Early Lessons

Are you going to chose and believe that every piece of human knowledge recorded has made its way to the internet?

The rising sun cut across the desk bisecting it into two equal triangles. One of light and one of darkness. The lights overhead were turned off. It was early in the morning and the sun was just beginning to rise above the tree line. Despite the early hour a young teacher sat at a large rectangular desk in front of the black board. His expensive striped shirt was slightly rumpled and his dark three day 5’oclock shadow had begun to show signs of red hairs. He sat reading the morning newspaper as a cup of half drank coffee sat forgotten on the table . The last shadows of steam slowly rising from the jet black surface as the coffee cooled to room temperature. The silence of the room, only occasionally interrupted by the rustle of paper, was deafening. The oppressive silence was disrupted by the sound of the door bursting opening. The lights overhead flashed on, the motion detectors triggered by the opening door. An eager youth of 17 thrust into the room. 

The youth was a boy turning into a man but his potential shone through him like a diamond in the rough. He was full of hope, eagerness and optimism. It was a stark contrast to the individual sitting at the desk. He looked tired, weak and worn down. He looked nearly forty but he was only thirty-two. His shirt was slightly too big for him hinting of days past when it was time for feasting rather than famine.

“I got to school early so I could ask you a few questions about our final paper.”

The man at the desk had glanced up from the paper in his hands when the door suddenly swung open. He eyes were now on the youth standing just inside his door. His look caused the young man at the door to become self-conscious. He was suddenly aware of his youthful exuberance and his act of intrusion upon his teacher’s time of solitude.

“I mean sir, I was wondering if you had a moment to discuss my assignment before class started”

The man at the desk didn’t say a word as he slowly laid the paper down on the deserted desk's surface. The desktops only other decorations the cup of luke-warm coffee and two piles of papers. One graded and one not.

“I would not be a true educator if I were to deny one of my students such a request. Joseph, please come in and take a seat” His voice contained a hint of sarcasm but a creeping smile reassured the youth that he was truly welcome. The teacher gestured towards the rows of desks located in facing his large metal desk.

“Any one will do.”

“Thank you sir.”

The youth moved into the room. He was carrying both a book bag and an athletic bag. He was the captain of his schools soccer team and had practice after school. He headed to the center desk in the middle of the classroom located directly in front of the teacher’s desk. He dropped his bags and threw himself down into the desk.

“So what was your urgent question that impelled you to show up to school an hour early? Which, I assume, must be some kind of record for you.” The teacher ask with a tone that suggested familiarity. 

“Well sir, I guess I really just don’t get the premise of the paper. I mean I tried to figure it out for myself but I couldn’t. I know the paper is due in a week so I decided to ask my dad for help. He looked at your prompt last night and got very angry at the subject. He told me I didn’t have to write a paper on this rubbish, crumpled up your assignment, and spent the rest of the night in his study on the phone.”

“Interesting” Said the teacher. He took a sip of coffee, slow and steadily.

“I don’t know if I would define it as that” Said the young man. “You know this paper is 50% of our final grade. If I want to get an A in this class I need an A on that paper. I need an A in this class to get into Yale”

“So it seems you must write a paper on this 'rubbish' after all doesn’t it Joseph? Your father, as powerful as he may be, does not decide your marks in this class. No that responsibility falls on me”

“Sir I’m not trying to get out of this paper I just don’t understand what you really want. The only direction you give to write on this paper is one sentence. “Compare and Contrast the fall of the American Empire with that of the British Empire”. The only research I can find on the subject online is that both the U.S and Britain voluntarily gave up their roles as world powers in order to better serve their subjects”

“To my understanding that would be the only result that would come of using the internet to research and write this paper. However, what were the stipulations I had on that?” Questioned the teacher sitting stoically in his chair.

“Well” answered the young man. “You said that we had to use one other source than the internet and I was going to use my dad”

“I can understand why you would do that Joseph. Our current educational system states that you students are allowed to use your parents as references in your papers. Though this may lower the overall historical value of many of your research papers, it does improve the readability of them significantly...But did you ever think to use a book?”

“Why would I use a book? Everything I need to know is on the internet. The only actual book I have is the bible. ”

“Oh Joseph…What came first. The book or the internet?”

“Books of course. But everything of worth has been copied over from books to the internet. Everyone knows that”

“Haha" The teacher laughed with no sign of amusement

"Well we seem to have reached a fork in the road of your life. Are you going to choose and believe that every piece of human knowledge recorded manually in the last 3,500 years has made its way to the internet or are you going to harbor the belief that there might be a possibility that some knowledge has not made the quantum leap from analog to digital?”

