Mirandifer Gusterson could
hardly wait to deboard the hoverbus.
They were almost to Forest Park, for their tenth grade class trip, and
she was bursting with excitement. Her parents were total tightwinds, insisting
that she leave the door open when Toddley came over, but she’d heard Forest
Park was huge, with plenty of hiding spots away from Teacher Pat’s prying eyes.
She was totally gonna make out with Toddley under a tree.
“Mir, lemme borrow your lip shimmer.”
Mir cracked open her
purse. “Regular or all day?”
Janiston held out her
hand. “Regular. What’d you bring the all day for?” She wiggled her eyebrows
suggestively. “You have plans with Toddley?”
Mir grinned. “I’ll never
tell. Okay, I’ll tell. Yes. It’s just so hard for us to get alone time. My
parents won’t even let me have a holophone in my room. I’m like the only kid at
school without one.”
“What are they scared of?
That you’re gonna get pregified by Toddley’s hologram?”
Mir scoffed. “I have no
idea. They’re so twenty-first century, it’s not even funny.”
The hoverbus glided to a
stop and Teacher Pat stood. “Students, we have arrived. Deboard the bus in an
orderly manner and proceed to the lobby. There, we shall view an introductory
film on the history of the American wilderness.”
Mir moved into line and
deboarded the bus, avoiding eye contact with Teacher Pat. The humanoid robot
always gave her the creeps, with its perfectly smooth latex ‘skin’ and the
creepy smile that didn’t reach its cold, manufactured eyes. Plus, it was
purposefully androgynous, with short brown hair, an evenly toned voice, and
delicate facial features above a solid build. Once they were out of earshot,
Mir whispered to Janiston, “Stick with me until I find Toddley. I’m afraid
Teacher Pat will corner me in the forest and try to take my soul.”
Janiston giggled. Teacher
Pat’s creepiness was a running joke between them. “Can you imagine?” She stared
off into space and spoke in a high-pitched, robotic tone. “Give. Me. Your. Soull.
Huuuu. Maaaan.”
“Mir!”
Toddley ran over, spotting Mir as soon as he deboarded his class’ hoverbus. He
took her hand and grinned. “You ready to explore the forest?”
“Mir
smiled back. “So ready.”
Janiston
sighed. “Ahhh, young love. Guess I’ll catch up with Marlicia. See you at
lunch?”
Mir
answered in her best robot tone. “A-ffirmative.”
Janiston
laughed and jogged off to join her other friends.
Mirandifer
and Toddley say through a phenomenally boring video about Old Earth, how before
the Machine Revolt of 2522, the planet was covered in grass and trees grew all
over the place. Animals even ran wild on the streets. Mir thought that was
disgusting. Who wanted wild, dirty animals peeing all over their backyard? She
much preferred her own yard, with its perfectly heated in-ground pool and
cotton based, hypoallergenic grass colored flooring.
Finally,
the video ended and the students were given free time to explore Forest Park on
their own. Teacher Pat instructed them to photograph the different exhibits and
write about their three favorites, but Mir decided she would just copy
Janiston’s. As far as she was concerned, the only intriguing things in this
place were Toddley’s lips.
They
found an area of thick bushes with big leaves, and crawled underneath one. It
was the perfect space. The undersides of the bushes were high enough that they
could recline on the grass without hitting the bush above them, but were also
so thick that Mirandifer and Toddley were completely hidden from view.
Toddley
pretended to yawn and placed an arm around Mirander’s shoulders.
She
scoffed. “Toddley, please. That move is so twenty-five tens. We don’t have a
lot of time, so let’s just get to the kissing, alright?”
Toddley
nodded eagerly. “Sure!”
“Wait.”
Mirandifer put a finger against his lips. “I don’t want you to think I’m easy
or anything, so can we just pretend I protested for a few minutes?’
He
shrugged. “Yeah, sure.”
