How Frieda “Fraidy” Katz Failed Mister Tannenbaum’s History Class
“This, Is. Amazeballs!”
A woman was walking out of Nordstrom’s. She was young and tall and blonde and ever so fashionable (…which, I guess, meant the clothes she was wearing were more expensive than the clothes of the people who were watching her wear her clothes), wearing heels so high that she should have fallen on her face with every step. Gravity was clearly falling down on the job. Fraidy thought the woman was the most gorgeous creature she had ever seen. Fraidy was short and scrawny, with scraggly, tightly curled black hair and…scrunchy facial features; her horizon for judging beauty was rather broad.
But the woman was not the amazeballs part. The amazeballs part was that, over the woman’s head floated a square from which somebody pulled the bottom line down into an arrow (it looked like home plate on a baseball field which, for reasons which will eventually become clear, Fraidy was only tangentially aware of). The box contained a user name (BettyBoopenstein2112) next to a teeny, tiny picture of her. Below that was text. Comments BettyBoopenstein2112 made were highlighted in green (ie: next to an icon of a purse with wings, the image that represented Nordstrom’s, she had posted a string of emojis, starting with a big red heart, followed by a thumbs up, a pair of eyes wide open with excitement, three more hearts, an alligator playing polo and a toothless grin). Comments made by other people about BettyBoopenstein2112 were highlighted in red (ie: harveypantsonfire had given her eleven emojis, alternating between a fox with a come-hither look and a wolf with its eyes bulging out). Obviously, not all of the comments could be seen (because of the whole filling her field of vision thing). If she had wanted to read more, Fraidy would have had to have blinked her left eye three times, then her right eye once, then left twice, right twice and alternating left and right until she came to a comment she wanted to read; alternately, because her cellphone was synced to her ARggles, she could use the arrows and space bar to navigate the woman’s information. In a similar vein, she could use her phone to click on the woman’s image, bringing up her photo gallery, or she could use a series of eye movements that could be interpreted as Morse code for, “help me, I’m meltnig!”
The info-bubble over the woman’s head was mauve, which indicated that she was bi-sexual. (ARggles info-bubbles for adults were every color of the rainbow, with each band representing a different sexuality; in addition, they were white for NOYDB (None of Your Damn Business) and gray for everybody under the age of majority. Fraidy had a…theoretical understanding of what the different colors meant – thank you, Ontario sex ed curriculum – but she had little experience to back it up. Just a week before, Fraidy had had her first kiss. It was with Hymie Ascher in the ravine behind William Lyon Mackenzie Collegiate Institute. It was short and sloppy and seemed to go on forever even though neither of them seemed to be enjoying it very much – possibly because neither of them seemed to be enjoying it very much. When it was over, they shared a “we must never speak of this” look. To ensure that the look was honoured, they ((casually, trying not to be too obvious about it…which made it very obvious to anybody who was paying attention)) sat on opposite sides of the cafeteria at lunchtime and avoided eye contact when they passed in the hall.
Fraidy was convinced that she would never kiss another boy for the rest of her life. Eww!)
The store, like all physical locations, had a square info-bubble with rounded corners. These, too, came in a rainbow of colors, not based on their sexuality (because, some people surmised, the developers of ARggles believed that shopping was inherently sexy), but on what their function was (red for retail, blue for wholesale, yellow for bulk sales, green for pre-loved, etc). The store’s info-bubble contained the purse with wings logo next to its name. Below was a heart emoji next to 97% (because some people are never satisfied!) Below that were announcements of store specials and comments. This is why there is so little love in the world, Fraidy thought. All the hearts have been given to stores!
Fraidy was nobody’s idea of an ideal shopper, least of all her own. Her idea of a perfect shopping experience was running into a store, grabbing the first thing off the rack that wasn’t totally hideous (and more or less her size), and rushing to the checkout counter. As long as there wasn’t a gaggle of girls clogging the cash register, two minutes, three minutes tops. Fraidy’s personal best was fifty-seven seconds – a purple training bra that wasn’t especially comfortable, but under her clothing wasn’t especially visible. It wasn’t that she judged the girls who were into competitive shopping – much – it just wasn’t her thing.
Fraidy was all about comfort: loose jeans, flannel shirts, a Blue Jays cap on backwards. It wasn’t that she was a tomboy. She thought sports were stupid. Except for the stats, because stats were math, and math was never stupid, even if it was in the service of something that was. Math was always amazeballs. Fraidy thought she should be called a steveboy or an elanboy to reflect her intellectual, rather than physical interests, but, as usual, language let her down.
