So what are they doing?

06/11/2008 by April First.

Bodger strolled in and asked us to take a look at the CCTV in the office.  We did, and found we were looking into Ms Bland’s study.  He then called up a page within the school system on my computer, and we saw a picture of all of us in the office busily working away.  “That is what she sees,” said Bodger.   “I’ve cut in bits and pieces of the office from the past few weeks and made them into an ever changing movie – not just for this room but for quite a few others.   We watch them, they don’t watch us.”

We watched Ms Bland’s room, the head’s study, the deputy head’s room – but after a few minutes it got a bit boring.  Nothing was happening.

Havoc Blythe joined us.  “Now,” he said, “we need to know what our lords and masters are up to.”

“They’re running the school,” said Ms Marchmount.

“But to what end?  What are they trying to do?  Why all the control?  Why watch us?  And where did the art come from?”

“Paranoia?” I asked.  “Desire for power, need to be in control?”

“I think that’s a cover,” said Havoc Blythe. 

“Do you have an idea?” I asked him, but it was Bodger who answered.

“An idea, yes, but…”

“Go on, do tell,” I said.

“I think that this has got nothing to do with the school as such.  We’re just a place, where something is happening.  It happens to be a school – but it could have been a factory, or a church, a charity, or a call centre.  They just needed a place.

“But what is happening?” Janice asked.  “What are they doing?”

“That of course is the question,” said Havoc Blythe.

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We’re watching

05/11/2008 by April First.

Jason Benard became the first teacher since the take over of the school to drop in with a request that we should send out a note to all parents to remind them that Saturday music club is not on this week and that orchestra rehearsals start on Monday.   We told him to stick it on the internet.   He looked singularly bemused as he left.   I said it was a diktat from Ms Bland.  He said, “who?”   Sometimes I wonder what the teaching staff do all day.

Deborah (previously the head’s PA, now underling to the deputy head) popped in with our contracts, asking what was going on.  We asked how she had got hold of them.

I explained the background, and she said that the deputy head had simply passed the paperwork to her to “deal with”.

“Tell him to sign them,” Janice suggested.

“Not until I’ve copied them and written up my own,” said Deborah.

We now have total access to the CCTV system around the school, and spent much of the day watching the comings and goings.

A new patrol system has begun using a new group of “Volunteers” who apparently have signed up to a charter which expresses the fundamental aims and beliefs upon which the school is based.   Now there’s a thought.

One thing that is impressive about this new system is that the patrols seem so effective.  I watched two pupils get too close to one of the new paintings that are in every corridor, and within seconds a patrol was there, had a word, and then the potential miscreants quietly moved away.

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A glimpse inside

04/11/2008 by April First.

I went to see Bodger.   He had asked for £100,000 for a time refinement unit so that he can allow students and others to travel back and forth in time as a way of raising grades.  I didn’t believe it then, and I don’t now, but since we have broken into the computer system set up by the new management of the school (which of course is nothing other than part of our own defence system)

I told him he could have his money.  He was thrilled, and asked me if I could explain post-modernism to him.   I couldn’t think what he meant, until I remembered that I had told him that was my expertise on the pub quiz teams.  I must try and stop making things up like that.

What with all the activity in the school of late I had forgotten about the contracts we had all re-written.  Janice handed them in to Mr Fixham, the deputy head.  He smiled and said “of course”, and put them in his in-tray.

Janice then returned in quite a state of excitement.   While waiting to go into Mr Fixham’s room (all appointments are now set down to the minute, and doors open automatically for 20 seconds when the appointment time comes around) she saw briefly into the head’s study, and apparently it is absolutely stuffed with pictures of the type that have started to appear all over the school.  

Where, we all wondered, were they coming from.

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“You are one of my contacts

03/11/2008 by April First.

Friday

Clarius and Derek were in much evidence, as pictures started to appear on walls where graffiti had been placed.   For the first time ever I found myself actually approving of something that our new masters were up to.   The pictures look to my untutored eye to be of high quality, and great variety – from Dutch masters through to post-modern – although thankfully they were all actual pictures and did not include any “installations” which I never understand and often find rather distasteful.

I was worried now on two fronts.  Firstly I had been instructed to be part of “returning the school to normal” and I had no idea how that was going to be achieved.   Secondly I had found myself approving of one of the senior management’s actions, and that in turn left me confused.

Eventually I wandered over to the library, for no reason other than to take my copy of Artemis Fowl back, and found that it too had numerous pictures on its walls.   There were more books on the shelves as well which was somewhat curious, but when I looked closely they seemed to be all rather obscure and not particularly educational.

 

For once none of my compatriots was in the building, and I had no one to talk to about these developments.  Even the eternally present Havoc Blythe seemed to have deserted me for the day.  

 

Saturday

 

Janice called and suggested we drove to the coast, which seemed a great idea.  It was extremely cold, but the sun shone, and we decided to make the most of it.  

We spent much of the journey debating developments at school – the New Order, whether Havoc Blythe ever did have a fling with Binky, Mrs Marchmount and Carlos Sotolongo, the Slovenian ambassador, and if Bodger was attractive or not, and if he was why no one went out with him, unless of course he was not the real Bodger, but simply someone who had travelled in time backwards, and replaced himself.    We spoke of  Ms Bland, military intelligence, graffiti and satellite navigation   It was jolly, and it was fun and in the end it got us no closer to understanding what on earth was going on anywhere.

