Steve Michel's Journal of Lateral Modernism********************** Vol. X No.4-8 Summer 2009

Steve's interiors(tm)

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Fiction: Algebra Gang

Part 5: by Steve Michel
[I wrote this Science Fiction story a few years back: a somewhat pre-Obama slipstream narrative with old-school sensibilities.]

'Shit! we had studied all night for that test; trying to catch us riding dirty?' BigGee clenched his fists.

'What fools do you take us for? Pluhease spare me.' Mr Jenkins pressed his phone's intercom button 'Mrs.M you can send in the gentleman'

The door opened and in stepped an sharp faced middle age man in a rumpled suit and a armored aluminium briefcase. He sat down on the hard wood side chair and without pre-amble turned to the boys 'I'm Mr Sullivan here from the Federal Task Force on School IT Security. You boys are going to tell me exactly how you hacked the servers.'

"What?" JB stood up "We didn't do it.."

Sullivan sighed, and opened his briefcase. Inside was an industrial looking flat console covered with faded warning stickers and corporate certification labels. "As per public school security procedures you will turn over your laptops for examination of evidence of tampering."

'With all due respect I think that's none of your business."

'Clam it son. It is my business. You boys have a choice: getting expelled now or cooperating with the authorities' Jenkins drooping jowls shook like some bulldog.

Sullivan without pre-amble plugged their laptops in turn into. "No cookies from from locked server pages or traces of erased files. They still might have done it through a proxy webserver or subnet protocol emulator.."

"Whatever. Now lets get to the bottomline here," he lifted a thick dossier from his desk. "Your grade points went up and I want to know why."

"We've been studying. What's wrong with that?" JB said in his cool matter of fuck voice. The others sat silent letting him talk. He was always the level head and prayed BigGee wouldn't say anything stupid.

"Don't give me your fucking attitude! I'm giving you kids five seconds to tell us how you've been stealing exam answers. capiche?"

JB glanced up from the floor and locked gazes with Jenkin "We take notes and study them." JB sensed BigGee fuming on his chair like a lit fuse.

"That does it! I'm putting you three on probation with pending suspension for failing to comply with school authorities. And I'm voiding your exam results on suspicion of cheating."

"Fuck you! you can't do this. fuck you!" Big Gee stood up threw his chair at the wall. Guards sprang forward with grins and cow prods.

"Don't do it Gee! just chill." JB yelled at him with his hands held from behind by a burly guard. An alarm sounded from somewhere more guards poured into the room. Soon they were all pinned down. JB's face pressed onto the cold floor tiles.

"Just remember this: we'll find out you did it one way or another. Now get out of my office."

# 'My old man's right. It's the same shit being played out over and over again' JB mulled over his soda. They sat at the 'Five and Dime', a greasy spoon joint so old it was the only non franchise business on the block squeezed between a Western Union ATM and a UPS store. Clappett, behind the cash register was watching an antique tube color TV, chuckling at a Jerry Springer re-run. JB and the crew were only patrons at this hour: too early for the friday night party crowd and well past the late afternoon lunch hours.

"So the fuck sent a letter to my folks" Kay said "that Jenkin indicted us without trial by jury of peers, proof or due process of law."

"Since I joined this group study thing last summer our grades shot up and now we're getting dissed for it. Fuck it." BigGee took a quick sip from his can of house soda.
to be continued next month
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