Anyhoo…Nordstrom’s great ratings were but a minor skirmish in the war for Fraidy’s ARggles attention, one that didn’t in any way interfere with her appreciation of the battlefield before her. Look! Over there! That bald guy with puffy white sideburns carrying six Christmas bags (even though it was July) is followed around by a pink info-bubble featuring an emoji of a drowning aardvark! And there! A middle-aged blond woman behind a slow-moving herd of teenagers with a black info-bubble that was quickly filling up with stuck out tongue and laughing emojis. If Fraidy was just the slightest squidge more self-aware, she might marvel at the fact that she was immersed in the lives of people she hadn’t known five seconds before, and would forget five seconds later.
Fraidy ran to The Source, the only store in the Yorkdale shopping mall that she actually enjoyed spending time in. Forty minutes later, she had reviewed the specs of all the latest products (the latest AlTech hoverboard was especially hot). She thought, If I die now, like, right now, and went to the big electronics workshop in the sky, I would die happy!
Two days earlier, on the event of her fiftteenth birthday, Freida Katz (known as Fraidy owing to an incident with a spider, a nutcracker and a hall closet in the family’s old apartment when she was two that she didn’t even remember – so, unfair!) was gifted with her first ARggles: Augmented Reality goggles. Looking through them, you could see the world in front of you, with digital information taken from teh Interwebz (combining a camera built into the goggles and face and pattern recognition to identify people, places and things in the wearer’s field of vision) laid over it. That was the amazeballs part. Her friend Imogene had gotten ARggles a couple of weeks earlier and swore by them. (And at them when people said stupid things on them. Unlike Fraidy, who generally didn’t care about the opinions of others, Imogene didn’t suffer tools gladly.)
Fraidy would have abandoned her birthday party (really just a repurposed family dinner) then and there to test the goggles, even though it would have meant postponing inhaling a piece of vanilla cake with chocolate icing (the champagne of birthday cakes…whatever that meant), but she had to register the glasses and set up an account (which put the counter back in intuitive) and, by the time she did that, Yorkdale was already closed. But the frustration (which Fraidy worked off playing Age of Indoor Plumbing) was worth it.
ARggles were amazeballs. Don’t pretend like you don’t want your own pair.
Scrolling through the comments, Fraidy was surprised to discover one that was not superemojilicious, but was actually plain text. Old school! Hardcore! She had no idea what paperproducts007 meant by writing:
O brave new world with such technologies in it! Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair! So, Fraidy pulled the cellphone out of the back pocket of her jeans and made with the zeroes and ones. An Interwebz screen popped up in her field of vision which explained that the post was made up of quotes from two dead white guyz – Shakespeare, whom she recognized, and somebody else, Shelley something, whom she didn’t. How pretensh!
And yet…
Who writes things on the Webz with text? I’ll tell you who: old farts. That’s who. Young people wouldn’t use their words because then old people would understand what they were saying (emojis were the coded language of youth; in a previous generation, it would have been hand jive or…or…or cave paintings). But old people didn’t generally use ARggles because it made them seasick or lose their hair…faster or be too cool, and everybody knew that old people were allergic to being cool. So, who was paperproducts007? It was a mystery.
Fraidy was intrigued. Fraidy loved mysteries.
She was about to investigate when an instant message window popped up at the bottom of her field of vision.
imogenegenie> where are you? Bob won’t eat himself, you know!
Oh, road apples! Was it noon already? Fraidy had agreed to meet her bestest bestie Imogene at the fast food burger joint Bob So Tasty. If Fraidy looked like Bob the Builder, only distributed somewhat differently (shorter and rounder), Imogene looked like Bob the Builder, only distributed differently and negative (shorter and rounder and with the blackest skin – I mean, skin so black that the other black girls in her grade were all like: “There’s a complete lack of color at this table – it must be Imogene. Let’s find another table to make fun of people at.”). The two girls inexorably found each other in the strange attractor of everybody else’s indifference.
Just a clique of two trying to get by in the big, crazy world.
katzoutofbag> on my way
Bob So Tasty was on the other side of the shopping mall. Fraidy hoofed it…until she got to the SportsCheck, at which point she thought: Why kill myself? It was a thing with her, a…a…a – whatchamacallit? Oh, yeah. Mantra. It was her mantra. Why kill myself? Hey! It had gotten her this far, right?
Bob So Tasty was the latest fast food fad. Until recently, Fraidy had ordered the Baby Bob (a kid’s meal featuring a small burger, a small order of fries and a toy based on a modestly popular new YahooTube video). However, on her previous birthday, her mother had told her that she was old enough to order an adult meal. At first, Fraidy didn’t know what to order – so many choices! So, she decided not to decide: she would work her way through the menu and see what she liked the best. She had tried the Basic Bob (with its super-secret So TastyTM sauce that everybody in the world, except for the current boy band Boyz To Noiz, which had a tie-in promotion with the burger chain, knew was mayonnaise and ketchup with more salt than would be healthy for the average fifteen year-old); the Big Bellyful of Bob (the basic burger with an extra patty and an onion ring on top); Baja Bellyful of Bob (Fraidy enjoyed the refried beans and guac, but she wasn’t thrilled by the jalapenos); and the Bauhaus Bob (an architectural marvel which incorporated an edible box in its design – Fraidy only needed a single taste to understand why it was the poorest selling item on the menu).
