Freelancer (4 page)

Trying to beat the simulation had gone poorly, but it had at least gotten Kari through the morning section of class and to the only part of school that was somewhat bearable—lunch
.
She followed her typical lunch routine, which consisted of printing some generic-tasting food before finding a deserted corner and logging into her development environment.

She needed to complete her homework for the week before the activity portion of class after lunch. She could spend months meticulously hitting high-pressure deadlines for clients; however, for some reason, it was much more difficult for her to get schoolwork done on time. The homework wasn’t difficult, but it took large amounts of willpower to force herself to do it. Her favorite part of being a freelancer was that she could choose whom she worked for and which projects she worked on. School offered no such luxury.

This week’s assignment was to program the provided drones so that they could work together to accomplish tasks. It was an assignment that she found to be refreshing and much more applicable when compared with most of the busywork she had been forced to do.
So, in short, I agree with David, and I still threw him under the bus.

She loaded the archaic school drones into her development environment. They had no software besides basic instructions telling them how to hover a few feet off the ground. She worked quickly, writing lines of code simply by thinking about how she wanted the drones to interact with each other. The drones now rotated slowly in a circle, equidistant from each other in the simulation.

Kari added more code, and soon the drones were chasing each other in more complex patterns. She checked the assignment and quickly added code that caused the drones to flash their red LED lights when they got close to a drone that wasn’t connected to their network. She ordered a separate group of three drones to appear in her development environment, so she could test the two groups against each other.

“Hey, Kari!” It was Aubrey, the only person in the entire school whom Kari considered a friend. Kari ordered her development environment to override the vision in her left eye, which made her feel cross-eyed, but she had to keep working. It was rude to work while talking with someone, but she doubted Aubrey would be offended, and she needed to get the assignment done.

“Hey, Aubrey, how’s school going?”

“Fine, I guess,” Aubrey said with an audible sigh.

“What’s wrong? You were so excited about school the past few weeks.”

“Well . . . I guess you were right. High school does get worse the longer you’re in it.”

“Aubrey! You’ve been in high school-level classes for, what, three weeks?”

“Seems like longer than that.”

“Don’t let me wear off on you. You’re supposed to like high school for at least another year or two. You’re not allowed to hate school ‘til you’re a senior.” Kari talked while she ordered her two groups of simulated drones to try to flash each other with their lights.

“So you liked high school your freshmen year?”

“Well . . . no.” Kari admitted with a laugh. “But that’s no excuse for you.”

Kari watched the drones perform pitifully, chasing each other around in hopeless circles, trying to flash each other with their faux LED weapons.
It’s probably as good as anyone else will come up with, and they spent all week on it.
Just in case, she added several more lines of code to make the drones work together to try to trap an enemy drone.

“So are you going to go?” Aubrey asked.

“Uh . . . ,” Kari said, trying to figure out what part of the conversation she had missed while she had updated her code.

“Are you going to go to homecoming?” Aubrey asked with a smile. She didn’t seem to mind that Kari had been ignoring her for a second; she was used to Kari occasionally spacing out. They had been friends for a long time. Their parents were good friends, so their families had occasionally had dinners with each other over the years. Aubrey was the closest thing to a sister that Kari had, but she liked to think they would have been friends anyway.

“Nah, it’s not my scene,” Kari said.

“Oh.” Aubrey paused for a moment, trying to find a new topic of conversation. “So how’s your day going so far?”

“Not too bad, actually. It’s been going all right,” Kari said. She had much stronger feelings about it than that, but she didn’t want to pollute more of Aubrey’s high school experience with her bad attitude.

“It’s been going all right? All right! Wow. That’s the most enthusiasm I’ve heard from you since your twelfth birthday!” Aubrey said just as the lunch bell rang
.
Kari jumped a little at the sound and checked the time.
How come the rest of the day can’t go this quickly?
She ordered her software to load onto the three school-supplied drones in her bag.

“Don’t get too excited, there’s still some time left in the school day. Besides, I think on my twelfth birthday we had peach pie. It’s hard not to get excited about that!” Aubrey laughed and ran away and joined a group of younger girls heading to their class. Kari received the notification that her drones had finished updating with her latest software, so she begrudgingly made her way to the afternoon portion of class.

The lecture part of classes was bad, but it wasn’t nearly as hard for Kari to endure as the activity portion. She slowly walked to the open activity area, which was the largest room in the building. Its walls were made entirely of glass except where wires and air-conditioning pipes ran. The ceiling here was, per standard, made entirely of solar panels. Kari was one of the last people to join the growing circle of students, with Thomas at the center, in the middle of the room.

“As was in your weekly outline, today’s afternoon learning activity will be a competition.” Thomas did not smile this time. Kari was fairly sure that Thomas didn’t believe in anything that categorized people as winners or losers. “So, I hope you all remembered to bring your drones.”

Kari reflexively felt her bag one last time to make sure the drones were still in there.

“For the first round, I will put you into groups of three. Two drones will try to tag an opposing drone at the same time to eliminate it.” Thomas was obviously not pleased about this lesson, but that didn’t curb the enthusiasm of many of the boys, who were excited by the opportunity to prove their masculinity.

It was an activity that Kari would have loved to compete in, if there were any real competition. She had briefly considered spending more than ten minutes during lunch writing her software, just to upset Thomas at her proficiency in the subject matter. In the end, she’d decided once again not to reveal her capabilities. It was too risky. She was perfectly content with everyone believing her to be an ever-so-slightly above-average student and programmer.

What made the activity portion of class so difficult was the fact that Kari had to try—to actually expend effort—to display herself at the level of her classmates on academic subjects.