“Well…of course some things are going to be left out when you put it that way. How are we supposed to know the titterings of some worthless wannabe novelist written a hundred years ago on the back of some cereal box? Everyone knows the government systematically gathered everything of worth 10 years ago and created a digital database of knowledge. Everything we have ever learned, every significant action in history, is contained there. I don’t know why I ever would hunt around for a book when the entire expanse of human knowledge is in my hand.” he said as he reached into his pocket and took out his smart phone.

The teacher sighed. He studied the face of the student in front of him as if he was making some critical decision. After a moment that felt like an eternity he broke the silence.

“Would you like to know what I did before I was a high school history teacher?”

The student looked at his teacher with shocked disbelief. There was one question that dominated his high school. What was the back story of the US History teacher? He had started 2 1/2 years ago when Joseph was a sophomore. He had shown up on the first day of school dressed in an all black suit that cost more than the car he drove to school in. He was unhealthy pale and relatively skittish. At first any unexpected noise in his class room was enough to drive him to his feet as if he was ready to flee the scene of some crime he had perpetrated in a particularly messy fashion. Everyone wanted to know what his story was but no one had ever figured it out.

“Well sir, truth be told it would win me a lot of money.”

“Have you ever heard of SneepSnipe.com?”

“Yes sir. As a matter of fact I was on the site last night looking at Yale’s site”

“I am, believe it or not, the creator of SneepSnipe.com. I was the first CEO. I wrote its first code and I made billions of dollars from it. But I’m sure that’s not what you’ve heard.”

“Not to be disrespectful sir but I know it was the first joint venture between Google and Facebook.”

“Well I’m not going to waste my time debating “fact” with what is on the internet with you...By merely mentioning SneepSnipe.com I have violated the terms of my “unsupervised parole” he said as he made imaginary quotation marks in the air.

“The police will be here in about 10 minutes to arrest me. They have certainly bugged my room. If they do I might never see sunlight again.”

“You’re joking sir.” The youth said his face wide with disbelief and shock.

“I wish I was.” The teacher said as he stood up and walked over to the window. The view was moderate at best with a sloping hill and an old stone building at the top. The sun was almost completely over the tree tops.

“But I’m not.  The truth will be made evident in 10 or so minutes but until then I will tell you my story. I once was a revolutionary. But first I worked hard and made a good deal of money with the belief that when I made enough money I could begin to make a difference in the world. That I could be a force for good. But they were waiting for me. As soon as I began to make any bit of interference they fell on me like wolves on a wounded deer. Joseph, I’m about to tell you things that you were never supposed to hear. If you weren’t who you are they would lock you away for life just for hearing them. As the only son of your father they can’t make you disappear. Your father loves you too much to let that happen. That is the only bet I’m making.”

The teacher had turned around to look at his pupil sitting in disbelief at his desk.

“You’ve never heard of the Arab Spring, nor have you ever heard of the Occupy Movement. Our 'history' has been sanitized of such things. They were the early attempts to through off the tyranny of dictators, oligarchies, and corporations. When the Occupy movement failed in the U.S people like me got involved. We called it the “American Spring” we tried to accomplish our goals peacefully but when that was crushed we knew we had no option but violence and that was when the “Spring Movement” was formed. A small group of like minded individuals carried out acts against the individuals involved in the war against America. Not organizations or countries. We knew that a very few were to blame for the woes of our nation and world. These were the individuals we targeted. But they proved too strong and too resilient. Their coffers to deep and the greed of our members to strong."

He paused and sighed. It was as if some great weight had been lifted off of him. As if just being free to discuss this was enough to lighten the burden

“They defeated our feeble attempts and imprisoned our leaders including myself. They had already destroyed our civil liberties before the conflict arose so they had the means to defend themselves. One man’s freedom fighter is another man’s terrorist after all. They had already stripped our streets of cobblestone so when it came time to defend ourselves against the riot police we had nothing and we were crushed, beaten, and dispersed.”

The youth sat silently in his desk shocked. The creeping light of the rising sun now dominated the room promising a beautiful day. The dawn had given way to early morning.

“They threw me in jail without a trial when I was 26 years old. They had stripped away our rights to trial by our peers a few years earlier. It was only a matter of time before the law that was put in place to defend us from our enemies was used to enslave us. They deemed me a terrorist and raided my compound in the dead of night. They slaughtered my entire security detail and staff. The last actual human interaction I had was when I was beaten and tortured for information on my compatriots. I was in solitary confinement for three years before I was able to speak to another human being. I was told, by the first person to speak to me in three years, that I was too brilliant to be locked away. That if I worked ten hours a week on any problem they gave me they would let me do anything I wanted. I told them I would like to be a history teacher in my home town. They thought I chose the town because it was where I grew up. Little did they know that I chose it because of you. I knew you would be here.”