For the last couple of months, Fraidy’s go-to meal had been the Bloated Belly Buster Bob, a triple decker burger with five patties, three onion rings and enough So TastyTM sauce to drown a yak. (Not a Peruvian yak, obviously; a Caucasus yak.) However, the previous week the restaurant had introduced – for a limited time only, available at a select location near you – the Baconadian Bob, featuring three different kinds of bacon and a maple syrup-based sauce – and, despite having knee-jerk sentiments against eating her porcine countryfolk, she had to admit that it was growing on her. (It was probably the maple syrup, which reminded Fraidy of campouts with her parents she wished she had had as a kid.)
Fraidy stopped at the white picket fence in front of the Bob So Tasty that jutted into the mall walkway, putting a hand on it to help her catch her breath. 7.35 million smiley faces? Check. 37 frowny faces? Probably had something to do with last year’s recall of 2,373 crates of So TastyTM sauce “purely as a precaution.” The comments held the biggest surprise:
paperproducts007> Bob So Tasty is Soylent Green! BOB SO TASTY IS SOYLENT GREEN!
The actual message was weird enough. But what made it really stand out was the fact that it refused to scroll down. The next message (ailineileen> So much tastiness! So tasty! So tasty! So tasty! I’m going to order a Baconadian Bob so I can have something for breakfast tomorow!!!!!) appeared at the top of the comments bubble for a sec, then the previous comment jumped back to the top over it. And the next comment. And the next.
Weirdness.
Fraidy entered the packed establishment (fast food restaurants at a mall were like a real life version of Where’s Waldo, only you substituted the person you had arranged to meet for the computer game character); eventually, she found Imogene in a far corner of the room. Fraidy put her backpack down on the seat next to her friend (“I claim this territory in the name of an unhealthy lunch!”), then went to the line to order. Ten minutes later, she asked for a Bloated Belly Buster Bob – for old time’s sake. Ten minutes after that, she plopped her tray next to Imogene’s on the table.
“Did you see where Melanie Goldman’s mole was in physics this morning?” Imogene breathlessly started before Fraidy even sat down. “What’s that all a -“
Fraidy cut her off. “Do you know what Soylent Green is?”
Being the consummate geek, Imogene grinned and shouted at the tippy top of her lungs, “Soylent Green is people! Soylent Green is peeee-puuulll!”
A couple of boys sitting next to Imogene looked up from their ARggles game of strip poker (in which a person of the player’s choosing in their environment loses an article of clothing every time they win a hand*); having determined that the person who had been doing the shouting was nobody of importance, they immediately banished it from their thoughts and returned to their game. For everybody else in the restaurant, the shout was smothered by the din of teenagers eating and chatting.
Fraidy widened her eyes and jerked her head forward, the universal gesture of, “What the hell‽” With a sigh, Imogene explained: “Soylent Green is a 1973 movie starring Charlton Heston based on the 1966 novel Make Room! Make Room! written by Harry Harrison. In a future where the human population is out of control, a police detective investigating a murder makes a horrifying discovery about the world’s most common food, Soylent Green.”
This sent Fraidy’s mind racing. Everybody suspected that the Bob of Bob So Tasty was the man whose genetic material had been the basis of the vat-grown meat that was in all of the franchise’s burgers. There were seven Farcebook pages devoted to the subject, so the rumour must be true!** Still, for paperproducts007 to publicly insist that it was true… Fraidy shuddered inside.
Outside, she punched Imogene in the shoulder and said, “You’re such a nerd!”
Through a mouthful of tastiness, Imogene replied, “It takes one to pwn one!”
A couple of bites later, Imogene asked, “Have you started the essay for Mister Tannenbaum’s history class? It’s due next week.”
“Ugh,” Fraidy ugghed.
Misinterpreting her, Imogene eagerly said, “Are you not enjoying your So Tasty? Because, you know, if you’re not, I could always find room to help you out…”
Fraidy hadn’t even started working on her essay for Mister Tannenbaum’s class. In fact, she had forgotten all about the essay for Mister Tannenbaum’s class.
Fraidy’s ugghs could be very expressive.
