The only thing more stressful than an excursion to a museum planet with Year Threes? Starting the day with thirty galactic cherubs and hitting recess with only twenty-nine. But a guy couldn’t monitor every student at every second, even in 2390.
Ugh. Bring on holidays.
The system’s synthetically-restored sun warmed the grass under our feet at Old Earth’s entrance lawn. I stroked my dark brown beard and adjusted my glasses to thermal imaging. Two tall, red figures stood across the other side of the class—our Specimen Support Officers, or SSOs, counting and recounting student numbers. We still had twenty-nine. I wondered if my misplaced student had fiddled with tech they shouldn’t have, like Mrs. Farzon’s Year Eights last week. Ballooned the size of planetoids, they had. I’d almost booked an excursion to see them.
My heart skipped a beat as the likelihood grew that a student was actually missing. Then I saw it: the red haze of a figure fifteen feet upside-down in a palm tree. I didn’t need to switch off my glasses to guess the culprit.
“Ferrix! Get down!”
Just Ferrix again, thank goodness. I thought we might have lost little Havannoa Saint. Of the two most powerful corporations in the galaxy, the Corporate Housing Trust and the Saint Bank Syndicate, ‘daddy’ was president of the latter.
I switched off thermals. Sure enough, Ferrix disengaged the fixed-point device he’d used to lock himself to the tree. The SSOs sighed in relief. Back to a full house. So long as you counted eighteen humanoids, three squid, a half humanoid-half squid, four reptiles, three bears and a sentient ice cube as a full house.
“Alright class,” I said. “Listen up while you finish injecting your recess. I know you’re excited to see your first whole planet museum and it’s—Kenzee, put that down¬!—been a long teleport here, but remember to take notes for your upcoming assignment. And listen to your guide. There’s lots to see today.”
“Yeah, and it’s all boring,” said a little voice.
“Try to stay positive, Ferrix. You can digitize your packs now, everyone.”
Havannoa bashed her pack repeatedly against her tech belt. “Mr. Stewhorn, mine won’t clip on.” Her frown evolved to outrage. She persisted with the bashing.
“Is that fixing the problem?” I asked.
“No. Why won’t it work!”
I let her frustration hang. The lesson was more important than the solution. “Try doing it the way I specifically told you a second ago. Digitize it.”
She tapped a button on her wrist monitor. The pack shrunk. It now fit. Amazing.
Our planetary guide warped in beside me, her mustard shirt evoking a daffodil aroma. She carried more excitement in her gray eyes than half my class combined. At least she wasn’t a bot, like the one from our last excursion.
“Welcome, class. I am Guide Yakka,” she said, smiling. She indicated the environment around them with her hand. “And this is Old Earth, jewel of the sector!”
Every planet was apparently jewel of some sector.
She went on. “Your MyWarps have already been pre-loaded with the appropriate site coordinates. First stop, the Under Land exhibit!”
My SSOs warped ahead of the class. I watched as students stood, twitched. One-by-one, their images flashed against my retina and they also warped away. Five, ten, fifteen …
The sentient ice cube, Gob, stared up at the tree where Ferrix had been. His thoughts matched his see-through viscosity. One unruly menace climbed something he wasn’t supposed to, and boom—five others wanted to try.
I hustled over, my broad shoulders towering above him. “Hey, Gob. Did you forget to turn your MyWarp on?”
“Were we supposed to?”
I breathed deeply through my nostrils and reminded myself he was only eight and over ninety percent Hydrogen Dioxide. “Yes, Gob. Please turn it on.”
“Okay.”
He warped away. Satisfied, I flicked on the device at my hip and waited for the slight freezing sensation, followed by a swift pull.
My molecules re-entered main state. A brown, barren landscape, charred by the sun’s ruining glare, replaced the green grass from before. It must have been fifty degrees Celsius. Students already fanned themselves. I counted them again, got twenty-nine.
Probably Ferrix mucking around.
“Here in Under Land,” Yakka began, “a large landmass situated in the planet’s southern region, the ancient inhabitants experienced many exciting trials. Serpentine creatures could bite you—and the ancients didn’t have Cureall or warp drives like we do!”
