When All is Null and Void

Chapter Three

If he hadn't been attending a school for rich snobs, Caleb might not have cared so much. For some reason, he'd been given a scholarship to one of the Museum's university preparatory schools around the time his parents disappeared. The money had been anonymously given, and sometimes he wondered if it were an act of pity. Uniforms weren't required, and everyone knew who the poorest in the school was anyways; if it had been pity that had landed him the scholarship, he wasn't appreciative.

The front doors of the school locked fifteen minutes after first bell, and Caleb was forced to pound on the glass until Saundra Pickett opened it for him. A frumpy, mousey haired woman, Saundra's lips were usually downturned over her crooked teeth, but when Caleb gave her a gentle grin the frown lifted. "You're late again," she said.

"You know what it's like," Caleb replied with a shrug. He tried to be on time to school, but it had grown more difficult with his late shifts at the Museum.

"I'll write you a note," Saundra offered, but Caleb shook his head.

"Historian Elderhart won't accept it anyways." He sprinted up the stairs to the third floor, and his professor only cast him a cursory glance before returning to his lecture on fulcrums. Every employee of the Museum was considered a Historian, whether they taught literal history or not. Caleb sat in the back corner, away from the entire rest of the class. No one tended to bother him here. People didn't usually bother him when Historian Elderhardt was teaching, either. For some reason the man nipped any uprisings in the butt--or however that saying went.

Sitting with his body angled in just the right way to look as if he were paying attention, Caleb doodled in his notebook. By no means an artist, he did enjoy drawing cartoonish monkeys in the margins, and if he timed his strokes right, it actually looked as if he were following along with the class perfectly. Even if he wasn't, Caleb understood enough about physics to endure these introductory lessons and answer any questions that might have arisen. He may not have loved this school, but he definitely wasn't about to make a fool out of himself, sputtering out a wrong answer.

Twenty minutes of pure solitude went by before anyone bothered him.

It came in the form of a digital note sliding onto his desk. Students could communicate with each other in class as a means of taking notes. Each desk was connected internally. The students each had a pen that allowed for their notes to be written on the desk and then saved directly to their wrist Holo for studying later. The Museum had thought it would be a good idea, except most of the students had learned to bypass the delicate system and had turned it into an instant messaging portal to pass the time.

What's curly haired and has no parents?the note said. Caleb was used to this one, knew the answer so innately that the sting of it had long ago grown dull.

Tapping gently on the desk, Caleb answered. "Me. So funny."

He wasn't entirely sure who the message had come from but held a strong suspicion it had originated with Bryce Clearance. If Caleb had wanted his head shoved against a brick wall, he could have made endless jokes about the guy's last name, but Caleb actually did like his face enough to keep it. Caleb was rankled by the fact that though Bryce wasn't witty, he was wickedly smart, and stronger than Caleb ever hoped to be.

Soon after his response had been sent, the desks gave off a collective ding,and a spinning wheel signified that data had been saved and would be uploaded to wrist Holos. Since Caleb didn't have to match his wrist to the desk he would have been the first out the door. That is, if Historian Elderhart hadn't coughed at him.

It was the cough most students dreaded hearing, and Caleb's own pulse dropped at the sound. He turned slowly. "I'd like to speak with you," said the Historian with a light, conversational tone that filled Caleb with a horrible sense of dread.