Humancorp Incorporated Page 18

  “I’ve got a hunch,” Noel muttered, then took out his magic wand and pointed it at the man. It started to beep wildly.

  “We’ve found our defective friend,” said Noel. “Hey, you,” he said, stopping one of the child science fair presenters. “Who is that?”

  “That’s Principal Rogers,” the child said. “He runs the school.”

  “Of course,” Noel breathed. “The principal! It makes sense. He’s the only person who could make this whole school so terrible. It’s the only explanation for an educational institution that teaches economics. We’ve got a chance to capture him now. Quick, Sean, get the net!”

  Sean rooted around in his bag for the net, but by the time he’d gotten it out, the principal had walked off and disappeared.

  “Darn,” said Noel. “We’ve spent far too long on this defective person already. We need to round him up before school shuts down for the day and he escapes!”

  Just then, a bell rang, and the school’s intercom crackled to life.

  “Attention all teachers, students, and parents,” said a voice. “The last class of the day has now ended. Please make your way to the auditorium and join the principal there for a parent-teacher conference, where we’ll be happy to explain some of the impending budget-related changes to our school, hear from select students, and listen to your concerns about our policies. Thank you for joining us, and remember, don’t shoot the messenger.”

  The intercom went dead.

  Sean and Noel looked at each other.

  “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Noel asked.

  “You think octopus boxers are a great idea too?” Sean guessed.

  Noel thwacked him on the forehead.

  “Ow,” Sean said.

  “I can’t tell if I zapped too much current across your brain or too little, but it clearly wasn’t the right amount either way,” said Noel. “No, we’ll go to the auditorium and capture the principal while he’s there!”

  “Great,” Sean said.

  And so, they sped off towards the auditorium together.

  Chapter 20

  Upper Middlesburg Homeopathic Elementary School auditorium is a storied place. Owing to steep Tahiti-fact-finding related budget cuts, the school can no longer afford to perform Shakespeare in the auditorium, and the students have since been reduced to re-enacting the one-man shows of William Shatner instead. The school’s orchestra, which in its glory days held epic recitals of great symphonies, now conducts epic one-man kazoo solos on special occasions, though these solos have been cut back to just one or two a year for reasons of budget and musical taste. Assemblies in the auditorium no longer feature an entire class or student body or even teachers, and are generally now conducted by chickens in their place, which the school has actually found to be a modest improvement over the previous system. In fact, the school no longer has control of the auditorium at all, as it has started leasing it out to some of the local beekeepers’ associations for extra cash, which actually worked remarkably well during the kazoo solos. The instrument and the bees musically complimented one another.

  Consequently, as Sean and Noel infiltrated the auditorium with a lot of parents, there was a loud buzzing noise, but neither Sean nor Noel could figure out where it was coming from.

  The auditorium was large and filled with many seats, plus a lot of beekeepers’ pallets of bees. It had a sticky, tiled floor and an elevated stage. Sean and Noel made their way to red seats near the front. As they sat, the lights dimmed, and Principal Rogers strutted out onto stage along with several students, who took up position behind him. Rogers was handsome and his suit was neat, but he looked a little bit dazed.

  “Hello,” he said. “Welcome to our auditorium and thank you all for joining us here at the Upper Middlesburg Homeopathic Elementary School. Before we go any further, please rise for the national anthem.”

  He stepped back, and a boy with a kazoo approached the microphone.

  Sean rose with his hand patriotically clasped over his heart.

  “Bzzz bzzz bzzz, bzzz bzzz bzz,” went the kazoo. “Bzzz bzz bzz bzzzzz bzz bzz bzz, bzzz bzzz bzzz bzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.”

  “That was beautiful,” Sean said at the end of the kazoo solo, sitting down and wiping a tear from his eye.

  “Why did that actually sound halfway alright?” Noel said.

