Hypergifted, p.14
Hypergifted, page 14
As we watched, I felt Raina’s hand steal into mine.
Unbelievable. For the entire summer, I couldn’t do a single thing right. And now she was giving me total credit for the cornhole championship.
I intended to take it too, whether I deserved it or not.
Who knew if it would ever happen again?
27
Hyperbackup
Dean Kendrick
The Ag school at Wilderton maintained its own farm. Not on campus, thank God—between the fertilizer and the livestock, the stench would make the place unlivable. The farm was four miles west of the university on a two-hundred-acre property originally owned by Nicholas Wilderton himself.
“Here they are, Dean Kendrick,” called Wendy, a senior in Agricultural Studies. She was the student showing me around today. “Take your pick. They’re all mighty pretty.”
To my eyes, they were the least pretty creatures in nature. University history was hazy on exactly how we ended up the Wild Hogs when there were far more dignified animals available, like the stag, the peregrine falcon, and the wapiti. I surveyed the muddy enclosure. In the summer heat and humidity, I could almost see the smell lines from some cartoonist’s imagination. And the seven pigs looked exactly like Porquette. Male, female, it didn’t matter. No one was going to notice the difference. They were equally hideous—massive, lumpy body, no neck, squinty eyes, big dumb ears, flat piggy snout.
“All pigs look alike,” I admitted. “There’s no homecoming queen in the bunch.”
Wendy bristled, and I regretted allowing my low opinion of farm animals to slip out to a young person who was at Wilderton devoting her life to them. So I added, “You’re the expert. Why don’t you choose for me?”
She walked up to one of the creatures—an absolute dead ringer for all the others. “Here’s your winner.”
“Great,” I commented without enthusiasm. “And do we have a Porquette or a Porky?”
She seemed disgusted that I couldn’t tell the difference. “Porky, of course. We’ve been calling him Smiley, but I’m sure he won’t mind the name change.”
“Sorry I’m late!” That student reporter—C.T.—came high-stepping over, plotting his route carefully so his white sneakers wouldn’t sink into the mud and worse. “I got here as fast as I could. What’s so important?”
“I’ve got a scoop for you,” I informed him. “Meet the new Porky.”
His mouth dropped open. “You’re replacing Porquette? You can’t do that!”
“Last time I checked, I was the one sitting in the dean’s office. Porquette has been gone for weeks. The football team will be back on campus soon for their summer workouts. Life goes on. And it’s my responsibility to ensure that this university has a mascot.”
“We have a mascot,” he insisted. “Porquette! You can’t have Porky while Porquette’s still alive!”
“We have no proof of that,” I stated flatly.
“Yes we do—the video! The Society of the Curly Tail has her! She could be back any day!”
The Society of the Curly Tail. I’d been hearing that nonsense for a while now—that a secret student group was holding Porquette, waiting for the right moment to release her. And typical of college kids, they’d built up these Curly Tail people to the level of outlaw folk heroes, like Robin Hood and his Merry Men. That made me the Sheriff of Nottingham.
No. I wasn’t buying it.
“The decision has already been made,” I said firmly. “I expect a picture of Porky on the front page of the next Wire.”
In answer, C.T. made a show of powering down his phone and putting it away in his pocket. “I won’t do it. It’s bad journalism.”
“How do you figure that?” I demanded.
“Let’s say I publish a picture of Porky and the very next day, Porquette comes back. It’ll divide the whole campus. There’ll be Porky people and Porquette people, and no one will know who the real mascot is.”
That might have been the most ridiculous thing I’d ever heard. But C.T. had a point, even if it wasn’t the one he’d been trying to make. If we somehow ended up with two mascots, it would definitely be blamed on me. It wasn’t a risk I was prepared to take.
Before I debuted the new pig, I had to make sure these Curly Tail characters weren’t hiding the old one somewhere at the university.
I took out my own phone and dialed the director of Wilderton’s security service. “I want a full campus search,” I told him. “Every dormitory, classroom, lab, basement, closet, and crawlspace. If Porquette is being hidden somewhere, I want her found.”
28
Hyperparty
Darius Marshall
How did I ever think summer semester was going to be boring?
This was the greatest time I’d ever had—at college or anyplace else.
Gamma Kappa house was the center of the universe on campus. A constant stream of people came in and out at all hours. The music never stopped. DoorDash vans had to line up to make deliveries. It was a blur of faces and dancing and action, a twenty-four-seven party.
Thanks to the Society of the Curly Tail.
Who were those Curly Tail guys? Beats me. And this was the important part: I didn’t care.
All I’d ever seen was a sign-up sheet in the student union and a bunch of piggy tails graffitied on walls and benches. But was I ever glad I’d had that weird impulse to put my name on line one. Because nobody else had a clue about the Curly Tail either. So when they wanted the scoop, there was no one to ask but Eddie and me. Everybody thought we had a direct line to the people who had Porquette. We were like the president’s inner circle or some rapper’s posse. We didn’t have to know anything. We just had to act like we did.
The best part was we weren’t even lying. Of course Porquette was out there. We saw her on video. Somebody obviously had her. Were they planning to bring her back soon? No idea. Personally, I was rooting for them to stretch it out a little longer, because Eddie and I were having the time of our lives.
