Adam Levin - The Instructions

And then, the next schoolday, I searched for a chink. For a little while, I even thought I found one. Late in the afternoon, I witnessed my first Hyperscoot: three kids scooted their chairs in rapid succession, each one loudly groaning the floor, and then a couple other kids groaned the floor with their chairs, and then another one, making six kids who groaned the floor in less than ten seconds. No one went over their tape-line, so no one got in trouble. What was even more interesting to me than that, though, was how the second three scooters never even got seen by Botha or the teachers, who were too occupied with checking to see if the first three were in violation of the Tape rule. And not only that, but a lot of us revolved to watch the action after the first three groans, and none of us got steps for breaking the Face Forward rule since we were done breaking it before the robots were done failing at trying to figure out who the second three scooters were.

As soon as school let out, I asked Nakamook about it. We were sitting in prop thrones on the stage in the cafeteria, waiting for the detention monitor to arrive. Nakamook said, “I’ve been in the Cage two years and seen maybe nine or ten Hyperscoots.”

So they happen once or twice a quarter? I said.

“Nine or ten divided by eight is somewhere between one and two,” said Nakamook = “Yes, once or twice a quarter on average, but I am not very interested in this subject.” He was using a house-key to scrape the gold paint off the dog-head on the arm of his throne.

I said, Why don’t people Hyperscoot more often? It’s so simple.

Nakamook said, “It’s not like anyone does it on purpose.”

But why not? I said.

“What do you mean?” he said. “It’s an accidental thing. A few spazzes groan their chairs at the same time by accident — that’s why it’s called Hyperscoot. Because it’s hyper. Hyper’s never on purpose. If it was on purpose it would be called Superscoot or something. Riotscoot.” He blew his pile of scraped paint off the dog-head and walked away from me.

I disagreed with Nakamook about being H — I believed you could be H on purpose, or at least use your H with purpose — but I figured that the potential purposefulness of H was beside the point. I figured that Nakamook had simplified a good explanation; that he knew some complicated set of reasons why Hyperscoot couldn’t happen more often but didn’t want to talk about them because, for some reason, they made him touchy. Even though we’d blanked hallway bulbs together a few days earlier, and even though I’d drawn on his head and he’d gone to my house for dinner once, I hadn’t yet given him that copy of Ulpan with all the Israelite parts cut out, so I thought it was fair for him not to want to talk about touchy stuff, and I didn’t want him to get upset, so I dropped the conversation and gave up on Hyperscoot.

That afternoon, when I got to the Frontier, I told Flowers I couldn’t find the chink. He said I shouldn’t be a quitter and told me I should look where I didn’t usually look.

The next day, I revolved my head a conspicuous number of degrees to look behind me. This broke the Face Forward rule, but Botha was spaced out and didn’t see, and neither did the teachers at the cluster, who were busy grading papers.

Across the room, directly behind me, was Nakamook. Jelly’s and Mookus’s carrels were along the same wall. The problem was that all their backs were to me. Everyone’s back was to everyone else because of how the carrels were arranged to face the walls. Still, I stared at Nakamook’s back for no less than two minutes and none of the robots noticed. I thought of throwing something at Nakamook’s neck so that he’d turn around, but whatever it could have been would have had to be heavy enough to travel the length of the Cage while also being light enough not to hurt Nakamook, which didn’t leave me any options other than a very compressed ball of paper bound with Scotch tape, which would be inaccurate to throw, noisy to crumple, and also, since it would have to pass the teacher cluster in flight, too large and white to sneak under the robots’ radar. Plus then there’d be this ball of paper on the floor.

Having thought, for the second time in two days, that I’d found a chink, and then, for the second time in two days, finding that I hadn’t, I started getting angry that I’d ever looked, and angrier still that I’d ever had to look. My friends were sitting just yards away, but I couldn’t communicate with any of them openly… Rather, I could communicate with any of them openly — all I’d have to do was use my voice — but I would get in trouble if I did so. And that I was expected to accept that was… what? An insult. One of a thousand that went with being in the Cage. And I did accept it. All of us did. That was the thing. That was the thing that started to eat at me, even though I didn’t yet understand it. This is the thing that was starting to eat at me, even though I didn’t understand it yet: In trying to find a chink with which to game the Cage, I, like the rest of them, was playing along with the Cage, accepting the insult, accepting — in action (or lack thereof), if not in thought — that the Cage possessed the authority to lay down rules = Even when the actions that would get us in trouble were good, human actions — e.g., talking to friends, making eye-contact, searching out something other than solitude and blankness — we did our best to stay out of trouble. And why? For what? They didn’t teach. They didn’t even teach . If someone were teaching, it might have been different; if you had to be quiet so as not to interfere with a teacher’s lessons, that, although stifling and totally unlike the way I’d been schooled at Schechter and Northside, would at least have made a little sense, but quiet at all times ? Quiet at all times, though no one was speaking, let alone about anything you’d be better off knowing, plus always facing forward, away from the teachers? The Cage Manual said that students in the Cage were there to learn through “self-direction,” but all that meant was that since we were all in different grades, with different abilities, there was no way for the teachers to give us group lessons. What they did was give us “individually tailored” writing assignments and readings, and then “tutored” us on an “as-needed basis” at the teacher cluster. If you had a question, you could raise your hand and wait to get called on, but since the teacher cluster was in the center of the room and your back was to the cluster while you faced forward, you couldn’t tell if the teachers had seen your raised hand; until they looked up and called on you to join them, you just had to wait, arm held high. Newer students often tried to groan the floor inside their tape-line to get the teachers to look in their direction and see their raised hands, but this drove people crazy, teachers and students both, and Botha called it Aggressive Squeaking, and Aggressive Squeaking broke the Quiet At All Times rule. Those words: Aggressive Squeaking! They got me explosive, and just before third period on that second day of my search for a chink, I couldn’t stop hearing them inside my head, Aggressive Squeaking Aggressive Squeaking, and I probably would have exploded by fourth, but my nose beat me to it; my nose had to sneeze.

I didn’t like anyone to see me sneezing, so I revolved to face forward and sneezed into my carrel, and Botha said, “Gehbless you,” and I thought: God damn you! and within half a second, I’d discovered the chink and how to exploit it, for as soon as Botha had said “Gehbless you,” I’d revolved in my chair, breaking the Face Forward rule once again, and I found that he was just as spaced out as before. Despite my sneeze and his automatic blessing, he wasn’t even looking in my direction. Neither were the teachers.