One day, sad news spread through the school. Sean Lancaster’s grandfather had died after being sick for months. A striker for the soccer team, Sean was out of school for a few days but returned with a grandpagotchi. It was not an event like when Emily arrived with hers, but the school was abuzz with the news before classes started.
“Lancaster?” Lilly asked. “Does his family own that burger place, Burgo’s?”
“Yeah, how did you know that?”
“I know his grandpa, that’s how! Your grandad and him started a business together back before he made Burgo’s. His wife was a dog, but a helluva cook.”
“Grandma, you’re a friggin’ wildfire.” Emily rolled her bright green eyes at Lilly’s brutal and unforgiving commentary and bounced into history class.
“What are you learning about today?” Lilly asked curiously.
“We just started a section yesterday about the early days of subdermal implants. Why? Aren’t you going to take a nap?”
“What’s the point? There’s nothing to recharge. I didn’t use anything this morning.”
“Then I guess we’ll find out together.”
Emily took her seat, greeting her classmates, who all had the manners to greet Lilly as well. The teacher walked in front of the class, light khaki pants and matching coat contrasting heavily against his black skin. Lilly turned into a tiny hologram and spoke up before he started his lesson.
“Mister Moore, I hope you don’t mind if I sit in today.”
“Of course not Lilly, it would be a pleasure,” he replied pleasantly. “Today we’re continuing our lesson on the digital reforms of the mid twenty-first century. After Paul Donahue pioneered the ION infrastructure that became the first standard for implanted technology, there was a series of companies that rallied against the standard and continued to engage in practices that were putting people at serious risk. Some high profile hacks followed by an American senator having his identity hijacked to the point where the hacker was placing votes on his behalf, led to sweeping changes in the laws. Have I got everything right so far, Lilly?”
The teacher made his question jokingly, prompting a chuckle from some of the class, but Like was not amused.
“Actually, all of that was pretty much wrong.”
The class laughed, as did Mister Moore, thinking Lilly was making a joke. Once the laughter subsided, Lilly clarified.
“I’m not kidding, that was a big nothing burger, everything you said was wrong.”
“Ooooh…” the class said in unison, taking her words as a challenge to the teacher.
“Well, ma’am, what do you think happened?”
“I don’t think nothin’, I know what happened because I was in college back then. Actually, I was a programming major, so we followed these stories as they were happening. I was a programmer for ninety years before I retired and I still did a few projects and consulting after that, so listen up, buck-o.”
The class roared at the direct challenge to the teacher after his sarcastic offer to hear out what she ‘thought’ happened.
“First of all, Paul Donahue didn’t pioneer shit! He was a damn crook who stole everything he’s got. When the hell did they start teaching that he developed or invented anything? Some of the developers of the technology died around that time and the others left to start their own company. ION Industries did everything they could to squash them. There was ongoing litigation against ION and several whistleblowers revealed the stuff Donahue was doing in secret. After the election, a change in administration brought in people who were friendly with Donahue, people whose campaigns he funded. Then all the investigations turned up nothing and all the cases were dismissed.”
The room was stunned. Mister Moore stared back at the tiny hologram of Lilly on Emily’s desk. He went to speak, but Lilly wasn’t finished.
“ION was breaking laws left and right. That guy who got hacked was originally a major supporter of ION and implanted himself with their tech. After having it for a while he wanted to see some safeguards put in place because he saw opportunities for abuse. That’s when he started losing time and placing votes he didn’t remember. He got his implants removed and tried to take the fight to ION. So, they rolled out the propaganda machine and some suspect they used the data they got from his implants to set him up. Once he was out of office, his measures were redrafted and we got what we have now.”
Again, the room was silent. Everyone stared at Lilly wide-eyed. The break in the silence came from the person with the lowest grade in the class.
“How come we don’t learn that stuff? That history is wild bro.”
Instead of laughing, the class agreed with him. Everyone nodded and spoke amongst themselves, a soft chatter breaking out around the teacher.
“Lilly,” Mister Moore finally said, “We’re going to get into some of the details on that, but it isn’t at all the way you explained it. This was over one hundred years ago, I’m sure some of the facts are a little fuzzy for you.”
“Part of life extension therapy is that it increases the potency of your memory. Maybe you just believe what you’re told and don’t go do any of your own research?” The class again lauded Lilly’s jab at the teacher.
“Why don’t we pull up some resources, then?” Mister Moore waved his hands at the room’s back wall to pull up a holographic screen. The back wall lit up and the teacher navigated to several resources, from an online wiki to articles and official history websites. Everything he pulled up supported what he said. The class did not laud his retort, but awaited Lilly’s biting response.
“Well this is disturbing,” she said. “Why don’t you look up Subdermatine?”
