the first person or use vernacular expressions like “piety-freak,” but I was pretty pleased with the grade.
My math homework was pretty easy because the display I was using didn’t override the math processor function of my pocket module.
After lunch, that nerdy guy from homeroom, the kid with the thin neck and thick glasses, sat down at the next table. He brought with him a portable computer, probably the fanciest one I had ever seen. I guessed that it was probably as fast as the super computers in the archives. It must have cost his momma a fortune.
I wasn’t sure what the stick geek kid was doing there because he seemed way too well behaved to be in in-house suspension. The archives clerk kept beaming at him like he was the pride and joy of the ship. I guessed he was doing some sort of independent study program. The clerk called him “Allen,” so I astutely figured out that was his name.
The vid screen on his portable unit was so big that I could easily see what he was up to. Mostly he did school work, advanced science and math that was so advanced there were no numbers, just some kind of foreign lettering. Every now and then he’d take a break and pull up schematics of military gear. I would have preferred boob shots myself, but the guns were pretty cool.
Something very strange happened around 14:30. I finished my all my assignments and had nothing to do. It was the first time in my l ife I had ever been caught up with my schoolwork. Honestly, with nothing else to distract me, the work really wasn’t very difficult. I sent Mr. Yongscolder a message telling him I was done with my work and asked if I could go home. He wrote back to explain that, not only did I have to stay until school was finished, I had to sit there another thirty minutes for even considering going home early when I should be feeling remorse for what I did to Franklin.
With nothing to do, I watched the geeky kid’s vid screen. He was watching some sort of science program. The volume was turned down but I could still hear the narrator. The content must have been pretty basic because even I could follow most of the talking points. I guessed that the geeky kid was watching the show for fun and it wasn’t part of his assignment.
“Ever use the word ‘Einstein’ to mock a friend who goofs something really simple?” the narrator droned. “A long time ago, calling someone an ‘Einstein’ was actually a huge compliment and not an insult at all, which underscores how our understanding of Albert Einstein the scientist has changed so dramatically in the last two hundred years.” The program went on to talk about Einstein’s early years, about how he liked to ride his bicycle, and how he was really into this one girl, and how he had to leave town because these guys were trying to kill him. The geeky kid wasn’t really paying attention though and opened up a program in the lower left hand corner that showed one of those old cowboy guns with the cylinder in the middle that spun around. When the narrator resumed discussions of Einstein’s scientific achievements, which seemed a lot less interesting to me than stories about goons trashing his house and running off with his violin, the geeky kid turned off the program about cowboy guns and started paying attention again.
“Building on the work of Planck and Maxwell, Einstein developed his Theory of Special Relativity,” the narrator explained. “Seemingly sophisticated at first, relativistic physics fundamentally constrained modern thought for over a century. The idea that no particle could accelerate faster than the speed of light and that time itself had no fixed reference made long distance space travel seem futile. Programs to send astronauts beyond the near reaches of our solar system were ridiculed by the scientific community and were never funded by governments. The major flaw in Einstein’s work was not discovered until the mid-twenty-second century when a young student at Abraham
My math homework was pretty easy because the display I was using didn’t override the math processor function of my pocket module.
After lunch, that nerdy guy from homeroom, the kid with the thin neck and thick glasses, sat down at the next table. He brought with him a portable computer, probably the fanciest one I had ever seen. I guessed that it was probably as fast as the super computers in the archives. It must have cost his momma a fortune.
I wasn’t sure what the stick geek kid was doing there because he seemed way too well behaved to be in in-house suspension. The archives clerk kept beaming at him like he was the pride and joy of the ship. I guessed he was doing some sort of independent study program. The clerk called him “Allen,” so I astutely figured out that was his name.
The vid screen on his portable unit was so big that I could easily see what he was up to. Mostly he did school work, advanced science and math that was so advanced there were no numbers, just some kind of foreign lettering. Every now and then he’d take a break and pull up schematics of military gear. I would have preferred boob shots myself, but the guns were pretty cool.
Something very strange happened around 14:30. I finished my all my assignments and had nothing to do. It was the first time in my l ife I had ever been caught up with my schoolwork. Honestly, with nothing else to distract me, the work really wasn’t very difficult. I sent Mr. Yongscolder a message telling him I was done with my work and asked if I could go home. He wrote back to explain that, not only did I have to stay until school was finished, I had to sit there another thirty minutes for even considering going home early when I should be feeling remorse for what I did to Franklin.
With nothing to do, I watched the geeky kid’s vid screen. He was watching some sort of science program. The volume was turned down but I could still hear the narrator. The content must have been pretty basic because even I could follow most of the talking points. I guessed that the geeky kid was watching the show for fun and it wasn’t part of his assignment.
“Ever use the word ‘Einstein’ to mock a friend who goofs something really simple?” the narrator droned. “A long time ago, calling someone an ‘Einstein’ was actually a huge compliment and not an insult at all, which underscores how our understanding of Albert Einstein the scientist has changed so dramatically in the last two hundred years.” The program went on to talk about Einstein’s early years, about how he liked to ride his bicycle, and how he was really into this one girl, and how he had to leave town because these guys were trying to kill him. The geeky kid wasn’t really paying attention though and opened up a program in the lower left hand corner that showed one of those old cowboy guns with the cylinder in the middle that spun around. When the narrator resumed discussions of Einstein’s scientific achievements, which seemed a lot less interesting to me than stories about goons trashing his house and running off with his violin, the geeky kid turned off the program about cowboy guns and started paying attention again.
“Building on the work of Planck and Maxwell, Einstein developed his Theory of Special Relativity,” the narrator explained. “Seemingly sophisticated at first, relativistic physics fundamentally constrained modern thought for over a century. The idea that no particle could accelerate faster than the speed of light and that time itself had no fixed reference made long distance space travel seem futile. Programs to send astronauts beyond the near reaches of our solar system were ridiculed by the scientific community and were never funded by governments. The major flaw in Einstein’s work was not discovered until the mid-twenty-second century when a young student at Abraham
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