“The error involves the fusing unit. The machine operation is disabled . . . Turn the operation switch off and on,” I say to no one as I flip through the repair manual surrounded by a swarm of hex wrenches. “Well hell, I could have figured that out on my own.”
Half an hour wasted looking for the manual and another fifteen minutes deciphering the four color coded blinking lights just to learn that I have to turn the damn thing off and on again. I came in early this morning because I wanted to use the memeo before all of the other teachers came in and formed a line out the doorway and down the hall, but as soon as I key into the copy room, we still call it that because it kind of makes sense, and insert the memory card into the memeograph the damn light begins flashing. Three fast yellows and a red to punctuate.
“Hey Mr. Hannegan, whatcha doin’ there on the floor?”
I look up from the chaos to see Sharon Ackerman staring at me over her glasses. “We can use first names, Sharon. There are no students around.”
“Sorry Ed, watcha doin’ there on the floor?”
“What does it look like? I’m fixing the memeo.”
“Have you tried turning it off and on.” She reaches over to flip the switch.
While she counts to ten, my frustration fueled by a lack of caffeine begins to percolate. Of course I should have done that before digging into the 482 pages of the poorly translated repair manual. My last district had the American made Engram T1-619. It was an early model that only handled simple rote memorization like the times table, historical dates, and difference between a simile and metaphor. This new model was Chinese from Corticon, but the advertising claims that it can implant more complex concepts such as Critical Race Theory, Marxism, and the Ten Points of the Black Panther Party. This one doesn't require the cooperation of the pharmaceutical companies either.
“These break down more than the old ones, but at least we don’t have to check under the students’ tongues to make sure they swallow the memory enhancers,” Sharon opines.
I don’t know what she was talking about. She has only been teaching for five years. More than likely she was the one pocketing the pills as a delinquent high schooler for their weekend echo-raves illegally downloading engrams from the nets. The abuse led to a lethe epidemic and government crackdown. Most kids these days are augies. Our district is one hundred percent augie. When the students are vaccinated for Sars-CoV 12 they also get a microchip that attaches to the prefrontal cortex.
I can’t believe I have to go through this much trouble just so the students can distinguish between Fa and Antifa for the state test. I waste my time repairing this machine and listening to Sharon’s insipid morning depressant just so students can perform Pavolovian acts of circle clicking (jerking). Why can’t we delve into irony or satire? Concepts that are all but dead because we focus on the three Rs, radicalism, revolution, and revisionism.
Now that the light has stopped flashing, Sharon is anxiously tapping her foot clad in a comfortable pair of Clark’s Mary Janes. I insert the memory card and the memeo uploads a class set to the indoctritrons in my classroom.
Now before you start to think that this is all bezoomy and baddiewad, this iso no Alex Delarge prison experiment. I mean yes the end goal is the same, but this much more humane. We just play some nice ASMR while the students drink green tea and view the presentation on Oculus. Testing shows that we are about ninety percent effective. It works like clockwork.
In the early days there were some hiccups. That one history teacher in New Jersey that was teaching the classic story of worker injury and exploitation about Phineas Gage. How was he supposed to know that that evening three of his students would pike themselves in solidarity.
* * *
“Do you ever miss the old days?” Brad Haus, who has been at this nearly as long as I have, jostles me out of my reverie.
“Huh?”
Pointing at the memory card I’m flipping through my fingers like a magician (an illusionist) with a coin, “Do you miss the old days when we actually taught?”
“You mean the days when the students didn’t do the work, skipped class, and acted like school was torture? No, not at all.”
“But didn’t you enjoy the challenge. This memeo business is boring. We just cram the stuff down their throats.”
“What is the difference between memeo and memorizing dates, filling out worksheets, and bubbling in multiple choice tests? This is a lot easier.”
“Ed you know that’s not what we did. Maybe that’s what they wanted from us, but we made them think,” Brad says.
“Did we though? I seem to remember parents complaining about grades, kids begging for extra credit, and admin asking us to give students a break.”
Brad responds, “ I remember period long arguments about Handmaid’s Tale or the Civil Rights movement. It was better when a kid disagreed. I mean that shit was Socratic.”
“Are you suggesting that we make education great again? I just stick to the downloads. If the parents don’t like it they can erase it when the kids get home. The engrams don’t become permanent unless it is reinforced with the home stimulator.”
“Good luck comrade,” Brad shakes his head as we enter our respective classrooms.
The students- we are encouraged to call them clients, but I can’t seem to change- will be coming in about fifteen minutes. I was planning on having more time, but that damn machine. I sat down to have a drink of coffee.
“Son of a bitch,” I was in such a hurry to get away from Susan that I left my coffee in the copy room. I’ll have to drink it cold at lunch.
The Oculus goggles dangle from the ceiling like oxygen masks in a doomed airliner. “In case of emergency, secure your mask before helping others. Emergency exits are located at the front and rear of the plane.” I look longingly out the window. One of them is an emergency exit in case of an intruder, but damn if I remember which one.
“Hi Mr. H,” Maria chirps as she walks in. How can so many of the students have a problem pronouncing Hanegan? If I mess up theirs it is a federal case.
