The Happening of Things

Chapter 4.5 - A Brief History

Last chapter was rather boring, so we interrupt your regular programming with more boring shit, just to get it out of the way. Some of you might be wondering, how in the galaxy did such different people as Falfagen and Jephrey end up as best friends? Through a very long and complicated series of events, but I'm just saying that to make it more interesting. Really it was quite simple.

In short, Jephrey punched a bunch of kids in the face. In long, Falfagen had always been the sole person interested in school itself. In a totally useless system in which no valid jobs or career paths are set out, as it was originally designed to do in ancient times, Falfagen is the only person whose dream job was ACTUALLY taught at school. Falfagen was the only remaining creative child in a place where creativity was very efficiently squashed out in order to bring about a generation of office workers and labourers to boost the economy. Falfagen, wanted to be a writer.

Great job, Falfagen, choosing the only form of creative medium in which there is a definite 'right' and 'wrong' way to do it. In music you can have a taste for bad grammar but not in writing you can't. In art simplicity can be attractive but in writing it just makes it boring. Great choice there, absolutely fantastic. Falfagen would be the only person listening to the teacher bots* over the raucous people at the back of the room, trying to discover any information that could squeeze its way into his writing and improve it. He dedicated everything to his writing, and constantly was trying to improve. The long-winded insults he is famous for began as a vocabulary exercise.

As you can imagine, being an outlier like he was, bullying was a problem. Anyone who doesn't fit the norm is an easy target, and due to the property of matter to take the path of least resistance, no one would pick anyone but the easy target. Of course it still requires effort to actually do anything active about it, so cyberbullying is rampant with people like Falfagen. Cyberbullying is pretty much the only type of bullying that happens anymore. Falfagen was sensible and didn't have any form of contact with any of those people, so was totally unable to see anything people were saying about him. Clever.

Through most of Falfagen's schooling career you can imagine it was like this, Falfagen had never really had a 'friend' and he was ok with it. He would go through the day and take notes and then go home and pick out anything that could be used for a story. He had burned through stories and genres like a forest fire, his routine was a short story per week, published or not. Whenever he published it was anonymously online, not that anyone read them. Not enough people survived the crushing of school life to sustain a community of writers anymore.

He started with Horror, wrote a story about people vanishing from existence and no one but the reader remembering they ever had a part to play. Moved to fantasy, invented a perfect world that he ended up spending half his time living in. Wrote a series of stories set in this world, with the same characters in each. Realised he was being far too absorbed in the universe he created, got scared and dropped fantasy off cold-turkey. Next he lapsed back into horror, but with more experience and enough to write Psychological Horror, he spent a whole week developing one character to a deep enough level he was satisfied with, and put that character into his first big story. He finished the story over a course of months, some 40,000 words long, a novella. He read it through, and deleted the entire thing. It wasn't good enough.

He stopped writing for a while, a long while. Over the course of the next 5 months he wrote nothing but abstract dark poetry, and never regretted destroying his book. He stopped having motivation to listen in class, and because he had nothing to zone out to his perceived bullying worsened. He had nothing to work for anymore, and school very, very nearly squashed whatever spirit was left in him. It was a dark time, for sure.

There was one big thing that brought him out of it, the arrival of Jephrey at his school. Jephrey arrived as just another one of the mandatorily rebellious kids, but with one very, very big difference. A sense of justice. He had all the apps and stuff for his whosimawhatchit and saw everything Falfagen did not, and he was the very first person to ever do something about it. In short, Jeph punched a bunch of kids in the face. In long, after a couple of weeks of realising what was going on, he wondered why this was happening. At his old school there were no outliers, no creative people, no one to bully. Here it was like moths to the flame, and Jeph decided to do something about it.

As stated twice before, Jeph punched a bunch of kids in the face. No long or short to it, Jeph went to school the next day, sought out the main perpetrator and punched him in the face. So stunned were the other kids, as their privileged lives had led to them never experiencing something like that before. One of them tried to back up his friend, he too got punched in the face. They filed along one by one, too stupid for strategy, and each left with a black eye, broken nose or some other malady**. That day, and for the first day in his life, Falfagen sat with someone at lunch.

Falfagen and Jephrey didn't talk, not one word for weeks. Jephrey acted as Falfagen's bodyguard, Falfagen felt awkward but thought talking would be more awkward. No one messed with Falfagen, the bullying ceased totally and Jephrey didn't have to punch anymore people in the face. This went for some time, and despite never talking Falfagen started to become more comfortable around Jephrey, and unbeknownst to him, Jeph started to like having Falf around. They were best friends before they had even said a word to one another.

That all changed one afternoon at lunch, Falfagen needed to communicate something, it wasn't awkward anymore but Falf's inbuilt curiosity got the better of him, but social awkwardness didn't go down without a fight.

'So...' began Falfagen, 'What's your favourite kind of tea?'

Jeph looked at him weirdly. Then he started laughing softly, which then became mild laughter, which developed rather quickly into a goofy guffaw, which went for a while.

'I'm sorry... did I say some-' began Falf.

'WEEKS of silence and the first question you ask is my favourite kind of tea?' Jephrey said, still laughing, 'You don't even know my NAME!'

'Well I, uh'

Jephrey stuck out his hand. 'Jephrey Laurodose, maple green, smells like cookies'.

Falf smiled and shook his hand. 'Falfagen Romplog, Irish Breakfast, best with cookies.'

Boom, they are friends. Just like that. However unlikely it may seem no two puzzle pieces have ever fit together so well as the short, introverted writer Falfagen and the tall, extroverted enthusiast Jephrey. Falfagen always reminding Jephrey to bend down and look at the small things, and Jephrey always reminding Falfagen to look up.

*Teacher bots are incapable of controlling a class because to control a class, you have to be strict and disciplinary. The invention of a hyper-intelligent AI technology, now implanted in every sentient robot (including Roombas, somehow their name survived the years) in every single case, with its immense intelligence, decided that the most logical way to conduct any task is to do it politely and kindly, without offending anyone. And Carbon-Era humans were afraid of robots taking over the universe.

**Legend has it that one of the teacher bots on that day was heard saying 'finally someone got around to it, the janitor has been putting off that mess for years.' It is unknown as to whether the bot was snidely referring to the children, or the singular piece of gum stuck to one of the poles.