  “Hey, the kazoo is a legitimate instrument,” Sean said to him sharply. “I should know. I used to play the kazoo in high school. Of course, I wasn’t nearly as good as the other boys. The music teacher, Mr. Chimes, wouldn’t let me play during out rendition of Beethoven’s Fifth.”

  “Sorry, I think?” asked Noel.

  “Oh, don’t worry. They still let me do all the Bach. Now, I didn’t strictly speaking have a kazoo during any of this, but the great thing about the kazoo is it sounds the same whether you have one or not.”

  The kazoo player sat down.

  “Lovely,” Principal Rogers said. “Now, before I open up the floor to parent speakers so we can hear from you, I’d like to address some of your concerns about changes to the school next year, as well as our current policy and what you might perceive to be deficiencies in our educational system. First of all, the budgetary matter. Yes, sadly, we are effectively shutting down the school next year because the city council told us that the Tahitian hotels, bars, and airlines really needed that money more than we did. We will no longer be able to educate human pupils. The only good news is that those of you whose children are chickens will still be able to enroll your children at this institution. As for the rest of your children, I’m sure they’ll be able to figure out which weeds are most edible and where the best begging spots in Upper Middlesburg are for themselves. Now, since I see some of you are antsy to speak, I’ll cut my remarks short. Uh, I’ll call on someone to come up on stage. You, sir, the man tying the noose while leering angrily at me.”

  Principal Rogers called on a large, thick man in the front row with a noose.

  “Yeah,” the man bellowed. “Why don’t you teach our kids anything here?”

  “Oh, we don’t believe in educating the children,” Rogers replied frankly. “We here at UME see ourselves as a kind of internment camp for minors, so they can be confined to a single location. Besides, educating the children is a real strain on the teachers and administrators like me. It creates a lot of unnecessary work for us and cuts into our nap time. Next question. You, ma’am, the woman with the knife?”

  A woman armed with a carving knife stood up.

  “My poor Jimmy has been beaten up every day for six years. What are you going to do about the rash of bullying in this school?” she demanded while waving the knife at Rogers.

  “Now, I understand our policy of appeasing the bullies is controversial,” Rogers replied in a calm voice. “However, the bullies do say it’s working very well for them, and I think that’s what’s really important. Yes, many students may suffer some minor concussions and bruises, but bully self-esteem is through the roof! And think of the boon to the local economy! With the lunch money they steal, the bullies are supporting the shopping mall across the street practically on their own. Next question?”

  “Come down here so we can fight you,” demanded another angry man, punching his fist into his palm.

  “No,” Rogers said genially. “I’m afraid I have to remain up here. Any other questions?”

  Noel had pulled out his magic wand through this exchange and waved it in Roger’s direction. It was beeping intermittently.

  “Something’s not quite right,” Noel murmured.

  “Yeah, it smells like honey and smoke in here,” Sean said, sniffing.

  “If there are no further questions that don’t concern tarring and feathering me,” Rogers said, “I’d like to open up the floor to one of our student speakers, the President of the Student Body and our reigning Valedictorian, Isaac Dunn. Isaac?”

  Isaac approached the microphone. He was an extremely tiny boy, barely tall enough to reach over the top of th
e podium, and he had wispy, blond hair. His large glasses made his blue eyes seem about five times too large. Otherwise, he was completely unremarkable. Isaac was so small and puny that he must have been easy to ignore, forget, or overlook by accident.

  Principal Rogers sat down on the side of the stage and Noel tracked him with the magic wand. It abruptly stopped beeping. Noel turned the wand back onto the podium, where Isaac was adjusting the microphone down to meet him. The wand started to beep wildly.

  “It’s not the principal at all,” Noel said with quiet awe. “It’s Isaac! He’s the defective person! But how could a little student like that be responsible for everything we’ve seen at this school?”

  “I don’t know,” Sean said.

  “I know you don’t; it was a rhetorical question,” Noel snapped. “I’m at least five times as intelligent as you, and I haven’t had my brain zapped today. Anyway, get the net.”