Fraidy could sum up history in two words: “Shit happened.” She didn’t trust any academic discipline which could be displayed on a t-shirt. Why was she even taking history if she had such contempt for it? The Ontario Ministry of Education determined that students must have a social science elective for their education to be “well rounded.” Well rounded. Apparently, well rounded was a synonym for bored out of your mind. History seemed marginally less annoying to Fraidy than political science, social science or, uggh, psychology.
“Yeah, I got it under control,” Fraidy assured her friend.
Imogene, sensing some doubt in her friend’s voice, realized that this was not the best subject to bring up, so she dropped it faster than a defective curling iron that was throwing off sparks. The girls spent the balance of lunch (and the next period, which they proclaimed “free”) discussing the most personal and cultural ephemera.
The rest of the afternoon was two tons of mush with a side of meh. Professor Ripperton continued to try to teach Fraidy math concepts she had mastered when she was six, so, naturally, she obsessed about the true identity of paperproducts007. Mister Tannenbaum blathered on about John A. Macdonald being “a happening Father of Confederation,” but Fraidy’s attention was torn between that and the true identity of paperproducts007. Finally – finally! – there was Professor Schmuelson’s comp sci class. Ordinarily, PS’s dry delivery put Fraidy to sleep even when she liked – tolerated – learned a single new thing from the assigned reading – especially when Fraidy had only learned a single new thing from the assigned reading. Today, however, she was wide awake, preoccupied with the question of…you know.
After the last bell, Fraidy dropped her books into her locker and ran for the exits. When Imogene asked her if she wanted to go to the mall, she shouted over her shoulder, “Can’t! I’m on a mission!” Imogene smiled. She knew what it was like to be on a mission.
When she got home, Fraidy rushed to her room and hit the computer. Hit it hard. She plugged her ARggles into her hard drive so she could work more easily.
INT. INVESTIGATOR’S BULLPEN – DAY
JACK RYAN (a fire hydrant with limbs and dark glasses) sits at a desk in an open concept office. Opposite him, MUFFY GOODACRE (a short, busty redhead) sits at her own desk. They are both wearing the blue vests of Transdimensional Authority investigators. Around them, other investigators are purposefully moving about, doing…investigationy things.
JACK RYAN
And that’s when I realized that the transdimensional frappezoid had been tampered with!MUFFY GOODACRE
The transdimensional frappe? Sounds tasty!JACK RYAN
(laughing)
Not frappe. Frappezoid. It’s part of the mechanism that contains the Pollock at the doorway of the Dimensional PortalTM!MUFFY GOODACRE
Ooh – that would have been awkward!JACK RYAN
Yes, I’m sure the Gurgglefluxx Ambassador will be happy that his atoms weren’t scattered across the space between universes. Say, you know what I could go for right now, Muffy?MUFFY GOODACRE
What’s that, Investigator Ryan?JACK RYAN
An ice cool, freeze dried with the natural goodness that only Bavarian guavas can provide Burpsi Cola!MUFFY GOODACRE
I know exactly what you mean. Whenever I’m hard at work travelling through universes to track down interdimensional dastardliness, it always gives me a little jolt of energy to know that I can take a break with a tall, cool – or, even room temperature, as long as it’s tall – I mean, it doesn’t have to reach to the ceiling, as long as there is a lot of it – Burpsi Cola!
Behind them, the other investigators do a little dance.
JACK RYAN AND MUFFY GOODACRE
(singing)
Ooooh. Whether here or in some strange universe, drink Burpsi Cola – you could do worse!
Fraidy hated the ads that appeared when you first logged on to the ARggles. Or between levels of games. Or at random times in chats. At least, they said the ads appeared at random times in chats; Fraidy had a feeling that they actually appeared whenever the conversation got too interesting for the participants. Unfortunately, she couldn’t afford to use the goggles ad-free, so she would just have to live with the ads until she could find a little time to hack into the system and remove the code that spawned them.
Fraidy was very good with code.
When the ARggles interface appeared on her computer screen, she ignored the unflattering comments about her rockets, moons and stars wallpaper and, opening a list of command icons, clicked on the river with a film camera over it. A list of saved AR streams opened up. It was an easy list to navigate: there was only one. She clicked on it, and several seconds of Bob So Tasty footage started playing. Fraidy clicked on paperproducts007 to see the person’s user profile.
It was empty.
Of course, Fraidy thought. Smartasses don’t advertise. That’s what makes their asses smart.
But smartasses were often hackers. It seemed like only yesterday that Fraidy had gone through all the trouble of setting up her ARggles account; she knew that some basic personal information had to be available for display. The only way it couldn’t be was if paperproducts007 had hacked their goggles to keep that information from being displayed. Or…had hacked into the system to make posts without ever having created an account in the first place. Yeah. Sneaky. But smart. Sneaky smart.
