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Post by Deleted on Mar 6, 2018 14:17:21 GMT
Technically speaking, he was a drop out. At least, here he was a drop home. Back in the truth, he had managed to graduated but of course the Killer Queen would have put him back in a situation that was designed to make people miserable. That the place seemed to have the natural habit of removing individuality and draining any creative spirit, that would have just been a very fortunate bonus to the world ruler. At least, as far as Galileo knew of her. He'd only ever met Khashoggi personally - even meeting Queenie had been through a computer screen. Everything to do with her had to be done on computers.
Computers. Even here he couldn't escape them. GlobalVision, in a show of philanthropy, had donated brand new systems to the school and library not long before he had too much and left the place. It hadn't exactly been the straw that broke the camel's back, but the idea of being around more tech that belonged to her was something he couldn't handle at the time. And now he was sneaking back into the place because he needed to take advantage of the fact that the tech was all GlobalVision. Life was ironic like that sometimes.
He had a cap on, pulled low to hide his face from the security cameras around the school, and a bag on his back to make him blend into the school crowd. It was a bit too early for there to be much of one, but at least to anyone looking, it could come across as though he was just an eager student, or one needing to get in early to get some work done. Sneaking in wasn't the hard part. Picking the lock on the computer lab without making it obvious... little trickier.
It hadn't changed. The machines were still shining even in the low light of early morning and Galileo felt a bit sick to have to rely on something that belonged to Queenie. He dropped his bag on the shelves that were at the front of the room, playing with the straps for a moment to calm himself. He needed to do this. If he had any chance of working out what was going on, of proving that he wasn't lying, he needed proof. This was the only way to do that.
He pulled out a chair, sitting himself in front of a machine and booting it up. He looked around warily. He didn't have long.
"Show me your secrets," he muttered to himself, hands beginning their work on the keyboard as soon as the system was running.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 6, 2018 18:02:43 GMT
Eli had had gotten used to coming to work, just after the crack of dawn, but after what he had been through the day before, he hadn't expected to be in such a hurry to head back to the school. All the same, it was his duty. It had been a hard enough day yesterday as it was and all he'd really wanted was to get some extra sleep so he could at least wake up the next day late, but with the memories of yesterday out of his mind. It'd started that previous morning when his proposal to the school board to create a motto for his class to hang outside the classroom door and raise moral among the students, had been diluted by corporate interests. It seemed that, what with his spontaneous duties to the Volunteer Fire Department, his frequently ''sponsor unfriendly'' lessons and his somewhat....erratic personality, that their ''loving'' paymasters at Globalvision were keeping their eyes firmly on all of his future activities. As a result, + the fact that hew had been forced to edit his originally proposed Motto (Quia omnes in melius/For the betterment of all) to read Nam fora cras. or ''For the markets of tomorrow.'' Anything to make Mrs. Queenie happy and keep that lucrative sponcership deal, right? To hell with the education of the student faculty.
Carling was now certain that it was because of this encounter that it was not Eli that had seemingly shown up to work that morning, but ''Clark.'' Clark was the name Eli had given to his more....pathetic persona. The Jerry Lewis Nutty Professor, pushover geek who feared his own students. He'd gotten the names from the dreams he'd had where people called him by that name, usually taking place in the same reporter's office in the same building in the same city. He'd overheard it's name once or twice of course. ''Metropolis.'' Eli rubbed his head as he drove the aged Chrysler Concorde down the road towards the High School. Those dreams were bad enough, but recently he'd had others. These new ones were as different to the old ones as day is to night. In those dreams, he found himself standing no, floating above crowds of people below him, often carrying unsavoury looking characters in his arms or certain items. In short, he often found himself treated like a superhero, but whenever someone was about to say his name in those dreams, a sudden awakening would cut them off. Eli sighed as he waited at a red light. Before long the light changed and he went on his way. As he drove the car forward, he started to chuckle at himself.
''Hoo, boy. Looks like Eli needs to lay off the comic books.....again.''