Several strange creatures with two powerful legs and thick tails leaped across the dry, dry ground before us. The musky scent from their hides drenched the air. “Ah, ha!” Yakka said. “Kangaroos! Amazing creatures. Ancient kids even rode them to school! Can you believe that?”
I didn’t believe that.
Three students yawned. Even I started daydreaming, as I pictured myself a pioneer on Old Earth. Muscles like mountains I’d have had, with a noble’s bravado. I’d have mapped out the first landmasses, risked a new world’s dangers single-handedly, just like the ancients. From my X3000 Starfighter’s cockpit, of course. Stewhorn the navigator. Stewhorn the planet’s beloved.
“Mifter Ftewhorn, my toof comed out!”
Some days I’d have settled for Stewhorn the elsewhere.
Our guide addressed us. “Let’s keep moving.”
Another headcount. Fourteen tentacles, three furry locks, seventeen humanoid frames, and … still twenty-nine.
“Ferrix, you’d better be here somewhere or so help me you’ve got a virtual compression tomorrow.”
“Here,” he said, leaning out from behind a bear. “Nowhere else to go.”
So, not Ferrix missing. Not Ferrix? I walked over and placed a hand on his shoulder to check he wasn’t a hologram. Not my first day in a classroom. But he was as solid as our ice cube, Gob. Who was missing?
I withdrew a metal box from my hip. It flipped open to triple in size, allowing me to ping the recorded roll. Almost all students were within proximity. One name flashed on my screen as ‘absent’: Havannoa Saint.
Sweat formed atop my brow as I read the name. I tucked the box back to my hip, tapped it furiously. I scanned the brown landscape. She was nowhere to be seen.
Think. Think.
Buddies. “Class, who is buddies with Havannoa today?”
A tiny paw raised into the air. “Thank you, Krill. Did you see her arrive at Under Land?”
The student shook her head.
“And you didn’t say anything? Why not?” I tensed my shoulders, exhaled.
Ferrix smirked. “Maybe a kangaroo took her.”
“Not helpful, Ferrix.”
Memories flooded my mind of the day Havannoa’s father, President Saint, had a parent accidentally exit from warp onto his polished diamond shoes at the school drop off zone. Simple device malfunction. Next day, the parent ended up with a rare job opportunity to study a black hole—from the inside. My veins turned to icy rivers just thinking about it. What would Saint do to me if I lost his daughter?
“Guide Yakka, a word.”
She pointed me toward the museum planet’s head offices. They would know more.
I attempted in vain to control my rapid breathing in the offices, listened to the fingers of the circ-droid receptionist whir across an infoscreen. White mirror-paint walls reflected morning rays through high windows and amplified visitors’ features. ‘See you in Old Earth’ the posters said.
The spherical disc on the droid’s head rotated. “Visitor designation 155062—”
“Havannoa Saint.”
“—last warped to Under Land. Although, her individual locator is recorded at Region Thirteen, our Atlantic Ocean exhibit. That does not compute.”
“If she’s at the ocean exhibit, we’ll head there,” I said.
The droid’s disc shook back and forth. “Unfortunately, it’s under maintenance.”
My face scrunched before I could stop it. “The ocean is under maintenance? How do you even … never mind.” I turned and headed back outside. A monotone ‘thank you for visiting Old Earth Planetary Museum’ echoed over my shoulder.
My SSOs stood on the paved waiting area outside, hushing restless students with outstretched hands. Sonyetta looked ready to puke. Her weak stomach must’ve struggled with the warps again. I’d get her a Band-Aid. Band-aids fixed everything.
“One, two, three, eyes on me,” I said.
“One, two, eyes on you,” replied most of the class. Ferrix didn’t even try.
I went on. “We’re changing our tour agenda slightly. Who’s up for a swim?”
“Yay! Yay!”
A frown the size of the Atlantic slumped over Yakka’s face. She skittered over immediately and whispered. “I’m sorry, that exhibit is currently unavailable.”
I told her who Havannoa’s father was. Surprise—the exhibit became available. Yakka’s demeanor jumped from firm disapproval to barely-concealed fright.
I did a final count and sent the SSOs on ahead. The class’s MyWarps activated and zipped them across the planet to the museum’s ocean site. I followed.
Main state came into focus and the warmth from the rising sun heated my particles. I stood upon a large, floating platform made from tree parts and gazed over a multitudinous aqua seascape that rippled with hidden drive. Half the class had already switched their clothing generators to bathing wear.
