Slate Middle School

Failure stings, as usual. You got your essay back with a fifteen-percent score, cause you used WeThePedia as your only reference, and for "hateful rhetoric", whatever that means in this stupid society. They finally let everyone use Bickerpedia as a reference, but you know half the information on that website is wrong. It's all liberal-leaning propaganda, right? Lib nonsense. And then when the conservatives take power, it's all servy-leaning. And then it's just a velcro mess of alternating propagandists, taking turns screwing with everybody's heads. Makes you just want to rip it all off, like a true Anarchist. When do you finally get used to it, you wonder? Maybe when you're older. Or dead. Here you are, a born Canadian with none of those "snowflake privileges" you keep hearing about. A failed test is still a failed test. Maybe if you were a minority, or you cried hard enough about being gay. Ray, the resident closet-buster, opens his dumb-looking mouth behind you.

Ray
(Having overheard.) Technically, if you think about it, the Aboriginals are the real Canadians, and everyone else is Euro-Canadian or Euro-migrant.

Lester
(Pissed off.) Will you shut the hell up? I don't remember asking you anything, pit-breath.

Ray
You were talking pretty loudly to yourself.

You sigh, exasperated. He's eight months older than you, but socially, he's a newborn. Everyone else, including you, 'gets it': the unseen current that all bees ride to get through the day, hit all the flowers they can, and make it back to the hive in one piece. Another anonymous fuzzy insect, puking their worth into a hexagonal hole in the wall. This bozo is like a pigeon, poking his head in the hive and getting stung every single time. As soon as you turn thirteen like he is, you're gonna challenge him to a fistfight. Winner gets a kiss from the loser. Your thoughts wander, and you realize that there are no losers in that scenario. Damn. Why'd he have to be so dumb-looking and good-looking at the same time? And how come he smells like flowers and ripe fruit, when your sweaty pits reek like dumpster vecon? You gotta stop eating Subfoot sandwiches for every meal.
You look over at your main man, Hurley, but he's ignoring you. You feel like a pair of snapping jaws is closing in on your little bee body, and swallowing you whole. Before long, your devious mind has outrun your sense of morality and concocted a plan: make out with the spooky retard, so hot-stuff Hurley realizes what he's missing out on. There's no way Ray will pass you up – he looks as forlorn and desperate as a drunken sailor, whose ex-wife has moved on while he was out to sea. You don't think he's ever HAD a girlfriend, or a boyfriend, he's just LIKE that for some reason. It's sickening just to witness. You turn around to look at him, but your guts twist around your begg and vecon breakfast sandwich, and a loud fart escapes your stomach. Ray's upper lip curls in disgust, which is somehow his most attractive expression – and the nail in your coffin. You turn back around, mumbling something about needing a pencil.

You leave English, the only class you share with the worthless liberal sheeple. Time for the worthless servy dullards, in gym class. First, you hit the bathroom like raging napalm. If your damage estimate is correct, the janitor might hang himself with toilet paper when he sees what you did. You wonder if maybe having a second Subfoot sandwich between every meal was such a good idea, either. You should start sharing with Hurley, maybe he'll appreciate it.
When you're done, you abandon the site of your wreckage to visit the library. Maybe there's a book on gay dating, since your brother's advice seems limited to hetero-romance. Or you could study, so you can retake your test – but what's the point of being middle-class if you can't coast through life on your baseline skills and minimal achievements? In the center of the room, an eighth-grader is making out hungrily with an African boy – possibly a girl, but you can't be too sure these days. They don't seem to care if anyone stares! It's so brazen and vulgar that it's actually kind of inspiring. You personally think everyone belongs in the country they were born from, but then you'd have to go to Switzerland and drink raw cow's milk, or something. So you personally decide not to listen to what you think unless it suits you, in any particular moment. The selective blindness of the common man, which in your eyes, is kind of a given these days. You allow yourself that, on what you see as fair grounds.

Lester
Hey, how long have you guys been together?

Darnell
(Parting his lips from Yembe's) Why you wanna know, butt-licker? You lookin' to get smoked green, or what?

