Patrick Griffin's Last Breakfast on Earth (12 page)

 

CHAPTER 21

The First of Lasters

It probably would have been nice to be as excited as the rest of the yelling, laughing, squealing, jostling students, but Patrick didn't envy them. He simply wished he were someplace else, someplace quieter, someplace he could experiment on ways to wake himself up.

So far he'd only figured out that pinching oneself awake was a load of bull. He'd pinched every part of his body he politely could and none of it had changed a thing other than causing momentary doses of pain.

It came as no surprise, really. He'd never known anybody to say they had complete control over what happened in their dreams, and pinching oneself must be one of those expressions—like blessing a person who's sneezed or knocking wood for luck—that were just old pieces of superstition people repeated because they were something to say, and people are always scrambling for easy words, especially at times when they have the least idea what to think.

The entire situation was all starting to make its own sort of sense to Patrick: clearly everybody forgot nearly everything about their dreams. Probably, over the years, he'd dreamed himself in hundreds or thousands of other places just as weird as this and so this strange dream wasn't very strange at all; it's just that he tended to forget all of the other freaky things his sleeping brain cooked up. And this was probably good because he had enough trouble concentrating in school as it was.

But the other part of it was that it being a dream really didn't change anything: What difference was there even realizing it was all in his head? Was he supposed to act like somebody other than himself? Should he throw a fit and sulk in the corner like his sister Eva probably would? Take advantage of there being no adult supervision and do something annoying like Neil? Scream at the top of his lungs like Carly? Lock himself in a room and avoid everybody like Lucie? Sit on the ground and stick things in his mouth that he probably shouldn't stick in his mouth like the Twins?

Of course he
could
act any way he wanted; but still, why go to the trouble? Why make things harder when they could be easier?

He considered all this as they were jostled to the end of the hallway, across a playing field, and up into an enormous grandstand.

Kempton took his arm and led him to the very top row.

“This is some stadium,” said Patrick, glancing down through the safety railing at the back side. They had to be seven stories up at least. He suffered a twinge of vertigo and remembered that he'd woken from dreams in which he'd fallen out of buildings and airplanes, or off a cliff or out of a tree. Of course, at least to his memory, those falls had always been by accident. Actually jumping off these bleachers on purpose seemed just as crazy and scary a proposition as it would have in real life. But—if he stood here awhile—maybe something would happen? Perhaps his dream would decide to give him a little accident? He gave a test shove to the safety railing but it seemed pretty solid.

“Admiring our grounds fauna?” asked Kempton.

“Your what?” asked Patrick, gauging Kempton's glance. A few hundred yards distant a large flock of blue-collared sheep, cows, goats, and llamas was milling about.

“Oh, like the animals in your yard, right? They're for mowing the ball fields?”

“Of course,” said Kempton.

“And what's the deal with the trench?” asked Patrick. Past the animals was a long, shallow concrete depression.

“The manure culvert?”

Patrick raised an eyebrow.

“Come on,” said Kempton, sitting down and gesturing for Patrick to join him. The green fields down below and off to the sides were flanked by jumbotrons. For the moment, they all seemed to be showing the same shimmering spider-stop-sign symbol that had been on Magister Dorkenlaffer's and Bostrel the Nostril's uniforms:

“So,” he said to Kempton. “Are we going to be watching a game?”

“We'll be
playing
a game,” said Kempton. “But, first—in a couple terts—there's going to be the commencement address from the provost.”

“Oh,” said Patrick. “What are terts?”

“Umm,” he said, looking suspiciously at Patrick, “you know, ten quats?”

“What are quats?”

“You don't measure time in quints, quats, terts, deuces, and dunts?”

Patrick shook his head and Kempton, sighing like he was being forced to explain things to a not-very-bright kindergartner, held up his screen with what appeared to be a Wikipedia entry. The subject heading read, “
t
I
mk
E
ping
.”

“So,” continued Kempton, “a
quint
is the smallest common increment of time measurement, right? One one-hundred-thousandth of a day. You know, count, ‘one-Missouri, two-Missouri, three-Missouri'—and each of those is about a quint. And a quint is a tenth of a quat, so count ten quints and—” He broke off and stood up, exclaiming, “There he is!”

Patrick looked down to the field even as the world exploded around them. He reflexively dropped down in front of his seat and covered his ears. The initial blast was followed by a series of rumbling notes that kind of sounded like a man—or a giant—talking. Another noise assaulted him next, a noise like a cresting tidal wave of applause and human voices and—

Patrick cautiously opened one eye, then the other. Everybody in the bleachers was jumping and cheering. He removed his hands from his ears, stood, and saw—down on the field at a podium and simultaneously playing upon the massive 3D jumbotrons—Bostrel the Nostril. The man was red-faced and fierce-eyed now, the cords on his neck standing out like cables under a tent canopy.

