Unpredictable Worlds: Stories

Magical Realism

Unpredictable Factors in Human Obedience

I was going to the charity dinner because, since I worked for the school, it was free. That’s the sort of charity a teacher really needs. Like most, I didn’t become a teacher for the money. But I didn’t do it because I like children, either. Nor do I believe they are our future—just the opposite.

The only reason I’ve been successful as a teacher is that my ex-fiancé had developed a biological, programmable computer chip and was willing to test it on humans. I asked no questions: I’m no scientist. I put a single, tiny chip into each fortune cookie I passed out on the first day—full attendance, zero distrust—ostensibly as a predictor for the class year. The ones whose tongues touched the exact chip molecule mentioned some bitterness, but most of the thirty fourth-graders crunched happily away.

Children who received no instruction in obedience at home often did not receive a morning meal, either, and weren’t going to complain when presented with any food, much less an innocuous fortune cookie.

The next day, I gave them spinach—mushy, stinky, gross—and said, Eat your spinach, children, in the same way my mother used to tell me to eat disgusting things, that way that set me obstinately against whatever it was. Notwithstanding their looks of dismay, even terror, every last one picked up the plastic fork provided and lifted a bite of green stuff into their mouths.

The chip was a complete success!

Soon the administrative offices were deluged with calls and letters thanking and congratulating Miss Matheson (I wasn’t married yet) for the amazing changes in the behavior of my fourth-graders. Because I was a novice, my teacher assistant had been at the school for many years, and she spread the word far and wide that there was nothing special or even very good about what I was doing in the classroom. I began to feel hounded by the other teachers, who wanted to know why a first year teacher was so effective, and why my students reacted the way they did to questioning.

Cody, we all think it’s wonderful the way you concentrate so much better now that you’re in Miss Matheson’s class. Can you tell us what you like about Miss Matheson?

Cody looked at the floor and replied quite honestly, Nothin’.

With furrowed brow, the concerned counselor pressed on. What’s your favorite thing about Miss Matheson’s class?

Nothin’.

There was no way to improve the project. The children became perfect whether they wanted to or not, and couldn’t complain because they didn’t realize what was happening. The chip couldn’t be found with a metal detector or any routine medical exam. Even if they had known or objected, all I would have had to do was instruct them not to complain or tell. It’s amazing how far a little obedience will get you.

Because I told them to, the children, all thirty of them, got serious about their schoolwork, and soon I was able to introduce some fifth grade material. I had the brightest ones using sixth grade reading books, which were easy enough to obtain from the sixth grade classrooms, in exchange for our fourth grade books, which were about all those kids could handle.

At that point the seasoned, long-credentialed teachers began to throw up their hands in despair. Obedient and well behaved was enough of a mystery, but reading above grade level and doing physics experiments instead of hundreds of addition and subtraction problems! They began to come to me, humble and subdued, no longer asking questions, only pleading.

I wanted to help them. It wasn’t fair that only thirty children a year could be perfect. I wanted to offer to visit their classrooms, bearing sandwiches, but I needed more biochips. So I called my ex-fiancé, way out in Silicon Valley.

Hey, Joseph, thanks for those experimental chips. They really work.

Wow, that’s great! Are there any side effects?

Not that I can see. Does utter perfection count as a side effect?

Wow. He sighed, relieved. I’ve never done a project involving full-term humans before. So many unpredictable factors. I can’t believe it’s going so well. They’re totally obedient?

Yes, and now that I’ve suggested it, they don’t even look like they’d rather resist. And that’s why I’ve called. The other teachers are really envious and I’d like to help them. Can you send me about a thousand more chips?

A thousand? Wait a minute. Do you mean to say you’ve used all thirty chips already?

Sure. Wasn’t I supposed to?

I just can’t believe you got permission for that many...

I was glad he couldn’t see me. I must’ve been vermillion with embarrassment and guilt.

Oh yeah, it was no big deal, I stammered.

Really? Thirty sets of parents and guardians gave you permission to change the brain chemistry of their children?

Well, I didn’t put it exactly like that.

How else would you explain that when the chip enters the bloodstream, it begins to multiply and perform computations on every cell in their brains?

Oh, you know. They’re not as sophisticated as you and me. I just kind of summarized.

I never imagined parents could be that lax.

Parenting today is really different than when we were kids, huh. But that was the other thing I wanted to ask you. I don’t think I can get a thousand permissions. I mean, that’s a bit much. Is there a way to make the chip flush out of their systems after about a year? Or perhaps be more specifically targeted at certain childhood problems? Maybe then it would be more inviting.

We’re developing a temporary chip now, he said automatically, distracted by the science. If we knew we had a test group, we might be able to have it within a year or two.

Well, keep me updated. Send it as soon as you’ve got it.