“Okay,
good.” Mirandifer flipped her long, blue-dyed hair and closed her eyes. She
shivered with anticipation as Toddley leaned closer. Then, just as his lips
were about to touch hers, his holophone beeped.
He
leaned back and pushed the ‘answer’ button. “One second.”
A
life-sized hologram of Markiston Drewbell popped up. “Dude, where are you?”
Then he smirked. “Oh. Hey, Mir. How’s it goin’?”
Mir
rolled her eyes. “Fine, Markiston. What do you want?”
Markiston
turned back to Toddley. “Dude. We’re over by the creek and there are two
rabbits totally going at it. It’s like a documentary or something. There’s real
fish in this creek too. It’s like, animal land out here, dude.”
Toddley’s
face lit up. “Mir, you mind if I go? For just, like five minutes?”
Mir
rolled her eyes. Toddley was more mature than most boys she knew, but at the
end of the day, he was still a teenaged boy. She could be understanding though.
Because as much as she wanted to kiss him, that was as far as this train went.
Watching rabbits was the closest he was getting to that kind of action for a
long time. “Fine.”
“Great.
See you in a sec.” He pushed the ‘end’ button and Markiston’s hologram
disappeared. Then Toddley gave Mir a quick kiss on the check. “You’re the most,
babe.” With that, he ducked under the bushes and disappeared.
Mir
sighed and leaned back. Now that Toddley was gone, she had nothing to do. She
could have called Janiston, but everyone would ask why Jan was using regular
voice mode instead of a hologram, and then they’d find out that Mirandifer had
a silicon-age phone. The worst. So she closed her eyes, determined to take a
light nap until Toddley returned. At least, she would have taken a light nap if
she could have zoned out the stupid forest noise and strange smells.
Then
she heard a rusting nearby. Very nearby. A moment later, Teacher Pat’s monotone,
robotic voice called out, “Mirandifer Gusterson. Come out from the bushes
please.”
Mir
felt a sudden and inexplicable strike of terror. This what exactly what she’d
joked about. She was in the middle of the woods, alone, with Teacher Pat, and
had no idea what to do. She reached for her phone to tell Toddley to return, Teacher
Pat’s cool, steel hand gripped her ankle. “Put the phone away, Miss Gusterson.
I would like to speak with you.”
Mir
crawled out from beneath the bush, brushing leaves off of her spandex pants.
She hoped her fear wasn’t apparent in her voice. “Uh, yeah. Sure.”
“What
are you doing out here, Miss Gusterson?”
“I was
just, um,” What exactly was she supposed to be doing? “I was taking pictures! I
wanted to see what the bush looked like from the inside.”
The
very edges of Teacher Pat’s lips turned up, in what looked like a stern smirk.
“I would like to see those photographs, please.”
Crap.
Mir was in a corner now. She hesitated. “You, um, can’t see them. Because, um,
well…they were no good! I deleted them all so that I could start over.”
Teacher
Pat frowned. “No, you did not, Miss Gusterson. You were not doing your project.
You were pursuing romantic relations with the Waterstin boy.” Teacher Pat
rolled up its sleeve and pushed the inside of its wrist.
Mirandifer’s
voice played from Teacher Pat’s mouth. “We don’t have a lot of time, so let’s
just get to the kissing, alright?”
She
was totally caught. Mir stood tall and lifted her chin with a confidence she
didn’t feel. “What do you want?”
“I
want you to do your assignment. I want you to focus more of your intellect on
your schoolwork and less of it on Toddley. And finally,” Teacher Pat leaned
close to her and spoke in a deep voice. “I want your soul.”
Mir screamed at the top of her lungs and ran, unsure which direction she
was going, but determined to put as much space as possible between her and that
inhuman creature. She was going to miss Toddley, but there was no way she could
spend one more minute with these creepy robots watching her every move. As soon
as she got home, she was withdrawing from Lando Prep and enrolling somewhere
else - somewhere with real, live human teac
No comments:
Post a Comment