“We have a problem!” said the big-nosed man, waving impatiently for the crowd to sit. To Patrick, the problem was obvious: they had the volume up about fifty times too high. He clamped his hands back on his ears and looked around, astonished that nobody else seemed to even be flinching. A person in the next town could easily have made out every word.

The provost continued, “Your achievements this yie deserve recognition and, I daresay, real praise.

“But I'm not here to just pat you on the head and send you to the next term.”

The man's eyebrows descended on his face and his fist on the lectern.

“Now is
not
the time for congratulations. Now is
not
the time for self-satisfaction.

“GRAVE PERIL is at our door!

“A menace like none we have ever known threatens to upend all the assiduous work of the Minder, the Seer, Rex, your parents, and all of us. The approaching new yie, the springtime of our birthright, can assuredly become a
waking nightmare
!

“You know the menace of which I speak?”

The kids around Patrick quivered in their seats.

“ANARCHISTS!!!” he screamed as the jumbotrons projected images of monsters like the one from Kempton's game.

Patrick winced at the pain in his ears.

“The Deacons inform us that these filthy scum, these degenerate solipsists, these
haters
of order and Nature and peace, these self-serving
monsters
, these agents of
entropy
have chosen this moment to wage an all-out campaign of terror!

“Our resolve must be like titanium-ceramic alloy!” he screamed. The images showed cities on fire, people running scared, soot-stained children crying in open fields.

“We MUST NOT waver, we MUST NOT flinch, we MUST NOT abandon our responsibilities, we MUST NOT question or doubt our course, and what they have done to us we MUST NEVER FORGET!

“To do so,” he added solemnly as the screens went blank and then filled with the image of a middle-aged man in a black turtleneck.

Kempton elbowed Patrick to get his attention. “That's Rex,” he said solicitously. “Do you recognize him now?”

Patrick shook his head. The man somehow looked like a cross between Steve Jobs and The Rock.

“To
forget
,” the Provost repeated for emphasis, “would be to fail the Seer and the Minder himself.

“‘
Why did they do it?
' we wonder. And why are those that remain continuing to flout Rex's Tenets? Why are they maliciously hacking our networks? Why are they impeding effective governance? Why are they tampering with the Minder-given order of Nature and turning genetic abominations loose upon us? Why are they attempting to disrupt the visit of our first emissary from Earth since Rex himself? Tell me now!!!”

“They're Evil!” screamed every student in the grandstand.

“I can't HEAR you!” the provost screamed back.

“THEY'RE EVIL!”

There was a thunderclap as he again pounded his fist on the lectern. “And, so, what quality must we embrace—on a daily basis, for every waking dunt—to ensure they don't carry off their nefarious plots!? What is our greatest weapon?!!”

“Vigilance!” shouted the students.

“And what do we do if we
see something
unusual?! We—”

“INFORM!!” screamed the crowd as the screens projected the eye symbol Patrick had seen on his binky.

“Louder!” screamed the man. “If you see something, you—”

“INFORM!!!!!”

“With your attention, with your focus, with your courage to observe and, yes,
inform
officials of any unusual occurrences, any potential malfeasances, we
will
be victorious. We
will
root them out and we
will
fulfill the Seer's vision … and the Minder's plan. We have withstood the worst plague in all of humanity's history—and we can finally triumph over the enemy!

“Now,” said the big-nosed man, suddenly smiling brightly as the screens filled with images of streaking military aircraft and exploding rockets, “let's take a measure of this moment's importance and apply it toward our opponents on the playing fields of this fine institution of learning:
Let the games begin!
”

*   *   *

“Kill the carrier? Like where one guy carries the ball?” asked Patrick. He was a little surprised. He'd seen it played—and played some himself—in backyards and neighborhood playgrounds, but he'd never heard of it being played as a legitimate sport. Somehow it seemed pretty dangerous for a school to ever approve, much less a school for a bunch of people who didn't even seem to like to shake hands.

“Really?” he asked.

Kempton cocked his head. “What do you mean? Don't you have kill the carrier on Earth?”

“Well, we do, but not at schools.”

“Just a pro league, then? But why not at schools? What better place is there to memorialize the Pandemic?”

“The Pandemic? Is this what that kid mentioned in your class?”

“Yes, where the Anarchists killed more than 99 percent of the population.”

“Oh,” said Patrick, a little shocked. “When did that happen?”