‘A’ For Effort, Pt. 2

December 27, 2010 11:25 pm Sir Haxington Stories

They were at Brian’s house. The four of them were hanging out as usual, talking about girls, games, and how they could get into trouble, when the topic of physics class came up. Frustration. Unfairness. Lack of honesty. No fair. Cheaters.

It was that fateful night when an elaborate plan to take control of their futures would be hatched. Counter ops. CIA shit. Secret squirrel. It was time to tip the cosmic scales.

Months ago, at home, he was infiltrating the dark corners of the Internet alone in his bedroom when he came across something called a key logger. A piece of software that records everything typed through the keyboard and stores those key strokes into a text file. He tried a few variants of the software, found the best and least obtrusive versions, and kept them on hand. For educational purposes.

They were arguing how to pull a prank on Mr. Robertson. Egg his house. Key his car. Hide dead animals in the classroom. Ruin some class experiments.

Then it hit him. They didn’t need to make life worse for Mr. Robertson. They needed to make their own life better.

“What if we just changed our grades?”

It was then the plan was born.

—

Each of the four group members had a specific job. He of course, was The Hacker. That night, he found his favorite key logger and tested his process 30 times until it was perfect.

PC on. Floppy disk in. Wait until boot-up. Key logger placed in start-up folder. Disk ejected. PC off. PC on again. Open a random application. Begin typing. Find key log file. Check to see that data was being stored. Affirmative. Remove key logger from start-up folder. Remove log file. Repeat. Try with different app.

The scientific method would be put to good use in Mr. Robertson’s physics class after all.

Getting software on Mr. Robertson’s PC was an easy task on paper, but there were still many roadblocks. How would they even get in the classroom? And when would they do it? What if they got caught?

Chris became The Gatekeeper.

The target classroom was in the basement, with the windows sitting high in the wall above a long counter. From the outside, easy ground access. All someone had to do was open the window from the exterior of the classroom and do the dirty work. Of course, the windows were locked.

Chris unlatched the windows from the inside discretely during the middle of a lab experiment. This took a bit of effort and acting. He clambered onto the counter claiming he’d seen Sara outside and wanted to say ‘Hi’ to her. Nice one, Chris.

Cue The Infiltrator.

Brian had taken physics the previous year and had a good repertoire with Mr. Robertson as he was his TA during the current year. However, Brian had his suspicions that Mr. Robertson was a corrupt teacher and didn’t feel any particular allegiance to this ‘educator’. As usual, Brian was always down for elaborate and risky plans with huge or at payoffs, or at least, being part of something with epic potential. He wasn’t even taking physics with the rest of his friends, but he wanted in on this sweet action.

After the school day was complete, he and Chris established a perimeter around the area of interest. He stayed in the hallway immediately outside of the classroom and ran interference on any would be intruders. Chris stayed near the builder exterior, near the window entry point and made sure Brian made it in safely. Chris also kept an eye on Mr. Robertson, who could be seen from his overwatch position, gazing down the hill as young girls bounce up and down around the track. Oh. So that’s why you’d want to be the ladies track coach. Nice.

He handed Brian the software quickly and moved to the building interior then began patrolling the hallway. No need to go over the process again, they had been through it ten times already. As he moved inside he checked out the live python in the glass tank. Stared blankly at a skeleton of a raccoon. Checked out the case of indian arrow heads. Waiting. Patience. Trying to maintain calm.

Oh no. It’s Mrs. Henley.

She stopped and chatted for a while. A long while. She was completely oblivious that a student, probably no more than 40 feet away was currently in a classroom attempting to access a teacher’s computer. He was nervous as hell, making small talk about her biology class he’d taken a few years ago. He couldn’t leave, but the conversation had to wind down. If it went on much longer, the entire operation would be compromised. What if Brain popped out of the door now? This whole thing was starting to seem like a really bad idea.

Finally, after a few minutes, she dawdled off. Whew. He ran over to the Mr. Robertson’s door and heard some commotion. Just then, the door opened. Brian’s face was as whiter than the bleached raccoon bones he was staring at five minutes prior.

“Dude, the PC won’t turn on!”

The two slipped into the classroom. Chris’s lower-half could be seen pacing back and fourth outside at ground level. The exterior perimeter was clean, but the interior was in serious danger of being compromised. Too much time had passed and the odds of catastrophic failure continued to increase. This was supposed to be a quick operation and they were in the hot-zone for far too long, and with at least one teacher still wandering the halls outside, things looked grim.

He pressed the power button. Nothing. Again. Nothing. The reset button. Nothing. Wait… the power switch?

He reached behind the PC and flipped the switch. After pressing the power button on the front of the PC one more time, it roared to life. The monitor still needed to be turned on. Mr. Robertson was apparently pretty serious about turning off appliances.

Nerves began to kick in. Too much time had been spent. They had to go. They’d try again later. The operation was FUBAR and they had to go. Sick feelings. Dread and panic.

They quickly powered down the machine then instinctively went the way they came in. He went for the door and looked over his shoulder to see Brian climbing out of the window, knocking miscellaneous science equipment and causing papers to scatter and flutter to the ground.

He closed the door gingerly behind him.

—

Pt. 3 came and went.