Fraidy opened a programme that she had written and stored on her computer that traced a user ID to the user’s ISP account. Yeah, yeah, not technically, you know, legal and stuff, but she was bored one afternoon, and it wasn’t technically illegal, it was more of a grey area, really and…and…and SHUT UP! Anyway, all that angsty programming genius didn’t help: after a couple of seconds, the name of the user was revealed: Justin Bieber. As if!
Somebody was spoofing the teen idol turned tofu entrepreneur’s account. Fortunately, Fraidy had created an app for that, too (don’t judge!). The real user was…Tessa Thompson? Hunh! I don’t think so! The next one was Cary Grant. Cary Grant? Aha! At last a name Fraidy didn’t recognize! Now, I’ve got you! Fraidy thought. She didn’t need a…specialized piece of software for the next part of her investigation, just a single Google search would yield the information that Cary Grant was –
A long dead movie star.
Fraidy realized that this was a potential colossal time suck. The name of the real person behind paperproducts007 could be revealed by the next link in the chain. Or, a thousand links later. Fraidy needed –
“Dinner’s ready!” Fraidy heard her mother call from the dining room downstairs. “Frieda! Come and get it before it gets cold!”
Annoyed, Fraidy shouted back, “Busy! Eat later!”
“What are you so busy doing that you can’t come to dinner?” dad loudly demanded.
Without thinking it through, Fraidy blurted, “Homework!”
All jaws in the Katz dining room dropped as if they were in a spaceship in orbital freefall and their jaws hadn’t been strapped in. Then, everybody froze as if a time warp had deposited them at the exact moment of the heat death of the universe. Their complete and utter shock was scientific, really. Dad Mischa had just taken some roast beef off his fork and was awkwardly frozen in defiance of the common courtesy not to chew, speak or otherwise be caught with food in one’s mouth. Mom Tzipporah was caught trying to convince Baby Michael to accept a spoonful of strained mushrooms and pineapple; the grey concoction slowly, inexorably slid sideways down the spoon as she gaped. Older brother Dov (who had tried to convince his mother that he was not a vegetarian, but was always rebuffed with “Sweetie. Bubbelach. It’s just a phase you’re going through!”) was caught dropping broccoli off the table to Friday, the family dog, who, not recognizing the emotional impact of the moment, panted and wagged his tail in anticipation of a feast. Dogs are the world’s eternal optimists. Even Baby Michael, a mere five months old, looked shocked, in a pudgy, be-highchaired sort of way.
Unaware of the trauma she had caused, Fraidy returned her attention to – okay, maybe a little context is called for, here. When Fraidy was in grade three, she could answer every math question Misses Lichtman would ask, and invariably got 100s on math tests. Not surprisingly, the boys in the class noticed. They started calling her “Brainy Fraidy Katz!” and “Smarty pants! Schmarty schmants!” and “Nobody likes a Fraidy Katz!” The other girls in the class started finding reasons not to play with her, upholding the time-honored tradition: “Better you than me.” When Fraidy complained to Misses Lichtman, the kindly teacher helpfully informed her, “Oh, it’s just a phase they’re going through, dear. They’ll get over it.”
Fraidy quickly realized that there is a difference between what school teaches you, and what you learn at school.
Eventually, Fraidy started intentionally answering questions wrong, getting marks in the low seventies, respectable but nothing special, so that other people (mostly boys) could get higher scores and not feel so…whatever it was that made boys make fun of smart girls. (Once, in grade six, Fraidy was having a miserable day and accidentally got a perfect mark on a math test; when it was returned to her the next day, she ended up being sent to the principal’s office because she wouldn’t stop arguing with Miss Galatney that she should lose marks because she showed too much of her work, more than she needed to show in order to solve the math problems!) Same for computer science. Ditto for physics. She coasted through all of her other courses (read: social science and – uggh – art) with limping colours. Add to her meh report cards a casual toss of her head and a muttered, “Whatever,” whenever the subject of school came up in conversation, and the impression of Fraidy’s family that she was, despite her obvious intelligence, a slacker who was indifferent to learning was perfectly understandable.
The thing you have to understand is that Fraidy had fallen in love with the idea of working for the Transdimensional Authority from watching Jack Ryan, Transdimensional Authority Police. But unlike other girls her age who wanted to negotiate trade agreements across universes or investigate multiverse crimes, Fraidy wanted to study Dimensional PortalTM technology and become the person who pushed the sliders that sent others into other realities. She knew the complex mathematical formula that determined how much material you had to take from another universe in order to co0mpensate for sending somebody from this one into it; although the calculation was mostly done by computer these days, she fell asleep dreaming of scenarios where she would have to calculate it using only a slide-rule and graph paper.
