MASS EFFECT
GRiSSOM ACADEMY
Ch 1 HYPER MATHEMATICS
The Vetus system had a glowing yellow star with five odd planets and a lengthy revolving asteroid belt. Floating under the star and glowing from the solar radiation was the pristine white station known as Grissom Academy. It was here that many students were permitted entry after passing a physical entrance exam. One of the more unusual students was Angel Shepard.
The Milky way galaxy's Council had reached out to Grissom Academy after its remarkable success in training soldiers. Biotics from Grissom Academy graduated to N7 status at exceptional rates. Two combat engineers from Grissom had become famous throughout the galaxy as expert saboteurs. The council turned Grissom Academy into a council academy for the brightest students of all species. It was supposed to produce the leaders of the future as well as the inventors of tomorrow. Once you attended Grissom Academy you were branded for life as news story material.
Angel certainly didn't feel like any of those things. He was fifteen. He was a mostly Jamaican boy with piercing eyes and short bleached blonde hair. He had two electronic gauge piercings in his ears. They were half dollar shaped contraptions with vibration speakers that would send pulses of sound to gently play music through the entire ear. They glowed gold and softly whirred with life.
Angel Shepard had received the highest team score in the Skyllian Blitz themed entrance exam that Grissom Academy made all of its candidates go through. Angel's team was a random group of students his age, and yet he was able to command their separate skills with uncanny tact. Thanks to Angel's command, Garrus Vakarian, Nihlus Kryik, Kaiden Alenko, and Ashley Williams all were playing the entrance exam at their best. They were able to perform under unbelievable stresses and odds and not a single team member was eliminated. Additionally, they eliminated many other teams and even managed to expose a turian boy named Saren's team to be cheating.
Saren wrote an apology letter to the school board and they allowed him and his team within the school considering their performances were still quite considerable, despite the fact that they cheated. Cameras caught what regulations could not, and the school ruled that because the exam was meant as an audition, exceptional performances or strategies could over rule the point system where deemed appropriate.
When Shepard's friend Joker told him about Saren's fate they both said 'fuck the council,' and then both almost died laughing. They said 'fuck the council' all the time but this is the first time they felt they had been personally screwed.
Today, Shepard's hyper mathematics teacher Dr. Solus was reviewing the first chapter of the lesson. Their first real test in the class was on the horizon. The stakes were high, but the students were struggling to pay attention as the strange mathematics lesson continued. Only a few students, like the AIs Legion and EDI were comprehending the lesson. The rest of the class were at least partially, or sometimes completely lost with what was going on.
Tali, a small quarian girl, was not lost, because she wasn't even paying attention. While she slept in her purple and gold environment suit, her little omni forged orange drone recorded the lesson and searched for easier methods of learning it on a multiple vid sites.
The only person who realized Tali was was asleep was Ashley Williams. The reason she knew was because as Tali slept her foot kept backing into Ashley's. Ashley became very uncomfortable and tried poking Tali's back for a consecutive minute. When at the end of it, all that happened was a small snoring sound and Tali's head tilting slightly to the left, Ashley realized Tali was knocked out. Ashley, of course, was disgusted.
"Bet you wouldn't do that in your flying favella school you vorcha-fucker," Ashley said under her breath.
Dr. Solus continued the lesson, "So once you apply the value of warp to T234.5 and open up all your gamma values again, the equation will…carry the 42324 and then drop another 211313…just comes together! Ah, you see people? It's simple! It's like redesigning a virus. Or rather, well, riding a bycicle." He spoke confidently but quickly as he crossed massive fractions out and moved them around the board very quickly.
"This doesn't make any sense, sir!" Jacob Taylor cried out. He was a young black boy with intense eyes and a buzz cut.
"Excuse me?" Dr. Solus scoffed. "How could you miss it again? We determined the answer pool twice and we're pulling the extra multiples around again. Its on and off on the left and right…do you want me to cross and pull again?" he asked.
"I don't even—I just want you to stop," Jacob said.
Saren agreed, "To be honest sir, none of this makes any sense. The more you started talking after you made that first graph, the more everything you said started sounding like a list of made up words."
"Saren's not even wrong, technically," Garrus, another turian boy, said, "If I am following what you're trying to say, Dr. Solus, most of these things are mathematically made-up anyways."
"Well, yes, I suppose that's true…" Dr. Solus agreed.
"Why are are we learning this, honestly?" Jacob demanded.