 

We drank coffee in Costa Coffee and had gorgeous salads accompanied by jazz in Pizza Express.  “Do you think the whole world is like this?” asked Janice.  

“You mean incomprehensible at work, and really ok when we get away?”

She said yes, and I said I thought it probably was.

On the way back we played a couple of Peter Gabrielle CDs, and waved at the cars that overtook us.

 

Sunday

A new person from military intelligence came to see me and told me that we were entering the final phase, and the next six weeks would be the denouement.   I asked for some sort of guidance as to what I was supposed to do (or alternatively a dictionary definition of denouement), but my visitor said she did not carry highly sensitive information such as that.  But she did tell me that my contacts in the school would keep me updated until it was time for me to act.

“What contacts?” I asked.

She looked at her note book.  “Codenames Bodger and HB” she said.

I was astonished.  “Bodger and Havoc Blythe really are my contacts?” I asked.

She checked her notebook again and said yes, and then left.

I decided to go to the Sunday evening dance club at the Pavilion.   Havoc Blythe was there.  “You are one of my contacts,” I said to him when we danced together.

“I wouldn’t put it as strongly as that,” he said.

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Resistance is useless

31/10/2008 by April First.

Even though it is half term and there’s still graffiti appearing.  Ms Bland has put Clarius on graffiti alert and he patrols the school with sprays and paints to remove the offending HH symbols – which I still don’t quite get.   I asked Havoc Blythe at break, and he said that it was all to do with rebellion.  According to him, rebellion is easy to break down when it is logical and has an agreed position.  When it is illogical or surreal – as with painting HH on walls in a reference to a 30 year old science fiction story – it is much harder to put down.

“The characters in the Hitch Hiker series are rebels – but against what?  Anything, everything, nothing.  How does someone as focussed and logical as Ms Bland attack that?”

It all seemed to be some sort of explanation, until the story broke at lunchtime that big white letters had been painted on the front doors of several senior managers of the school including Ms Bland, the head and the deputy.   The letters in each case were RIU – standing I suppose for “Resistance is Useless”.  Clarius was dispatched to Ms Bland’s house.

In the middle of the afternoon a note was circulated saying that all radios and radio station receiving devises were now banned from the school.  There was no explanation.

Bodger popped in, and following his guidance we turned off all our computers – since they could all receive internet radio.   He worked his way around the school passing the message on to the few teachers on the premises and helping to dismantle every computer in the school.

 

By 2.30pm everything was shut down, and that left all of us without any work to do.   Fortunately I had not finished reading the latest Artemis Fowl novel, which is a little disappointing I think.  Whereas all the previous stories in the series (which I have been devoted to since first hearing one read on Big Toe on Radio 7) have been driven forward by the action, this time we have such a complicated plot – with Artemis travelling backwards in time in order to save his mother, that we lose the thrill of the events.  But it gave me something to do.

As I left for the day I could overhear a furious row going on in Ms Bland’s office.

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Pretty little number

30/10/2008 by April First.

At last – communication from on high.  My contact came into school posing as being from the fire inspectorate – whatever that is.  She was in her twenties, had a nice friendly smile and looked tough enough to eat Ms Bland without thinking – which come to think of it was probably the best way.

 

We went out onto the playing fields so I could show the inspector where everyone would gather in the event of a fire.   Once there she said, “What you see here is happening around the country – newly formed groups moving into schools and taking them over, driving them in new directions with their own philosophies.   The department is worried.”

 

“We’re worried,” I told her.  “The whole place is wired for sound and vision – Bodger’s putting in disruption devices, but it’s never safe to assume you aren’t being watched.”

 

“Bodger’s a good man,” she said.   (She knew Bodger!  Was he one of “us”.)   “So what you got?  Books removed from the library, special ways of talking to people, complete computerisation of everyone’s comings and goings…”

 

I nodded glumly.

 

“You are fortunate you are not on your own here – but I have to admit it is a nasty outbreak,” she told me.

 

“When you say ‘not on my own’ who exactly do you have in mind?”

 

“It’s never my place to let anyone know the other agents in the field, you should know that.”

 

She looked at me sternly.  “It makes you relax too much – but you should know that when push comes to shove, its all hands to the pump.”

 

I thought of asking what that last bit meant, but decided to leave it.

 

“So who are these people who are running the school?”

 

“The New Order,” she said.  “Neo-Nazi’s with CCTV.  Nasty bunch.  Still I’m sure you can cope.”

 

“Cope?” I asked.  In what way ‘cope’.”

 

“See them off, return the school to normal.”

 

“But I was excepting back up, support, cavalry arriving over the hill, D-Day…  How am I supposed to cope against an organised take-over of a perfectly normal school in a perfectly normal town by a bunch of fascist nutters?”

 

“I’d have thought that was obviously your job.  Hardly my place to tell a field officer what to do.   After all, you’ve had your training.”

 

“No I haven’t,” I protested.  “I’ve had a twenty minute chat which told me nothing.”

 

“Tricky,” she agreed.  We were almost back at the main building.  “Still do your best.  Head man thinks the world of you after you pulled off that Slovenian stunt.”

 

“What Solvenian stunt?”  I was getting hysterical.

 

“Quite right, mums the world.   I’ll be off – and I can tell you, if you can get this place sorted and back to normal by Christmas, the head man will be thrilled.  World’s your oyster after that.”

 

And with that she got back into her car.

 

I turned round and almost bumped into Havoc Blythe who had crept up in his normal manner.  “Pretty little number,” he said.

 

“What?”

 

“The car.”

 

“Oh.”

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