| CHAPTER 1 What if… “Your homework for tonight is page 137 numbers, 1-60, even and odd, due tomorrow, and your 5 page essay on the history of mathematics is due the day after. Any questions?” There were none. “Good, now get to work,” Mrs. King then rolled in her chair to her desk in the back of the classroom, as the students sat resigned to their fate. After a class of math-filled boredom, Keoni and Kawika stumbled blearily out of the classroom, their minds numbed by equations to complex for their comprehension. After they were safely out of Mrs. King’s hearing range, Keoni turned to Kawika and said angrily “A five page essay on the history of mathematics? The only good thing about math class is that you don’t have to write essays!”
“And, not to mention all of my regular history homework. Christa!” Keoni called to the black-haired girl walking by,” don’t we have too much homework?”
“Too much homework. Don’t we have too much homework?”
Keoni asked again. “Who?” Christa responded. “Us!” “Us what?” Seeing that the conversation was going nowhere, Keoni muttered, “never
mind,” and continued on his way with Kawika. He was about to continue
with his rant when something heavy hit him on the shoulder and his knees
almost buckled. Looking to his side, he realized it was a hand. “Hey
Keoni,” said a deep and booming voice that could only belong to
varsity linebacker, Marcus Kirk. “Hi Marcus what’s up?” Keoni said through gritted teeth
as he extricated himself from the football player’s grip. “Just wondering if we had any English homework,” Marcus responded,
unaware that he had just walked into the middle of a rant in progress. “Of course we have English homework! We always have English homework,
and history homework, and math homework. I know because we always have
homework for every class! Homework, the evil tool of the man to keep us
down! I’m not going to stand for it anymore!” “Uhh, ok. Thanks, I think.” “No problem,” replied Keoni in a normal voice. Having finished
his speech, he was back to his calm self as clouds covered the sun overhead. As Marcus continued on to the dining hall, Kawika and Keoni veered off
towards their lockers. “I just wish there wasn’t so much homework
and so many rules at school,” Keoni said. And then something strange
happened. As Keoni bent down to put his book in his locker, there was
something like a camera flash and the universe seemed to fade for a moment
or two, but when they stood up, everything looked normal. They continued out of the Paki/ Konia courtyard, and after a few steps,
it was apparent that everything was not normal. Where the quad would normally
sit there sat instead a large patch of fine white sand. Coconut trees
framed each of the school buildings, which were now almost unrecognizable.
The familiar green and white buildings had all been replaced with single
story, open-air pavilions, and where the gym, pool, and other athletic
facilities would normally be was the ocean. The two boys turned around,
saw Haleakalä far behind them, and realized that the school was now
situated directly on the beach. After staring openmouthed at their new surroundings and at each other,
Keoni and Kawika gave shouts of joy. After all, they now went to school
at the beach. To be continued… |
CHAPTER 2 What if… As they were staring in amazement at the scenery around them, mouths
agape, neither Keoni nor Kawika noticed the elephant like shadow behind
them. It was only after the owner of shadow spoke that both that the two
boys whipped around to see a 438lb Mrs. King standing behind them in a
bikini, the bottom of which was obscured by a roll of fat. “Why aren’t you two on the beach?” she asked, her four
chins bouncing up and down with each word. “Uhh… we were just on our way,” Keoni responded, sounding
very unsure of himself. “Well hurry up, or all the fish are going to be gone,” and
with this mysterious comment, Mrs. King turned and left, giving the adolescents
a full view of her g-string. “I suppose we should head down to the beach then eh?” said
Kawika, and with that they turned left and proceeded to the shoreline. Strangely, there were no plates of food, nor were there any lunchboxes.
Instead, the coast was lined with row upon row of fishing polls. One of
the polls waved in the wind and a student, clad in only surf shorts, leapt
up to reel it in shouting “I git one fish! I git one fish!”
