How the Lab Rats Fell: Part Two

There Will Be Glitches

Labor Day.
Finally!

Look, I have nothing against this academy, but come on! When there's no summer vacation, spring break, or winter break, you get excited for national holidays. Because Davenport is literally bound by law to give us a rest day. So, like your typical teenage students, we took full advantage of the day to rest.
Davenport, however, did not.
I guess the prospect of his company not running for one day genuinely terrified him.
-
I woke up to pounding. I slipped out of my capsule and treaded over to the commons are where Davenport was working furiously.
"Good morning," I said warily, silently hoping that I wasn't disturbing him.
"Dang it, I was supposed to have way more done than this by the time you guys woke up!" Davenport whisper yelled, "Oh, hey Garrett."
"Are you okay?" I asked.
"I've only been up for 4 hours," Davenport said, "Davenport Industries won't run itself, so I have to do it myself."
"Four hours?" I asked in shock, "It's 6:30! You should've been sleeping the past 4 hours!"
"I have an idea!" Davenport suggested, "Why don't you go back to bed, and I'll get work done!"
"Don't have to tell me twice," I muttered, started trudging off. All of a sudden, my super speed glitches, and I sped into a wall.
"How nice," I grumbled, "A stupid glitch ruins my streak."
Getting up, I spent the rest of the walk focusing on not glitching. I got back to my dorm, and laid down in my capsule.
I slept for four more hours.
-
After I finally got up, I had breakfast with Taylor and Travis, who had just gotten up too.
"Have you seen Mr. Davenport today?" Taylor asked, spreading some butter on a bagel.
"Nope, which means today is looking up!" Travis said, throwing blueberries up in the air and trying to catch them with his mouth.
"Well, I was rudely interrupted from by the guy banging on his cyber desk," I said, in between bites of cereal, "He's been working non-stop since 2:30, and probably won't stop until Davenport Industries reopens."
"Hallelujah," Taylor muttered.
All of a sudden, guess who came into the room?
None other than Davenport himself! The room suddenly lost some of its exciting energy.
"I have come to announce that I, Donald Davenport, have just finished a breakthrough upgrade for everyone!" Davenport announced.
When no one seemed to react in gratitude, Davenport continued, "It will almost completely stop your glitches! You guys should be excited! No more glitches!"
Right on cue, a student's intangibility glitched, making them phase through the chair and land hard on the floor.
"Now do you guys want that upgrade?" Davenport asked.
-
After Davenport finished the upgrade, it was time to, once again, forget academy life and RELAX! But, of course, am I that lucky?
Absolutely not.
Here's how it started.
-
Some class had built the academy a pool, so Travis and I decided to ditch Taylor to go to there and pick up some chicks.
Okay, that was Travis's idea, not mine. But, honestly, I didn't have anything else to do. So why not go to the pool and try to pick up some chicks?
The stupid upgrade, that's why. The two of us had turned a corner, and about five steps later, I was super speeding backwards into the corner, bursting it off in the process.
"What was that?" Travis asked.
"I think that was a glitch," I marveled, pretending for a minute to be Captain Obvious from those hotels.com commercials. Travis was looking at me weirdly.
"What?" I asked, then it hit me. My vocal manipulation was making me sound like Captain Obvious. I concentrated on my normal voice.
"Better?" I asked.
"That part..." Travis said warily.
"What now?" I groaned, throwing my hands up in exasperation. I heard a couple smashes behind me, so I turned around. There were two pieces of the wall that were missing, and two dents in the ceiling. Fine grains of player and cement were raining down.
Alarmed, Travis said, "Stay here, I'm gonna go get the chip extractor." With that, Travis geoleaped off.
And I promptly phased through the floor.
Landing hard on the cement floor, I heard Travis's muffled voice asking where I was. Concentrating hard on not glitching, I speeded up to where I was.
"Intangibility glitch," I explained, and Travis nodded. He quickly took the chip out of my neck.
"Thank God," I said, I don't know how much more of that could could take."
"Did it really hurt that bad?" Travis asked.
"No," I said, "But that doesn't mean it wasn't scary or just plain annoying."
"Whelp, let's go tell Mr. Davenport," Travis suggested, with fake excitement, "I bet he'll be ecstatic when he hears this."
-
"This can't be right," Davenport protested for the umpteenth time, "My upgrade was flawless! Even Eddy said so!"
"And you trusted his judgement?" I asked, " Do you want a demonstration?"
Without waiting for an answer, I grabbed the chip extractor and inserted the chip back into my neck.
I immediately turned invisible.
"Where'd he go?" Davenport asked.
"I'm right here- whoop!" My intangibility glitched again and I started falling through the floor again. Except that the glitch stopped once I was halfway through the floor.
"Ow," I groaned.
"Good thing that my floor panels can disintegrate," Davenport said in relief.
"Yeah," I agreed, "Wait. What??"
Davenport pushed a few buttons, and before I knew it, I was falling again. And hit that cement floor for the second time that day.
I give up.
- A Couple Hours Later -
"I reversed the upgrade, do everything should be like it was," Davenport told me, pressing the button that put the bionic chip back in my neck, "Because your chip has a different architecture, the upgrade did the opposite of what it was supposed to do."
"Those are a couple seconds of my life that I'm never getting back," Travis said, "And you wasted them on sounding smart even though wet know exactly what happened?"
"Yup," Davenport replied unconfidently, "I'm just gonna go..."
I stepped out of the capsule.
"Better?" Travis asked.
"I think so," I replied. Just then, my super speed glitched, and I sped Travis into the wall.
"Seriously?" We groaned in unison.
🏃🇺🇸🏃🇺🇸🏃🇺🇸🏃🇺🇸🏃🇺🇸🏃🇺🇸
September 5, 2016
Well, it really has been an eventful summer, hasn't it?
Anyway, I'm done writing "One of Us is Bionic," and I'm actually getting over the bit of writer's block that I've been developing. My goal is to update again this month. Let's see if that happens...
In any event, I go back to school tomorrow (later than all of my friends that go to other schools, because my district decided to be stubborn. HALLELUJAH), however, I've found that school puts me in a better mindset to update.
Also, this chapter turned out to be way longer than I thought it was gonna be. So yay.
Anyways, I should stop rambling, it's probably not good for my health.

One day, I'll learn how to write an author's note without rambling.
Until then,
AJ