His enthusiasm for discovery had won him over for me, fortunately. After I hung up, I took my troubled mind with the rest of me to the closet and pulled out the box I’d saved from the first package of biochips. Under a mass of packing peanuts was what I can only call a manuscript, which I’d completely disregarded. Of course, it explained in detail the process Joseph mentioned and included permission forms for the parents and outlines of the sort of reports I was to make with the data and send back to the lab. I almost felt like I was back in school again, and the problem frustrated me. I couldn’t recall anything being so complicated when I was an adolescent or a college student. I couldn’t get used to being a real adult.

Things just weren’t simple anymore.

On the one hand, I’d already changed thirty children and the course of their lives forever, without consulting them or getting to know them, and there was no way to give them back the choice I’d already made. Would they ever think of becoming great artists or scientists if I happened to forget to suggest it? On the other hand, they tested really well, and in June I received several different awards as well as a small raise and a grant to design a school-wide improvement program at all grade levels. My picture was in the paper and I was interviewed for Channel 5. My husband, Claude, was the cameraman. We wouldn’t have found each other anywhere else, so I had to conclude that the whole experiment was meant to be. Maybe I sold my soul in order to find my soul mate. A bit of an O. Henry, but well worth it. My soul was a lonesome, power-hungry old wretch before Claude. It’s not lonesome anymore.

In the meantime, I had Joseph send a steady stream of prototype chips so that I was well stocked for whatever occasion might arise. My grant-funded improvement program turned out to be a kind of lecture series based on the idea I’d originally had of taking pity on the other teachers. I went to every classroom where I was requested and gave a study skills workshop to a group of children which invariably started out unruly, even restive, but began to show true dedication after the break, during which I would have passed out doctored tortilla chips and various dips.

Of course the difference between before I’d visited the class and after was punctuated and phenomenal: all the teachers remarked on it.

I experimented with the dosage and found that in the older children, sixth grade and up, only one chip didn’t produce the sweeping behavioral changes I was used to seeing in the younger ones. They tended to go begrudgingly about tasks set for them, and the overall attitude remained very antiestablishment. Two chips, however, produced robots even I found unattractive. I moderated my contact with the upper grades and considered the students in the attached middle school a lost cause.

Between observations like that, feigned scatterbrainedhood, and excuses such as preparing for my wedding, I was able to keep the Silicon Valley crowd, always avid for scientific reporting and hundreds of signatures, mildly appeased or at least at bay.

The modified chips arrived beautifully on schedule almost a year after I’d asked for them, just in time for the Christmas festivities. There were a thousand of them in saline solution, which again took up much less space than the accompanying literature.

This time I took a lot of trouble to make sure I’d found all the pages in among the packing materials, and sat down to read right away. I found that my memory of high school chemistry, refreshed by the experiments we conducted in class instead of doing sums, was all I needed to grasp the words among the biochemical symbols and diagrams.

Essentially, the chips could hold sway for six weeks, after which they shut down and were flushed out of the system, leaving it as if they had never been introduced. The uses were endless.

Claude came home at a normal hour because he didn’t have any live broadcast assignments, and found me off guard in the big fluffy chair, the literature stacked methodically around me on the arms and the floor, and saying, Ah! Aha!

Hey there, what’s all this? he said.

I looked up and he seemed to be floating in a cloud of Cs, Hs, Os, and other elements. I thought of the vial of saline solution on the dining table just behind him. My inclination was to answer truthfully and tell him the whole story, in essence, the whole reason we ever met, but when the cloud cleared and I saw his innocent sky-blue eyes, peering at me so naively, I averted my gaze and said, Ah, just some new teaching materials a friend sent me.

We stood in the kitchen making Cuban rice for dinner and after he told me about the interview with the congressman he’d taped that morning, I asked him a question, the importance of which he might never guess.

Were you obedient as a child? We hadn’t had a very long engagement; these sorts of questions were bound to come up sometime.

Not really. I don’t remember caring about anything until after high school. I wish I had been a little more obedient. Then I would’ve gone straight through to college and been a better citizen overall. He stopped stirring and looked at me. Why do you ask?

He pierced me with his blue eyes. My Claude, my perfect Claude, was telling me that he could have been much more perfect. I might be having dinner with the mayor or a Film Studies professor instead of a Channel 5 cameraman. Not that that’s a bad job.

I wonder if the charity dinner is accepting potluck. I have an urge to bring peanut butter crackers tomorrow, I replied. He would never know just how to-the-point my comment was.

I laid out more than fifty saltines on an enormous serving platter dating from my parents’ wedding, peanut-buttered them one by one, and then, when Claude was already at the station for the early morning broadcast, I used an eyedropper to put exactly one chip in the upper right corner of each peanut butter mass. I stuck toothpicks into some of them and laid plastic wrap gingerly over the top, making a tent to ensure nothing would disturb the chips.