So when Eddie first came up with the idea to hold a big rally to bring Porquette home, I was skeptical. “We’ve got a good thing going here, man,” I argued. “Why rush it? Once the porker’s back in the sty, nobody’s going to need the Curly Tail anymore. We’ll be out of business and back to twiddling our thumbs for excitement.”
“Yeah, but it’s starting to wear a little thin,” he countered. “I overheard a couple of girls saying that we don’t really care about Porquette. We’re just using it as an excuse to throw massive ragers. We need to make it look like we’re working hard to get her back.”
He had a point. In college life, it was never just “a couple of girls.” They’d tell their friends, who’d tell their friends, and before you knew it, the whole campus was turning against you.
So we put up posters and handed out flyers. We called it the Never Forget Porquette Rally, set for the second of August at three o’clock in the main quad.
The news spread around Wilderton like mono. Even the commuter students and the kids who lived off campus promised to be there on the second. It was a show of loyalty that would make any pig proud—if pigs were smart enough to understand the concept of loyalty. Anyway, Eddie and I were proud enough for the whole school. And the nonstop party at Gamma Kappa house was twice as amazing as before.
* * *
When the second of August rolled around, the quad was already a mob scene an hour and a half before the rally was supposed to start. The crowd filled the square and spilled out onto the surrounding lawns. These guys from one of the other frats had ordered five hundred novelty pig snouts and were selling them for ten bucks a pop. It seemed like half the people there were wearing one. They were oinking and snorting and honking. The whole atmosphere was high-energy, raucous, and fun. This was what college should have been like—not classes and exams and graduating and having to get a job. Everyone was having an awesome time.
Scratch that. Almost everyone.
He was so much shorter and scrawnier than the college students that I didn’t see him until he was standing in front of us.
“No, no, no!” Noah exclaimed in that sharp, high-pitched voice of his. “This is all wrong!”
“How’s it going, Noah?” I greeted him. “Nice day for a rally, huh? Hope you put on sunscreen.”
“Are you guys behind this?” he demanded. “You have to stop it!”
Eddie gestured at the throng surging all around us. “This is bigger than any two people. How could we stop it?”
“You know how to get things done,” the kid insisted. “You’re Gavelers.”
“I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that,” I told him. “We’re not Gavelers. We were just goofing around. Sorry about that.”
Noah seemed stunned. “But—my AI picked you two as the most likely Gavelers on the whole campus.”
Eddie shrugged. “I guess artificial intelligence isn’t the same as—you know—intelligence.”
“Anyway,” I added, “we’re Curly Tail guys now and that’s one hundred percent legit. Look around you—everybody’s here!”
As if on cue, Arlene Pulaski slipped through the crowd and bent low to throw her arms around Noah. “Sweetie! I’m so glad you’re here to support Porquette!”
Noah didn’t reply. He couldn’t take his eyes off her companion, the hulking Gator, whose bushy beard and mustache literally exploded from behind his plastic pig snout.
Gator grinned sheepishly. “Sorry about the little misunderstanding before. Arlene explained everything.” He put one tattooed arm around Eddie and the other around me. “We’re all bros now.”
Noah looked uncertain. “Uh—that’s nice.”
Arlene gave him another hug. “Great to see you, Noah. Let’s hope we get Porquette back soon. Fine swine—”
“Top of the line,” chorused Eddie, Gator, and I.
Arlene and her boyfriend melted into the crowd.
Noah regarded us, his eyes open and sincere. “You have to believe I have information you don’t. There’s no Order of the Curly Tail and they don’t have Porquette. I can’t tell you how I know. I just do.”
“All right, smart guy,” I challenged. “If there’s no Order of the Curly Tail, who shot the video?”
He frowned at me. “Video?”
I whipped out my phone, opened the app, and played the clip of Porquette, tattooed with the Curly Tail symbol, marching through the daisies.
Noah was thunderstruck. “Impossible!” he whispered. “Inconceivable!”
“The proof is right in front of you.”
The video ended and Porquette was replaced by one of those action clips featuring Noah’s roommate. In this one, he was barreling down a ski-jump ramp, executing a double somersault into a perfect landing.
Noah had a high IQ, but no one could fake that level of astonishment. I thought he was going to keel over dead right there in the quad.
“Get it together, kid!” I exhorted. “You’re not going to tell me you don’t know about your roommate’s videos!”
“Videos?” he managed in a squeaky voice. “As in more than one?”
And right there, with the pre-rally raging all around us, I ran him through the clips, careful to point out the view count on each. The one on Mount Everest—the most popular—had been watched over fifty thousand times.
Noah looked unsteady on his feet. I probably could have knocked him over with a puff of breath. “Of course,” he mumbled absently. “It’s so obvious!”
“Your roommate’s a pretty famous guy, you know,” Eddie supplied.
“I—I gotta go!” Noah turned on his heel and fled into the crowd.
Which was fine with Eddie and me.
We had a rally to run.
29
Hyperinspection
Noah Youkilis
There were times I hated my 206 IQ because I understood everything, anticipated everything so entirely that I was incapable of experiencing surprise.
