Stormfuhrer by E. R. Everett Read Free Book Online

private realm for each player, but the grant money had been maxed out by the units themselves—and by the ridiculous, overpriced software that he would only use per se .   Instead, he came up with the idea of covering the units with refrigerator boxes.  Within a few weeks, he had access to dozens of the largest size, discarded from various retailers across the Valley.  His old Subaru truck would only carry a few at a time, but gradually all 24 units were covered.
     
    Farash had dropped in during Preparation Week, the workweek before students returned, the time when mandatory in-services could be gotten out of the way, when teachers put up their class rules and decorated their doors and walls and bulletin boards with catchy slogans like “Launching off with LEARNING!” picture of rocket ship included, and a smiling moon, on which stood a little passe schoolhouse with the bell, a tiny teacher waving from its doorway.  Farash wanted to prepare his own wall with a time-line that ran from one side of the door, starting with the Sumerians, all the way around the room to the other side of the door, ending with the fall of the Berlin Wall.  He would create and post the pictures and the events himself.
    When he walked into Mr. Hayes’ classroom, the middle-aged instructor was at the opposite end of the room near his desk, cleaning out the contents of several filing cabinets, tossing out stacks of manilla folders bulging with copies of assignments.  Large refrigerator boxes, monoliths of unequal heights, stood in rows like a memorial he had once seen in Europe.   Hayes saw him, smiled, kept working.  “How goes it my Indian friend and fellow educator?  Ready for a new year?”
    “It goes well, thanks for asking, Richard.  Just cleaning out a few things.  I see you’ve been busy.”
    “ I got the computer grant.”
    “ Exceptional!  Where are the computers?”
    “ In the boxes.”
    “ They’re very big.”
    “ The computers are embedded in their own desks.”
    Hayes explained, as he would to others, that full implementation of the Aris MindMage software required total concentration on the part of the student.  The more focused the student, the higher the StatSat scores would be.  The boxes weren’t hermetically sealed, so there was no safety hazard.  In fact, each one had a curtain of black felt that hung just inside the mouse hole-shaped entrance.  The student would approach the box from the left side and easily sit before the “7”-shaped mail-drop module with room to spare on either side. 
    Still standing at the classroom door on the side of the room opposite Hayes, Farash was intrigued with the setup, so intrigued that he did not catch the part about students actually working inside the boxes.  Rather, he simply thought the boxes were the containers in which the computers and desks arrived.  He thought their sizes a bit large to justify their probable contents, but this wasn’t the first time he was confronted with the over-packaging of American products, always boxed to make the contents look like more than what they actually were.
     
    It was a month into the school year before Farash made his first visit to Hayes’ classroom for a round of occupational therapy.  It was mid-morning and some students had been sleeping through one of his lectures.  He'd had enough.  He looked through Hayes’ narrow window and saw . . . nothing.  There was no light on in the room.  Perhaps Hayes was absent.  No, Farash had seen him earlier in the day, coming back from the faculty restroom on the upper floor, swinging his large, stained coffee mug.
    Farash tapped on the window and waited. 
    No response. 
    He tried the handle. 
    Locked.
    Farash went back to his room, pretending that all was normal.  At the bell, Farash rushed into the hall to see if Hayes would appear at his door.  Hayes was at his open door and students were filing out.  The fluorescent bulbs in the ceiling above the classroom were