Chapter Four
Proof
I rescued the pages of my aliens story and put them back in order. Then I found an old-fashioned pencil and did some polishing. I even wrote in the idea I’d had during dessert about how Bryan would discover the sand castle without the alien realizing anyone was watching.
When I’d finished revising, I reloaded my backup copy of “Mystery of the Alien Sand Castle” from my CD and typed in the changes I’d made on the printout. Then I burned another CD, right away, even before I printed out hard copy. These two CDs were evidence.
Even though I hadn’t done anything to Foster and his Baker Street buddies, my room felt colder. It’s just late, I told myself as I dived under the covers. It’s winter, and it gets colder at night in the winter. Right? At the same time, I decided to leave my lamp on while I fell asleep. It couldn’t hurt. I even had an energy saving light bulb plugged in, so I wasn’t contributing to global warming or anything.
I told myself it was just coincidence that the bulb burned out in the night.
The next morning I went right to the teachers’ room to find Mr. Myers. He raised his eyebrows when he saw the CDs, the C- assignment and the other two printouts in my hand.
“It’s too late to redo the assignment, you know, Zach,” he told me, looking severe when he came out into the hall to talk to me. Maybe he was grouchy because he hadn’t had his morning coffee yet.
I’d tried to plan out in advance what I was going to say, but it hadn’t occurred to me that Mr. Myers would start the conversation like that.
“No sir,” I stammered. “It’s just - well, that wasn’t my story you graded.” And before he could say anything I went on, “I think there’s something wrong with the school’s computers in the magazine office.” I’d decided to keep my mouth shut about what happened in my home. Maybe it had just been my imagination. Maybe it was a fluke. Maybe I’d been writing in my sleep, or something. Who cared? I had proof that the Foster story he’d read wasn’t the story I’d written. I held out my evidence.
“See, this is the backup of the aliens story I did from my work at home,” I explained. “The file’s dated, so you can see I wrote it before the assignment was due, and there really is a sand castle and aliens in it.”
“Zach -”
“And here’s the revision I did on my home computer last night, dated, on this CD,” I rushed on. “Here are printouts of the story in progress. But if you look at my file in the school computer, you’ll see it’s labeled “Aliens” but it’s all about this Sherlock Holmes stuff, not my story at all!”
Mr. Myers was shuffling papers and CDs and frowning. He’d frowned at me more in two days than he had in two years. “Let’s take a look at the office computer,” he said finally.
I fired up the computer, found my aliens file, and double-clicked on it. Nothing happened. I tried again. Nothing.
“But, Mr. Myers, this is the file I printed that from.” I pointed at the miserable C- story. “And when I looked at it yesterday it was all about Foster and Sherlock and -”
“Let me try.” Mr. Myers sat down in front of the computer and launched the word processing program. Then he tried to open the document from that menu. “Aliens” was listed, but it was grayed out, meaning you couldn’t open it. He exited the program and just clicked on the “Aliens” file and “Get Info.”
He looked up at me, one eyebrow cocked. “This says the file was last modified this morning. What are you up to, Zach?”
I shook my head. “I haven’t even been in here this morning. I came straight to you. That’s what I meant - something’s going on with this computer.”
Mr. Myers launched a translation program and tried to view the file, but “Aliens” was gibberish.
“Please,” I stammered, “just put in the CD and see the date on my file there. I’m not making this up!”
Reluctantly he took the first CD and slid it into the slot. There was a humming noise. Then there was a grating sort of noise. Then a dialogue box came up:
Unable to read the contents of “Untitled CD”
Do you wish to erase and initialize?
The options were “Okay” or “Eject.”
Mr. Myers said, “Let’s just eject it, what do you say?”
I couldn’t say anything. I just nodded.
“Everybody gets a bad grade now and then,” Mr. Myers said gently. “You don’t have to be ashamed of it, Zach. I’m sure your next story will be back to your usual standards.”
It was nice of him to say so, but I wasn’t sure of that at all. The only thing I was sure of was that my teacher thought I was going crazy, and maybe he was right. I’d convinced myself that there was a logical reason for what was happening to my manuscripts, like the school hackers Keisha had suggested. But I was beginning to think it was something a lot worse than hackers.
– End Chapter Four –