This was not one of those times. I was astonished, stupefied, flummoxed, gobsmacked. How could I not have thought of it? All those dozens of hours in the Tech Center working to restore my project, and never once did it cross my mind! How could I have been so blind?
I was already shouting “Donovan!” as I burst into Butternut Hall and scrambled down the corridor to room 115. I was so overwrought that I couldn’t perform the simple operation of inserting my key into the lock.
At last, Donovan opened the door and dragged me inside. “Keep quiet, Noah!” he hissed. “I finally got Porquette settled down. She’s having a bad day—the worst so far!”
I lowered my voice, but I was bursting with excitement. “Donovan, why didn’t you tell me about those videos?”
“Because they’re all fake,” he shot back. “You think I’ve been to Mount Everest? That’s not me! None of them are me!”
“Well, I know that.”
He frowned. “Really? So would you mind letting me in on the news? I’ve been calling my parents, asking if I have a secret twin.”
“The videos aren’t real,” I explained. “They’re generated by artificial intelligence.”
“Why would AI make videos about me?” he demanded.
I went back to the beginning. “Remember when I thought my AIDAN system deleted itself? Well, it didn’t. It disguised itself on the Wilderton mainframe so it would look like it was deleted. And it began to generate content based on the first images it had—pictures from our phones. That’s where it got Porquette with the Fibonacci spiral. And that’s where it got you.”
Donovan digested this for what seemed like a long time. Finally, he said, “I wouldn’t take a 206 IQ if someone gave it to me as a present.”
I knew what he meant by that. “It can be a burden at times,” I admitted.
“You’re lucky I didn’t understand most of what you just told me because I’m pretty sure I’d be really ticked off about it,” he added.
At that moment, there were sudden sounds of wild activity coming from the hall. Donovan and I rushed to the door and peered outside. Our college neighbors were scrambling around the corridor, carrying a variety of items—toaster ovens, fish tanks, candles, hot plates, electric blankets, and armloads of fireworks.
“What’s going on?” Donovan called into the commotion.
JoJo provided the answer. “Dorm inspection coming. If you’ve got anything that’s against the rules, you’d better hide it.”
She ducked just in time to avoid being clobbered by a full-size lizard terrarium with a bearded dragon peering out through glass.
We retreated into the room, shut the door gently, and locked it.
“Anything that’s against the rules,” I mused aloud.
“Like a five-hundred-pound sick pig the whole campus is looking for,” Donovan said through gritted teeth. “That definitely counts as against the rules.”
I felt tendrils of panic encircling me. “What are we going to do?”
“Well, she’s too big to hide under the rug,” Donovan reasoned. “So we’re going to have to get her out of here.”
“Yeah, but then what?” No one was better than Donovan under pressure, but this strategy didn’t lead anywhere. Even if we succeeded in taking Porquette out of the building, we’d still be standing in broad daylight with a contraband animal who would be hard to overlook and even harder to explain.
Donovan had an answer for that too. “We’ll do what we should have done ever since your dumb elderberries poisoned her. We’re going to get her the medical attention she needs.”
“A vet? How are we going to take her to a vet?”
“The Wilderton Ag school runs a farm just a few miles up the road. Surely somebody there must know what to do with a poisoned pig.”
I should have had the intelligence to evaluate his plan, pinpoint the flaws, and refine it to perfection. But with a dormitory inspection hanging over our heads, there was no time for that. Donovan sounded confident. That had to be enough for me.
First, we headed down to the basement for a move-in cart. That was how we’d gotten Porquette into our room so it made sense that we could use it to get her out. As we passed a window, we could see restless residents hanging out on the lawn around Poplar Hall, the nearest dormitory to ours. The inspectors from campus security must have been right there. There was no question Butternut would be next.
Luckily, the hubbub in the hall had died down, so we had no trouble rolling the cart into room 115. We pushed it into the bathroom. Porquette watched us through piggy eyes, grunting and moaning softly.
“Never mind, poor girl,” I soothed. “We’re going to get you all fixed up.”
“Don’t make any promises you can’t keep,” Donovan warned. “How the heck are we going to get her out of there?”
The problem was a vexing one. On the way in, we’d tipped up the cart to get her into the bathtub. We obviously couldn’t tip up the bathtub to get her into the cart.
Donovan climbed into the tub, leaned in with his shoulder, and put everything he had into pushing Porquette. Standing beside the cart, I pulled with all my strength. The mascot didn’t budge. She might as well have been set in concrete.
I spoke directly into the pig’s ear. “We can’t move you on our own, girl. It’s a matter of weight ratios.”
“Great,” Donovan panted. “Now we’re explaining science to a pig.”
Whether she understood the science or not, Porquette began to scrabble at the side of the tub with her hooves. And once she got her front end over the edge, Donovan and I were able to help her heave her bulky body out of the tub and into the cart. There she lay, exhausted, oink-gasping into the canvas fabric of the cart.
“She’s hyperventilating,” I worried. “She’s never done that before. This is bad!”
“All the more reason to get her to the farm.” Donovan ripped down the shower curtain and used it to cover our payload.