"Please, calm down Jacob, it can't be all that bad." Dr. Solus chided.
"I don't understand a Goddamn thing," Jack said. "And you fuckin' sound like Scat-man Jon!"
Jack was a bald and defiant looking girl of sixteen. She wore a black jacket over her Grissom Academy uniform.
"I have a photographic memory," Thane Krios, the drell boy, said very calmly. "And I don't remember anything you said."
Grunt, a young Krogan, laughed at Thane from the seat beside him. "Roooasted!" Grunt howled. "Yeah, but Thanes right and I can't have a class like this affecting my GPA," he continued.
"Student's please!" Dr. Solus insisted.
"I do feel a just a little overwhelmed," Ashley noted.
"How is this the first class we've been placed in? This is graduate level information at least," another student inquired.
"Dr. Solus, I just finished pulling the extra multiples," Joker said. "And I end up with all imaginary numbers for every single one."
"You're just pulling left instead of right, but you almost have that part," Angel said as he looked over at Joker's notes. They were sitting next to each other, as usual.
"Seriously?" Joker said. "…Oh, yeah. What do you do next, though?"
Angel put up his hands. "That's as far as I got."
"Of course Paragon Sam understands this fucking garbage math," Jacob said.
"Don't call me Paragon Sam, man," Angel said firmly.
Paragon Sam was a heroic soldier from a movie who had cried in the film just like Angel had cried in front of Jacob when Jacob had tried to fight him two weeks ago. It was the beginning of several people not associating with him and his great source of shame at the school.
"You're gonna make Shepard cry again, Jacob!" Saren yelled from across the room and then laughed.
"Shepard is soft and organic," Legion joked. "Like ham."
"Shepard's SUCH a fuckin' ham," Saren agreed.
"Can you guys chill?" Nihlus asked with concern.
Saren looked at Nihlus with a confused grin. "C'mon? Seriously? Why do you care man, you're not on his team anymore."
"If we could please focus, I'd like to move on to number fourty-four," Dr. Solus said. The old Salarian quickly looked around the room. "As it stands the time we lost while all of you were talking about Shepard has spelled failure for another fifteen percent of the class."
The bell rang and the students all left the room as quickly as they could. Some of them eager to go to lunch, others traumatized by the overwhelming complexity and logical implausibility of the math lesson. Jack was last to leave. She had been sitting in her seat transfixed by her notes. They were very incomplete. They seemed to contradict each other. Moreover she didn't understand the little she had managed to scribble. After thinking quite thoroughly about how her adoptive parents would further ruin her life after she failed this class, she left the classroom in a daze.
"Kill me," she said to herself as she exited the classroom.
"Yo, Jack" Grunt called.
Jack turned around. Thane and Grunt were standing in the hallway looking at her.
"We're fucked," Jack said to them seriously.
"I know we're fucked." Thane agreed. "I find it very…dissatisfying that this class is a freshman course."
"Let's not think about it now," Grunt said. "I have new lyrics for a song we should develop in our next band practice."
"Okay big man, let's hear it," Jack said with a smile.
Grunt cleared his throat. "CRUSHING. RUSHING. BURNING THROUGH MY SKIN! MY QUADS ARE ON FIRE AND MY HEARTS ARE FILLED WITH SIN! DIG THE KNIFE DOWN THE SPINE, LICK THE EDGE—THE BLADE IS FINE. LICK THE EDGE, LICK THE EDGE! OFF A LEDGE, OFF A LEDGE—FALL!" Grunt finished by plucking on an imaginary bass guitar.
"That's heavy man," Jack said. "I love it."
"I know I said your lyrics were a little too violent when we started this band," Thane said. "But I must admit, that sounds extremely cool."
"Yeah, this exam has me mega stressed so I've been coming up with all kinds of shit," Grunt said fondly.
"You and me both, man," Jack said. "I feel like I'm gonna die." She scratched her head.
"You guys probably shouldn't worry about the exam," Thane said.
"Why is that?" Jack asked.
Thane pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket. "Aria T'loak and Miranda have been passing notes."
"So?" Jack asked haughtily.
"Well, this particular note has one of them talking about gathering all the students and seeing if anyone of these talented young individuals wants to try and steal the answers to the exams."
"That's awesome!" Grunt said.
"Wait, you said exams? Like multiple?" Jack asked.
"Well I don't know how they know this but on the note they say that all of the exams for hyper mathematics are already up and stored together. So yeah, exams," Thane finished with a coy smile.