However, the farther he reeled it in the more apparent it became that
he “never git one fish”. In fact, there was no hook at the
end of the line. As more and more people began to reel in their lines,
it became clear that something was very wrong. Not one line had a hook
at the end of it. Divers emerged from the water bleeding with spears stuck
in their sides and Christa appeared to be trying to catch fish in her
mouth. The entire population of KSM had been turned into a conglomeration
of blithering idiots. Things only got worse as class started. For fourth block, Keoni had Seminar
and Kawika had English. They split up but agreed to meet back at Keoni’s
locker after school. As Kawika entered the English classroom (which now
consisted of one wall with a white board, two other walls lined with fish
diagrams, and one open side) he groaned. English was his favorite subject
and he could tell from the lesson on the board that he would not enjoy
this at all. It read, “We will go to the store.” “we
going da kine uhh… stay go to da stoa.” The grammer just got
worse as class wore on and the teacher stood up to lecture. “Good morning class. Oh, what, stay afta’ noon awready? Ho
brah, time goes fas eh? So today we going for talk about da kine, da comma
use. You use one comma when you need for separate on ting from one naddah
ting. Gettum? Awright! Go swim for da rest da day, class pau. Oh an one
moa ting, no moa homework eh?” And with that the teacher sat down
and went to sleep. In Seminar, things were equally dismal. Marcus was apparently the smartest
kid in the class, what with being able to answer every question about
the worlds great surf schools. Most of the class consisted of trying to
put plastic cylinders into their corresponding holes. Keoni and Kawika both sprinted from class to Keoni’s locker, desperate
to find someone able to recite the entire alphabet. “When I said less homework, I didn’t mean no work at all!
We got no homework in Seminar, no homework in English, no homework in
anything. It the man, man! It’s the man keeping us down with stupidity.
I just want to learn something!” As he said this Keoni bent down
to open his locker and again the universe seemed to dim. When he stood
back up he found the school had miraculously returned to normal…
or so he thought. |
CHAPTER 3 What if…Our School was Taught by the Greatest
Minds in the World?
The school seemed strangely empty and there was no sign of movement anywhere.
The boys’ footsteps echoed off the walls of the Päkï/Konia
building as they strode through the corridors of the school. There was
something unnatural about the silence in that, normally, there is always
another student talking somewhere or a bird chirping in some far off tree,
but this silence was total. “Where is everybody?” Keoni asked, his voice booming strangely
in the oppressive quiet. “Maybe they all went home. It is almost 3:00.” Kawika responded,
“Let’s go check the parking lot.” Upon arrival at the archway leading out of the building courtyard, they
discovered that there were no cars in the parking lot. In their stead,
there lay an expanse of gleaming metal. “It looks like its shimmering,” Kawika observed, his voice
slightly apprehensive. As he stepped out onto the surface, several things
happened at once. He let out a loud yell and tried to jerk his foot off
the metal, but to no avail. The shimmering turned out to be waves of heat,
rising specter-like from the silvery sheet. A sound that was more a feeling
than a sound ripped through their consciousnesses causing them both to
fall to the ground as a large floating creature swooped out of a ventilation
duct, and everything went black. When they awoke, they found themselves standing, fully dressed in a strange
black “clean suit” surrounded by other students in identical
clothing. A small man with a disproportionately large head was standing
at the front of the class with a glowing device attached to his temple.
All the students had the same device on the sides of their heads The students were arbitrarily separated into groups of three and asked
to communicate telepathically. Keoni’s group contained a scrawny
boy, who appeared to have prosthetic feet, and Christa, whose TEN. had
the unique property of simply echoing back whatever the sender thought,
almost like a cave. “hhhey, you,” thought the scrawny boy with great effort at
Keoni. “III don’t remember ssseeing you in classss before.
