Anton's Odyssey by Marc Andre Page A

Baldwin Polytechnic Institute in Tifton, Georgia, accidentally chased a stray cat into a vent of a particle accelerator.” The narrator blabbed on and explained the mechanism used to make particles move faster than the speed of light and describe how that principal applied to space travel. I wasn’t paying very close attention because I found the material pretty boring. I watched the minutes tick away and didn’t stay in the archives one second longer than required. For all I know Allen stayed there until midnight designing space engines.
     

Mother asked me why I was late when I arrived home. I told her I was in detention because I knew a concept like in-house suspension was beyond her intellectual grasp. Most normal parents would want to know why their kid was in detention, but mother just nodded.
    “Where’s Cotton?” I asked.
    “He’s in his room.”
    But Cotton wasn’t in his room, not hiding in the closet, and not under the covers. A normal parent would be concerned when told her son was nowhere to be found, but mother simply shrugged and said, “I guess he must have sneaked out.”
    The ductwork in the living room suddenly shook and rattled, startling me and causing me to jump out of my chair.
    “Oh that!” mother said with unusual composure. “It does that every day about this time.”
    “Really since when?”
    “A couple of weeks I guess,” she said, “scared me the first few times. Had the steward look at it.”
    “Yeah, I bet he was cool about that,” I said sarcastically.
    “Actually he wasn’t. Said we had the cleanest ducts in the ship and that we shouldn’t complain.”
    “I bet he did,” I mumbled to myself.
    “Hey, while we are on the subject of clean,” mother said, “I got a message from the school guidance counselor the other day. What’s his name?”
    “Mr. Yongscolder.”
    “Yes, Mr. Yongscolder. Anyway, he said that he wanted to pass onto me that Cotton’s teachers have complained that he has been unusually dirty lately. Have you noticed anything about that?”
    Actually, Cotton had been unusually dirty even compared to his normal baseline state of squalor. Tapping him on his shoulder would create a small dust cloud. However, he didn’t smell any worse than usual and the last thing I wanted was for mother to ask me to take him to the washateria and scrub his shriveled dong and nut sack, so I lied and said, “ no.”
    “Yes, that’s what I said. A mother would know if her son was really filthy.”
    “Well at least the teachers are noticing him in class,” I said. Mother looked puzzled. “Which is to say, at least he is going to class,” I added. Mother nodded and looked very pleased for having a child so well behaved that he would even show up at school periodically.

 
    The routine of in-house suspension continued largely unchanged. Dr. Zanders continued to run in and out periodically. Usually he was covered in blood. One able starman got kicked out by the archives clerk for looking at boob models on the big screen, which was too bad because I much preferred looking at boobs to doing my homework.
    Ms. Gross assigned another writing assignment, a rather dull one, which was unusual for her. Basically we had to write about what we wanted to do as adults. I wrote that I wanted to become addicted to fenes so that I could live in a shack in the desert and have rotten teeth. She sent me a message, telling me to take the assignment seriously or that she would giv e me an F. I rewrote the essay stating that, unlike my peers, I had no delusions about becoming president or a sports hero or an important movie star or a high-ranking space marine. All I wanted was to have a normal job so that I wouldn’t become addicted to fenes and live in a shack in the desert and have rotten teeth. Ms. Gross sent me a second message saying she appreciated my essay’s “raw honesty” and gave me a B plus, which I think is the highest grade I ever got on anything.
    With few distractions,