McDonalds

Just a note: This does not relate to our good friend Bruce. Instead, it explores what my school, MHS, would be like viewed through the eyes of Jonah, the protagonist of Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle.




At first glance, MHS school seems like a very normal place. Students hanging out in groups or frantically scrambling to finish their homework, griping about a test they have to take, flirting with each other. The usual picture of life in high school. This, too, is what I thought, when I first came to the school.

But little did I know, that I would be dead wrong.

Many people believe that things are not always what they seem. But in truth, things are always not what they seem. MHS seemed ordinary. David seemed like a nice guy. McDonalds seemed like - well, McDonalds.

And none of this was true.

I should probably back up a little at this point, and explain. I came to MHS in my sophomore year of high school, and liked it immediately. People were friendly, and I seemed to fit right in. I did a musical, played soccer, hung out with John and David and Alice and Mikey after school. John was a football player, and he's the one who introduced me to the other three. He was very smart, but his problem was he just couldn't find any incentive to work hard. After his dad had died he had only wanted to play football. It worked like a pain reliever for him, that he could get all his unhappiness and aggression and anger out on the field. And so, in consequence, he was a really nice guy. David was extremely rich - his dad had co-founded Microsoft or something, and he had had one of the easiest childhoods on the planet earth. He was a good actor, and was in all the plays, but what he really wanted to do was start a rock band and be lead singer. Unfortunately for him, none of the rest of us had any musical talent, unless you count Alice's dancing. And Alice was a good dancer. Highest level class, in all the clubs, the whole sha-bang. She was good-looking, too, but not in a way that made guys objectify her. And she loved McDonalds.
Mikey was Mikey. To this day I still have no idea if he had any other talent than being a class clown.

Things were normal for maybe six months. And then, two-thirds of the way through the school year, I made a very important discovery.

I had been duped.

The events leading up to my discovery started on a rather cold February afternoon, when the four  of us decided to go downtown for lunch. As we walked down the sidewalk, an argument broke out about where we were going to eat. Mikey wanted Stacks, David wanted pizza, I wanted crepes, and Alice wanted McDonalds. John had not said a word. Mikey was pointing out to Alice that she had wanted to go to McDonalds every lunch for a month and a half, and Alice was retorting that he had never actually let her go to McDonalds for a month and a half. I was about to back up Mikey's argument (since pancackes are alot like crepes and so I was willing to compromise) when out of nowhere, David exploded.

Almost literally.

He just went off, like a somewhat higher-pitched cannon. The phrase "Something inside him snapped" doesn't apply here. The "something inside him" just utterly ceased to exist. He started screaming at Alice, "LISTEN YOU LITTLE BITCH WHY DO YOU ALWAYS THINK YOU SHOULD HAVE YOUR WAY? WHY CAN'T YOU CONSIDER OTHER PEOPLE'S FEELINGS FOR A MOMENT? I'VE LIKED YOU FOR 3 YEARS NOW AND YOU HAVE NEVER, EVER SHOWN ANY SIGNS OF AFFECTION BACK!!!!!!"

Now let me just say that if there is one thing I truly and utterly hate about high school it is the drama. The completely pointless drama. But I felt like it was my duty to intervene, since David had just uttered a complete hypocrise and called one of my best friends a bitch.

But I never got the chance. David was still yelling his head off, now just calling her as many derogatory terms as he could think of. Alice had backed against a tree, and David was advancing on her, yelling "CUNT! HOR! SL-" Suddenly, he was gone. It took me a moment to realize that John had punched him. He was lying on his back on the sidewalk, blacked out! John checked his pulse, and then silently got up and kept walking towards downtown. Alice was still up against her tree, shaking slightly. "C'mon," I said. "I think we'll go to McDonalds today."

Mikey wholeheartedly agreed.


The three of us didn't see John or David again, and we didn't have any particular desire to go find them either. But after three days, we started to get worried. So we decided to go and see the principal to find out what had happened.
And so began the most important stage of my discovery.

We walked into his office, and he asked us to sit down. We began explaining to him what had happened, but I had only just gotten to the part where David started yelling when suddenly all the lights went out. Curtains had dropped over all the windows and somehow blocked out all the light. I immediately grabbed Alice and Mikey and yelled for the principal. He did not answer, so the three of us locked hands and got up, meaning to head for where we thought the door was. We hadn't taken a single step before a voice I did not recognize said in a calm, measured tone, "I wouldn't move if I were you." I could feel Alice freak out, but I squeezed her hand and after a moment or two she seemed to calm down a little. The lights came up, and I realized that I was no longer in the principal's office. Or at least, it didn't look anything like the principal's office. Just to add to the freakiness of it all, there were four men with machine guns trained on us flanking a man in Bermuda shorts and a Hawaiian T-shirt. All I could get out of my mouth was "what the hell?"

"Sit down," he said "and let me explain something to you." We sat back down on the couch, but now it was a hard wooden bench. This was slightly less troublesome at the moment than the machine guns and the man in bermuda shorts, who had continued to talk. "I will not tell you my name, but I can tell you that I work for the government of the United States of America, and so you have nothing to fear. Please just listen to what I have to say to you. Your friend David was part of a top-secret U.S. intelligence test run. He was an android." "A what?" said Mikey. "An android. A robot in the form of a human. You see,  he was a test to see how well our androids would function in social situations. And I'm sure you'll be very pleased to know that he passed with an abundance of flying colors."
I was none too pleased to hear this, but I didn't think Bermuda man really cared.
"Unfortunately, he was programmed to be adaptive, and he adapted so much to the social environment at MHS school that he began to feel sexual attraction, and to get involved with the intense and pointless drama that goes on at your school. And when he began feeling attraction to someone he was programmed to be friends with - that would be you, Miss Alice - he blew a fuse in his command processing unit and went out of control. You are very lucky he didn't cause you any physical harm."
I was utterly shocked and somewhat disbelieving of this fantastical story this man was unweaving for us, but I did not miss the irony of the fact that something inside David had broken when he had attacked Alice.
"Your friend John saw to that," he continued. "But unfortunately, he also committed a felony in destroying the most expensive piece of technology in our history. A felony that is punishable by death."
"What?" yelled Mikey, shooting up off the bench. "Listen Mister, I don't know who you think you are, but this isn't fucking funny! Let us out of here right now or I swear to god I will take your small intestine and shove it so far down your rectum you'll be able to pull it out of your -"
A deafening sound echoed through the room, and it took me a second to realize what it was.

Gunfire.

In what seemed like slow motion, I looked at the floor where Mikey had been standing and saw him lying in a pool of blood, not moving. Alice was just sitting there in a dazed silence looking at Mikey, almost like she was willing herself to believe that it was not true. And then I did the most courageous, noble thing I could've done.

I threw up.

"Threatening a government official is also a crime that is punishable by death," said Bermuda, looking right into my eyes with a removed look that gave the impression he thought it was an inconsequential statement, but also managed to send shivers down my spine.

I took the hint.


They blindfolded us and led us somewhere. All I know is that it was a long way down a lot of steps. And when they took off the blindfold, I was in a cell with no bed and a hole for a toilet.

And now I'm sitting here wondering how the hell this happened, and why my normal life took this weird of a turn for no reason other than what seemed like pointless drama.

And what they did with Alice.