The first group of drones took flight smoothly and then awkwardly began to try to maintain formation with each other. Thomas started the competition, and the drones hesitated for a moment before they started to buzz around each other like toddlers playing keep-away. Their only “weapon” was a little, red light on their front. If two allied drones flashed their lights on an enemy drone at the same time, the enemy drone was eliminated from the competition.

The drones flew around exactly how Kari imagined a group of drunken houseflies might—sometimes clumping up together before breaking apart. She felt her stomach tighten a touch.
They’re somehow worse than I thought they would be. I’ll probably win this whole, stupid thing despite my efforts to fail.
She followed that thought with another colorful, internal curse.

A few minutes later, Sky, one of the few girls in the class Kari could tolerate, was declared the winner. She was the last person to have two drones in the air. Taylor, one of the star athletes of the school, tried hard to act as if he hadn’t wanted to win. This wasn’t a natural act for him, as he was the type of guy who would try his hardest to win a watch-the-grass-grow competition.

Kari was in the second group and reluctantly placed her drones on the ground next to Sarah’s. A moment later, the drones rose from the ground in unity and slowly started to rotate around each other meticulously like the gears of an antique watch. This earned Kari quite a few disapproving glares from her classmates, Thomas, and fiery look of contempt from Sarah.

On Thomas’s signal, Kari’s drones broke apart gracefully and formed a wide triangle around the other drones. They elegantly moved in and eliminated drone after drone. It took less than thirty seconds for her drones to eliminate four opposing drones, which was the minimum number she needed in order to win, although Kari’s drones managed to flash the remaining two drones before Thomas could stop the competition.

Sarah turned and made a joke to her friends. Kari couldn’t hear it but she knew it wasn’t nice. The group burst out in laughter and shot uncomfortable glances toward Kari. Some of the more interested students in the class looked over at her, clearly impressed. Kari just shrugged and
cursed her peers’ incompetence under her breath.
Really, it’s not that hard. If they spent half as much time learning to program as they did on doing their hair, they might actually be able to compete with me.

Several other groups competed, but none posed a shadow of a threat to Kari’s drones. The last group saw David and Connor, the red-haired bully he had argued with during class, face off against each other. They were one on one, as there were an odd number of class members today. David looked determined; Connor looked annoyed. To Kari’s delight, David’s drones took off in formation and crushed the opposing drones within seconds.

David beamed with pride, and Kari couldn’t help but be happy with Thomas’s obvious displeasure. It was clear the class members weren’t ecstatic about David’s success, but none of them dared say anything too direct with Thomas around. Their courage for picking on people was unsurprisingly circumstantial.

The final round was to be a battle royal between all the winners. Kari placed her drones on the ground across from David’s. There were three other groups of drones as well, but Kari knew David was her only competition. The other drones would likely eliminate themselves without too much effort on her or David’s part. She tried to smile at him when he looked up, but he returned her smile with a scowl.

Well, make us both happy by beating me.

Thomas announced the start of the final round with as little interest as possible. Despite Thomas’s lack of energy, a clear sense of excitement was in the air as the drones took off. Taylor was trying to take bets without Thomas noticing, and from the sound of it, Kari was the favorite to win. David’s drones moved forward in formation, sweeping in toward some easy kills in the center. Kari’s drones shot out to form their triangle around the action. David’s drones picked off a couple of enemies in the center while dodging the clumsy attacks of the other drones. The class cheered a little every time a drone was flashed out of the match, except for the times when David’s drones were doing the eliminating.

Well, that settles that.
Kari gave up her hope that David would defeat her. His drones were going for easy kills or, more likely, just the most obvious ones. Kari had programmed her drones to go after the most threatening target first. It was a gross oversight, but it had seemed like the obvious choice at the time. She had honestly expected everyone to try to program their drones to go after their stiffest competition first.
I really should stop expecting anything from these people.

Kari cringed as her drones darted in and flashed one of David’s drones before it could react. To her surprise, David’s two remaining drones turned and flashed one of her attackers down to the ground. David pumped his fists, and Kari tried not to smile. The class was unsure how to react, as if confused about whom they wanted to lose, given their options. The other drones swarmed together in a messy blob, flashing their lights, causing a several drones to drop to the ground, eliminated. Kari’s drones floated to the outside of the battle and picked another one of David’s drones to hunt.

To her pleasure, David’s drones moved in to attack the swarm and escaped her attacks. Kari’s drones picked off a couple of different drones instead and eliminated two more classmates from the competition. David’s drones eradicated another competitor a second later, leaving only her and David with enough active drones to compete.

Several of the boys who had just witnessed their bet-upon drones being stamped out of the competition walked away, too upset to watch the finale. Kari, surprisingly, found herself quite engaged in the battle.

“Let’s go, Tahe!” Taylor yelled. A few of the other class members who had also put their money on her started to cheer. Kari tried not to react, but she couldn’t keep a small smile from briefly spreading. This caused a number of short-lived counter cheers that Thomas quickly hushed with an angry glance.

“Apparently, you have to be crazy to be good at this,” Sarah told her friends in a voice just loud enough for Kari to hear. She ignored Sarah by instinct. It had taken her years to train herself in selective hearing, but it was a skill that paid dividends every school day.

David’s drones singled out one of Kari’s and chased it in circles, but, lacking a third, they weren’t able to corner it. Kari’s second drone chased David’s drones that were pursuing her first drone. They spun around in circles for a minute, unable to corner each other.

Kari watched the drones and started to feel a little dizzy.
Why are his two drones sitting there, chasing the one in front of them when they could just pivot and attack the one behind them?

The questions caused Kari to pause, and she lost focus on the battle all together as she followed the idea through her mind.
Because they are fixated on that drone in front of them already.
She hardly noticed that her drone made a desperate attempt to attack one of David’s pursuing drones. It was a second late, and David’s drones flashed hers to the ground.