Literally, it is a federal case. P.L. 153-12 or “Say My Name Act” made it an offense punishable by $500 fine for each instance of mispronouncing, misnaming, or altering a students self-declared nom de jour. To be safe, I just avoid names entirely.
“Hi,” I manage.
There are teachers in the school who have entire social media accounts devoted to their inventive methods of saying good morning as if this superficial personal connection is the key to reaching the students. Even before memeo when we had to personalize things, I always thought that this was a weak attempt at connecting with a student, so I have made a game of how little I can acknowledge their existence. This of course has become its own special type of greeting that the students have connected to.
Now the only connection that matters is the high-speed one between the Oculus and the memeo servers and between the chip and cortex.
More students begin to filter in carrying their Teavana thermoses and take their seats.
“Are we doing anything today, Mr. H?”
“No, sir. We are just going to take naps today. Take your seat.” I avoided the name, but the use of a gender specific signifier was an amateur mistake.
Miguel comes in, “Hey H, I spilled my tea on the way to school this morning.”
“Go to the dispensary, and they will give you some.”
“But they charge me for it.”
“There’s nothing I can do. You have to have your tea. If you don’t drink the tea, you can assimilate the lesson.”
Maria says, “You can have some of mine. I have extra. Here, give me your thermos.”
“Young person, get in here,” I command the student who is casually entwined with a young woman outside my door. “You, you need to get to class.” I say to the other non-gendered individual that had been bodily engaged with my student.
With everyone settled, tea uncapped, and Oculus engaged, I begin. “So last time we were talking about the Trump Rebellion, but some of you were confused by contemporaneous accounts that claimed that it was a false flag attack by Antifa forces. That was my bad. I should have made it more clear who was right and wrong in the memeo. I downloaded some material from the state that clarifies the dangers of Trump and why he was subsequently banned from the nets.”
With that I flip the switch. The sound of dry hands rubbing together, followed by the crinkle of plastic wrap and gently manipulated toothbrush bristles fills the room. Students don their goggles and I kick back to read the latest celebrity news and sports scores.
Fifty minutes later the period comes to an end. We don’t have bells anymore because a sudden exit from the Mem Cycle can cause the engram to either not fuse, or in some rare cases it actually inverts. It doesn’t happen often, but when it does, students have to come in on Saturdays to remem the lesson. I flip the switch again which initiates the power down process and students remove their goggles.
“Don’t forget the assessment next week. We only get the PET scanner for a few days, so make sure you drink your tracers the morning of the test.”
The students groan as they gather their thermoses and head to the next class.
* * *
“Hey Hanegan, are you coming to the faculty meeting?”
“Huh?” I had fallen asleep sitting at my desk. I slowly adjusted my head sensitive to the sharp pain in my neck.
“The faculty meeting. It’s Monday,” Brad repeated.
“Yeah, yeah. I’m coming.” I head to the door still rubbing the left side of my neck.
“So, how were the kiddos today?” Brad asks.
I hate that word. Kiddos. I don’t know if it was the lack of respect or the exaggerated enthusiasm, but that word really worked my nerves, though it is one of the few safe words we can use these days.
“I don’t know. Maybe you’re right Brad.”
“Hold on there. Old man Hanegan is admitting that someone else might be right? Let me record this for TikTok.” Brad pulls out his phone to feign recording.
I wave my hand at him in annoyance. “This memeo thing is boring. I mean don’t get me wrong. It is easy and the students always do well on the tests, but I am starting to think that easy is not necessarily a good thing. Do you remember TNG?”
“TNG?”
“Star Trek: The Next Generation.”
“Hanny that thing was like twenty series ago.”
“I know, but that is when they first introduced the Borg. They had this hive mind and would assimilate every new species they came into contact with.”
“I know who the Borg are.”
“Yeah well I’m starting to think that, that is what we’re doing here. We plug the students in to the Oculus, download the engrams from the Memeo, and they become part of the hive mind. You were right. There is no thinking, no debate.”
We come to a stop outside the library doors where the meeting is being held. There is a table full of cookies and chips, and at the end a variety of drinks. We grab some and go in to take our seats.
I see Sharon sitting with a few of the other younger teachers. Her Clarks now kicked off under the table.
Brad continues, “I’m glad you are finally seeing it my way Hanny.”
As the last few faculty members walk in, the principal takes his/her position as a silhouette in front of the video screen.
“Faculty and staff,” he/she safely intones, “We have several new acronyms to learn today, but before we start, I am excited that this whole process may become just a little bit easier for all of us. We have with us today a representative from Corticon.”
Good I think. I can give them a piece of my mind about those four blinking lights.
The sales rep silhouette replaces the principal’s and begins speaking. “My associates are now passing out the latest line of memory enhancers, the Locutus. We are excited because previous models had some problems encoding for post adolescent individuals and those that had not been augmented, but with these new models your district will easily be able to download the latest acronyms and consensus educational theory.”
I look down at the goggles that had just been placed in front of me sitting there wrapped in plastic next to the bottled tea I had been drinking. I hear gentle whispers, a finger running across the bristles of brush, and the snick of scissors slowly closing.