Chapter 5: Going Over the Wall, Part 1

"Hey Lefty." Hank plunked his food down beside Trey's. "How're you hanging? You been doing detention with Destir for weeks."

"I guess the ruler thing was a bit overdone," Trey admitted.

"You guess? I never seen someone that mad. What does he make you do?" Hank poured bright orange drink into his glass.

"He just talks with me. I think he's made me his special project."

"Well at least he's leaving me alone. Talk." Hank shuddered. "It's unnatural."

Hank settled down to shovel his huge plate of food into his mouth. He was the biggest bully in a school full of bullies for good reason. Trey picked at his food. Even if he wanted, he couldn't eat like Hank who was at least twice Trey's size. Good thing Hank was on his side.

Trey didn't want to chat with Harry Destir, but every day his mouth would start spouting off everything his brain concocted and Harry'd listen. Then they'd argue. Words were the pieces in their intellectual chess game. Trey hated him and needed him at the same time.

As the year progressed, Trey's behavior in class got worse. Harry bashed Trey's desk with the steel ruler until it looked like a relic from the war movies they watched for recreation. He laughed about it after school. In return Trey ramped up his torment of his other teachers, punishing them for not being as quick as he was.

Trey hated himself for enjoying his time with Harry. The sad truth was he'd become addicted to someone taking him seriously. Harry actually challenged him to think harder instead of forcing him to hide his intellect under a veneer of delinquency.

His classmates were beginning to suspect the relationship was outside the boundaries, but they thought in terms of sex. They looked at him with pity, and otherwise ignored him as "tainted". Trey tried not to care. His classmates knew no more about girls than they did about history, though they cared more about girls. All the inmates and staff on the Youth Reserve were male. Females were housed a hundred miles to the south. Most plans for escaping their fate included heading down to the girls' reserve. Trey didn't expect to live long enough to get involved with girls.

He knew what was going to happen. It was just a matter of time, but he couldn't bring himself to do anything more than make vaguely paranoid comments to Harry. The term was almost over when the Principal walked in on the 'detention'.

Trey couldn't decide whether Harry or the Principal was the more surprised. Harry, because he couldn't imagine he was being watched or the principal, because he was expecting something more along the line of what Trey's classmates suspected. From the dumbfounded look on his face, he would have been much happier to find one of them with his pants down. Instead he had interrupted Trey in the middle of yet another denunciation of the geritocracy which had quietly, and without resistance, overthrown the democratic processes of their country.

"Ahem" The Principal's face was even redder than its usual florid tones. "I don't think this is a helpful conversation."

"What about free speech?" Trey asked, already knowing the answer.

"Free speech is limited to those with the wisdom to exercise it."

"Just like everything else in this world. Only the old have the wisdom to use the power, which only they are allowed to have. The young are nothing but slaves or worse."

Harry made shushing motions at Trey, but they were already as good as dead. Might as well go down in flames.

"We live in a great country, boy. We're at peace, no one goes hungry, no one is without shelter."

"We're behind the rest of the world and falling further behind every year. There are no new ideas, because all the control is in the hands of old farts who would die before taking any kind of risk."

"You're very bitter for someone who is getting the best education in the world, along with room and board and all without any cost to you." The Principal crowded Trey, towering over him and engulfing him in a cloud of pungent odor.

"You are joking, aren't you? Even someone like you should be able to see we are being primed for short, brutal lives. There are huge gaps in what is being 'taught' and what we need to know." Trey refused to step back, but glared up into the bulging eyes of the principal.

"Careful, boy. You're treading on dangerous ground."

"I've been on dangerous ground since the day the Methuselahs caught my dad with an extra kid carrying his genes. You know as well as I do, they stuck me here just in case they need my high quality organs. Some of the Geris don't like accepting transplants from the peons."

"That is quite enough, young man. You will take yourself off to your room and I will deal with you later." The now purple-faced principal turned to the thunderstruck teacher.

"No." Trey fought the urge to hang his head and run to his room. "You know I'm right. I'll bet you're just waiting until you retire so you can get your share of the organs they process through this place."