Day 1 12:31
John regretted it even before the word had left his mouth. Everyone heard him, literally everyone in the room had heard him say the stupid joke. Heads through the crowd turned to look at him in confusion, anger, and annoyance. There were times to tell jokes and there were times to be serious, this was most definitely not the time to be telling jokes. A Shitty joke about toilets during a funeral would have been better than what he just said.
Fortunately, the orientation continued before John got the chance to embarrass himself further.
The four large metal shutters that usually separated the main room of the cafeteria from where the lunch ladies served food opened up. What had once been where students were severed cold french fries and mass produced hamburgers had been replaced whit a perfectly smooth white wall that housed what looked to be science fiction vending machines and a large screen that covered the entire wall above them. There were twenty of vending machines in total, five for each of the shutters. John knew instinctively that he could walk up to any of them, ask for any item, and it would appear before him.
But before John could put his theory to the test, the announcement system spoke again. “The administration felt it would be best for participants to have time to awaken and socialize before you were informed of the parameters for this experiment.”
Oh, so they were test subjects, and fancy alien professors thought it would be good for the rats to squeak at each other a bit before they started the dissections. John hadn’t been sure what to think about this debacle before but now he was pretty sure about how he felt. This entire thing was going to burn, he would see to it.
John felt the hysterical wrath boiling up within himself and felt his heart burning. This wasn’t who he was, he was the annoying funny guy, not the fire-breathing demon full of rage. He needed to calm down, this anger would get him nowhere. As long as Mark, Grace, and his friends were okay everything would be fine. Everything would be fine.
“Once orientation is finished subjects will be released in the research enclosure. It was created based on the measurement unit of your culture. It measures ½ mile by ½ mile and encompasses approximately 3.5 million square feet and most school grounds.” The more John listened the more he could tell it wasn’t a real person speaking to them. He couldn’t trust a single thing that was said but he listen carefully regardless.
“The goal of this experiment is to study how adolescent Homo Sapiens interact with one another. Please interact with each other as one usually would outside of this test. The Administrators wish to fully document the developmental process of your species, thank you for your cooperation.” The voice synthesizer spoke with the same happy but callous tone that a drug commercial listed off the side effect of their product. Fortunately, it didn’t talk at the same speed meaning that everything was easy to understand. Whoever oversaw this would probably enjoy them being able to clearly hear the part that drug companies usually tried to skip over.
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“Many of you have already discovered the device attached to your arm is referred to as a GU-ORP. The gu-orp is designed to monitor your vitals as you engage with social stimuli.” John studied his right arm attempting to figure out how deeply it was implanted. It probably wouldn’t be easy to remove otherwise John would do it in a heartbeat.’
“The gu-orp with also allow you to purchase foods, drinks, and other assorted items from the replicator stations which are located here in the cafeteria.” John had watched almost all of the original Track Star tv shows when he was younger. After watching every single episode of The Previous Generation, Deep Station 7 and Traveler John didn’t need a text to speech program to tell him what a replicator was. John sighed, this was an explanation to everyone, and not everyone had watched the old Track Star shows even if they should be required viewing for school.
“The gu-orp will allow subjects to access their credit balance. Each day thirty credits will be added to your balance to allow for the purchase of necessities and other desired goods. Credits may also be transferred between subjects. This will allow administrators to monitor subjects’ purchases and determine the ability of adolescents to manage fiat currency.” They weren’t even trying to be subtle about it, at least they weren’t being given the illusion of freedom. John hated it but he would be good. It was the nail that stood out that got hammered down, and without knowing how big the hammer was there was a decent chance Mark and Grace could get hit alongside him.
“The Gu-orp is very important so be careful not to lose it not that you’ll be able to as it’s attached to your bone. Ha Ha Ha Ha.”
“Dam dude you got the whole class laughing” John murmured under his breath as the entire to no one as the entire room lessoned intently through the awarded silence.
“Due to the nature of the experiment, there are no mature subjects present adolescents will have to fulfill the roles typically done by senior members of your species. To incentivize the completion of important tasks subjects will be rewarded additional credits. Upon completion of a difficult task that results in a long term benefit for the population then the subject may be rewarded a permanent increase to the about of credits received each day.” It was the first thing said that John didn’t immediately hate outright. It did make sense, without any adults around work was going to have to get done and there was no way teenagers were going to work out of the goodness of their hearts. Still, the whole thing was too vague and never stated what would happen if someone refused to work it just assumed that everyone would like a mindless drone in an ant colony.
“Thank you for participating in this experiment if subjects have any questions that were not answered during the orientation please see the information packet provided on your gu-orp. If it does not contain a satisfactory answer please use the gu-orp to contact the Administration staff. This concludes the orientation, subjects will now be released into the main testing facility, please have a nice day.” After the message ended an electric buzz from the doors unlocking sounded across the room.
The entire student body rushed to the doors desperate to escape, the wrestling team moved to follow but was stopped by Patter who didn’t want to risk anyone getting trampled in the desperate crush to get outside. Waiting for the stampede to be over wasn’t a big deal, it gave John time to check out the replicators and think of a way out of this school sized test tube.