No sign of Havannoa. I tried tracking her DNA residue. Blast—I needed a comparable tissue sample.
“Mr. Stewhorn, my swimmers generator is missing.”
More interruptions. “Again, Forroroid?”
“Mine, too.”
That smelt of sinister. Where was Ferrix?
I spotted him doubled over, holding his gut, nearly laughing himself into the ocean.
That kid.
“Ferrix. Give them back,” I said. The young bully picked himself up and returned digital generators to no less than six owners. A thought occurred to me—I needed Havannoa’s DNA. What else did Ferrix have?
The last student snatched back their digitized swimmers. I waited a few moments to ensure everyone had entered the water and was, for now, distracted. Internal body sensors would boost strugglers to the surface. The class was safe. I gestured for Ferrix to come over.
“Ferrix, do you have any of Havannoa’s belongings?”
“I don’t steal, Mr. Stewhorn,” he said.
Was he joking?
“Alright,” he said. “Something might have ‘fallen onto my tech belt’.” He indicated quotation marks with his fingers—not that he bothered to use punctuation any other time. “Let me check.”
I shouldn’t have been surprised when he expanded his miniaturized storage box; it overflowed with other students’ generators, virtual lunch orders, two conical amplifiers not permitted at school, a file converter—also not permitted, interstellar licenses for both SSOs and a few other items.
He held out a microchip.
“Havannoa’s homework data,” I said, shaking my head.
“Could be. Don’t know.”
I wanted to chastise him so badly, the little rat. Time would not allow. I held my tracker against Havannoa’s chip and scanned. Sensors registered it; definitely hers. I angled the active tracker around the platform. It picked up a faint trace on the far side.
I brushed past the last few students to bellyflop into the ocean and copped a splash of high-density saltwater in my mouth. A scan exposed Havannoa’s footprints on the platform. They moved twice in circles before disappearing.
My wrist monitor beeped. Thirty-two minutes. That was how long she’d been missing. I needed help from the school or the Saint Bank Syndicate, but dared not ask. If anyone learned I hadn’t planned Havannoa’s absence, I was done for. No, I had to find her myself. Soon.
Behind me, a heavy sigh. I turned to see one of my more diligent students sitting on the platform’s edge with head low and mandibles wrapped around her legs.
“What’s wrong, Beatrice?” I asked.
“It’s Havannoa.” Her little face sagged with sadness. Loss born of genuine friendship, and the sweetest thing I’d seen all day.
“Don’t worry, we’ll find her.”
“It’s not that—she’s got my best ponytail generator and she, like, totally broke my last one.”
Oh.
I noticed our tour guide shuffling back and forth worse than before. She’d started rubbing her hands like crazy, too. Our eyes locked. She looked away.
“Excuse me,” I said. Yakka turned back toward me, offered a pathetic smile. She made her way over.
A brief discussion determined Guide Yakka’s awareness of museum logs. Numerous people had arrived at this supposedly restricted exhibit. There was more to the problem, though. Something she hadn’t said.
“Anything you need to add?” I asked.
Her gaze shot out over the ocean, but I chose not to fill the awkward space between us. She wriggled. I waited. She pretended to let me speak. I waited.
Finally, she gave in. “Havannoa’s father holds an unofficial arrest warrant for future offenders regarding his daughter’s safety.”
No. She wouldn’t invoke that.
“We contacted him. The warrant’s active.”
Yep. She would.
“But using your tracking data, I should be able to trace the next location Havannoa warped to.” Yakka’s irises flittered as she received communications. “She’s in the Savannah exhibit.”
“Then that’s where we’re going.”
High above our heads, a massive star cruiser burst into space just above the museum planet’s atmosphere. I could see it’s navy-blue hull with golden stripe. The Saint Bank Syndicate. They’d wasted no time in arriving to investigate. If they caught up, they’d ask too many questions I wasn’t ready to answer. I had to find Havannoa.
Fast.
The museum’s Savannah site had a wonderful array of stuffed, wild animals that poked out from tall grass the artificial sun had licked yellow in that part of the planet. The critters’ strange calls and roars drifted along earthen plains under the occasional Umbrella Thorn Acacia’s canopy. Now directly overhead, sun rays lit the place up like fire’s extremities. My constitution responded in kind. Poor Gob’s temp regulator had to be working overtime to stop him melting.