  Sean drew the net out of his bag.

  “Wait,” Sean said suddenly. “Maybe there’s another way we can go about this that doesn’t involve entrapping any small children in nets.”

  “Ridiculous,” Noel said. “The net is a proven method. Stick to the plan.”

  However, Sean wasn’t the type of person who was going to go around netting small children just because his manager told him to. He might have done it for fun or profit, but certainly not for work-related purposes. Sean thought back to what the woman at the entrance to the school had said and produced the list of children she had given him.

  Meanwhile, Isaac had started to speak into the microphone. He had to stand on his tip-toes just to do it.

  “Um...” he said in a very small voice. “Hello. I’m Isaac, the President of the Student Council.”

  “What’s that?” Principal Rogers said. “Speak up. The nice people can’t hear you.”

  “I’m Isaac,” Isaac said more loudly. “And I’d like to thank UME for everything it’s done for me. Without UME, I wouldn’t know any of the great things they teach here, like the correct method to demolish a grain elevator, or the mathematics of pencil sharpeners, and you know, I think that’s really important...”

  “We can’t hear you!” someone shouted from the audience.

  “Oh,” Isaac said, and stood on the very ends of his tip-toes and started to scream. “I really like it here, because all the teachers and all the bullies are really supportive, and they overlook a lot of crime, which is nice...”

  “Still can’t hear you,” the same voice hollered.

  “Never mind,” Isaac said, and looking depressed, perhaps even on the verge of tears, Isaac slumped back down into his chair on the back of the stage and cradled his head in his hand. He seemed very sad.

  “I’ve got it,” Sean said excitedly. “Isaac Dunn is on the list of lonely students with tragic backgrounds who need people to pretend to be their parents so they won’t get beaten up as much! We can pose as his parents, and then take him home.”

  And without waiting to further consult Noel, Sean stood, net over one shoulder, and rushed up onto the stage.

  “Hello,” Sean said. “I’m sorry to interrupt, but I’m one of Isaac’s parents, and I have to take him home. He’s late for his, uh, fifty million volt electrical brain reprogramming.”

  Isaac looked up through his large glasses at Sean in shock.

  “Of course,” Principal Rogers said, his voice dripping with understanding. “I wouldn’t want to stand in the way of your family business, but before you go, maybe you could say a few words about your experiences with the school? You know, since Isaac wasn’t able to say much himself?”

  “Er, okay,” Sean hastily agreed. “Anything to trick you into letting me kidnap him.”

  Sean approached the podium and scratched his head.

  “I don’t know much about parent-teacher relations,” he admitted. “I’m not a parent myself, unless you count Isaac, which of course, I don’t, but I’ve been talking to a lot of the other adults around here, and they seem very angry and concerned about how the school isn’t providing a good standard of education, or how they’ve cut all the students out of the budget so they can keep all the teachers employed, or because next year the school is only accepting chickens, or because there are wolves outside on the handball courts that keep salivating when they look at you... And I also know a lot of you have been reluctant to accept Principal Rogers’ explanations about the budget cuts, and how we should take pride in the fact that we have the most highly trained and experienced bullies in the world... But, you know, education isn’t that easy. Being an educator is one of the most difficult professions in the entire world, because, when you think about it, you can’t learn if you’re not motivated to learn, and how do you motivate a child to learn when you’ve basically drafted them into a classroom against their will without compensation and then locked them up with a bunch of other mistreated, sociopathic children? How can you get a kid to learn anything under those circumstances? Why, the only way is probably to beat it into them with a fourteen-inch stick. It’s especially hard when you consider that a lot of teachers probably don’t even care whether the child graduates or not, because they’re paid the same either way. So, it’s really not that easy, and we should probably give the teachers lots of credit for showing up to work at all.”

  Sean mused about what he should say next.

