Extinction (14 page)

Mr. Wilks looked at the clock; only
another two minutes had passed. Damn. He tried so very hard not to be a
clock-watcher, especially as it went against everything he told himself he
would never be. But standing there, watching his students browse the Net,
message one another, doodle, and even blatantly sleep, it was difficult for
Wilks to be the teacher he always dreamed of being.

Mr. Wilks had an affinity for
history and advanced mathematics with a personal interest in military history.
He had always wanted to be a teacher, had always wanted to be better than the
horrible clock-watching teachers he had had while growing up in an impoverished
Coalition colony. The teachers showed up for their paycheck and to make sure no
one was killed in class—not always successful on the second part—and that was
about it.

Mr. Wilks understood why they
were that way: the kids were horrible and had no desire to be there. The colony
had taken steps to ensure that there were no truancy issues by placing a GPS
bracelet on all of the students. If the bracelet wasn’t on the school grounds
when it was supposed to be, the police would locate the truant child and return
them to school. So although this made sure that every kid was at school every
day, it just increased the number of problems that the teachers had to deal
with. If the kids who didn’t want to be there weren’t, then the teachers would
have had more time to work with the students who did want to be there.

Mr. Wilks always thought that
even though the teachers were dealt a bad hand, they weren’t playing it as best
they could. They didn’t even try to reach the kids with issues or create a
teaching plan that would give the ones with interest the education they
deserved. As a student, Mr. Wilks had approached his teachers many times with
ideas to make the classroom more fun and interesting even to the most hardened
juvenile criminals some of the classes contained. None of his teachers ever
implemented any of his ideas; some wouldn’t even listen to him.

The defining moment of Mr. Wilks’
education was when one of his most-hated teachers replied to his suggestions
with, “Look, kid, if you think you can do better, then get your own classroom.
Until then, leave me the fuck alone and go back to your desk.”

So Mr. Wilks did just that. He
approached the principal and asked about having a classroom after school for
one to two hours a day for a study club that he was putting together. He was
extremely surprised when the principal handed him a key and told him that room
203 was empty and the study group could use it as long as he promised not to
burn it down or kill anyone in it. And on a side note, the room was empty
because a teacher was actually killed in it and they never cleaned it up after
the police were done investigating, so yeah, you might want to bring some
bleach and water with you when you go there.

Wilks spent the next two weeks
cleaning up the room and making it presentable. He wanted to make it a place
that his fellow students would want to voluntarily come to. A place to learn,
to teach, to get ahead and get out of the colony. When it was done, Wilks went
to eight other students that he knew were like him, wanting more but not knowing
how or where to get it. He took them all to the room and showed them what he
had done with it.

Wilks wasn’t sure whether the
principal knew it or not, but the key he had handed over was a master key for
the whole school, not just a key for his study room. Wilks wanted to learn, not
steal, so he put the key to good use. He found an interactive learning board
that wasn’t being used, along with a lot of other teaching equipment that was
long forgotten. The found equipment, together with teaching aids and books,
were put into the classroom.

When his handpicked study
partners showed up, they were amazed and excited at what they saw. This is what
a real classroom should look like! It was clean and stocked with actual
supplies. There were only a few individual desks; the rest of the workspaces
were set up for group work at large round tables, each with its own supplies. There
were also individual study stations made up of discarded couch cushions, a
couple of which had some questionable stains on them.

Wilks talked with his new friends
and told them of his vision. This place was where they would come and study
together, but more important, teach one another. They each had their own
educational strengths, some overlapping, and he wanted them to take turns
putting on classes for each other. Everyone loved the idea and was immediately
on board. Wilks hoped that in time other students would hear about what they
were doing and would want to join. Not everyone would be a teacher of course,
but the group would be open to anyone who wanted to learn.

It only took two weeks before
their first ad hoc student showed up. At first, Wilks and his colleagues were a
bit nervous when the student walked in the door. She was one of the scariest
kids at the school. Rumors of her exploits, both those confirmed and those
hopefully not even remotely true, preceded her at every public school in the
colony. Cynthia Macavoy, with her dirty blonde hair, chubby frame, and angry
eyes, stood in the doorway, waiting for someone to say something.

Wilks stepped forward first. “Hi.”
He tried to be as cheery as possible. “Do you want to come in?”

Cynthia looked at Wilks. “Don’t
laugh at me. If any of you laugh at me, I’ll kill you.” They were all pretty
sure she meant it. “And your parents, too.” Yeah, she meant it.

Wilks gave her a quick tour and
explained what they were doing and what their goals were. Cynthia was
completely honest with the group and told them that she was tired of being
dumb. She didn’t mind so much that she was already on a criminal path; she just
didn’t want to be dumb.

Wilks assured her that if she was
aware of how much her education lacked, she simply couldn’t be dumb. A dumb
person would never realize that they needed help. Cynthia seemed to like this
line of thinking because everyone else she had ever known had called her dumb
or some variant of the word, sometimes a much worse variant. Cynthia settled in
very quickly and only had a few minor emotional incidents for the next many
years that she was a part of the group.

One student quickly became ten;
then twenty and then too many for the group to take care of in a single space.
Teaching and study days had to be rationed like bread to the starving masses.
Wilks eventually used his master key to take over a few more unused spaces in
the school. He also found that they could use the school after hours thanks to
the magical key he had been handed without so much as a second thought. This
allowed their endeavor to flourish even more with the run of the entire school
at night. With the use of the subject-specific classrooms, they could schedule
classes and study sessions even better.