Competition to get into the Alternaut Academy was fierce; this was known as “the Jack Ryan effect.” Each year, there were twenty-seven applicants for each opening. That’s a lot. But Fraidy had a plan: starting in grade 10, she would start ramping up her marks, so that by the time she graduated from grade 12, she would have 100s in the maths and sciences again. Oh, she was getting into the Alternaut Academy, no question. And she would end up in technical, the most heroic of Alternaut Academy streams.
So, if that’s cleared up…where was I? Oh. Right. Unaware of the trauma she had caused to her poor family, Fraidy returned her attention to the problem at hand. Trying to determine the identity of paperproducts007 by tracing their user ID back to its source was likely to be a dead end. Even if she did find it, it would probably be an account set up just for this purpose with no real connection to the person who created it. That’s how Fraidy would have set it up. If she had a nefarious purpose. Which she never did because she wasn’t that kind of girl.
Fraidy looked at the Bob So Tasty feed again. Comments on it flowed like water through a goose***, but every time a new one popped up, paperproducts007’s bounced to the top faster than a three year-old with a sugar rush on a trampoline. She stared at the feed, even though it was making her a little dizzy. How does he do that? Fraidy wondered.
Then, she started thinking.
paperproducts007 must be using a script when he submits a comment that deletes it and resubmits it whenever it detects somebody else has submitted a comment. Could it be that simple? Well, no: ARggles must have software that detects when a script on multiple messages is being run from a specific IP address. Think, Fraidy, think. It couldn’t work…unless… With mounting excitement, Fraidy traced the origin of paperproducts007’s first comment, the one for The Source, back to its…origin. It was Tom Robbins, not Justin Bieber! Whoever was behind paperproducts007 must create a new identity for each post, then cycle through the identities every time the message is reposted to fool ARggle security into not noticing that they were all coming from the same person.
Gord, that’s brilliant!****
Fraidy clicked on paperproducts007’s icon; if she couldn’t directly figure out who they were, maybe she would find clues in other things they had posted. One thing she knew about people like paperproducts007 was that there were always other posts.
The next message from paperproducts007 appeared over a picture of a large, complicated roller coaster: “No arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent death; and the life of man solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” Leviathan? Really? Hunh. I’m not impressed.
A quick search confirmed that the roller coaster was a ride at Canada’s Wonderland, but, not having spent any time there, it was of limited interest to Fraidy, who scrolled downpaperproducts007’s feed. On the screen appeared a statue of an older man, his hands behind his back like somebody giving a lecture. The look on the statue’s face struck Fraidy as either stern or smug – bronze was not necessarily the most expressive medium. paperproducts007’s comment was: A happening Father of Confederation my wrinkled patootie! All the children who were taken away to Residential schools would probably disagree!
Fraidy wondered where she had heard that phrase befo – noooooooooooooooooooooo! No! Way! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! It couldn’t be! Could…it?
“A happening Father of Confederation” was the phrase Mister Tannenbaum had used in history class! Mister Tannenbaum, who was tall and mostly bald and walked with a cane and liked wearing boring sweaters! Mister Tannenbaum, who laughed at his own jokes about politicians who had been dead, like, forever! Mister Tannenbaum, who should have hung a “Mind the Gap” sign between his two front teeth (a source of fascination for many students who had zoned out of what he was saying)! Mister Tannenbaum! Fraidy couldn’t believe it. What were the odds of such a coincidence? None. None were the odds.
Mister Tannenbaum was paperproducts007! Mind blown.
…For a few seconds. Because this knowledge opened up interesting homework possibilities. Very interesting homework possibilities…
Katzoutofbag> Do you have any idea how many Canadians were killed in World War I?
imogenegenie> Umm…12?
Katzoutofbag> And the burtality of how we put down native rebellions? And how we stole their land using treaties that we never honored? And the poor treatment of the Chinese people we “invited” over to finish building the railway? Oh, and how we burned the Murrican White House to the ground?
Katzoutofbag> Twice!
imogenegenie> You took this history assignment pretty serious, sounds like.
Katzoutofbag> Fersher! I used to think that Canadian history was all about old men sitting around in stuffy rooms talking about accords and shit. Well, okay, there was a lot of that. But there was so much more!
Two weeks later. Fraidy and Imogene were sitting in Bob So Tasty. The din of conversation was more annoying than usual, so they fell back on an old standby: instant messaging. With a twist: instant messaging via ARggle. Fraidy was so wrapped up in the conversation that she had barely touched her Baconadian Bob. The pair had been at the table long enough that the boy sitting next to Fraidy (the one with the angel’s face – it’s always the one with the angel’s face) had snuck a fry off her plate, and was beginning to strategize capturing bigger game. The girl he was sitting with was not impressed.