After the regular meeting of the fire team he'd headed straight home and to bed. Hours later He'd woken up slightly earlier than intended and slowely crawled downstairs. As he headed to the kitchen however, out of nowhere, a terrible gut feeling had suddenly sprung up inside him and after a quick rub down with a soapy cloth and a flash combing of the hair, he had headed in his car and then towards the school. It was as if some kind of danger sense (or maybe just premonitory dread) was driving him on. A weird way to start the day one might think, until you realised that Eli's life had recently been plagued by similar occurrences since the dreams had begun. It'd started off small, as these things often do. Reaching for a doorknob and having it come off in his hand, looking at a student's closed locker only to find himself looking inside it and up till this point the most recent ability...being able to see people and objects in total clarity from miles away like a telescope. Right now he was using that power to make sure the school was open, as he drove into the parking lot. It was, but right now, only 4 or maybe 8 students had showed up. None of them were in his class that he could see. After parking, he exited the car and headed inside to maybe get something to eat from the teacher's lounge. The principle had told him on his first day, that all the best doughnuts were still uneaten round about this time and now he was here, he wanted to put that theory into practice.
All the same, he couldn't shake the gut feeling that something was happening right under his nose. Which is why he suddenly decided to forgo breakfast when he reached the lounge, grab a cup of coffee and then head straight to his classroom without stopping. On this occasion it seemed, his feels had indeed served him well. The door to the Computer Applications classroom/Computer Lab was wide open. The standard issue Globalvision lock that all doors in the school had, had been bypassed. Somehow this didn't surprise Eli in the slightest. Queenie's company had a habit of making their locks cheap so that it wasn't too hard to crack them. Suddenly, pure reason hit him like a speeding bullet. Maybe it was all just in his head. After all, it wasn't uncommon for the other teachers to pull little innocent pranks like this or for the custodian to simply forget to lock certain rooms up. (The poor devil was being payed too little to care about most things as it was after all.) Only when he looked inside and his eyes fell upon a kid he didn't eminently recognise from the school, he began to get a teeny bit suspicious. Especially when his new telescopic eyes came into use again and clearly ousted the kid in the process of hacking into the PC he was sitting in front of. Needless to say, it didn't take much more than that for Eli top open the door fully and powerwalk in there after him.
"OK, Kid." He said in a deep, gruff authoritative voice, walking over and taking the cap off of the boy's head. "I don't know whjat it is you think you're doing but maybe you'd like to..." He stopped, dead in his tracks as he light fell upon the culprit's face. It belonged to someone who anyone in the town could've identified at this point, but for Eli, it was much, much more personal. It was someone he knew quite well. Someone he never thought he'd see round this part of town again. "G-Gordon?"
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Post by Deleted on Mar 6, 2018 19:27:09 GMT
There were good reasons Galileo had chosen to sneak into the school as early in the day as he had, even if it would have probably been easier if he waited until there were more students to hide around. Most of it boiled down to simply not having to run into anyone. The janitor, while seemingly always at the school, tended to leave the computer labs alone. There were strict rules regarding what could and could not be around the machines, and it tended to mean there actually wasn't a lot of mess in that area. That the internet access was very fast, even with most of the school logged on, also meant that had he waited until more students were around, Galileo wouldn't have been able to get access to a computer.
He was hopeful that his chosen time meant that he wouldn't run in to any members of staff. He hadn't exactly gotten on with the majority of the teaching staff. A natural tendency to distrust authority mixed with the learned knowledge that no one was going to help tended to lead to that reaction. Oh, he had found one or two of the teachers tolerable, but he didn't need no mind control. He didn't trust teachers. He didn't trust anyone.
And then the cap was ripped off his head and he flinched automatically, head ducking down to avoid a blow. The voice was familiar, annoyingly so, and Galileo breathed deeply. This was not exactly what he wanted. Forcing himself to straighten up, he turned in the seat, a shaky smile forced on to his face.
"Hi, Mr. Carling."
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