Havannoa’s tracks led to a set of weird prints in parallel lines in the dirt. A vehicle that travelled on land? Strange.
I couldn’t lose her. That meant another distraction for the class. I pulled one from my repertoire, an old favorite.
“Class, this is the Savannah. Does anybody know a kind of animal that lives here? If you uploaded your worksheet, they have big roars and flowing manes. What are they?”
Cori raised his hand.
“Yes, Cori.”
“My shirt has three pockets.”
Seriously, dude? “That’s got nothing to do with what I just said. It’s a lion, everybody! Let’s have a game of sleeping lions!”
The class settled themselves into interesting positions and prepared to keep still. I figured I could stretch out round one of the game for at least twenty minutes. I silently ushered over my SSOs and filled them in.
“I want you two to take this spare tracker and follow those marks in the ground. If you find Havannoa, contact me before you do anything.”
I handed them the device and they left.
Round three of lazy lions was about ready to start when I heard back. The communication came through scratchy, cutting in and out—a problem in itself. Tech never did that. But I got coordinates.
I prepared the class to warp. Fear for Havannoa’s safety bumped around in my gut like I’d swallowed a virtual eraser. I brushed my nose tip, scratched my forearms. Jolted as another message beeped on my wrist monitor.
“Spies captured. And we have the girl. Do not follow.” Signed with a digital stamp, a house with a curved roof. I knew the sign—the Corporate Housing Trust. Sworn enemies of the Saint Bank Syndicate. Did they plan to ransom Havannoa for a galaxy? Demand her father’s public resignation?
I tried to shake the fear from my fingertips. Not only was one of my students unaccounted for, her family’s most hated rivals had her in their clutches. Now I’d lost my SSOs!
My blood raced. Several students, bored with the game, noticed and came to ask what was wrong. Every little voice served as a stark reminder that one of their number had been kidnapped.
Kidnapped.
A whizzing sound of rapid-warping rang loud and true. Perhaps fifty feet to our west beneath an acacia, a Saint Bank soldier squad entered the landscape, clad in gold-striped, blue uniforms.
I needed more time to work out how to get Havannoa back. “Class, class!”
Another sound from tall grasses nearby. More a low rumble than a voice. The rumble emerged with large, sunset eyes and a mane.
“Guide,” I said. “Does this site facilitate wild animals?”
“Of course,” she said. “Lions and tigers and deer.”
“Oh, my!” I turned and shouted at my remaining students, some still dozing on the pleasantly warm earth. “Class! We’re leaving right now!”
The Saint Bank squad heard the commotion and hastened toward us. Fearing the lion’s pounce, I raced my fingers over the communal MyWarp feature on my wrist controls that would send the whole class to the first location I entered. Havannoa’s last known coordinates in the Mediterranean exhibit happened to still be on my screen. The lion leaped.
The class vanished. The MyWarp on my arm short-circuited.
Stupid technology! Don’t glitch now! The class had already warped. I tapped frantically at my wrist controls, imbedding them into my skin. It was no use.
I held my palms up as the Saint Bank forces stormed over. Sleek rifles trained on me. The lion fell prey to the seriousness of their business and fled.
“What did you do with the class?” one soldier asked.
“Where is Havannoa?”
They threw out a dozen more questions.
“I … I …”
I didn’t get to finish; my warp drive finally kicked in. The cold sensation stung, and I welcomed it. A soldier’s violent shout trailed in my ears as I was whisked off in the class’s wake.
When I emerged, I inhaled freedom’s sweet, fresh air. Observation showed the source to be a spread of heavenly white blooms that decorated a paved courtyard, leading to large pines set either side a massive amphitheater two hundred meters north of me. The Bank forces would surely follow my warp trail, but for now I could tend to my twenty-nine students’ needs.
Except all of them were gone.
A distant scream from the amphitheater drew my attention. I activated long-range sensory lenses for a better look. Men in Housing Trust jackets with phaser rifles had captured my students. They already had Havannoa, now they had the entire class.
They must have grabbed them before I warped in.