Cynthia even started teaching a
class of her own, basic Coalition penal code. She had actually absorbed a
wealth of knowledge in all of her goings-on with the local law enforcement. Now
that she was learning how to better articulate herself and put together a study
plan, her elective study group was becoming quite popular. Cynthia went on to
graduate from an Ivy League school and came back to the same colony to practice
juvenile criminal defense.

By the end of the year, Wilks and
his original study group were basically running their own school at night. Even
a few parents present were taught to read and write. When he looked back on his
fifth-grade year, Wilks couldn’t help but be impressed with himself and the
other eleven-year-olds he worked with.

The school’s overall GPA was just
about eleven times what it had been when they started. The principal knew it
was because of Wilks’ study group but never said anything about it. He also
knew they were using the master key well beyond its original intent and
purposes, but he was fine with that, too. Why would he say anything when he basically
now had an army of non-paid teachers who were making his school look better
than any of the other public schools? Not to mention the fact that “new” equipment
had shown up all over the school. Most likely thanks to the master key and the
ingenuity of the young criminal minds working together to make their new
learning obsession as grand as it possibly could be.

By the time Wilks graduated from high
school, he and his friends had had more success stories than probably all of
his teachers combined, times five, to a modest power of ten. Okay, maybe a
power of two, but still pretty damned good.

After college, Mr. Wilks began
working at a public school, teaching history and helping to coach track after
school. Mr. Wilks hadn’t returned to his own colony as Cynthia had; he wanted
to help the less fortunate but he also wanted to see new places so he moved
around for the first five years, trying new things. He even tried substituting
at a fairly wealthy private school and found that some of the students were even
harder to reach than the young criminals he was used to working with.

During his fifth year of being a
teacher, he was living on a Coalition planet near the Shirka home world. He met
a woman, maybe even
the
woman. Mr. Wilks settled down at last and got a
full-time job teaching at one of the poorest-rated public schools in the city.
He was going to make a difference. He was going to re-create his childhood
school, but it would be better this time now that he had the full support of
the school and he was an actual adult.

Three years later, he was
watching the clock and getting annoyed at his own voice. Maybe it was because
he was an adult and the kids didn’t want to listen to an adult regardless of
who they were. Maybe he had possessed a certain something as a child that he no
longer possessed. Maybe his earlier successes were actually more because of his
adolescent colleagues than because of him. Whatever the reason, Mr. Wilks was
utterly beat down after just eight years of teaching.

The clock struck the top of the
hour and the lights dimmed twice to indicate the class was over. An almost
audible sigh of relief escaped from everyone who was still actually conscious
in the classroom. As Mr. Wilks walked out of the room, he didn’t even take the
time to wake the two students who were still sleeping. They’d figure it out
soon enough when the janitor droid came in and poked them and ordered them to
leave the school grounds.

Mr. Wilks was now on the track
field, the best part of his day. At least here, most of the kids wanted to be
participating in the activities. Some were there due to the pressures of their
parents and some were court-mandated to take extra-curricular classes to help
them learn the socialization skills they so obviously lacked.

Mr. Wilks ran a 5K to warm up and
then went through each of the events in a decathlon. He wasn’t out for time
today, just a good workout, so he did a fairly light pace and easy numbers on
all of the events. He had five students working out with him, two who were
actual competition when they were pushing each other. After the workout, they
all put some time into the pole vault and worked on some of the issues the team
had been having with their techniques.

Mr. Wilks then went home and
found all that was left of his girlfriend Mary was a note. Not even a very long
note. In fact, the note was fairly atrocious in its spelling and grammatical
errors. That gave Mr. Wilks some solace, to know that he could always look back
on the note and see that she wasn’t really that great of a catch to begin with.
Its contents didn’t matter so much as the sentiment, which was along the lines
of “It’s not me. It’s you, it’s totally you. Seriously, how could you not know
it was you? We both know it wasn’t me, not in a million years could it ever have
been me. So we’re clear, right? All you, buddy.”

Mr. Wilks sat on his couch and
opened a beer. He stared at a still-dark screen for twenty minutes before he
realized he hadn’t even turned the television on. That issue was easily solved
as he turned on the Coalition military channel. The screen came to life and Mr.
Wilks found himself in the middle of a documentary series about the first
twenty years of military space exploration. In the back of his head, he heard
Mary’s voice: “The military channel again? What a surprise. You see, totally
not me.”

The first twenty years of
military space exploration was filled with first contacts, first battles with
other species, so many firsts that were scary and wonderful all.

Ten hours later, the series
marathon was over and Mr. Wilks looked at the clock, this time not waiting for
his day to be over but dreading his day having to start. She was right: it was
him—it was always him. With the documentary still fresh in his mind, he was
able to go to work with a little spring in his step, thinking about the
wonderful history he had just watched. The documentary would help him get
through the day, as he imagined himself in the place of the brave warriors who had
ventured out into the cosmos so many centuries before.

Mr. Wilks kept going over his
personal mantra, “The day will end. Nothing they do can ever make the day
longer. It will end, no matter what.“ And while it wasn’t a merciless end, it
did in fact end and Mr. Wilks headed out to the track for the only thing that
brought him joy anymore.

As he approached the track, he
saw there was a small contingent of military personnel near the field. That was
odd. He had seen small contingents of cops on campus before, but that was to
arrest one of the wayward students. Could any of the students have done
something so bad that the military needed to show up?

Mr. Wilks approached the group
and walked up to one of the soldiers. “Excuse me. What’s going on here, Gunnery
Sergeant?”

The gunny looked at Mr. Wilks. “Career
day. Prior service?”