this twelve times already.
"Look here. I can't afford no private school or lawyers to bail you out if you're pirating shit or cheating; so keep it legit or you'll end up in some corporate indenture flipping hamburgers for free."
"Whatever." JB walked past him to his room. JB resisted the urge to curse him right there. Old man didn't know fuck all' he thought about all those state election brochures his dad kept in an old shoebox on the sagging bookshelf. Kay's dad, who never voted, sent Kay's older sister to a private school and worked his ass off in some factory hoping he could send both too.
# Big Gee went home alone that night on the crosstown robobus and stepped off at JacksonHeights projects. He lived in a worn out flat on the fiftieth floor with his grandmother. She was already in bed by the time he got home.
BigGee closed his bedroom door and switched his laptop on a flashboot drive. He thought how conceited JB was sometimes -like he had everything figured out. BigGee had a few things figured out too. He first logged to his favorite sports forum to check some scores. After a while he checked into the SnakeDen, the notorious hack forum. Snooping around the endless threads on the latest downgrade hacks and links to ftp sites of stolen credit cards and spam lists, he spotted the link to a site called the Black Fedoras. He logged in as guest and jumped in at a random topic.
Immediatly his screen lit up with pop up webcam windows of real and animated avatars. The place was buzzing with traffic; there must have been over three thousand blinking on and offline every second. "Newbie what's up? you lost your way and ended here again?" asked a talking skull of polished chrome spinning slowly in a black window of night sky. The words scrolled at the bottom of his screen.
BigGee realized they were on speakers. He scrambled to unmute his mike."Yo dude just looking what's hot." A cacaphony of chatter assaulted his ears.
"Fuck he's stupid" YurzBoy a likeness of an anime ogre grimaced menacingly.
"Any of you aka Leroy?"
"Newbie you're off topic. This is Ruby-on-Rails syntax." Said IX16, a pulsar floating above a still lake of mercury.
"Switch to Room 6." said Jack of Hearts, a playing card seen at various angles. His profiled face blinked once and was gone.
BigGee popped one of the forums private sub-topics. Jack waited there, the playing card hovered casting a huge drop shadow on the white walls.
"Congrats on that exam Newbie." Jack folded into itself and turned inside out back into a playing card this time Jack of Spades looking at him with unblinking eyes too large for his face. "Too bad Jenkin has it in for you."
"You heard?"
"Like the whole school knows it."
"Shit! Leroy..I mean Jack.. I want to know..."
"It's like I don't give a fuck what you want to know" Leroy's avatar spun on an axis. "I done you some favors now you owe me."
# "My sister? I'll break your arm you fucking scum." Kay looked ready to pounce on BigGee sitting accross from her next to Jb in the school cafeteria, as they always did since last semester's end before last summer when they met. Lunch curfew didn't allow them out to the local greasy spoon diners. The cafeteria was loud with seventh grade kids who only came to eat the sponsored lunches -some from families so poor, it was their only square meal in the day. JB would have given his month's allowance for some fries and hot dogs.
"Looks to me like those BlackHats are into selling what they hack hmm.." JB broke in before Kay could put her impulse into motion."Private schools are premium places to sell their goods. What else did the creep tell you?"
"If he can hack into password protected school documents, there's no knowing what he might do." BigGee felt he was way over his head. "Kay look its like this: give Leroy an lead or two from your sister's address book and we're off the hook."
"And we're off the hook? No! you're off the hook. Brother's think only of themselves. Like I'm gonna sell my sister's ass to some two bit hacker zit faced mafia shit to save your ass. Don't lie to me fuck. You told me he gave you the last exam questions he lifted off the school's ftp site."
"It's not cheating girl. Just knowing the questions that's all."
"At least with Leroy we can breeze through without making waves." BigGee said. "your damn studying is sweating techniques."
"We're fucked." Kay shook her head.
"That too." Big Gee then slammed fist on the table "I say we take the easy road. I mean Microshit Penton's got 600 foot yatchs while others do the fucking work. Fuck this shit! I say we wheel and deal."
"How many exams did he give you answers for BigGee?"
"The last two. What difference does it make?"
JB smiled. "So close don't you see? Our grade point average jumped when we started the study forum."
"Yeah so?"
"It means our shit works: you couldn't have passed those exams without knowing how to figure out the answers. All that Leroy did was give you an edge." JB's face brightened briefly with optmistism.
"What about my deal with him?"
Kay's face frowned. "To hell with Leroy. He can't blow a whistle without exposing himself."
"We got bigger problems than Leroy. Jenkins still won't give us back our marks."
"I told my dad and he called the fucker to let him know even the intern lawyers who work for city hall know the law enough to give him trouble and cut into his profit margin."
# Jenkin announced new security measures. By mid-term, armored cars delivered the mid-term exams to the school's main entrance. The computer rooms and library had been taken offline. That hadn't stopped JB and his crew. The gang now numbered twenty and growing; word had gotten out about the chair in Jenkin's office wall.
Over twenty, scattered throughout the hall, typed feverishly at keyboards. Someone had brought an antique wireless router to the library. JB was moderating a quadratic parabolic vertices exercise. The Chicago Poets were posting a new gender reading of Othello, while Brooklin's Mechanics blog covered vector mechanics with animated billard balls -half of New York's pools hall now put bouncers at their doors to keep out the brothers.
By mid-term's end Leroy sunk while JB and crew breezed through acing it to top ranking. By semester end JB' crew got a thousand new members and the online forum membership went global. Kay and BigGee took to wearing a gold ring for each grade point.
# "Congradulations." Leroy/Jack of Diamonds profiled face spun in the night"You guys got the board in a tizzy. Jumped off the bell curve on that last score. The straw that broke the proverbial camel's back"
"Jenkin's a problem yeah."
"Fool, you don't get it do you? I got something for you." The Jack of Diamond spun out leaving the screen blank. A momment later a command line pop-up terminal appeared with a news feed header:
//edu.intranet/pswd/.25421
Senate commissioned impact study of illicit study gangs in privatized inner city public schools.//edu.intranet/pswd/.25421...unsubstantiated with no evidence of tampering. Online study gangs on the increase, are wrecking havoc on inner city college quotas. The initial investigations have identified dozens of these forum rings. Baltimore, only a five murders a day city, now has Algebra Gang members with possible connections to Mainland Chinese gangs..
"That last bit is you guys -way to go dude. You're on the school board's A-list for criminal offenders."
END
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