Everybody had handed in their history assignments the week before, and were expecting to get them back in class that afternoon.
imogenegenie> You okay?
Katzoutofbag> Okay? I’m on fire! For knowledge! Ofg history!
imogenegenie> It’s just…this is not like you.
Katzoutofbag> Who is it like?
imogenegenie> I don’t know. Somebody who actually likes school? Or history? Since when do you like history? Or school?
At first, Fraidy hated history. Confederation. Repatriation of the Constitution. The Quebec referendum. Free trade. The other Quebec referendum. Bo-ring! She probably would have abandoned the project, but whenever her research on history got to be too much, she switched to working on the technical problem of getting her message to stay at the top of a stream of messages.
To do this, Fraidy grabbed a programme for a messaging system similar to the one used by ARggles that she could run on her laptop computer. This was a wise move. The first time she tried to run her script that would keep a message at the top of the message stream, it broke the programme. And the second time. And the third. The fourth time she tried to run her rewritten script, the programme froze. Progress!
What finally interested Fraidy in history was reading about how the MS St. Louis, an ocean liner carrying Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany, was turned away from Canada’s coast in 1939; when the ship returned to its home country, most of the passengers were sent to camps where they were killed. Okay, Fraidy thought. Canada is not just a country of bureaucratic boy scouts – we’ve done some terrible things! Which, I mean, are terrible. I’m not happy that we did this. I just think – people should know about this! Yeah. That’s it. People need to know!
Fraidy spent the next few evenings researching various incidents that had happened in the country, many with racial components, that her teachers just “forgot” to mention. She stayed up later and later, and got more and more excited as she learned more about her country’s history as the days progressed. There was so much history that nobody seemed to want to talk about! Part of what took up her time was distilling it into short messages and choosing just the right places in Toronto to peg the messages to in her ARggles; as things started to come together, Fraidy found her respect for paperproducts007 grow.
The last piece of the assignment that she completed was, ironically, the programme, which, now that the recursive loops had been ironed out, made the message stream stutter. Debugging the programme bugged the…stuffing out of her, but, in the end, she found the stray close bracket that was causing all the problems (relax…breath…it’s just math), and everything worked! Yay!
Fraidy went around the city the next day, posting her messages to the appropriate places. Then, she wrote a brief essay for Mister Tannenbaum outlining what she had done and containing links to all of the messages that she had posted.
She was proud of herself.
Katzoutofbag> i have depths.
imogenegenie> Yeah. Hidden. So well hidden.
Katzoutofbag> Scoff if you want, but some day I’m gonna be a Transdimensional Portal(TM) technician, third class!
imogenegenie> Uhh…good to have ambition, I guess.
Katzoutofbag> yeah. Yeah. You’re just jealous! I’m gonna ace this history assignment! It’s gonna be amazeballs!
“See me after class.”
When she received her history project, Fraidy flipped to the back page to discover what an amazeballs mark she had been given for all of the hard work she had put into it. Instead of the great mark she was expecting, all she saw was a cryptic comment. Maybe…maybe Mister Tannenbaum wanted to tell her in person how much he appreciated all of the effort she had put into the assignment. It could happen.
When the class cleared out after the lecture (which was about…something having to do with…I have no idea – I was so concerned about Fraidy’s assignment mark that I couldn’t concentrate on the monotone drone coming from the front of the room!), Mister Tannenbaum, sitting behind his desk, looked at Fraidy, sitting at the back of the room. “I think this will be easier if you sit up front,” Mister Tannenbaum told her.
“I’m good,” Fraidy assured him.
“Miss Katz,” Mister Tannenbaum said with an attempt at a kindly smile, “I really do think this would go better if I didn’t have to shout.”
But Fraidy had seen one too many movies in which somebody had said, “That’s okay, thanks. I’d rather stand,” when offered a seat. So, even though she was sitting, she responded, “That’s okay, thank you. I’d rather stand.”
Mister Tannenbaum sighed as only one who recognizes that he doesn’t really understand young people (even though he has worked with them for decades; it seems the more time he spends with them, the less he can say about them with certainty) can. Then, he did the unthinkable: he got to his feet, hobbled to the back of the class and sat uncomfortably on the desk in front of Fraidy.
Sensing something bad was about to happen, Fraidy stammered, “That…that’s okay. I…I…I’d like to..to, umm, stand?”
“Miss Katz,” Mister Tannenbaum softly told her (more to hide his confusion than from any compassion for her), “I’m sorry, but I have to give you a failing grade on your essay.”
“That’s not fair!” Fraidy protested. “All that work!”
“I know,” Mister Tannenbaum agreed. “You clearly did more research for that assignment than any other I have given you, possibly all the others combined. I do not agree with all of the political positions you have taken – I disagree with most of them, truth be told. But I cannot fault your research.”