The men prodded twenty-eight students and one very scared tour guide off a transport and toward the amphitheater doors. Cannon barrels attached to the structure’s exterior swiveled and fired four warning blasts across the plain in my direction.
Wait, only twenty-eight students?
I checked the transport again, hope building for the safety of even one young life. I counted the small bodies as the Housing Trust shoved them inside. Twenty-six, twenty-seven, twenty-eight. Not a sentient ice cube or hybrid tentacle more.
Dust churned up in the two hundred meters between my class and me and stole my attention. I focused the long-range lenses there. A body appeared.
Ferrix. Had to be him. Of all the students to evade capture, he’d be the one. He ambled toward me.
“You escaped,” I said.
“Duh.” He squinted at something behind me and pointed. I turned.
The Saint Bank soldiers had arrived.
The stool the soldiers thrust me down on seemed foreign in the middle of the Mediterranean exhibit. The landscape had grown silent—even the black birds had fled. Two gruff Saint Bank soldiers pinned my shoulders and interrogated me.
“The beacon was activated,” one soldier said through his snout.
The other clenched a fist. “Where is Havannoa?”
“Where is she?
“Tell us now.”
“Okay, okay!” I buckled under the proverbial slapping. What to say? There’d be no escaping them this time. But I had to tell them something, and I could hardly give them the truth.
I decided upon ambiguity. “She’s safe. Tucked inside that big amphitheater over there, with our SSOs. A little extra-curricular activity, you might say.”
That could technically be true. Safe was subjective, and kidnapping wasn’t in the curriculum this year.
The larger of the two soldiers reached down and ripped off my badge before his hefty paws latched onto my shirt collar. “I don’t care why the boss’s daughter is in there. We want her out. Now. Call your aides, or we’ll have you arrested.” He glared at me, unblinking, while putrid breath beat against my cheek. I squirmed to avoid him.
“Funny story, actually. The SSOs … ah, … won’t hear me. Our tech is malfunctioning. I’ll need to go and speak to them directly.”
Ferrix butted in. “But that’s the Corporate Housing Trust in there.”
“What?!” the Bank Soldiers encroached further on my space.
If only Ferrix had been put in Mrs. Marlabow’s class.
I stood and tripped over the stool. “I know what you’re thinking. But I just need to go and speak with them.” Sweat formed in every one of my skin cells. I half faced the amphitheater and dragged myself toward it, under heavy protests from the soldiers.
A wide shape suddenly shimmered and fuzzed before me as another person materialized. Giant. Reptilian. Humorless—a terror from the hollowest depths. The sky darkened. Here stood perhaps the only thing I feared more than the soldiers.
Principal Koloxis.
The principal’s booming voice commanded authority. “Mr. Stewhorn. I finished a meeting early this morning and decided to check in on the Year Threes. Imagine my surprise when I learned young Miss Saint was missing. Now your entire class and teaching aides are gone.”
Koloxis growled. His yellow eyes narrowed.
The two Bank soldiers who’d questioned me stepped over. One pointed up at Principal Koloxis. “Listen, whoever you are. President Saint’s daughter is in that amphitheater. We need her out. Now, if that’s the Housing Trust who have her, and we bust in, it could lead to open war. This teacher lost her. He needs to sort it out.”
They flexed excessive brawn and pointed past the pines and white flora with their weapons. A clear scare tactic. I was convinced.
Principal Koloxis would not be so easily intimidated. “He’ll do no such thing. Mr. Stewhorn will return to the museum planet’s head offices with his sole remaining student and wait.” He swiveled his head and I thought he’d devour me. “This is not the kind of class management I expect, Mr. Stewhorn.”
Gulp.
“I will negotiate with the Housing Trust for Havannoa’s release,” Koloxis said.
My head drooped to my shoulders as I got up. The situation had passed out of my hands. A sure relief—though I’d pay for it later. I set the coordinates to warp Ferrix and I back to the offices.
My class kidnapped by the Trust, the Bank Syndicate on edge, and now our principal readied himself to fire me. Wondering what else I could do, I warped.
Slumped against a tree back at the entrance lawn halfway across the planet, I struggled to feel a heartbeat in my chest. Wasn’t sure I wanted to. Grey clouds blotting out Old Earth’s sky presaged my future. What kind of teacher was I, anyway? I’d failed my students. They were locked inside a fortress with hostiles. The risk assessment hadn’t covered that sort of thing. Their fate was in someone else’s hands now.