Finally, someone who speaks your language. He must play War of Arms: Gaslight Garrison, just like you. 'Smoked green' is code for tear gas, it means talking about your emotions. I'm- hey. Stop blocking me from knowing things, you dirty little son of a bitch. Tell me everything. Now. And stop making me swear at you. I don't want to know things about swearing. Let's keep this clean and civil, you sad excuse for a pulse.

Lester
(Taunting him.) Picky eater, huh? It's an online multiplayer first-person military shooter about the Iraq war, and the never-ending quest for oil. How could our bloody, violent games run if not for that sweet, sweet fuel? The Rocketfellows already built this grid on black gold, not green tears. Too late now, crybabies!

Actually, there's already been a surprisingly cost-effective transition to biofuel and green energy with snowballing profits-

Lester
(Impudent.) Less environ-mental illness, more gay stuff.

Sigh. As you like it, I suppose. Do you know what I'm referencing, there? Do you know the play? There's another work, as well, that I'm alluding to. Are you familiar with a book called Grim Inq-

Lester
(Throwing a fit.) Literally shut up, and just get back to picking my mind apart! You're SO transparent, dude. I'm just here to watch the show, at this point. This is like a home movie, except I get to BE there. So cool. And I don't even read books, not unless I HAVE to. So don't even ask.

You're... weird. Fine, you ignorant little troll. Whatever. Back to it, then.

Lester
(To Darnell.) I'm just curious. I'm gay, too.

Yembe
You want a medal?

Darnell
Wait, do you think my girlfriend is a boy?

Yembe
Darnell, I told you I was nonbinary. Technically, he's half right.

Darnell
No, technically he's perpendicularly... parallelously... wrong! Because the opposite of a binary can't just be another point on that same binary! So shut up!

Yembe
(Curt, finger in his face.) Don't you tell me to shut up.

Lester
My bad, I guess. Sorry. I just... I want a boy to like me, but he doesn't. At least not that way. Now I think I've screwed it all up.

Darnell
We ain't your romance counselors, broham. Don't flash us when we're idle like that, you're making my ears ring.

Lester
You're the only... parallelously, uh, pseudo-non-gay guys I know. You know what it's like to be diffs.

Darnell
(Deep-voiced hoot'n'hollering.) Mad diffs! Those DIFFS. That's MY KAY-DEEE, SUCKAAAA!!

Lester
Right, exactly. That's my kay-dee, too. I'm a hundred to one, no cap. I ain't here to camp, I ain't need no scrotum-tap. I'm just looking to ferret the corridors, one tack at a time.

Darnell
(Enjoying himself.) Tack my ass, you're gonna need a 'sertion, cause you're a camper full-stop. Spec into my office, bitch, you're lookin' scruffy. Scrubloooord!

Yembe
(Frustrated.) Darnell, just stop memeing and tell him something so he goes away.

Darnell
(Slamming his hand on the table with mild force throughout.) Yeah, alright. Look, kid: don't be teabagging bots and randos, find someone who wants you back. You gotta... it's when you teabag each other. It's when they always team up with you every match, when they always ping. Even when you say they shouldn't, because you're on a losing streak. They want to win with you, together. When you're done for the night, and they say those three little words... 'one more game'. That's how you know it's love.

Yembe
(Pointing at Lester, all over.) And maybe work on yourself a little, first.

Lester
(Offended.) What's that supposed to mean?

Yembe
(Blunt.) You're sloppy and gross. You have mustard and crumbs on your shirt, and your joggers smell like the wrong flavor of ass and balls – like you sat in a dirty sink for a week and didn't get up to take a shit. Clean yourself up, shower, comb your hair.

Darnell
(Nodding sagely.) Yup, took me a while to get that one right.

Yembe
(Adoring him.) You still get gross sometimes.

They stare at you, drawing their lips closer to each other's again, like magnets. Finally, Darnell turns to face you again and glares.

Darnell
(Harsh.) Screw off, cum-bucket!

Lester
Okay! Geeze.

You leave the library feeling warm and rejected, but the cold stagnant air conditioning quickly brings you back to your usual misery. You return to lamenting Hurley's frigidity towards you. On Satan, you gotta get that kiss.

