Vox Mentis

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SpoilerSorry for the lack of updates recently, work's been busy. Here's a nice massive one with lots of developments to make up for it!

Well, a little paranoia never hurt anyone. You'll note that Jane said they're "aware of his behaviour', not necessarily that your assessment is completely factual. Ask whether she can give you assurance of the following, while preparing yourself for the likelihood they can't or won't give you straight answers to the following:

1. Has Smugass propositioned a member of the faculty in the same way you have?
1a. If he has, will they divulge to you what he said/suggested to them?
1ai. If they will not, is this because of Academy policy or because he explicitly told them not to?
2. Whether he has or not, and whether you are now privy to his plans or not, are you able to trust the faculty to lie to him if he does come and inquire as to your movements?
2a. Would Jane ensure, in the event Douchebuck does come knocking at her door, to impart to him the following information: that you came, complained that his methods were bullshit, and got told to suck it up and to not expect outside help?
3. If Prickstain does proposition the faculty in future to help with a scheme, and he does not explicitly swear them to secrecy, if you inquire will they tell you his plans, or, say, at least the existence of a plan?
4. (contingent on your bedroom having a lock, I don't remember) can the faculty promise to not use their skeletons keys or whatever to enter your room on his behalf?
4a. Can they promise to refuse his requests if he does ask them to do so, making up a rule like that doesn't count as "persuasion" for their purposes?

These are all general assurances so you can afford to be a bit less paranoid, spend a bit less time trying to second-guess him, and thus make the next two days more authentic. Get well-rested and visibly take full advantage of the comparative luxury this place is offering you.

Once you've made sure you've got appearances covered, go nuts. Smear vaseline on his doorhandle, take the batteries out of the tv remote, launch spitballs, prank him, gaslight him in incremental movements of his possessions if you can sneak into his room, basically take the excuse to be as juvenile as you wish. Have a screaming tantrum, pull his hair, walk in and change the channel, ignoring him, be loud and/or obnoxious in his vicinity, and really make it look like you're giving it your all.

You need to stick to the most childish methods you've got to make it seem like you're not a threat to him, and he can afford to stick to putting up passive resistance. That's the best-case scenario, but you need to be prepared for him cracking and replying in kind (at which point you're going to want sanctuary in your own room), or having something nastier planned out.

You ask your questions. While Jane will not confirm or deny that your opponent has spoken to the faculty, she also will not confirm or deny that you have spoken to them, should he inquire. If you wish for her to tell him that you spoke to her complaining about his methods, she will do so, but she will not lie. Fortunately, you did actually complain about his methods, so that's not a lie.

Jane will not tell the boy your plans, unless you want her to, but likewise, she will not tell you his plans, should he propose any. You can also rest easy in the fact that the faculty will not violate the privacy of your room. Again, though, they will not lie to the boy about the rules of persuasion, if he asks.

Comfortable with your answers, you return to your room to start plotting the shit out of this thing.

~

You make the next two days of curly-haired boy's life as obnoxious of a living hell as you can. Vaseline on the doorknobs. Clingfilm on the toilet seats. Packing tape across the door frames. Loosening the cable connection on the TV enough so that every time a door slams, the channels cut to static. You are become Asshole, harsher of mellows.

The prick remains stoic, however. If you're annoying him at all, he doesn't let it show. This serves to annoy you further, which is going to end up helping you sell what you're about to do even more.

Late on day 2, get frustrated that he's still here and punch him square in the face. That'll give a reason you're being expelled that he already expects to apply.

Late on day 2, get frustrated that he's still here and punch him square in the face. That'll give a reason you're being expelled that he already expects to apply.

Also, it'll be glorious

On the evening of the second day, you pass by the boy on his way to the TV room. He smirks at you. Now seems as good a time as any. You cock your fist back and let fly, fully bathing in the feeling of your hard knuckles connecting with his soft privileged nose.

Curly-haired boy goes down, holding his nose. A thick rivulet of blood trickles past his hand. His eyes well up a bit. "F-fuck you! You've just failed this exam, you idiot."

You show him two middle fingers. "No, fuck you. I'm done with this shitshow anyway. This school is bullshit, Jane is bullshit, but most of all, you're bullshit. Run off and tattle, microdick. See if I care."

~

From there, everything goes according to plan. You pack your stuff up and leave your door conveniently open for the boy to see your failure. You watch him get into the limo, strutting like a fucking peacock, and watch him drive away and out of your life. Your only regret is that you won't get to see the look on his face when he realizes how thoroughly he has been played.

This school is yours.

~

You have sixteen classes per week. In between, you're expected to study and practice. Not on other students. That's a rule. Your first day, wearing a uniform that still smells of the plastic wrapping, you stand in Jane's office and take a lecture. There are many rules, and Jane takes you through each of them, patiently and in detail, like you're a moron. At first you think this is because Jane is still carrying a grudge from the cheating thing, but as the lecture wears on, you realize no. Jane just thinks you're that stupid.

"This is a nonnegotiable rule of the school," Jane says. "Indeed, of the organization as a whole. Should you break it, there will be no excuses. No second chances. Am I making myself clear?"

"You're making yourself clear," you say.

