Flash Virus: Episode One (3 page)

“How’d they do that?” I asked.
 

“Maybe it was CGI,” Jemmy suggested. “Or Photoshop or something like that.”
 

“We’re not watching a movie and this isn’t the internet,” I pointed out. “This is freaking real life.”
 

“Children,” Principal Feltspur called out. “Children!”
 

Now let me tell you - there is nothing that a sixteen year old boy hates more in this world then to be called a “children”. It’s demeaning. We’re people – real people – and there isn’t anything CGI or Photoshop about us and you adults really got to get over yourselves and stop referring to us as kids, students or even teenagers.
 

We’re people – just the same as you.
 

Or at least then we were.
 

“These two gentlemen,” Principal Feltspur said. “Are representatives of the mumble-mumble corporation.”
 

That’s just how he said it. I was watching and I saw his mouth move when he said what was supposed to be the name of the company that these two black suits represented – but his lips moved one way and his mouth the other and all I seemed to hear coming out of them was “mumble-mumble-mumble” give or take a mumble or so.
 

“As part of a nationwide promotion these two mumble-mumble gentlemen,” Principal Feltspur continued. “Have come to our school to give everyone a free sample cell phone.”
 

Right away Jemmy stuck up his hand.
 

“Do we get free cell phone service with that?”
 

I thought it was a pretty good question.
 

So did a lot of the other kids.
 

One of the Black Masks swiveled his gaze directly at Jemmy. It was a little like watching the turret of an armored tank swivel to aim its cannon in our direction.
 

It is a cellular telephone.
 

That was what he said but he actually didn’t say a freaking word.
 

What actually happened were the words sort of projected across the black fish bowl that covered his face. I’m saying that the words “it is a cellular telephone” scrolled over both of their faces – like one of those digital advertising signs that you sometimes see on buildings that tell you what time it is, what temperature it is and that you should buy a certain brand of television set – at least once a day or so.
 

It is absolutely free.
 

The same thing.
 

Those four words – it is absolutely free - scrolled across both of the Black Mask fishbowls.
 

And the weird thing was that I heard those words in my head like they had some sort of a microphone built into my brain cells.
 

It is absolutely free.
 

“Okay,” Jemmy said, shaking his head like he had water in his ears. “So when did I wake up in the middle of The Matrix?”
 

“Did you hear that too?” I asked.
 

Jemmy nodded.
 

“Up here,” he said, pointing to his forehead. “I heard it inside my brain.”
 

Weirder and weirder.
 

A lot of other kids were looking confused and shaking their heads too – so I figure THEY must have heard the Black Masks in their heads as well as me and Jemmy.
 

“I told you that you should have taken the blue pill,” I said. “This whole thing is way too CGI for my liking.”
 

“Me too,” Jemmy said.
 

“It has to be some sort of an advertising gimmick,” I said.
 

“Yup,” Jemmy agreed. “A freaking advertising gimmick”
 

But I guess those Black Masks heard us talking. Or maybe our words flashed inside their fish bowl heads – the same as what they were saying showed up in our heads.
 

It is gimmickless. It is absolutely free. It is a cellular telephone.
 

“Gimmickless?”
 

I didn’t even think that was a real word.
 

“Who cares?” Jemmy said. “They’re going to give us a free cell phone. I can get used to a CGI fishbowl for anything free.”
 

“Nothing is free,” I said. “There’s got to be a catch.”
 

It is absolutely free.
 

I stared at the fish bowl.
 

I couldn’t tell if he – or it - was staring back.
 

It is without catch.
 

It felt as if I were listening to a dictionary unravel, syllable by syllable. It was like those two Black Masks were pulling words out of the Manual of Modern English and fitting them together in a way that was almost right. What they said kind of made sense – if you squinted – but you could hurt your eyes if you listened to them for too long.
 

Their words just didn’t quite fit together.
 

Almost.
 

It is a cellular telephone.
 

Right.
 

Still, Jemmy had a point.
 

Who in their right mind was going to argue with a free cellphone – fish bowl helmet or not?
 

Not me.
 

So we all lined up – Jemmy and I being careful to stay behind Billy Carver and Lonnie Tarkins and Bigfoot Hansen. I had already received a perfectly good wedgie this morning when I first got to the schoolyard and I knew full well that I would need to use the janitor’s bathroom if I needed to go – on account of Billy and Lonnie and Bigfoot would be waiting for kids like me in the regular boy’s washroom.
 

I just didn’t want to risk any further complications.
 

So we all took one of the cell phones.
 

I guess that’s when it really all got started.
 

The end of the world – and what came next.
 

You just wait and see.
 

It is coming right at you – absolutely catch free.
 

And gimmickless.
 

Now usually when the freaking principal of our freaking high school walks into the room everybody shuts up freaking-fast. It’s not like we’re afraid of him or anything like that. It’s just that we’ve been conditioned, is all.
 

You don’t believe me – just go and look it up on Google. I’m talking conditioning – like Pavlov’s dogs. You remember – those dogs that were trained to drool every time the dinner bell rang?
 

Old Pavlov – he’d ring that bell every time he fed the dogs. After a while it got so that he could ring that bell and those dogs would drool like he was carrying t-bones and pork chops – even if there was nothing on that plate.
 

Of course, what the science books never told you was that sooner or later those drooling dogs were bound to bite old Pavlov in the leg – and maybe work their way up to his ear-bones.
 

That’s how it was for us.
 

We were conditioned.
 

