First off, of course the oft-repeated mad props to JR Parz, for coming up with the idea for the Master PC universe. Additional kudos to Bill Pratt, whose work in Master PC: The Rumor Mill inspired me to attempt what I hope is an unconventional slant on the sub-genre.
Disclaimer: Don’t read if you’re not 18. (Even if you are, there’s probably something else you should be doing.)
Note: The prologue establishes the premise, and will make the subsequent chapters make sense. I apologize in advance for the 1,568 sexless words at the beginning, and hope the remainder shall serve as sufficient atonement.
Alvin J. Lohrman strode out of Warren Master High School for the final time. Forty-two years, he thought. Forty-two years I tried to teach those dunder-heads some knowledge and respect. Forty-two years of my life culminating in a generation of whiny, incorrigible, spineless, over-entertained, under-disciplined, entitled, whorish delinquents.
He didn’t look back as he got in his car and drove away. For his years of service, they’d given him a watch – he’d thrown it away in plain view of the principal, just so she knew what he thought about her lip service praise. She was on the students’ side, and so were most of the other teachers and coaches, always worried more about popularity than they were about doing their damned jobs.
Mr. Lohrman was still fuming about it when he got home. Ever since his third wife left him six years ago, he’d given up on women and was decidedly happier for it. He’d never met a one of them who wasn’t too insipid or too commanding – doormats and devils all. He slumped down before his computer chair out of habit, checking his email without even remembering he no longer had need to.
Most of his inbox was routine garbage – spam, bill reminders, a message from his son congratulating him on his last day of teaching. Delete, delete, delete. Mr. Lohrman’s hand was descending on one email when it caught his eye. It had no message and the sender address was nonsensical – he wondered if it could be that new teacher, that eastern European dame with the name he could never pronounce or remember.
Regardless, the email had no text, only an attachment labeled mpc.exe. He ran a virus scan on it to be safe – more than a few of his ungrateful bastard students had tried to fry him like that before. It came up clean, so he opened it.
“Welcome to the Command Center,” read a message in the center of the screen. His eyes naturally skimmed to the end, as always impatient to get to the point. Blah blah blah… “you are the Master’s representative.”
“Great. This doesn’t tell me squat.” He clicked the button to close the introductory window. There was a blinking cursor next to a box labeled “name.” “Well what the hell is this?”
He thought about it, and wondered if it was some kind of data mining software like he’d read warnings about in his AARP magazine. Or maybe some kind of address book? Or… well, there was that new software the school was buying, supposed to make entering grades, taking attendance, entering detentions, emailing parents, all that crap more streamlined. Could this be that? He looked at the program title again – Master PC. Of course, for Warren Master High School. Those idiots had sent him a copy even though he was resigning.
He shrugged, and decided to test an arbitrary student’s name. He typed “Joe Bernison” and hit enter. Sure enough, the smug, deadbeat convict-to-be had a profile! Especially impressive was the slowly rotating 3D image of the young man. Great. Last year we fired half the art and music faculty, but we have money for THIS tom-foolery? As he perused the rest of it, Mr. Lohrman was actually impressed with how detailed the information was – he clicked through various sub-menus and saw measurements on his intellectual and physical abilities, motivation, ethics, sex drive…
Wait, what?! Is nothing sacred any more? First it’s illustrated sex ed textbooks, then it’s condoms in the nurse’s office, and now we’re actually rating them on it? He couldn’t begin to guess how the school even collected any of this information, or if students created their own profile. Thinking back to the punk’s glib offer to “eat him” that morning – a fine note to end his teaching career on – Mr. Lohrman experimented and found out he could adjust settings and saw a save button. He shrunk his sex drive to 0, penis measurements to laughable proportions, and in the comment box, made a note that the boy’s girlfriend – the vamp whose face he’d seen the boy try to suck entirely into his mouth – only dated him out of pity, and liked to flaunt her power in the relationship over him. “Since the boy clearly has no self-esteem, he puts up with whatever she dishes out,” he wrote.
