LINDA'S NEW SCHOOL

BY JOREYMAY

[ part 16 ]

Début

As they approached the common room, she knew something was very different. Girls who had stared in fear (and sometimes awe) earlier in the day were barely hiding giggles as they passed. Others looked puzzled, sometimes whispering to the gigglers. Linda had a pretty good idea what was going on.

As usual, their approach quieted the room. Once it was clear that no adults were coming, the sounds of enjoyment returned. She noticed that the girls were passing around books by Baum, and a variety of others. She went around behind one of the apparently reading girls, and found what she had expected. The cartoons were nestled unobtrusively in the books.

Victoria winked and led her to the computer in the corner. She showed her what certain biographical references brought up. Now that she got a better look, the third panel was more recognizable, and more embarrassing, than she had expected. Even Blue Boy was fairly detailed. He was also positioned in a way that covered nothing.

Linda gave a brief half smile, then gestured to Victoria to follow her. They quickly made their way to her office, where they could talk.

"That last panel was more than I expected," she began. She had to wait a moment, as her friend let out a long suppressed laugh.

"I thought they captured that blush rather well."

"Along with altogether too much else. Oh, well. Done is done. And they seem to be doing what I wanted. Now comes the hard part. After another day or so, all of the known copies will need to be deeply hidden or destroyed. We don't want them falling into the wrong hands. The same with the on-line versions. Thank the girls, and feel free to describe my reactions."

"Has anyone told you that you get bossy when you are behind that desk? Even when you're saying something good?"

Linda stuck her tongue out at her. "Don't you have some homework you need to get done?"

Victoria saluted and left, giggling as she closed the door.

Linda waited a moment, to make sure she was gone. Then she got up to take care of another matter.

Linda took the short way, up the front stairs, and found her way to the utility closet. It took her a few tries to find the right key, but once she did, she found her way into the monitor room with no further difficulty. The woman at the monitors turned to face her.

"Since you can't find me, and I'm obviously not here, I'm probably in my office. Wouldn't you say?"

"That sounds reasonable to me. What can I do for you, oh hallucination of mine? And where can I get more of whatever brought this on?"

"Since we are not having this conversation, you can muse freely about things I would have no way of knowing."

"Such as?"

"Such as the streaming video feeds. How many are there, and how do they start?"

"We can have up to four simultaneous streams. One is broadcast at specific times, the other three are on demand."

"Encrypted?"

"Industrial strength. Keys are rotated frequently."

"Are any live, or all from disk?"

"We can run one live feed, but we usually use that for conferencing only."

"Are there *any* of those streams that wouldn't get us fried if they went public?"

"A few actual educational productions from class projects, and the archived Board Meetings. Well, the official parts of them, anyway. And the school introduction."

"Well, I suppose it's better than nothing. Who does the camera work for the class projects and the like?"

"Most of the time, I do. For some of the meetings, I just put a couple of fixed cameras on tripods in the room, and then mix it from here."

"Alright. In a few minutes, I should still be in my office. I will need you to meet me there and record a short video. Once you have it, you will need to reprogram the computers to play that video in the place of all the others. If the current stream would be encrypted, then this should be as well. This will need to continue until this is all settled, and the new policies are in place. For the near future, every bit coming out of this place will be subject to intense attention, and not just by people friendly to me or the School. Can you do that?"

"As long as your video doesn't run too long."

"It won't."

"Ok. One more thing. Are the priest holes still active?"

"Most of them still exist, but they haven't been used by visitors in years. Too much chance of being seen or otherwise discovered inside or outside the school. Our valued friends prefer the relative safety of the streams. Sometimes Miss James uses them when she is doing teacher evaluations and the like, but that is about it."

"Thanks. See you in a few."

Within an hour, the change had been completed. Every request or access of a Sands stream would see the same thing: A closeup of Linda. She would introduce herself, and tell the viewers that the School is undergoing some changes. Until those changes were complete, all of their entertaining and educational streams would not be available. She thanked them for their patience, and ended the video.