It turned out to be the company started by those who had left ION. At first, what they found supported what Mister Moore had said. Lilly insisted they dig deeper and look into the lawsuits, but Mister Moore was happy to call it a win for himself and move on. He deemed that they had wasted too much time on the tangent and he had a lesson to teach.
Lilly was having none of it. She insisted they dig deeper and repeatedly he refused. They argued, with him taking jabs at her memory and age and her taking jabs at his competence until she called him a tool and a coward, which got Emily sent to the principal’s office.
“We’ll see you there! Come on sweetie, let’s go,” Lilly replied. Flabbergasted, Emily went with Lilly to the principal’s office. After reading the note the teacher had sent after her departure, they discussed the details of what happened with Principal Benson, and Lilly made her case. Her experience was hard to overlook.
“Look, Principal Benson,” Lilly said after they discussed the finer points in the matter, “this is a school for the children of successful people. We’re not going to stand for a substandard education. I know for a fact that I’m right, so why don’t we turn this into a research project? Since it’s not on the curriculum, it’ll count as extra credit for Emily, and when I turn out to be right, Mister Moore has to admit to being wrong in front of the whole class. I don’t want to be a whiny little runt and complain about him picking on me for my age since I was insulting him too, but this should serve as a lesson to the class.”
“How about this,” the principal said after some silent deliberation. “That topic is Mister Moore’s lesson for the week. Emily will be excused from class for the rest of the week, but will have to turn in a comprehensive report on Monday with as many citations, pictures, and evidence to support your claims as you can find. Does that work for you?”
“That sounds splendid. How about Emily gives a presentation on it Monday with you in attendance so this can all be resolved as smoothly as possible, so as to avoid any such future misunderstandings?” Lilly proposed. Emily was taken aback by being volunteered to give a presentation, but her grandmother had navigated this with such confidence, she said nothing and trusted her.
“That sounds splendid, I’m looking forward to it. But, could you please avoid picking fights with our staff? In the future when you have an issue with the curriculum, please bring it to my attention so as not to disrupt the other students.”
“I think that’s perfectly reasonable. I’m sorry for causing such a stir.” Lilly said, but her true feelings were made clear once they were walking to Emily’s next class, for which she had been made tardy. “Mister Moore is a pussy. After this report, we’re going through your history book, see what else they’ve been teaching you around here.”
That week they spent history class in the library digging for the information they sought. They looked up old articles from defunct publications, patents, company information, videos, interviews, and scraped together everything they could find. Emily learned more about doing research and how companies and society works from Lilly in that week than in all her years in school. She also learned the bar for gathering information at school was extremely low.
“You know, this would have been easier if it were in my day. Back then, online schooling was all the rage. It wasn’t until the calamity happened that everyone started to value social time at school again.”
“What? I’d love to school-from-home. That would be so much better.”
“Honestly it has its advantages and disadvantages. But, I think it’s stupid they don’t even allow homeschooling anymore.”
“Maybe they don’t want us learning stuff like this.”
“Actually, sweetie, I think you’re on the money with that.”
The presentation Emily gave the following Monday was a glowing endorsement of everything Lilly had said with first-hand sources. Documents filed, legal proceedings, video corroboration, everything was there in black and white. Mister Moore had to begrudgingly apologize to Lilly and the class.
Principal Benson was stunned. Before class he had skimmed that section of the history book to re-familiarize himself with the information, which was in stark contrast to what Emily and Lilly had presented. He ran his hand over his bald head as he flipped through the pages after the report.
“Mister Benson, I know you had to apologize for this and everything, but don’t feel bad about it. This is an honest mistake that I would have made too, if I’m being honest. I thought this was going to end with Emily and Lilly having to apologize, but I see an incredible discrepancy between the history book and what actually happened. I’m going to do some digging on this to figure out why the book is wrong. In the future, let’s do some due diligence before we assert the book is right. Okay?”
“That sounds fine to me, Principal Benson. I’ve never seen a history book be this wrong before. I’m honestly beside myself right now. It makes me question my whole curriculum,” Mister Moore said.
“Principal Benson,” Lilly said.
“Yes, Lilly?”
“Could you please keep me apprised as to your findings? I’m very curious about this as well.”
“I’ll be sure to do that, ma’am. Alright, everyone, I’m out of here! It’s been a pleasure, thanks for having me.” Principal Benson waved and left to disjointed but lively goodbyes from the class.
“I like that Principal Benson,” Lilly commented.
“Yeah, everyone does. Unlike Principal Conroy, he’s awesome.”
“Conroy was a bit of a hardass, but if you could take your seat Emily, we’re already halfway through class and I have a potentially accurate history lesson to teach.”