There, now when his little myface.com buddies (or whatever the kids were using these days) see this, they’ll see that little comment. Mr. Lohrman didn’t even care if his name was attached to it – he was moving to Florida in a few weeks after his vacation, and was beyond being fired now. It was therapeutic, and hell, not like they could fire him even if they traced the changes back to him. So why not have some fun?
Unsure of how to navigate the program, he entered “Warren Master High School student body” into the “name” line. It brought up a window with nothing more than a comment box. He noticed a box in the corner with the words “subjects are aware of changes,” and unchecked it. (No sense alerting people to his actions, he figured.) Mr. Lohrman grabbed a bottle of wine, and settled in to unload forty-two years of stress and neglect.
All but giggling to himself, he read it aloud as he typed.
“The students of DMHS, despite once having been offered a high quality education, shuffle into the building each day to decline it anew. Whatever experiences and knowledge they gain over the course of the school day, they forget the moment they walk out the exit. Nothing phases them any more. I’ve long since given up trying to change their wretched, filthy, disrespectful behavior outside of school, but inside of it… they emulate all of the worst stereotypes they see on television, as appropriate to their self-perceived niche in the social strata, never questioning why they behave the way they do. Most are selfish, vulgar, immature hooligans whose only serious motivation is engaging in sexual intercourse, and the rest just stumble along oblivious to their peers’ indiscretions – as if it were normal. Their focus is on their appearances above all other concerns – after all, their only options are to be one of the beautiful people, or be doomed to be a wallflower no one will ever pay attention to. The young men are consumed by the desire for sex, using any cheap trick and sleazy tactic they can think of to coerce their female classmates’ into sexual acts. The young women alternately encourage it where they aren’t simply so dim that they fall for whatever half-cocked pick-up line is thrown at them. This is even aside from dressing to reveal and highlight their assets without regard for their dignity, and flirting with any male with the confidence – or arrogance – to bait them.”
He sighed, feeling like he wanted to write more, but decided to get somewhat more specific. Still, while he was making sweeping statements, he typed “Warren Master High School staff, faculty and administration, and other adults on campus” into the name box, and with a devilish smile, gave them a piece of his mind.
“The adults are idiotic patsies. Clearly the students run the day-to-day affairs, and the adults there simply enable their misbehaviors with an insincere and ineffectual attempt at discipline, always reaching for some creative new method rather than using the ways that always worked before. They’re practically teenagers themselves, the way they spend their days striving to befriend, coddle, please and pacify them. There is nothing beneath them, nothing too low and shameful for them, if it means they reach just one student. Their dignity has no value to them; the only currency they prize is popularity and the satisfaction of their students.”
He began specifying individuals – the principal, the dean, the guidance counselor, and then tore into student after student. (He was stunned how many of them had their pictures taken for the software in PJs, He couldn’t figure out how to retrieve rosters for his old classes with this program – for all its frills, Master PC failed to cover the simple day-to-day needs, as all new-fangled technology always did. To be safe, once he stumbled across a preferences menu, he set all changes to be specific to the confines of Warren Masters High School. Seeing a blank to set what time changes were to take effect, he chuckled to himself and entered in the date of the Sunday beginning the week of the next semester, a nice welcome back present to those half-wit colleagues and juvenile delinquents.
Mr. Lohrman found the process entirely relaxing, and continued playing with it all through the evening before finally collapsing, exhausted, in his bed. His alarm awakened him at 6:00 the next morning and he hastened off to the airport, unburdened by all the pent-up rage of four decades of teaching.
And so it came to pass that despite being the most stand-offish, curmudgeonly, judgmental, old-fashioned, holier-than-thou cantankerous prick who’d ever taught a class at Warren Master High School had more impact on the lives of its staff and students than any other person who ever walked those halls.
These are some of their stories.