The Dynamic Taser

Chapter 2: Confrontation

Seth felt pretty good today. He was whistling the opening theme to Star Wars to himself while putting his books away in his locker after school. He had aced another Chemistry quiz on thermodynamics, solved a complex Calculus problem that not even the teacher could figure out, and most astounding of all, actually ran a few laps in Gym after decided not to go with that rehearsed story about perspiration-induced pre-mortem rigimortis. Shame. He knew Coach Stowel would have bought it too.

He was so absorbed in his rare feeling of contentment that he didn't notice Ryan creep up behind him until Ryan slammed his fist into the adjacent locker. There goes a peaceful afternoon.

"You think you're better than me, Sanders?" he growled.

Seth was taken aback by Ryan's sudden appearance, and took a second to collect himself. He looked at Ryan quizzically; he wasn't making any sense, or at least less sense than usual. It looked to him that Ryan was wearing the same ugly and dirty outfit from yesterday, right down to the mustard stain on his shirt. Seth just assumed that Ryan hated doing laundry. Or bathing. The only thing that was noticeably different about the obnoxious troll today was that his overshirt's collar was turned up around his face and his stringy bangs were covering his eyes that Seth couldn't even see them.

"I don't know what you're talking about, Ryan."

"Don't you? You rat me out and that's it?"

Seth could only stare at him. I didn't think it was possible, but I think he's actually getting dumber.

"Tell you what I'm gonna do for you, Sanders. You get me the answers to the rest of the Bio tests this year, and I'll let this lapse in judgment of yours slide."

Seth closed his locker slowly, buying himself a little time to think this over. He set his backpack down on the floor and looked Ryan in the eyes, er, bangs.

"Forget it, Redger. Figure it out for yourself."

Ryan snarled. "What'd you say to me, Sanders?"

Seth straightened his shoulders, holding his ground. "You heard me, Redger. Do your own work from now on. Maybe it will make you less stupid."

Ryan growled as he picked up Seth by his shirt collar and slammed him into his locker behind him. Seth guessed he might've just pushed his luck too far this time.

"You're dead, Sanders," Ryan threatened him in a tone serious enough that it actually scared Seth. Seth saw Ryan pull his fist back and was not hopeful about the next few minutes.

"Hey! Put him down, jerkwad!"

Both Seth and Ryan turned to see Alicia standing in the hallway, looking furious.

"What's it to you, Ayers?" His tone was slightly less harsh for some reason.

"I said put him down!"

Ryan let go of Seth's collar and dropped him. Seth was barely able to retain enough of his balance to stay on his feet. He tried to look nonchalant about it while dusting himself off, but didn't go too well about it. Thankfully, neither set of eyes was on him at the moment. Alicia was glaring daggers at Ryan, and Ryan's eyes were still obscured by his bangs.

"Happy now, princess?"

Alicia got beside Seth and looked Ryan down. "What's your damage, Ryan?"

Ryan looked slightly apprehensive about that remark for some reason. "Why are you always hanging around with this loser anyway?"

Seth was actually anxious to hear her answer to that. He stole a glance at her from his side. Her glare at Ryan was unflinching.

"Why are you always bothering him? Don't you have something better to do, you Neanderthal?"

A somewhat disappointing response, but at least she didn't say something along the lines of pity.

"As a matter of fact, I do have something better to do." His mouth twisted into a wicked grin. He leaned forward, putting his palm against the locker on Alicia's side opposite Seth. Both of them tensed at this sudden intrusion of her personal space. "Why don't you ditch the dork and me and you go do something fun? What'd ya say, beautiful?"

Alicia's response was immediate. She narrowed her eyes in pure disgust. "Not even if the survival of the human race depended on it."

Ryan's grin quickly turned into a grimace. He leaned back. "Hmph. Whatever. As if I would want Sandbag's sloppy seconds anyway."

Without warning, Seth took a furious swipe at Ryan with his fist. Ryan may have been slow of mind, but he was quick of body enough to barely move his head fast and far enough to dodge Seth's punch. Seth ended up connecting only with Ryan's hair, brushing it slightly. As his bangs moved, Alicia and Seth saw that Ryan's left eye was heavily bruised.

When Ryan heard Alicia's gasp, he quickly covered his black eye and gritted his teeth angrily. "You saw nothing!"

