'Laziness
should be worse of a sin,' thought Jake. It was true. Here, he
sat watching with glazed
eyes the plan that ultimately will save the
world. He missed important lectures on battleship speeds,
weapon
ranges, and tactics against a higher numbered enemy. Even if the
needlessly complex
diagrams suddenly turned into pinup girls, Jake
doubted if he would wake up for it. Instead of
venturing too deep
into this thought, Jake fell deeper into his stupor, not aided
by his uncomfortably
warm clothing, which fit his body tightly as if
it were a wet suit. The monotonous teacher's voice
became a
lullaby. "Now, the SSG-21 represents the standard ship you will be
using. Although
outdated, its 22 phaser cannons gives it an
unmatched arsenal…" Jake's eyelids drooped, opened,
drooped
again, and finally fell completely. He tried to pry them open with
his will, but his eyes might
as well have been vacuum-sealed. Jake
couldn't believe his military-discipline teacher didn't notice.
Usually he would notice a smudge on Jake's shirt from fifty feet
away. Jake put his elbow on his
empty, entertainment less desk and
used his fingers to pry open his eyes. His eyes complained: they
could only take so much seeing without resorting to absolute
blackness once in a while. The brain of
Jake needed something,
anything, to try and drag its thought process away from 'sleep.'
The girl
sitting besides him raised her hand. 'HURRAY!!' Now
every fiber of his mind was fixed on this
fourteenish teenager. It
wasn't a good distraction, but it was enough to finally awake Jake.
She had on
the same wet-suit like clothing that Jake wore. It
didn't take a genius to figure out that the seven year
old to his
right would be wearing the same stuff. Jake was not a big fan of
conformity, and this show
of the finest in military fashion did not
aid the counterargument. "Why do we need to learn about the
SSG-21? No nation in its right mind would take that as its main
ship. Nobody has even made that in
forty years!" Jake could have
groaned out loud, but didn't. He was too tired. He realized that
she was
as dry as the teacher, as goal oriented as a guy using a
public urinal (author's note: find me a guy who does NOT pay
attention to the business when using a urinal, and I'll show ya
he's pissing his pants). Jake moved his eyes towards the teacher,
not caring one way or the other in his answer. The dry teacher's
answer made Jake glad he didn't place faith. "Because that's
what you're using. Now the SSG-21 has accelerated photon engines,
which can get a normal cruise speed of about 80 knots…" Jake
realized that the board the teacher pointed at no longer had the
schematics of the SSG-21. Instead, in big marker writing, he had
written 'American Literature.' The words were all spiky, not at
all in his usual 36-font Times New Roman handwriting. Jake was
slightly confused. A lightbulb went on in his head. Somewhere,
someone made a convenient 'ding' to go along with it. He
whispered, "This looks a lot like Ender's Game.' The
girl next to him stared. She said, "Of course it's all Ender.
We're all pawns to his battle against the buggers. Have you ever
doubted it?" This raised an alarm in Jake's mind, mostly because
he did not exist in a science fiction novel set hundreds of years in
the future. He put his arm down, and realized that his desk was not
empty, after all. There was a book on it. He picked it up. It was
a copy of Ender's Game. A quick glance told him that the
girl next to him wore a t-shirt and jeans. The only thing
consolidating him was that the jeans appeared tight enough to be a
wet-suit. Another glance told him that the teacher, still dry and
monotonous as ever, was staring right at him. It made sense that
he'd been just asked a question. "Well, Jake? What is Orson
Scott Card trying to show us with his representation of battle
school?" Jake put down his book, realizing that by picking it up
in the first place, he must have looked as if he was trying to hide.
"The battle school is Mr. Card's representation of schools during
Vietnam, where students were recruited right out of high school at a
younger and younger age." Of course, that didn't come out his
mouth. He thought he said it, while all the time he sat
close-mouthed. Jake thought a lot of things, many totally separate
from any sort of reality, and usually took the form of the general
topic at the time. It didn't help when that daydream collided with
reality.
If it is any surprise that Jake received detention, then you must not have read any of the above. He was to return promptly after school to sit on a desk and take a lesson in sensory deprivation for 45 minutes. It was perfectly well for Jake. Anyone with an imagination can just breeze that time by. Unfortunately, due to the collective effects of television and social studies every single teenager in the United States has no imagination. None. Nada. Zip. Cos90. Number of politicians not currently sucking on the banana shake of capitalism. Number of mistakes the government admits to making in the past, present, future. And for the less astute of you, the chances that you'll ever use the word 'animadversion' in a conversation not having to do with words you can't pronounce. Because of a lack of imagination, the 45 minutes of detention stretched itself out. The detentionee has to spend it without any sort of entertainment or general stimuli to the part of the brain responsible for 'rap songs about to be obsolete in a month,' or 'epilepsy inducing sitcoms.' Jake alone knew this, because he thought like the teacher. There was no need, he discerned, of whippings and punishment anymore. Simply plopping a student in a brightly lit room becomes the corporal punishment of the 21th century. Without bright flashing lights or breakable rules to not follow, the student (the sole exception being Jake) will end up eating his or her own appendages in an hour in a desperate attempt to reduce the boredom.
The reader might find it surprising the Jake followed the exact same train of thought as the author as he wrote that particular passage. Jake didn't. This was his thoughts after all. He was too busy thinking of the idea to match the brilliant 'arm-eating' thought. Then he heard the words that every thought-provoked kid fears to hear. "Time to go, Jake." Jake wasn't ready to go. He had planned a vast expedition with Robinson Crusoe. They were to gather turtle eggs and fry them by the shore. Jake would have helped chop down a tree to make into a raft three years in the future. He was suppose to fight off the dozens of cannibals as they swarmed the land. Instead he was hustled out of the class by a teacher more than ready to leave. So Jake plunged once again into the 'real world,' as every educator liked to call it. Jake hated the real world. The real world had a purpose to it: a goal that everyone worked towards but never quite reached. There was no time for imagination in the real world. He was too busy with homework. In the past he was too busy with trying to catch 'Sesame Street.' In twenty years or so he will be too busy with a veritable mountain of tax papers. He would work towards the goal, and it was just incredibly pathetic that no one could even be sure what that was. Jake turned left and right. He was in hallway C. He frequently turned this particular hallway into a giant subterranean cavern. Jake liked to shout thoughts in his mind and hear the echos. Among the sea of blue lockers (sometimes a literal sea in Jake's mind) seven people were making out (you do the math). Another half dozen were doing homework. Jake tried to turn them into garden gnomes. It failed. One person seemed to get smaller and sprout a beard, but that could have been his imagination. Wait. So it didn't fail. Satisfied his imagination was safe from the real world, stinking of pollution/hormones/home cooked meals, Jake began the march home. He encountered three German bunkers armed with machine gun nests in the way.