Chapter Consensus

Consensus

Sheri told him, “Pete was attacked by an anti-virus. Josh and Brutus came to his rescue. Josh ended up destroying it with the zapper.”

“Oh no.” He had a second thought about his Dad maybe being right. Still he wished he had gone. He looked at Pete and gave him a friendly slap on the back. “You know for Pete, its kind of an improvement.”

“Don’t joke, he is in a bad way.” Josh showed his worry.

“What are we going to do to help him?” Yancy finally getting how serious it was.

Josh lifted his arm and Sheri pressed his exit button. He vanished from the room. “We are hoping it is just his twin damaged and with a reboot he will recover.” Sheri sighed, “I have to go, bye.”

Pete’s pod opened and his twin brother heard the noise from the bedroom they shared. He came to the pod room to say hello to his brother and ask him why he was so late. Pete was still in the pod and looked a little dazed to his brother that Pete affectionately called Re-Pete. “Are you gonna stay in there?”

“No, I am just trying to remember something.” He climbed out forgetting what he wanted to remember kind of like when you wake from a dream and you try to think about the dream and it is instantly gone. “I just need to rest for a minute,” so he went into the bedroom and collapsed onto his bed.

Re-Pete thought he was acting odd but went back to finishing his homework.

Sheri exited her pod at home. Her Mom and Dad were separated and she actually went out to work and was usually not home when Sheri got home from school. But today Sheri came home so late her Mom was cooking. “Some kind of after school meeting today?” she asked.

“Yeah, what are you cooking.” She stood behind her and looked around at the stove.

“Spaghetti.”

“Yum, I’m starved. I’m going to hit my homework for a while.” She went to her room with laptop in hand, sat on her bed and powered it on. She fell asleep without even logging on to the computer. The next thing she knew her Mom was calling her for dinner.

Josh filled Yancy in on everything including the beach. “I wish you were with us, but I understand.”

“I think I will go next time.”

“Yeah, Pete shouldn’t go again until he completely recovers. We are going to have to take action with Miss Ursbrook. She is a virus. The longer she remains the more infected and dangerous this will get. It seems we can’t rely on the school system or our parents who are always too busy. We should all get together this weekend away from school to plan. I’ll set it up at the ‘Run Around’ gym. I’m gonna exit now.”

“Wait, what exactly are we planning?”

“Maybe confront her for starters. Later,” he pressed his exit and disappeared.

Yancy said to himself, “Why am I always the last one here?” He thought about the virus returning with him alone, looked at the door, panicked and pressed his button.

Josh crawled out of his pod and went to his kitchen where his Mom and Dad were just sitting down to dinner.

His Mom said, “We were beginning to worry about you Josh. Do they have after school activities for you in there?”

“No, not really.”

Dad joined in, “Then why are you so late?” He passed the food so Josh could fill his plate.

“Well, we were going to study together when we noticed some more weird stuff going on with the teacher,” he shoved a spoon full of mash potatoes in his mouth.

He began to continue when his Mom interrupted him. “Don’t speak when you have food in your mouth dear.”

The phone rang and his Dad got up and answered it. It was work related and he took the call to the living room. Josh finished eating and his Mom started clearing the table seeming to forget what they were talking about. He shrugged his shoulders and said, “I got homework.” He got up and went to his room.

She said, “OK.”

As he went up the stairs he said to himself quietly, “And they say I have a short attention span.”

Saturday morning Josh called all his friends on a conference call, “Let’s meet at the ‘Run Around’ at 1:00 PM,” he said to them.

“I love that place, sounds good,” Sheri replied followed by each acknowledging one by one in series.

The ‘Run Around’ was a new kind of gym which featured an aerobic workout that rivaled out door walking, running, skating and bicycling especially when the weather was bad. It was a large disk that filled a circular room in the building. The user entered from a circular staircase in the center from below. The disk rotated in a clockwise direction. The speed of the disks surface grew faster as one moved away from the center. When stepping onto the disk the speed was pretty slow so then you could move out radially until you found a spot where your forward velocity approached the speed of the disk in that spot, hence staying in one spot. Many users could be jogging at different speeds but not moving away from the positions, The disk moved underneath their feet like a treadmill. Bicyclist and skaters would go out toward the edge of the disk and walkers would remain close to the center.

Sheri and Molly joined the guys in the lobby below ready for a workout. They sat in one corner away from others. Josh spoke up, “We all know what we are facing in school and I believe we should confront the teacher about her activities. I wanted us to be able to discuss this away from class because the teacher has bionic hearing.”

Yancy was first to speak, “She might even hear us here," joking. "She will probably deny everything. Then what do we do?”

Molly added, “Good question. How far do we take this?”

Pete sat quietly which was not normal for him.

“I have tried speaking to my parents about all this but they get into a worried judgmental mode. Yancy talked with his Dad. I don’t think our parents are really listening to us. I don’t know how to get the school system involved. It is like a program running that doesn’t want any input,” said Josh.

Molly suggested, “We can ask for help from the computer system can’t we?”

“I have asked the help desk about a couple of other things and have not received any helpful replies,” said Yancy.

Josh stood, “Let’s go out on the disk. Maybe pumping some fresh oxygenated blood to our thinking caps will inspire us.” He went up the steps and stepped out on the disk followed by the team. There were two bicyclists near the perimeter racing while staying in place and several people walking and running in different locations. The disk moved slowly at the center entrance and felt like stepping on an escalator at a department store. They all starting jogging except Yancy who was happy to walk fast. Molly went out a little further and jogged slowly. Josh, Sheri and Pete got more competitive moving further out and running. They all stayed pretty close to each other.

Sheri mentioned that she liked Molly’s idea of trying to contact the school system through the help desk. Pete tried to move out from the pack by running faster but looked awkward with his flailing arm movements and over exaggerated gate. Sheri and Molly watched him and snickered knowing he was trying to impress them. It wasn’t working. Josh raced with him but none of the group were very athletic except Molly who was more into strength then running. It was a good time and allowed them to clear their thoughts. After the workout they met up and had refreshing fruit drinks in the lobby.

“I guess the consensus is with Molly then,” offered Josh. He looked at the girls. That was two.

Then he looked at Pete who said, “I’m with you bro,” seeming to have his personality restored.

He looked at Yancy who struggled not wanting to be the tie breaker, “I guess it wouldn’t hurt to try Molly’s approach? Josh, you don’t have a plan yet other then confronting the teacher right. How about we make that the next step when the help desk fails.”

Josh thought to himself that Yancy punted while at the same time admitted that Molly’s idea would fail. “OK, will you lead on that Molly and start the communication?”

Sheri butted in, “Yes, she will and I will assist her.” Then she made a face at Pete who had recovered enough in her opinion. The girls left and went to Molly’s home. They went to the school web site on her computer.

Molly said to Sheri, “Where do we go to do this?” She clicked around with the pointing device. “Any ideas?” She looked at Sheri.

“How about filing a complaint?” There was a path from the main screen to do this. “She did give us a scare when she froze and we could not exit on the second day of class.”

“That’s good.” Molly typed in the description. “Should we identify our class and her the teacher?”

“Hmm, that kind of exposes us doesn’t it,” Sheri said.

“Well yeah. We have to,” she looked at Sheri with knitted brow.

“Alright, I guess so,” Sheri replied.