"Ryan, what happened to you?" Alicia asked.

"Yeah, man, how did you get that black eye?" Seth added, his momentary rage subsided due to this revelation.

Ryan turned his remaining good eye on Seth in pure hatred. "You should know, Sanders! It's your fault!"

"But I—"

"And now I'm gonna kill you for it!" Ryan lunged at Seth in full fury.

"Alright! That's enough!"

Ryan hadn't gotten three inches when that booming voice rang out. The three of them turned to see Mr. Mecailic, the school principle, rapidly walking toward them.

"What on earth is going on here?"

Ryan backed off and let his arms go limp. "Nuthin', teach. Just having a friendly chat."

"If you think I'm dumb enough to believe that, Mr. Redger, then you have even less respect for me than I thought. And what's with your eye?"

Ryan made what could only be called a "tch"-ing sound and looked away.

Mr. Mecailic stared at Ryan for a brief moment. "Fine. We'll sort this out in my office. Move it, Mr. Redger. You know the way."

Ryan sized up Mr. Mecailic. He wasn't particularly large of stature, but his stone face and stern voice were more than enough to curb even the most troublesome students, Ryan included. He took one last menacing glare at Alicia and Seth. "This isn't over, Sanders. Let's see if you still think you're so much better than me after something important is taken away from you."

Seth looked quizzically back at Ryan. He still had no idea what he was going on about. That deadly look in Ryan's eye was darker than usual, and it worried Seth.

"It's over now. Go, Mr. Redger!" Mr. Mecailic pointed down the hall.

Ryan grunted indifferently and turned to go. Just when Seth thought this particular ordeal was done with, Mr. Mecailic rounded on him.

"And as for you, Mr. Sanders . . ."

"Sir, I didn't—"

"I know you didn't, young man."

Seth breathed a slight sigh of relief.

"And I know why you took a swing at Mr. Redger too. You normally don't cause any trouble, Mr. Sanders, so I won't reprimand you this time. But if there is a next time, try a more nonviolent means, will you?"

Seth nodded meekly. "Yes, sir."

"Very good then." He nodded slightly at Seth before turning to Alicia. "And Ms. Ayers, I hope this incident hasn't disturbed you too much?"

Alicia shook her head. "No, sir. I'm fine."

Mr. Mecailic nodded one more time. "In that case, I'll see you both in class on Monday. Good day to you both." He turned and walked back to his office to deal with Ryan.

After a moment, Alicia sighed in relief. "Well, that was an ordeal." She turned to Seth, and slightly tugged at his sleeve. "Let's go home now, ok?"

Her touch brought Seth out of his temporary shock and back to reality. "Er, yeah."

Their walk home was considerably quieter than normal, especially for Alicia. For once, Seth was thinking about Ryan instead of the girl next to him. How did he get that black eye? But more importantly, what the heck was he ranting about taking something away from him?

"Hey, Seth?"

Alicia's voice brought him out of his train of thought. "Huh?"

"I'm really proud of you for standing up for yourself to Ryan today."

Seth grinned sheepishly. "Thanks. It was nothing really."

"Mind if I ask what brought about this new attitude?"

"Uh, well . . ." Seth scratched the back of head, trying to put the words in his head into a way that wouldn't sound too corny. "I just finally thought you and my mom were right about me doing the right thing for a change, and that I can't keep letting people push me around anymore if I'm gonna do any real good for anyone."

She smiled. "Good, cause we're always right, you know."

He smiled back. "Well, in that case I'd better make this a regular thing then, huh?"

"Couldn't hurt."

They continued their walk back to their apartment building in a comfortable and happy silence for a while.

"Oh, and Seth?"

"Yes?"

"Thanks for standing up for me too."

He blushed slightly. "D-don't mention it."

As Seth thought to himself that he should definitely do that more often, he noticed that Alicia was walking just a little bit closer to him. He was on cloud nine.