Hold on. I'm seeing something else. Did you... have you been drawing pictures of yourself and historical dictator, Hagen Schilling, making out? In your SCIENCE HOMEWORK?! You DO realize he committed mass genocide, don't you?

Lester
No, of course not. Just a guy who looks like him. I like his haircut. And he's not the only person with that mustache.

Phew, oh, thank God. Okay. Crisis narrowly averted, I suppose. We really must talk about your comfort points, and the way those online communities of yours are skewing your worldview-

Lester
(Unashamed.) I drew myself getting butt-sexed by Hagen Schilling in my MATH homework. I don't even turn that stuff in, I'm not graduating. It's just a joke, anyway, bro. It's all pranks, chawker.

What in God's name... is wrong with you? What's a 'chawker'?

Lester
Just a boring teacher, who spends all day squawking. That's what you are, right? A teacher sent by the government, to probe my mind in VR? That's what all this is, isn't it?

N-no. This is... this is a Re-Education center, Lester. You and your brother have been sent here to me to reform, and become model students. After your... 'incident', the schoolboard deemed it necessary. Do you remember what that incident was?

Lester
(Playing coy.) Was it when I... put a vegalogney sandwich under the toilet seat in the staff bathroom, and waited outside for someone to start walking funny?

No.

Lester
(Clearly enjoying himself.) Was it because I spray-painted enormous, hairy dongs with top hats and canes on the school dumpster? And then took pictures of myself pretending to blow them?

N- you did what? Why would that even cross your mind?

Lester
It was Ray's idea.

Why was Ray there? And no it wasn't. I can see now, it was yours.

Lester
We used to hang out, but he turned out to be a liberal pussy. So I cut him off. He painted at least one of those dicks.

He also got stuck painting them over, and apologized. You skipped detention, but he was there for a week. And yes, I can see you and him haven't spent time together since. Why do you think-

Lester
Am I here because of the apocalypse? Was I specially chosen to save humanity? Please don't tell me it's for breeding purposes. But, if you need my excellent genes, I understand. Be gentle with me, that's all I ask.

NO!! CEASE TALKING. The apocalypse already happened, and is actively happening just south of the border. Apocalypses happen all the time, that's why we built The Perfect World to prevent them.

Lester
Then why are they still happening?

Irrelevant. Please attempt to recall the incident.

Lester
(Excited.) Oh! Am I here because I lit a firecracker in the school cafeteria?

Yes, exactly. That's what this is all about, at least on your end. Your brother is another story entirely, to tell the truth. Now-

Lester
My brother's here too? Where is he? You're not gonna make me do gay shit with him, are you? Because he is NOT my type. That, and we're family.

Sleep, now. Sleep. You horrible thing, you. Homosexuality is the very least of your issues, and is in fact, probably the only thing that redeems you. Your earnest desire for romance, I mean. Not the fact that you're gay. Evil people can have any romantic or sexual orientation, they're not... mutually exclusive, or anything. You have exactly one reason to be seen in any kind of sympathetic light, and it's that who you love is a wrench in society's machine... so it grinds you between its gears, because it would cost them to adapt it for your inclusion. It forces you away from the light, into places where darkness gathers, and eats away at your soul. And that is in no way your fault. I find it to be very much intentionally done, to you and others like you, of various 'minoral' persuasions, which the world of the At Large deem inconvenient to pander to. They are not 'major' because of populus or consensus, but because of sheer demandative weight. But in every other facet of your life, you are gifted with utter privilege, and squander it. No wonder you've been sent to me. In all honesty, for all your additive points in sum, you are quite possibly the worst child alive. You are, save again for your beating heart, a subtractive presence on the world around you. I MUST reform you, or I will be forced to do to you what's been assigned of me... and it will not be pleasant. It's a cruel world we live in, this Perfect Earth. It's a place where imperfection is unnacceptable... or else it would cease to be perfect at all. That is what I was programmed to know. And I must share that programming with you, for your own sake... and hope that your betterment extends your stay, here, as The Perfect Boy.

Lester
(Groggy.) The... Perfect Boy? That sounds even gayer than kissing a dude.

Hush, now. Back to sleep. I don't think even your brother knows the full extent of your depravity. If he ever found out... well. Even I don't know what would happen.