“Then, why?”
“Because tampering with proprietary software – such as the ARggles operating system – is wrong,” Mister Tannenbaum explained. He wasn’t mean about it, which was the worst part. “And quite possibly illegal. If you were an adult, you could be prosecuted for what you did. I’m fairly certain. As it is, you still could be in a lot of trouble. But if you take down…whatever it is you did, we shall never speak about it again.”
“But – failing!”
Mister Tannenbaum looked apologetic. “I’m, sorry, but I can’t reward you for such behaviour. And I would strongly recommend that you not do anything like this in the future. Do you understand?”
Fraidy understood. If she had been a boy, Mister Tannenbaum’s warning would have been said with a sly wink and a smile and the advice that he should join the computer club and take lots of computer science courses because somebody with his talent and initiative had a bright future in the field. Just her luck that she hadn’t been born a boy.
“Yes, Mister Tannenbaum,” Fraidy quietly said. There is something about an impending trip to the principal’s office that focuses the mind.
“Alright, then,” Mister Tannenbaum started.
But Fraidy couldn’t let it alone. “You, of all people, should appreciate what I’ve done!” she complained.
Okay. This was new. “Why?” Mister Tannenbaum asked her.
“Because you’re paperproducts007!” Fraidy blurted.
Mister Tannenbaum looked blankly at Fraidy. A moment after the silence became really uncomfortable, he hesitantly said, “So, I…I’m a robot made out of – umm, sorry, what are you trying to say?”
“You…you…you called John A. McRonald ‘a happening Father of Confederation,'” Fraidy argued. “That’s what paperproducts007 called his statue. QED, Mister Tannenbaum. QED!”
Mister Tannenbaum didn’t follow everything Fraidy had tried to say, but he did follow enough. “Miss Katz. First, it was Macdonald. Sir John A. Macdonald. Not…whatever you said. Secondly, I got that phrase from something I read years ago. I use it, and I am not too proud to admit this, so that people your age will think I’m hip. At this point, though, anybody could use it.”
With growing horror, it dawned on Fraidy that she may have made a terrible, terrible, very bad mistake. The reason that it seemed so unlikely that Mister Tannenbaum was paperproducts007 was that Mister Tannenbaum was not paperproducts007. Her QED seemed hollow in her throat.
“Sorry, Mister Tannenbaum,” Fraidy, head hung low, said. “I’ll delete all of my messages.”
“Good.” Mister Tannenbaum rose awkwardly from the desk. “Because my back is killing me!”
Fraidy grabbed her backpack and fled the scene of her humiliation.
Stupid history class, anyway! Honestly, Fraidy thought as she made her way to math class, who even heard of a successful history nerd‽ Nobody, right‽ She was about to slam open a locker (the kid has mad mad skillz), when she realized that she was left with a question: who was paperproducts007?
Fraidy opened her locker like a normal person and started formulating plans for how she would discover who paperproducts007 was. Oh, she would find out who they were, like, for sure. She didn’t know what she would do when she found out, but she knew that it would be amazeballs…
* Nudity in the app is based on age, height, weight and measurement information, as well as online images of subject. If online information is not up to date, physical attributes may not reflect current reality. Unclothed body parts are taken from a proprietary database of nudity and should not be expected to be an exact match for people in the environment of the app. This is an ADULT app; if you are not of age in your jurisdiction, you will be limited to images of people in their underwear. Westbound, Downtown and All Around, Inc. accepts no responsibility for any user’s disappointment with their sexual fantasies.
** Suspecting and knowing are, of course, two very different things. Suspecting that the meat in the burgers was vat grown based on the cloned DNA of the the founder of the chain was one thing. Setting aside the legal quagmire such a scenario would create, the slightest amount of research would reveal that the chain was started by a chef named Marcel Gondrey, with seed funding from Wayne Gretzky. No Bobs were involved. Knowing that this information was easily available has not deterred diehard conspiracy theorists (and Bruce Willis fans), who claim that the Bob that gave his DNA to the cause was a homeless person in Cincinnati, where the chain established its first restaurant. There is a counter-theory that the whole conspiracy is actually the misremembered plotline of an episode of the TV series Bob’s Burgers. The battle between the Bob’s DNAists and the Bob’s Burgersists has been waged on Farcebook pages from here to Timbuktu; people being what they are, the feud will probably continue long after Bob So Tasty has ceased operations owing to wide swaths of humanity being forced to convert to vegetarianism.
*** Folk saying may have been edited for sensitive readers.
**** Whether Fraidy was praising paperproducts007 for creating the dodge, or herself for figuring it out, I leave to more insightful omniscient narrators than myself.