The Baseline
"What does the green light represent?"
Mr. Henderson, a young teacher whose tie was too bright and whose optimism hadn't yet been crushed, posed the question with genuine passion. He was pacing the front of his ninth-grade English class.
"Come on, people. The Great Gatsby? The light? Anybody?"
In the front row, a jock with a faded buzz-cut and the school's logo on his hoodie was visibly asleep. A girl in the third row, her black braids threaded with silver beads, was texting under her desk.
This was the 2:00 PM slot. It was a graveyard.
"Mr. Cole."
Aris looked up. He hadn't been staring out the window; he'd been mentally reviewing the standard model of particle physics. It was more interesting.
"Aris," Mr. Henderson said, his voice laced with a familiar, desperate hope. "The green light. Help us out."
Aris, now fifteen and growing into a lanky, sharp-angled frame, was in his usual seat. Back row, corner. He was a creature of calculated indifference. He had spent the last seven months building this exact reputation.
He considered the question. He considered the question. "It's a fixed point of desire," he said, his voice as flat as the linoleum floor. He could have spoken for ten minutes on the socio-economic symbolism, the critique of the American Dream, the tragic poetry of it all. Instead, he delivered a clinical autopsy. "A symbol of an unattainable future..."
"A symbol of an unattainable future. It represents Gatsby's flawed perception that wealth can recapture the past. Its symbolic value is inversely proportional to his proximity to the goal."
The room was silent, save for the hum of the overhead projector. The texting girl looked up, confused. The sleeping jock snorted.
Mr. Henderson stared. It was, Aris knew, a perfect, bloodless, A-plus answer. It was also completely devoid of the "passion" Mr. Henderson so desperately wanted.
"...I... yes, Aris. That's... technically... correct," the teacher finally managed, deflating. "Very thorough. Thank you."
Mr. Henderson turned back to the board, his shoulders slumped. He had, Aris knew, run out of road. You can't teach a student who has already processed the entire curriculum.
This was the baseline.
It was the same in every class. In Chemistry, he'd finished the final exam in twelve minutes, double-checked it in three, and then spent the remaining hour calculating the optimal fuel-to-oxidizer ratio for a hybrid rocket engine in his head.
In his "Introduction to Programming" class, he'd completed the entire semester's project (a simple inventory-management program) in one night. The teacher, baffled, had accused him of plagiarism until Aris had, in front of him, calmly rewritten the entire code from scratch in a different, more efficient language, just to "see if it would work."
He wasn't a "teacher's pet." He wasn't a "nerd." He was, in the words of his classmates, a "robot." He joined no clubs. He ate lunch alone. He was a ghost in the social machine.
The bell rang. Aris was the first one packing his bag.
"Aris, hold up a second," Mr. Henderson called out.
Aris paused at the door. "Yes, Mr. Henderson?"
The teacher ran a hand through his thinning hair. "Look, I... you're acing every test. You're turning in A-plus work. But you never raise your hand. You never join the discussion. Are you... are you bored in here?"
This was the question he'd been waiting for.
"I just like to listen," Aris said. A simple, non-confrontational, and utterly false statement.
Mr. Henderson sighed, the sound of a good man hitting a brick wall. "Okay. Well... keep up the... good work."
Aris nodded and left.
He got home to an empty house. Elara was on her afternoon shift at the hospital, and Marcus was still at the construction site. He did his homework—all of it—in forty-five minutes.
When his parents got home, he was in the kitchen, reading one of his father's old, grease-stained truck repair manuals.
"Hey, Einstein," Marcus said, dropping his keys in the bowl. He looked tired, but his blue eyes were warm. "How was the gulag?"
"It was adequate," Aris replied, turning a page.
"We have your parent-teacher conference next week, Ari," Elara said, tying back her dark hair. "Are you excited?"
"For what?"
"To hear what they say! They must... they must just be so proud of you."
Marcus snorted, grabbing a beer from the fridge. "They're gonna say you're a pain in the ass, is what they're gonna say. Got a call from Henderson today. Said you're making him look bad."
"He said that?" Elara asked, shocked.
"Nah." Marcus smiled, popping the cap. "He said, and I quote, 'I have nothing left to teach your son. He's... he's just... waiting.' So, what are you waiting for, champ?"
Aris looked up from the manual. He gave his father a small, practiced smile. "Graduation."
Marcus laughed and ruffled his hair.
Later that night, Aris lay in his bed. He heard the muffled sound of the TV, the low murmur of his parents talking on the couch. He heard the clock tick.
His plan was working perfectly. He wasn't just a "prodigy." He was a "problem." A "bottleneck." He was a 15-year-old kid who was, by all accounts, "waiting."
Year One was almost complete. Soon, they'd be begging for a solution. And he would be ready to give them one.