Quantum Nightmares - Softcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Jose M. Rodriguez Jr. is a debut author of Puerto Rican descent, a veteran of the United States Military, a recovering drug addict, and a father. He lives in Iowa.

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Pete, who was usually too smart for his own good, was sitting in the third-row center and noticed how the interaction between Billy and Mr. Johnson transpired. He concocted a plan.

 “Gimme your phone,” he said to his best friend, Sean, who scoffed and shrugged him off. “No way, dude.” Sean’s eyes grew big as a particularly juicy sequence of candies and chocolates lined up perfectly. He swiped left and right, up and down, licking his lips as a cascading mountain of fresh chocolates and hard candy replaced the section he’d just matched. “I’m almost to level seven hundred fifty thousand,” he added with stars in his eyes.

Pete should’ve known better. A teenage boy would just as soon dip his testicles in a lagoon full of famished piranhas then surrender his phone willingly. He punched Sean on the arm and said, “You wanna know what’s going on r’not?”

“‘Course I do,” Sean said, rubbing his arm.

“Well, then, gimme your phone, and I’ll put mine in my pocket,” Pete said. “Then when Johnson asks for my phone, I’ll give him yours.” There was a mischievous twinkle of pride emanating from Pete’s eyes as he cocked his black trucker hat to the left. Everyone else in his hive, save for the female president, Sara Foxx, wore white hats. “I’ll check out the feeds and see what they don’t want us to know.”

Sean’s eyes lit up. “That’s why you’re our president, my dude,” he said.

After the rigged presidential elections of 2028, there was a coup committed by the United States government against all social media platforms. They made away with the likes of TikTok, Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, and all other social media platforms—banned them outright, declaring them a threat to national security and an enemy of democracy itself. Then they planted their own social media platform. After the government sanctioned social media took over, every school in America held elections where representatives of the five national hives were voted in as elected presidents to their respective hive. You could distinguish them from the crowd by the letterman jackets they wore, or, in cases such as the Emos, by their hair, or Pete’s hat.

In many ways, the new system was preferable to the olden days when popularity was based solely on looks or athletic abilities and some kids were overly endowed with both, while the vast majority were perfectly basic. But none of that mattered in the new system. When everyone was a part of a hive, no one was ostracized; everyone was part of a family. Terms like ugly, nerdy, or gawky no longer held validity and the ugliest, nerdiest, and gawkiest were often the leaders of a hive, and therefore, the coolest kids in school.

Sean looked around, spying for onlookers. He slid his phone into Pete’s hand. Pete put his phone in his pocket, jumped over the first two rows with the dummy phone already extended. In the old system, Pete would’ve been considered a nerd, a leper, an outcast. He was a good kid, smart, polite, but unremarkable in terms of good looks, athletic abilities, presence, or anything else that used to matter.

Mr. Johnson looked up from his pizza and saw Pete’s skinny, awkward gait. He used to torture kids like this. How he missed the good old days, when letterman jackets were reserved for athletes and the only leadership role a kid like Pete could aspire to was on the chess team or the debate team. What he wouldn’t give to stick Pete’s head in the toilet and flush it. Just one time. He relished the thought.

“Yo, Mr. J,” Pete said, shimmying this way and that, “can I use the bathroom?” Green and red lights bounced off the black mirror screen and cut into Johnson’s eyes. Johnson took another bite of his pizza and chewed slowly, deliberately. He disliked Pete on a deep and visceral level. It wasn’t hate—but damn near close to it. He knew he shouldn’t base his feelings on outdated concepts such as looks, but something in him deeply despised the young man before him. In his opinion, kids like Pete were permitted entry into an echelon of society they had no business being in. He often used the example of wasps allowing hobos into their country club. He felt like the world had been reversed, turned upside down, like he had awoken in a Twilight Zone episode that had lasted these last twenty years.

“My name is—” he said slowly, wiping his mouth, “—Mr. Johnson.”

“I’m sorry,” Pete offered. “May I please go to the bathroom, sir?”

Pete heard footsteps coming from behind him. He pivoted. Mr. Johnson threw up his right arm with his pointing finger extended as if to say one minute, then he grabbed a phone that sat on the table and handed it to Billy.

“Give me your phone and you’re welcome to use the restroom.” Mr. Johnson smirked and savored the prospect of breaking Pete’s heart, but Pete tossed his phone and speed walked out of sight, the awkwardness of his walk digging into Johnson’s rigid susceptibilities, the way he walked without swinging his arms, the way he held his head high with the confidence of a boy who should be completely lacking.

What in the fuck has the world come to? Mr. Johnson thought. He was the school’s PE teacher. He had also played quarterback on the 2030 Minnesota state Class A football championship team. He remembered a time when cool kids were cool and nerdy kids were nerdy—the natural balance in a delicate ecosystem that’d segregated high schools for decades, putting kids in their appointed places, casting indelible shadows on their probable futures, building confidences, shaping egos, solidifying futures. But somewhere around the time he was graduating high school, the world around him had begun to change at the base fundamental level, and he was incapable of changing with it. He lied to himself often with the running narrative of: “It’s not personal. I don’t like Pete for the same reason a lion doesn’t rub elbows with antelope. It’s unnatural.” But he knew that that was rubbish. He came from a long line of athletes; two uncles played college football and one even made it to the NFL. He disliked Pete for the same reason the Nazis hated the Jews, and with the same fervor—it was taught to him.

He scanned the sea of teenagers squirming in the bleachers and although there were nearly two-hundred students crammed into the small gym, he could make out only five distinct styles, five distinct copies, five distinct hives.

He turned to Mrs. Glennon, the resident mental health and crisis counselor, and said, “What do high school students and birds have in common?” Mrs. Glennon, though usually chipper and amicable, was currently void of anything even remotely resembling a sense of humor. The nation was in mourning and the looming disaster was still on the wrong side of the hill, climbing, climbing, climbing to a dizzying precipice before a long, steep drop. The proverbial nuclear missile was still in the air and the hard part was still ahead of them.

“I don’t know,” Mrs. Glennon said, shrugging absently, trying to be polite. “What do high school students and birds have in common.” She was suddenly aware that she didn’t want to know the punchline, because knowing...