The Girl Who Sat in the Corner

Chapter 2 - Lab

When the bell rang, it sounded like it was miles away. Wesley stood inside the door and tried to catch his breath. His heart was hammering and there was a rushing sound in his ears. It wasn't so much that he hated the crowded hallways, he felt like they hated him. The noise. The bodies jamming against him. The laughing groups he would never join. The overly-affectionate couples, even. They made the halls close in around him.

Mr. Kronkowski stared intently at the screen of the large black laptop on his desk. It was his own. He reviled the Macs that the school district handed out. He looked the part of a computer science teacher. More Silicon Valley cool than hacker geek. Head shaved, a trim blond goatee and the pierced earring he wore that was just a few millimeters too big for a high school teacher. Somehow, they bonded and "Kronk," as he was known to his favorite students (his "minions" as he called them), had become something of a friend. Wes's breathing finally slowed and his composure returned. He pulled a thumb drive out of his jeans pocket.

"Hey Kronk! Got something for you to try," and he flipped the drive onto his teacher's desk. Kronk tried not to look too annoyed at having his train of thought derailed by a kid who was so smart it was almost scary.

"This isn't going to take down the District again is it?" Wes looked down. (It wasn't really his fault if Kronk clicked on the wrong program that one time.)

"It shouldn't. It's a demo of a subroutine I've been playing with for a hide-and-seek game I'm working on." He explained as his teacher slipped the drive into his computer and the game started up. "Usual control keys. Just try to catch the orc."

When it came to gaming, the only difference between Kronk and his minions was that he had more years' experience. He loved them just as much as the kids and the guy was good. Really good. But this time, his face went from a "this will be easy" half-smirk to a seriously wrinkled brow. He paused, and then went at it again with something bordering on desperation. Wes smiled.

"Okay. I give. How are you doing that? The thing seems to know what I'm going to do even before I think of it."

"To be honest, I'm not 100% sure myself. I kind of stumbled into something last night when I was trying to improve the response time and I got some interesting results." This wasn't completely true, but Wes was uncomfortable admitting that someone who just turned fourteen had possibly discovered something about computers that no one else had ever thought of.

"Whatever you say. We've got some network issues to untangle in the language lab. You up for it?" Wesley nodded. He got to work with Kronk a few periods each week as a volunteer lab tech. He loved the fact that it got him out of the school's mainstream and gave him some quiet time to do something he liked.

"And I found something I thought you might want to read. It's an early paper from Max Tegmark. It's about the beginnings of his multiverse theory. I stumbled over it when I was digging though the MIT archives looking for something else. The math is totally beyond me, but I figured you may get something out of it."

"Yes!" Wes exclaimed. He was fascinated with everything about the strange physics where space and time touched. The multiverse was the idea that there are an infinite number of universes with some nearly identical and just slightly out of sync and others with totally different laws of nature. Time, Wesley was convinced, was something more accessible than people thought.

Because they let him convert a study into a second period working with Kronk, he had an easy end to the day and that particular section of time flew by.

When the final bell rang, he went back to his locker to dump off the books he didn't need to carry home. He was in something of a rush, as usual, so he could find a safe seat on the bus where he wouldn't get hammered on too much by the bullies who'd discovered he was such easy prey.

"Hey," a soft voice came from behind him. Several butterflies exploded quietly (and somewhat pleasantly) in his midsection as he turned and his eye's met Kai's. She looked quickly back down and asked, "Are you ever on vid.io?"

"Uh, sometimes," he lied.

"I'm 'Navajo ninja zero zero' - with underscores."

Before he could answer, she turned and walked out to the busses. She took the same one as him, but lived in the apartments at the edge of his neighborhood. He thought about her screen name and his imagination kicked in. Navaho. That explained her haunting eyes and beautiful bronze skin.He started imagining her as a Navajo princess, maybe even with magical powers.Then it struck him, that they had actually talked and he wasn't totally freaking out. It felt, in fact, pretty nice.