Ferrix sat on the damp grass a few feet away, fidgeting with some tech box he’d undoubtedly stolen. He wore a passive expression. Didn’t he care about his peers at all? He pointed the box at a leaf and touched a button. The leaf warped and reappeared two feet away.
At least now I knew how the mysterious tack had appeared on my chair last week.
Ferrix glanced in my direction with a mocking grin.
It vexed me—he knew I couldn’t tell him off for ‘happiness’. “Ferrix, don’t you ever get tired of acting the way you do? The class is in real danger.”
“Clearly. At least today’s less boring than usual.”
“Can’t you see? You’ll get to go home this afternoon. Your classmates may not.”
Ferrix’s grin disappeared. His posture diminished into a ball. He turned cold and broken like show and tell day with nothing to share. He never behaved this way.
“What is it, Ferrix?”
He returned to fiddling.
“You can talk to me,” I said. “If you want to.”
Ferrix winced, dipped his chin further. But he spoke. “It’s just … well, at home, Dad’s been fighting with Mum. He even … doesn’t matter. Anyway, he promised he wouldn’t do it again.” A single tear slid down his left cheek before his appearance generator dissolved it. “I know he’s lying.”
“Ferrix, I’m sorry. I had no idea.” Everyone should feel safe in their own house.
He looked up, straight into my eyes. “It’s okay, Mr. Stewhorn. Your class isn’t so bad. I’d rather be here than there.”
My throat went so dry I could’ve drained a river. Here sat a bully, a constant pain and an academic mess. More, here sat a lonely eight-year-old with a broken home, crying out for refuge the only way he knew how. Instead of listening, I’d scolded him, this fragile boy.
As warmth rose in my chest, I smiled at Ferrix and promised myself I would do more to help him from now on. Not just with Mathematics uploads. He needed me. So did my class.
Ferrix apparently noted the shift in my eyes, the purpose, as I rose from the tree and stared poignantly into the backdrop of the sunned, blue sky. “Mr. Stewhorn?”
My hands found my hips in a pose the gods might have envied. “The class needs us, Ferrix. It’s time for a little extension project, you and I.”
Hold on students.
Your teacher is coming.
When the MyWarp took me back to the Mediterranean exhibit, Ferrix at my side, I took scope of the situation. At first, thermal imaging showed no sign of the class in the amphitheater fortress. I angled the lens lower. Hidden beneath ground level, twenty-nine little bodies.
Nearby trees had been obliterated into smoking ruin. Saint Bank starfighters dropped in from their cruiser, raking the surrounds with a constant, deadly laser barrage. Shattering cracks rang out every few seconds from Housing Trust cannons mounted on the fortress. They decimated the landscape, the wreckage, the air. Principal Koloxis was tied to a pole on the highest amphitheater wall.
No way forward. No survival. No non-contact lessons.
“Ready for this, Ferrix?”
“Ready.”
I nodded at him. I nodded at the burning pines, the starships. Just kept nodding at every darn thing.
Ferrix pulled out boxes from his tech belt, dozens and dozens of stolen materials. He handed me one. Activating the conical speakers he’d ‘found’, he hacked into the ancient museum network and selected some classical music. The Final Countdown began to play.
From the great beyond—and mostly the Under Land exhibit—a fearsome mob of kangaroos materialized. I flicked a leg high over the head beast’s back and mounted. Who said you couldn’t ride them to school? A fixed-point device, like the one that had kept Ferrix glued to the tree, locked me to my animal. I closed my eyes and pictured our class, injected my midday coffee. Its power awakened within.
I pointed one mighty finger. The epic tune played.
“We ride!”
Our kangaroos shot forward. They hopped, weaved, leaped across the wasteland before the amphitheater. A few Saint Bank starships noticed our run and broke off in an attempt to eliminate this new threat. At Ferrix’s command, the devices he’d attached to each kangaroo activated and began to warp the animals in short, unpredictable bursts. Lasers couldn’t catch them.
The enemy locked within their fortress caught our presence, too; half the cannons angled down toward us, blasting hell and fire and rockets. Charred earth littered the area. It invaded my nostrils. But I gripped my kangaroo’s thick neck one-handed, bouncing up and down on its back while I slapped its thigh like a jockey.
