Tales From Heller

Fun And Games

Beth considered herself a pretty good sport as far as the new school leadership was concerned: her Alpha status, earned through being friends with most of the leadership team (Alan was not included in this), was a big plus, and two weeks of saying the Pledge of Allegiance hadn't dulled whatever meager patriotism she possessed.

The other day, at the third football game of the year (against one of Heller's many nemeses, the St. Sebastian Sea Lions), Juliet pointed out to her the multiple rows of neatly dressed Heller students attending the game, all clutching identical cups of water and wearing identical foam fingers. Occasionally someone, either Frank or Alan, would bark a command, and everyone would do the wave or clap a few times in thunderous unison.

"Wait until Frank brings the conductor's baton to lead them in 'We Will Rock You,'" Juliet whispered to Beth.

"Oh, delightful. This isn't creepy at all."

"Of course it isn't creepy. Duh."

A few minutes later, after Heller scored another goal, Frank walked up a hastily erected podium facing the audience, took out his baton, and began counting in threes: the audience, still facing forward, began patting their thighs and clapping, with a few brave ones singing along. These brave souls drew extra attention from Frank with his conducting, and all while the game raged on the field, all the assembled students, cheerleaders pepping them up, sang murderously "We Will Rock You."

Beth thought the song was nice and all, but couldn't help thinking there was something eerie about the entire affair. Juliet obviously said it wasn't creepy, but this was the same Juliet that had the other day said that the security cameras in the restrooms were "necessary in case people were doing cocaine," which also wasn't ironclad logic—Beth could think of nothing more creepy than having security cameras in the restrooms.

"So anyway, Juliet, here's a hypothetical situation for you: suppose that the school were to look through students' texts and social media, app settings, voicemails, all those things, to see if they were doing anything against the rules. Would that be creepy to you?" Beth asked after the applause from the audience (all synchronized, of course) concluded.

"Oh, like TigerTalk. That's not creepy at all. It's good that you're asking those sorts of questions, though—paranoia is a sign of intelligence."

"So what would be creepy to you? If that isn't it?"

"There's this one horror game where a security guard's stuck in a pizza parlor while a bunch of animatronics are trying to kill him. Now that's what I call creepy. But it's also a good branding opportunity: Frank was thinking about commissioning a bunch of tiger animatronics to use as a security patrol. Glowing eyes to see at night, the ability to sneak around silently or sprint, tranquilizer darts, stainless steel teeth—you know, the usual security features."

"Why, Juliet, do I need to know this? I'm going to have nightmares now."

"I don't know, thought it was a cool idea worth sharing."

"How much would these cost?"

"A fair bit, but we've been able to cut costs by only providing toilet paper to higher castes, and we also found a new supplier for the others' school lunches. Great track record—they even serve San Quentin!"

"Cool..."

These new insights did little to shake Beth's burgeoning notion that being a good sport with everything was going to bite her in the butt someday—or inject her with tranquilizer. After the game and a similarly eerie performance of "We Are The Champions," Beth tracked down Ms. Foster seeking spiritual guidance under the guise of "why the Bosnia-Herzegovina is leadership building security robots that are explicitly modeled after ones from a horror game?".