The principal would walk on in and you would shut up.
 

Then the principal would walk on out and you could get back to talking.
 

Sooner or later you figure out the more you shut up the sooner he walks out and the faster you can back to doing what you wanted to do in the first place.
 

See?
 

Conditioning.
 

Only today when Principal Feltspur walked in to our classroom there was about a gazillion red-blue-green cell phones lying on the classroom floor playing “Here Comes Santa Claus” and our state of conditioning fell completely apart.
 

Everyone was talking at the very same time.
 

“You’d think that with all of these freaking cell phones somebody would dial 911,” I said.
 

“Maybe that’s just a little too close to mathematics,” Jemmy replied.
 

“That doesn’t add up to me,” I said.
 

The first thing Principal Feltspur saw was Billy Carver, Susie Diamond and Tommy Puckers standing at the windows, staring at their cell phones like three ugly wildflowers – except for maybe Susie who wasn’t anywhere close to being ugly – all leaning into the sunshine and praying for rain.
 

“Let’s see what he does,” I said to Jemmy.
 

I knew he’d do something. That was the principal’s job. If something was going on that shouldn’t be happening then you could bet that the principal was going to do SOMETHING about it.
 

A riot in the schoolyard?
 

The principal would DO SOMETHING about it.
 

Didn’t do your homework?
 

The principal could DO SOMETHING about that too.
 

Nuclear warfare?
 

Well, he’d probably do something about that as well.
 

The second thing that Principal Feltspur did was to grab Billy Carver’s cell phone from him.
 

Billy Carver went almost boneless, fell on the floor and started to shake like he was having some kind of a seizure. Every nerve in his body was twitching uncontrollably and his face twisted like he had chewed upon the mother of all sour balls. His mouth frothed up and his eyeballs rolled back inside his head and I think he might have been chewing on his tongue.
 

“Oh my god,” Principal Feltspur shouted. “Someone do something.”
 

The problem was when he shouted that he was looking straight at me.
 

Remember what I’d said about conditioning?
 

I was conditioned to do what the principal told me to do.
 

So right away I stepped up and did something.
 

I grabbed Billy Carver’s cell phone from Principal Feltspur’s hand – which was easy on account of he wasn’t holding onto it all that tightly. In fact it looked almost as if he was getting set to drop it on the floor. Maybe he felt that whatever was in that cell phone might get into him. Maybe he just was completely freaked out about seeing one of his students flopping around on the floor like Billy Carver was.  I mean I know that teachers and principals are trained to handle this sort of thing usually – but you have to add in about a kazillion red-blue-green flashing cell phones yodel-smashing “Here Comes Santa Claus”.
 

Given that sort of confusion I guess you couldn’t blame anyone for getting a little freaked out and letting stupid get in their eyes.
 

I knelt down beside Billy and I almost laughed at loud seeing him in the state that he was in.
 

I didn’t really want to see Billy Carver suffer, you understand. It was just sort of peculiarly pleasant – not doing any suffering of my own – and yet still being close enough to Billy Carver to spit on him – which I honestly thought of doing but I didn’t on account of spitting would have been rude – and besides, you never could tell just when Billy Carver might wake up out of what ever had got hold of him and do me some serious bodily injury.
 

Namely, hurt me.
 

I put the cell phone in Billy Carver’s twitching hands.
 

Have you ever seen an octopus grab onto something to eat? The way that it kind of wraps its tentacles around what it is grabbing right before squeezing on tight? That’s just how Billy Carver’s fingers looked to me after I had put the cell phone back into his hand. His fingers kind of closed around the cell phone and like magic Billy’s twitching stopped and he kind of rose up from the floor like there was a rope tied to the top of his head and someone was pulling him straight on up towards the ceiling.
 

He was smiling and he looked all calm – in spite of that little trickle of spittle rolling down his cheek - and he went back to standing beside Susie Diamond and Tommy Puckers and the rest of them – staring calmly at his cell phone and whisper-whisper-whispering without missing a single solitary beat.
 

Next thing you know everybody is looking at me like I’m some kind of a freaking hero – and that is the last thing I want to be. You get to being a hero and pretty soon everybody in the whole world expects you do SOMETHING about ANYTHING that happens to happen.
 

You might as well be a principal.
 

“Don’t look at me,” I said, pointing straight at Principal Feltspur. “It was all HIS idea.”
 

And then I just ducked my head and walked on back to Jemmy, who was staring at the cell phone like it was some weird kind of beetle that he’d found in the schoolyard.
 

“I guess Santa is still coming,” Jemmy said. “They’re definitely playing his song.”
 

“I guess he is,” was all I’d give him. “Maybe he’s figuring on bringing us presents.”
 

“Maybe we could try to take out the cell phone battery,” Jemmy suggested. “I bet you that would stop it.”
 

“It’s worth a try,” I said. “Stomping on it sure doesn’t seem to be helping much.”
 

By now Burt Hertle had started jumping with both feet on that ringing cell phone – which was truly a sight to see. Burt was a little what you’d call glandular – meaning he was sliding into the chunky side of life. His Mom was forever filling up his lunch bag with rice cakes and celery and putting him in yoga class and dance school and on the badminton team in hopes of burning off enough calories to turn him into something that he wasn’t. People are funny that way. Always trying to turn other people into something they never were in the first place.
 

“I can’t get the battery compartment to open,” Jemmy said. “Maybe it’d be safer if we just threw them into the garbage bucket.”