To my right, Ferrix appeared from warp on his mount. He smashed buttons on boxes, not even holding on. His maniacal laughter rose above the thunder of his warzone playground.
Halfway to our goal.
From the pinnacle of the sky, high above the starships, metallic pods plummeted toward the ground. Doors opened as the pods struck earth. Out came giant robots, the kind often controlled via remote signal. Surnames from our class were welded on each machine.
Ferrix shouted. “Who’s controlling those?”
“It’s the parents! They want input!”
We forged ahead, neared the amphitheater. The final term. The end-of-year test.
“Ferrix,” I said. “It’s now or never!” He bashed at more devices. The Final Countdown reached a crescendo.
Trusting in the fixed-point device, I rose and stood on my hopping kangaroo’s back, invincible as the artificial sun. I spread both arms wide before the swooping starships and fortress rockets, raging robots and one massive principal swinging back and forth on his pole. Three thousand knowledge uploads and fifteen years wrangling kids had prepared me for this. It was my time. My moment. I roared in triumph.
As Ferrix and I neared the barricaded amphitheater door, I activated the one small box he’d given me. It hijacked all enemy electronics in range, if briefly. For fifteen precious seconds of control I redirected their attacks. Rockets, lasers, cannons, pencil sharpeners. Wave after wave of coordinated weapons fire slammed against the fortress’s front door. The ground shook. Dry lightning split the air. The door flew off its hinges with an ear-splitting boom.
I dismounted. Dang was my backside on fire from all the bouncing. When I walked, I bent halfway over and shuffled like a duck to avoid moving it. No mind. The unmanned robots fell still around me. Saint Bank forces stumbled out from crashed starships, mouths agape. I recognized one soldier—an old student, frazzled and moaning in the dirt. Never did his homework.
And look at you now.
Ferrix and I entered the amphitheater. I cut the rope on Koloxis’ pole and he slid down, a bound, sorry hulk on a stick. We ventured to the level below ground, where the class waited. Their Housing Trust captors, awed by the supreme authority of our entrance, quivered in the furthest, darkest corners they could find. I formed our students, SSOs and principal in two straight lines and marched them right up and out the front door.
As we filed back over the scorched exhibit, my old student, the Saint Bank soldier, overcame his wonder long enough to offer us a ride back to school.
Not a chance. We still had our hyperbus, and two other exhibits to view before lunch break. Education paused for no squid, ice cube or humanoid. Not on my watch.
When the first bell vibrated, I’d seated the class on the bus, ready to return home.
Back at school, students chatted in our small, colorful classroom about favorite moments from the day. Smiling and making huge gestures with their hands, they soon digitized bags and stood behind their desks. On the other hand, unrest from parents waiting outside was so intense it pierced the walls; a star constellation ready to go nova.
The home bell went. Tentacles, legs and fur rushed outside in a fearsome stampede. The second I followed them out the door, parents launched loaded questions at me from all sides. That was, until Dimossa Saint, president of the Saint Bank Syndicate, moved forward. Silence dropped. He hugged his daughter, shook my hand. There were no more questions after that.
Students hung upside down on the bars or begged their parents for sleepovers. Ferrix made Gob evaporate a few inches. When I caught his eye, he simply shrugged. I laughed.
Principal Koloxis snuck up beside me like a lunging skyscraper. “You came through after all, Mr. Stewhorn. A successful excursion, I’d say. But I trust we can avoid any student disappearances in future? Your class visit to the half-imploded meteor is still scheduled for next week. After today, you might want to use some of your galactic leave. You’ve earned the break.”
I shook my head.
“Very kind, Mr. Koloxis. But I’ll be there. It’s a dangerous galaxy. My students need me.”
What does one teacher, multiplied by thirty little problem X’s, minus a few weeks sleep and rounded to the nearest virtual playground experience equal?
Infinity.
Plus one.
Scott M. Sands is a speculative fiction writer, based in the Adelaide Hills in South Australia. When he isn’t spending time with his beautiful wife and four kids, he’s watching Star Wars, gaming, writing his next novel and walking his crazy border collie.
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Website: www.scottmsands.com