Walking up to the desk where the youth sat the haggard teacher grabbed the desk with a surprising strength and firmness. He stared at the wide eyed youth with an urgency that betrayed his calm demeanor.

“Joesph Bush-Koch you are the hope of America. You are a prince of a subjugated land. Your forefathers and your allies have betrayed us but I believe you can change the tide. You have been told lies your entire life. The constitution was not merely a suggestion, it was meant to be a guideline. I have watched and studied you the last couple of years. I believe that you are a good person. I hope you will one day do what is right. I ask that you fight your own greed and when the time comes you return our constitutional rights. “

“What do you mean?” Asked the wide-eyed youth.

“You are being groomed to be president. You were born with that idea in mind. It will happen many years down the line but if you don’t screw up, mark my words, one day you will sit in the oval office. I only ask that when it occurs you remember me and do what is right. Return the liberties to the people and we will once again become a great nation that benefits the many and not the few.”

The teacher relinquished his grip on the desk and walked back over behind his desk. He turned his back to the youth and picked up a piece of chalk and wrote something on the board.

“This is my last lesson to you. I have told you why our nation and England fell. Greed and Corruption. Now time for my last lesson”

He stepped out of the way and written in barely legible script was the phrase, “Never tell anyone what you plan to do”.

“This was my downfall and it will be yours as well if you do not follow my advice. You must be a wolf in sheep’s clothing until the time is ready. Then you must strike without mercy and without restraint.”

With that he wiped the board clean.

“Now is your chance to ask me any questions you would like about the real American history and not the hogwash that I’m told to teach.”   Before the young man could ask a question the door burst open and the school police officer burst into the room with gun drawn. He pointed it at the professor. 

He was a brute of a man and relatively disliked. He frequently abused his power and was shunned by most people in the school. This only fueled his actions. His outfit of blue pants, blue polo shirt, and blue baseball cap with the word cop clearly showed him for what he was. The only other decoration to his outfit was the belt around his voluminous waist that contained his gun and other policing items. There were numerous rumors about this individual providing alcohol to young women for sexual favors and other equally troubling ones but nothing had ever been done or proven.

“Well dipshit I guess you fucked up. I was on my way into work when I heard your arrest warrant get issued over the radio. I don’t give a s**t what you did but it’ll be my pleasure to bring your condescending a*s in”

“Cooper of all days for you to be almost on time” replied the teacher without fear and with a condescending yet disapproving air as if he just caught wind of a particularly follow smell.

“If you had been on your normal routine I would have had another few minutes of freedom to enjoy. Lucky for me you never are on time or else you would have been her 6 minutes ago.” He said this as he glanced at his watch.

“Whatever d****e. Don’t move! Back up will be here in a few minutes. They told me not to try and put cuffs on you but to keep you at gunpoint.”

“Joseph would you mind grabbing my bag from the back of the classroom. I would like to have it handy when they do take it away. My medication is in there.”

“Don’t move” Said the officer speaking to the youth.

“It’s ok Cooper. He can bring it to you”

“Well ok then. But don’t think I’m going to let you get your hands on that bag”

“Very well Cooper. Please Joseph, my bag”

The youth jumped up and walked back toward the back of the classroom. The police offer's eyes left the teacher for one second as they tracked the student's progression towards the back of the class. This was the opportunity the teacher was looking for.

With surprising quickness he pulled an antique revolver from seemingly nowhere and shot the police officer in the chest in a fluid motion that occurred in less than the time it took for the young man to turn around. 

Screams and yells could be heard from throughout the school as the officer fell to the ground dead with a look of shock on his face. 

“Joseph if you would kindly bring me my bag I must be going. I’m sorry but I do not have time to answer your questions. If I can make my escape perhaps we will meet another day. If not, and I am spared from death, you can pardon me one day” The man was calm and unnerved.

The youth collected the bag and handed the bag to his teacher. The teacher took the bag and put it on his back. He walked over the still twitching police officer and took his gun and extra ammo. He walked away from the door and towards the windows. Reaching the windows he turned and faced the youth.

“Good bye Joseph. I hope we meet again. Remember what I said and may right be the true north on your moral compass”

“Yes...Good bye sir” Joseph said his voice breaking ever so slightly

"I'm not your sir. You don't need to call me that."

With that the man bent his tall wiry frame and managed to squeeze through the slanted window. He dropped down and disappeared from sight. Joseph ran to the window and looked out to see his teacher fleeing into the woods. At that moment a group of policemen burst into the door. Seeing the dead officer and only Joseph in the room the leader of the group bellowed,

“Where did he go?”

“The maniac jumped out the window after shooting the cop and headed towards the street. I saw him get in a black car” the youth replied excitedly as the majority of the cops sprinted down the hallway towards the street exit in pursuit of his teacher.