At this point, you didn't know what practicing meant. It takes you months to find out. You had thought they were going to teach you persuasion; instead, you get philosophy, psychology, sociology, and the history of language. Back in San Francisco, Lee had given you a little speech about how this school would be different because it taught interesting, useful things, and that was a joke, in your opinion. Grammar is not interesting. It's not useful to know where words came from. And no one explains it. There's no overview. No road map. Classes are eight to twelve students of wildly different ages, all of them ahead of you and no one asking the obvious questions. You have to stay up at night, staring at textbooks, trying to figure out why any of this matters.

You learn Maslow's hierarchy of needs, which is the order in which people optimally satisfy different types of desires (food-safety-love-status-enlightenment). You learn that leverage over people's desire for knowledge is called informational social influence, while leverage over people's desire to be liked is normative social influence. You learn that you can classify a person's personality into one of two-hundred and twenty-eight psychographic categories with a small number of well-directed questions plus observation, and this is called setting.

"I thought this was going to be cooler," you complain to Eliot. He's a part-time lecturer, teaching a few advanced classes, which don't include you. Whenever you see his car parked out front, you head for his office, because he's the only one you like to talk to. "I thought it would be like magic."

Eliot is busy with papers. But you figure he has an obligation to deal with you, since it's basically his fault you're here. "Sorry," he says. "At your level, it's just books."

"When is it like magic?"

"When you finish the books," Eliot says.

~

By the end of the year, you can see where it's going. You're not learning persuasion, you're still deep in Plato and neurolinguistics and the political roots of the Russian Revolution, but you're starting to sense the connections between them. One day you get to dissect a human brain, and as you peer through goggles at a frontal lobe, sliding the scalpel through the meat, separating decision making from motor function, memory from reward centers, you think, Hello. Because you know what the meat does.

~

You play soccer. You have to do a sport, soccer or basketball or water polo, and you're short and hate the swimsuits, so, soccer. On Wednesday afternoons you line up with the other girls, shin guards stuffed into knee-high purple socks, your hair dragged back, a yellow shirt billowing, and you chase a ball around a field. The girls are all ages, so it's mostly an exercise in kicking the ball to the oldest and shouting encouragement. The exception is Sasha, who is only your age but strong and graceful and has shoulders like battering rams. Soccer is supposed to be noncontact but Sasha's shoulders put you on your ass anyway. After a goal, she pumps her fist, unsmiling, like she's satisfied but not surprised, and although you don't enjoy soccer much, you find this terribly impressive. You want to be as good at something as Sasha is at soccer.

At night, you sit by the window of your cloister room, books piled on your desk. You study with your hair pinned up and your school tie slung. You don't really enjoy reading but you like how the books are clues. Each one a piece in a puzzle. Even when they don't fit together, they reveal a little more about what kind of picture you're making.

One day, exploring a corridor you'd always assumed went nowhere, you discover a secret library. You don't know if it's actually secret. But it's not marked, and you never see anyone else. It's very small, with shelves that stretch up so high you need a wooden ladder to reach them. Up there, the books are old. The first time you crack open a volume, its pages come apart in your hands. After that, you're more careful. It occurs to you that maybe you're not allowed here, but that hadn't been included in Jane's comprehensive list of rules, and the old books turn out to be interesting, so you stay.

One shelf is for disaster stories. There is probably a classification scheme you haven't figured out. But the common thread seems to be that a lot of people die. After a few books, you realize they're all the same story. They're set in different places, in Sumeria and Mexico and countries you've never heard of, and the details differ, but the basics are the same. A group of people - sometimes they're called sorcerers, and sometimes demons, and sometimes they're just ordinary people - rule over a kingdom or nation or whatever. In four of the books, they begin building something impressive, like a crystal palace or the world's largest pyramid. Then something bad happens and people die and everyone starts speaking different languages. This story feels vaguely familiar to you, but you don't place it until you come to a book in which the impressive thing is a tower named Babel.

You think you hear a noise and freeze. But it's far away. You suddenly see yourself: sitting on the floor of a library in a blazer and pleated skirt, navy ribbons in your hair, reading old books. Before you came here, you'd seen girls like this - girls who wear ribbons, and enjoy books - and thought they were a different species. You'd thought you and them were separated by walls. Yet here you are, on the other side, and you don't know how you did it. You don't feel like a different person. You're just in a different place.

~

The junior dining hall makes excellent chocolate milk shakes. You get into the habit of swinging by after Macroeconomics and carrying one out to a sunny spot on the grass at the side of the building, where you can read. The cup is comically big. You always feel a little sick at the end of it. But you keep going back.

One day you pass a boy with a laptop at one of the outdoor tables. You've seen this boy in the halls, but you don't share any classes because he's older. He's more advanced. You sneak a glance at him, and another, because he's pretty cute.

The next day he's there again, and this time he looks up as you pass. His eyes take in your enormous milkshake. You keep walking to your sunny spot but can't concentrate on your book.

The day after that, he sees you coming, stretches, and pushes the hair out of his eyes. "Thirsty, huh?"

You smile. "Yeah," you say. "I am thirsty." You walk on.

You know you'll be passing him again tomorrow. Do you want to take this little thing you've got going any further? How would you like to handle this?