—

Later that evening, Seth's night had been relatively normal. After dinner, Seth retired to his room to get some homework done when his mother called him from the kitchen saying the phone was for him. He would rather not have been bothered with anything at the moment, until his mom told him it was Alicia. He quickly picked up the spare wireless he had in his room. It turned out that she was calling about a math assignment from her Pre-Cal class, which Seth had already taken last year, so it was pretty ease to walk her through each trigonometric equation. It was also lucky for him that she called, as he was having trouble with analyzing that set of poems for English class, and it didn't help that they were by Emily Dickenson either. That was the system that they had set up, they covered each others weaknesses with their own strengths. Seth was good at sciences and mathematics, a real left-brain type; and Alicia was adept at the liberal arts; more of a right-brain type. They complemented each other quite well in that respect, something that was not lost on Seth. For the time being though, Seth was concerning himself with their conversation. He always found it easier to talk to her during these times. It mostly had to do with that he was getting a chance to talk enthusiastically about a topic he was vested in, but also partly because she wasn't actually in the room with him to get him all flustered and stuttering.

"Thanks for the help," Alicia said to him over the phone.

"Anytime, and thanks for yours too."

"Well, I'm gonna see if some of the other girls are up to tonight, so see ya later!"

"Bye then." They both hung up.

His assignments finished, or at least his tolerance for them, Seth decided to switch over to another mindless activity of his: World of Warcraft. Sure, it was probably the dorkiest thing a person can do outside of Dungeons & Dragons (Seth's set for that was in his closet, and to his credit, he hadn't touched it in years), but it gave him another outlet for his otherwise crippling lack of social skills. He logged on to his Human Paladin character, LordOfLightAndArt87, and went about the town of Ironforge that he was in. Soon after he started, he was messaged by another character in the game, LordOfDanceAndSorrow44:

"What's up, friend? Haven't seen u in a while."

Seth replied:

"Been busy. Got some time to kill now tho. Switch to TeamSpeak, normal ch?"

A moment passed before Seth saw the reply message:

"Sure. Give me a sec."

Seth put on his headset and set up the TeamSpeak device. He always liked that better because he could keep his fingers on his controls, and he could actually hear the other person's voice. "Got mine all ready. How 'bout you?" he said into the headset.

A young man's voice came back through the headset. "I'm good. Let's do this."

Admittedly, Seth did not know much about the person behind the screen name LordOfDanceAndSorrow. He never gave his real name out, and neither did Seth. Internet anonymity was funny that way. From his voice, Seth could tell that this guy was a young man, probably somewhere around his own age. He seemed to like a lot of things that Seth did: all the standard nerd-type things, like comic books, Star Wars, video games, and all that good stuff. They got along fine, for Internet friends; they didn't know each other's real names, but their friendship was a bit better than being on each other's Facebook page and never saying anything. Seth liked him okay. He wasn't about to give his PIN number to the guy, but he knew he wouldn't exactly ever have to get Chris Hansen involved either.

In the game, LordOfDanceAndSorrow's character, a Night Elf Ranger, appeared in front of Seth's character.

"So what're you up for, the Tower of Azora? Or do you want to try the Burrow Dens again?" Seth heard his friend's voice over the headset.

"I'm good for whichever. Anybody else gonna join us?"

"Nah. You're the only person I know in this thing. You, and you know, her."

"Yeah, same here. I try not to get too involved in this thing so it doesn't consume my life. It's not like I would flip out if my mom ever canceled my account." Seth chuckled.

His friend laughed a little back. "I just make take offense to that, you know, because I might do that myself. Not like I have much else going on for me."

Seth mentally sighed. He had always gotten the sense from this guy that he was a bit of a shut-in. He never directly said so, much less why, but Seth was afraid he was this guy's only contact with the outside world. It always seemed like he was always on this game, whenever Seth decided to log-on once in a while. "So let's go."

"Whatever you're doing, count me in." Another voice came over the channel, female. It was Alicia!

"What the heck are you doing still around?" Seth asked, dumbfounded, but pleasantly so. She must've tuned into their TeamSpeak line. They all always used the same channel. "I thought you said you were gonna do something with your other friends?"

"Nah. They all decided to stay in and watch the newest episode of Jersey Shore."

"So why didn't you?"

"Because that show gives me headaches. This seemed like a better use of my time. Besides, I'd rather do something semi-fun with you if I'm going to be rotting my brain."

Seth was ecstatic that she'd said that. Before he could realign his brain synapses so he could form a coherent response, his friend cut in.

"Dude, don't push it. If a girl wants to play with us, I say let her. I personally find it refreshing."

"Thanks, mystery guy," Alicia said back. "That's kind of sweet, in a geeky sort of way, I guess."