  “Also, maybe you really shouldn’t care all that much about whether your children get a good education or not, because when you think about it, they’re not really your children. They’re automatons produced by a secret company called Humancorp Incorporated, so they’re not even related to you, and you don’t have to love them so much.”

  A silence descended over the audience. Some parents clapped their hands over their childrens’ ears.

  “You’re not supposed to say that,” hissed Principal Rogers to Sean.

  “It’s true, isn’t it?”

  “Sir, we don’t give children true information here! This is a school!”

  “Oops, sorry,” Sean said. “I guess I’m not supposed to say stuff like that. I guess I’m probably not supposed to say that Santa Claus isn’t real either-”

  The parents clapped their hands over their children’s ears, particularly the small ones, even harder.

  “-and that we don’t even have basic answers to a lot of the important questions of existence, like whether life has purpose or not, or if begonias are really evil,” concluded Sean. “My point is this. I don’t think this school is so bad after all, especially when you consider how easy it is to break into the lockers and steal their contents, and speaking as Isaac’s father-”

  “I’m his father,” Noel shouted. “You’re his mother.”

  “-mother,” Sean said. “Aw, why do I have to be the mother? Anyway, speaking as his mother, I don’t think this school is that bad after all. That said, I’m taking him out of this place and probably never bringing him back. Bye bye.”

  With that, Sean broke away from the microphone, walked over to Isaac, and took him by the hand down to the front row, where Isaac sat next to Noel and Sean.

  “Who are you?” Isaac said to them in his very small voice. “You don’t look like my mommy.”

  “We’re not,” Noel said. “It was a cunning ruse. We’re here to kidnap you and administer powerful electric shocks to your brain because the richest man in the world told us to.”

  Noel prodded Isaac with his defective person detector. It beeped harshly.

  Isaac cringed away from him.

  “Be nice,” Sean snapped at Noel. “Isaac, can I ask you a few questions? Did you do something to the school to make it, er, crazy?”

  Isaac didn’t look Sean in the eye, but nodded.

  “Yeah,” he said, in a very small voice.

  “And how did you do that?” Sean asked.

  “I wrote to the city council and told them the teachers were all overpaid and they should use the money for something else. Then, I sent them Tahitian summer vacation
brochures. I rigged the student council election. And I started forging letters to Principal Rogers so that it looked like they were from the government telling him to do things, so he started changing the school to dumb down the classes. He brought in cheaper teachers after the budget cuts, and they didn’t care much about whether we learned or not, so they started teaching really dumb stuff.”

  “Why did you do all that?” Sean asked kindly.

  Isaac fidgeted.

  “I wanted people to think I was smart,” said Isaac. “No one ever notices me because I’m so little, and I’m not very brave or outspoken or anything. None of the girls will talk to me, and all the other boys ignore me. I don’t have any friends. The teachers always forget about me. I wanted to be the smartest kid in the school. I thought then they’d all have to pay attention to me!”

  “So you started to make the classes easy so they’d be simple to pass?” asked Sean in surprise.

  “No. I studied hard and became the Valedictorian, but no one cares. I’m not even in middle school yet. I started making the school weird, because I thought if I was the only good student in a school where everyone else was bad, then I’d become really notable. It didn’t work. No one pays attention to me. Not even those wolves that live on the baseball field.”

  “Those wolves aren’t good enough for you,” Sean said. “I’ll tell you what - you were lonely and thought you were being ignored, so you caused trouble, right?”

  Isaac nodded grimly.

  “We can help with that,” Sean said. “My colleague Noel here has a brain reprogrammer, don’t you, Noel?”

  “I don’t like to boast, but I’ve fried a lobe or two in my time,” Noel said with a smug, self-satisfied grin. “How does that help Isaac?”

  “We can reprogram him,” Sean said with excitement. “If we reprogram Isaac to make him think he’s assertive and popular, it won’t just make him behave differently, right? Because of that brain dissonance-”

  “-resonance,” corrected Noel. “Dissonance is when you know bacon is bad for you but you eat it anyway.”