Paolo's Whole Story

I don't know why I got into this thing about school. Maybe it was the warm weather. Maybe it was because there is so much time between spring break and the end of the school year. Maybe it was hormones. I just couldn't concentrate. On anything. Not for long, anyway. Miss Blanche (who is brown, not white) and I had "talks" about it. Miss Melissa (I love saying that ) would tell me just to get over it. Mr. Stuart kept giving me harder work, thinking I was bored. It was so hardI was clueless which made me hate the class even more. Miss Hee Hee (the Indian girls gave her
that name because that's how she laughs and she is always laughing whether it's funny or not) was doing utopias in her class. So she said-"Fine, you don't like school the way it is-make designing a better way into your utopia project. Hee hee." Everytime I goofed off in her class, she would remind me about coming up with a better way to learn. And then go hee or haw or something in a kind of mischievous way. I wished I'd never opened up my big mouth. I kept procrastinating and
delaying and not starting until it was the day before the utopia project was due and I was feeling more and more like I was in a dystopia. And then it happened. The drip. 

Sometime during my daydreaming in class I'd noticed that the ceiling wall was discolored. But on the way out of class, Miss Helen (her real name) asked me to stay behind I was worried she was going to ask me about my project but that wasn't it. She pointed to the tile. It was dripping water pretty fast. 

"You're tall, Paoulo-can you stand on a chair and reach that drip-let's see what's going on if we take the tile off." 

I was happy to do something physical-maybe it was sitting around all the time that was getting to me. So I got on the chair. Stretched out my arm. Popped the tile and whoosh I was gone. 

I was in someone else's mind. I guess I was in her body too. I'm still not too sure how it works. I know it was a she because she was writing in her diary and when she closed it said her name "Margie Jones" But here's the weird thing, as if being in somebody else's brain wasn't weird enough. She started her entry with a date and the date was-2155. Man, I'd be dead by then, I thought. Way dead, since I was born in 1984. 

I could read what she was writing just like she could I guess. But I could also think what she was thinking-I could read her mind. What she wrote was "Today Tommy found a real book." That's all she wrote. Her thoughts were hard to keep track of. They came in a big rush. What I could sort of pull together and remember later went something like this. It's not so much the way she thought but the way I remembered her thinking:

Then it was whoosh and I suddenly found myself on my rear end in a place I didn't recognize at first. There were shelves on either side. Shelves of books. So I knew at least it wasn't 2155 any more. I was sitting on a carpet. It smelled a little dusty or musty in a vaguely familiar way. I got up and walked to the end of the shelves and there I was in the school library where I never go except when some teacher drags us there. I was dazed and confused all right but not like the movie. More like some other movie, a science fiction one. I went straight to the basement to Miss Helen's
room but it was dark and locked. I looked at the clock in the hallway. Dang! I was five minutes late to my next class. I didn't even try to explain to Miss Blanche what had happened. She would be all sympathetic and understanding and then go call the guys in the white coats. 

The next day I came to school really, really early. I went down to the basement and no one was anywhere near the class yet. The door was still locked but a fonecard did the trick. The tile was back in place. It still had a big brown spot on it and it was moist although I didn't notice any water on the desk underneath it. I climbed up on the chair, pushed back the tile and yesssss. 

It was still Margie with the eleven year old boobs. I knew that somehow even before I looked down and saw them. Not bad for just eleven. I was back in her brain. And she was in her bedroom taking off her blouse-what great luck-and putting on something lighter. It was kind of warm. Her bedroom was so pink it looked like pepto bismal. She was moving quickly to another room. It was small-almost like a really big closet There was a big robot with a computer screen for a chest. On the screen were the words "Please insert yesterday's homework in the proper slot." Margie pulled out something that looked like an index card, only light brown, with holes in it.
And she slipped it into a slit in the robot, kind of like you'd insert a diskette. I'd seen something like that card once -oh yah, my grandfather showed it to me. He'd worked for awhile as a keypuncher, I think that's what you call it, in the days when there were big mainframe computers, not PCs or macs. What was she doing with a card like my grandfather used to use in 2155? Well, whatever, the robot told her she'd got everything right. And she thought something like:

I sort of caught an image, not a thought but a picture, of a round little guy with a red face and a lot of tools and dials and wires. He was taking the robot apart and putting it together again and handing someone, Margie I guess, an apple and saying "It's not the little girl's fault, Mrs. Jones." Something about the geography sector being geared too quick and his slowing it up. 

Next thing I knew I was back with the books and the dusty carpet. 

Later in class, Miss Helen looked at me kind of funny, quizzically I guess. Like she knew about the tile but she was waiting for me to tell her what had happened. I had nothing to present for my utopia project which was due that day but luckily it was an oral presentation and there were other people presenting ahead of me. I've got to get back to Margie, I said to myself, so I can come up with a school utopia. 

When I did get back inside her head she was hanging out with her friend Tommy and they were looking at a book-I guess the one she had written about in her diary. "It's about school!" Margie exclaimed. "Why would anyone write about school?" 

In a kind of wiseguy way, kind of condescending like, Tommy told her how school was in the old days -"Centuries ago." He more or less got it right. Margie seemed amazed that human beings could be teachers-like a human couldn't be smart enough to be a teacher. She didn't seem to like that part but she was absolutely thrilled by the idea of kids going to school together. She was thinking "What fun they had!" As if. 

Later, back in the present, I thought about Margie's kind of school. It seemed just as lame as mine. A robot calling the shots wasn't any different than a teacher talking at you or telling you what to do. And even though the robot was right in her home she couldn't use it when she wanted. Her mom told her when to study. 

Which got me thinking about my utopian school. Kids would decide what they wanted to study, what they were curious about. And they could do it whenever they wanted, as long as they did it. They would use the internet, not some dumb robot. 

But what about the fun of being with other kids. Margie was right about that. Who wants to be alone all the time? And wouldn't students come up with better questions and more answers if they worked together? Chat rooms and bulletin boards might be good for that but I like seeing my friends every day. Maybe we could get together in some sort of computer room and do projects together. But then I couldn't start and stop whenever I wanted. Maybe some combination…. 

Well, the good news is I aced my presentation on utopian schools. Miss Helen was grinning like a Cheshire cat. The bad news is the drip was gone, the tile had been replaced and the next time tried my portal to the future absolutely nothing happened. I couldn't get up the courage to tell Miss Helen or anyone else about Margie and 2155-it was just to weird. So I wrote this and e-mailed it to Miss Helen who sent me back this message. 

Nice work, time traveler. Mind if I post this on Nicenet?

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