In fact, they weren’t taking potluck at the charity dinner, and my elegant platter lay in the dark on the school kitchen’s counter next to stacks of canned beef ravioli, undoubtedly intended for next week’s hot lunch. I suppose to show off the school or perhaps to show how much we needed the charity, they had decorated the multipurpose room simply, with streamers and multicolored paper tablecloths, and there they served the $100-per-plate repast to people in blue jeans and sweatshirts. In attendance were all the town magnates—the city council, the school board, the television stations—precisely the targets of my peanut butter crackers. With powerful adults even temporarily obedient to my authority, well, the improvements would surpass phenomenal! I complained that the food didn’t have enough protein in the hope that I could take the crackers from the kitchen later and calm their growling stomachs.

The principal, stereotypically venerable with his grey hair and elbow patch jacket, got up to speak.

Friends, as you know, you are here this evening to help our school, our crucible of the future. We couldn’t create the responsible citizens of tomorrow without the help of you, the responsible citizens of today. As you also know, the proceeds of this dinner will go to fund a program for improvement created by the woman who has already done so much in her short career, Emily Matheson. (I hadn’t changed my name when I married.)

The principal hadn’t warned me I was to be honored in this way and I was rooted to my seat as he motioned for me to stand up to the applause. As I began to move, I saw out of the corner of my eye some movement outside the windows. I turned around and identified some five of the middle school students peering inside with their antiestablishment eyes. They darted away when they knew they were noticed.

Those are precisely the kinds of things we need to improve about this school, I said to everyone at the dinner, and darted out the door crouching under my suspicion.

As I made my way around the outside of the mostly darkened building, I found I was leaving a trail of concerned adults along every turn, as all the responsible citizens followed, curious about my now famous nurturing instinct. The hooligans were nowhere to be found.

Perhaps they’ve seen our numbers and been scared off, I surmised to the gathering, but even as I did, one of the twelve-year-olds stuck his head out the main entrance and shouted something utterly unintelligible, then ran back inside. I told Claude to keep the crowd calm, then followed the boy with the principal behind. The three of us dashed together into the boys’ locker room, where, who knows why, there was a bathtub next to the shower stalls. Something was evaporating out of it and practically gushing into the air duct above. The boys were staring intently at the tub in a supervisory mode, but when they sensed our presence, they stood back and beckoned us near to it.

We leaned over the tub. Inside was a dramatic blue liquid, which began to swirl and bubble.

What is it? the principal asked me.

This is the dumbest stunt I’ve ever seen, I said, turning to the kids. Why should we care if you put blue dye in the bathtub? But then my eyes began to smart.

When he saw our eyes beginning to tear up, the messenger boy shouted, Everyone who goes to this school is going to die! and they all ran out of the locker room, not bothering to lock us in.

I ran after them. They were headed for the front entrance, but as they passed the kitchen I thought fast. I grabbed a couple of the ravioli cans, and, with astonishing accuracy, I hit the last kid in the head with one of them. He fell over and lay bloodied, but the other four kept running. I hoped Claude and the others would be enough to detain them, and before I did a single other thing, I unwrapped the platter of peanut butter crackers. I turned the wounded kid over and forced a finger full of top-right-corner peanut butter into his mouth. When he woke, he would be a changed man. Then I remembered that these were temporary chips, sized him up, and gave him two more dabs for good measure.

I noticed the principal and the other teacher hadn’t emerged yet, but decided to go out front first. The adults looked at me in relief—here was someone in control of the situation. I could see that’s what they were thinking. They were forcibly holding the last four kids, several adults to each kid, and one’s hands had even been tied with someone’s belt. Claude was on his cell phone with 911, so really I wasn’t in control of the situation but at least someone was. Then Claude said, What about the principal?

No one panic, I said, but is Mr. Wood here? I need him to analyze a chemical substance.

Various gasps went through the crowd, and by the time I had Mr. Wood take me to the chemistry lab for goggles and gloves, several people had pulled out anti-biological warfare pills, popping a few and offering some to friends.

Well outfitted and carrying several sterile beakers, the chemistry teacher and I returned to the boys’ locker room only to find the principal passed out on the floor next to the bathtub. Two police officers arrived on the scene as we began taking our samples. Please, Mr. Wood told them, get him out of here now. We can’t wait for EMTs: he’s been poisoned!

If that’s hazardous, everyone’s got to get out of here, now, said one of the officers, eying the air duct.

We agreed. Mr. Wood and I clutched the samples and each officer took hold of one victim. Then we came across the fifth kid, lying in the hallway where I’d left him.

Who’s that? asked an officer.

That’s one of the suspects. He’ll need to go into custody, after he’s treated, I explained, handing Mr. Wood my vials and throwing off my goggles. I slung the kid over my shoulder in spite of his size, and grabbed