mmMaybe you can help me. YYYou see thesese feet?” he asked, pointing
at his prosthetics. “I haven’t seen the sun in 10 years. They
never let you out of this place to go and walk around, and you never have
any fun. So, I got tired of it one day, and I tried to run. That accursed
heat-sheet burned my feet right off and crippled me. I was hoping you
could help me escape again, and maybe we could leave this campus. Oh,
and by the way, my name is Marcus.” With horror, Keoni realized
that this withered husk of a man in front of him was none other than football,
basketball, baseball, volleyball, swimming, tennis, and golf player-of-the-year,
Marcus Kirk. Unable to reach their locker this time, will Keoni and Kawika ever
escape this horrible alternate reality? Read our next issue to find out. |
CHAPTER 4 What If… We never went home? In our last issue our heroes learned that the school’s star
athlete, Marcus Kirk had been crippled. Now, without being able to reach
their locker, how will Keoni and Kawika ever get home to KSM? “All right, class is over, time for class to start,” Mr.
Aid thought from the front of the room. The world went out of focus and
the boys felt a rush of air as the floor dropped out from under them.
After a series of quick turns through snaking pipes, Kawika found himself
separated from Keoni and in a class with Marcus. This turned out to be
Beginner Matter Bending, where budding psychics tried to bend paper clips
with little success. “What’s the deal with these pipes?” Kawika asked. “There are no doors in this school because no one ever leaves until
they graduate. There is only one pipe that leads out of the school and
everywhere else is blocked in.” “Sometimes I wish I could leave,” chimed in another boy sitting
next to them. “I haven’t seen my parents for 5 years. One
day I got a perfect score on my math test, and the next I was here.” As the discussion was reaching a climax, everyone’s mouths suddenly
clamped shut and they could not breathe. As people began to pass out,
Mr. Aid strode out of a tube, his T.E.N. pulsing rapidly. “What,
you don’t think I monitor my students’ thoughts?” he
thought at them. “I could hear this dissention in my office a mile
away. There is no way out, as Marcus can attest , and you will stay here
until you graduate. Understood?” With that, he released his psychic
hold on the students, allowing them to open their mouths. “Well that was scary,” one student said. “Yeah, well when you try to rebel against the telepathy and Advanced
Matter Bending teacher, you have to expect trouble.” “Advanced Matter Bending?” Kawika queried. “Yeah, those guys are crazy. I saw one blow up a slab of solid
concrete once, just by thinking about it,” Marcus responded. Just then, an idea began to form in Kawika’s head and he started
to look around for AMB students in his classes. He met with success in
his ninth class of the day, “MJLNOR Armor Theory”. “You want me to blast a hole in the school? No way,” the
student responded when Kawika told him about his plan. “You can get out of here and start a real life in the world. Isn’t
there anything you miss on the outside?” “I do miss the sun sometimes, but then I can just lie under a heat
lamp.” “Come on, you’d really be helping the rest of us out.” “OK, if you can convince some of the other AMB students to help
you, I’ll consider it because there is no way I can knock down that
wall by myself.” It turns out that all of the AMB students were surprisingly reluctant
to rebel, and it took massive amounts of effort to persuade each student.
One had to be bribed with the promise that, once they were out, a different
student would have to cook dinner for her every day. Another made everybody
call him “Lord Master of All That is Good and Psychic” before
he would help. After four days of marshalling the troops, they made their move. Their
were small explosions all around the school as AMB students pulled the
transport tubes open so they could all congregate in one class. They were
met with no resistance as they made their way to an empty classroom whose
wall they wanted to blow out. With a concentrated burst of effort, they
pushed through the wall blowing a huge hole in it. As they ran for the
opening, they saw that the wall was beginning to reform. Mr. Aid was striding
across the campus smiling triumphantly as he thought the wall back into
place. He stepped inside as the wall closed around him. The students were
pushed back, unable to move. “For smart people, you are all a bunch of morons,” he said
menacingly as he stepped closer to the trembling students. Have the heroes finally met their match at the hands of Mr.Aid? Who
will save them from this terrible plight? Find out in our next issue. |