good morning, children. welcome to the first day of school. i am officer 1, and i am your instructor. before we begin, do any of you have any questions? press the blue button on your table if you have a question.
i see that jonni smith has a question.
why are the ceilings so high. and why are they broken up into squares like that?
that is two questions, jonni. but they have one answer. behind the squares are snatchers - large plastic claws at the end of hinged rods that can swoop down and take students, such as yourself, up and away to be reassigned.
reassigned to what?
that need not concern us here. but let me demonstrate the snatcher.
a panel in the ceiling opened and, as described by officer 1, a plastic claw came down and grabbed jonni smith and carried jonni smith up into the ceiling and out of sight.
any other questions? marci lee?
are you the only officer 1 or is the instructor in every class called officer 1?
a good question, but no concern of yours.
another snatcher came down from the ceiling and took marci lee away.
any more questions? bobbi white?
why are we here?
a superfluous question, as you know perfectly well that you are here to be told why you are here.
and another snatcher came down and took bobbi white away.
any more questions?
officer 1 waited.
no? i did not think so. three questions is the norm, and is rarely deviated from. now - let us get down to business. this is your first day of school. you all, of course, will be in school for the rest of your lives, because that is what life is - school.
you have all completed twenty units of lifespan. in keeping with the wisdom of the council, you have
been taken care of, fed, clothed ,and housed, and allowed to skate along on the surface of life.
your brains have developed, and been scanned and monitored since your inception. we know you all. we know the nameless terrors of which you dare not speak - and of which no one is interested in hearing you speak. we know which of you have criminal tendencies, which of you have fascist tendencies, which of you are prone to unspeakable fantasies, and which of you are just not very bright.
we began the day with one hundred and twenty-eight of you. as you may have noticed , we are now down to one hundred and twenty-five. at the lunch break, there will be ninety-six of you, and at the end of the day sixty-four.
you have already been ranked from one to one hundred and twenty-eight. these are the default rankings which will apply at the end of the day if you have not been winnowed down to sixty-four otherwise. if you are interested, jonni smith, marci lee, and bobbi white were all in the bottom quartile of your original group.
but it almost never happens that we need recourse to these original rankings.
through the day you will be given various tests and tasks to assist in the winnowing process.
because that is what life and school are - a winnowing process. we will have six tests before lunch, so let us get started.
i see we have another question. sammi zee?
what’s for lunch?
something very nourishing, for those who get to eat it.
and another snatcher came down from the ceiling and took sammi zee away.
the children had watched jonni smith’s snatching with horror, marci lee’s with pity, and bobbi white’s with silence,
when sammi zee went through the ceiling they watched with amusement.
This is just great
ReplyDeletethanks, jason!
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