Seth coughed loudly into the headset. "So then, shall we?"

Seth and LordOfDanceAndSorrow joined with Alicia's character, a Human Sorceress PrincessOfFashion95, and wasted about an hour on their computers that night. Seth thought it was awesome that she actually not only didn't think his fondness for video gaming wasn't stupid, but that she actually indulged in it with him a little. He could always tell that she wasn't all that into this sort of thing, but as long as it gave him something else to do with her without him feeling like a total nerd, he wasn't going to complain.

—

It was close to midnight, and Seth couldn't sleep. It was still riding the high from playing that game with Alicia and their friend from earlier. Every so often, he would smile goofily to himself, his mind wandering to possibilities. At any rate though, he felt it best that if his was going to be up this late, it might as well be at least a little productive. He was out of new comic books to read, so he felt he was in the mood for something more intellectually stimulating.

He went to his father's home office, picked the key from off the top of the door frame, and unlocked it. He entered, flicked on the light, and looked around. Seth found what he was looking for right on his father's desk: the notes to his current project. He had been reviewing it earlier that evening, which would explain why it wasn't filed away yet. Seth took the folder and went back to his room. Seth had a habit of looking at his father's work from time to time because of his interest in science. His father's professional work was of the caliber that challenged Seth, contrasting with his normally boring and easy schoolwork.

Lying back on his bed, Seth opened his father's folder and began reading it. It was entitled "Project: Zeus." It was the latest effort to abandon their previous reputation as a waste-producer and develop a clean energy at Rexton Laboratories, where Seth's father worked as a researcher. As Seth flipped through the numerous pages of the current status report, he was very intrigued by the concept. They were attempting to create a device that could absorb and harness ambient static electricity in the environment and distribute it amongst various channels in the power grid. The key was generating enough power. Theoretically, nature did this itself naturally, the product being lightning. After all, a bolt of lightning was nothing more than a large atmospheric discharge of static electricity. The centrifuges at the top of the room-sized device spun at rate fast enough to gather electricity from the air, as well as generate some power itself. The entire device was meticulously constructed to posses a positive charge as well, in order to increase the pull on negatively charged free electrons in the area and valence electrons from nearby matter. The problem, however, was creating a container for all that power. A bolt of lightning contained enormous electrical force (Seth chuckled a little as a scene of Doc Brown flashed in his head describing just how much wattage), so much that it could not be contained by any man-made device they had tried thus far. Furthermore, containing the energy long enough for distribution was also a hindrance, as the charge was just as likely to dissipate from whence it came if balanced by the earth's natural magnetic field.

Seth thought the problem over himself. A metal device likely wouldn't work too well, as its strong conductivity would lend to the static electricity dissipating. Inorganic materials like rubber or plastic wouldn't work either, as their nonconductive properties would hinder distribution to an electric grid. An organic substance would then be the best choice, thought Seth, but it was unfortunately terribly impractical. A power container made of cotton or wool? The very notion was ludicrous. Still, he was reminded of the power of static electricity with wool socks and a fluffy new carpet. And certainly a living battery of organic tissue was downright impossible; this wasn't Mary Shelly's Frankenstein after all. Seth could see the dilemma his was father was in here. He was on the cusp of a breakthrough. If they could only overcome this last obstacle, then the project would be a success and the idea could potentially revolutionize energy production. The concept was even lucrative enough for the whole family to be set for generations if this could be pulled off. And it had to be, seeing as all of the money the R&D department had sunk into this project. Looking at the line item on the budget sheet, Seth cringed; it was enough to possibly bankrupt the company if it failed.

Seth continued to muse over the project when he heard voices outside his window. He glanced over at his digital clock radio. It was nearly 1 AM.

Odd, he thought. Who else is up and about at this hour? Yeah, I know this is New York City, but this neighborhood is usually quiet around now.

He got up and parted his curtains enough to take a peek outside. Four stories down, he saw a small group of people gathered around one of the dirtier ground level apartments. Seth switched his bedroom light off, both to give the impression that no one was up and to let his eyes adjust to the dark so he could see who these people were. After a few seconds, he was able to make out the bulky forms of four thuggish looking teens on bicycles. It looked like they had stopped to get their bearings. He strained his eyes a little, and was able to tell one of them was Ryan.

Oh great. What's he doing here? That means the rest of those punks must be the rest of his stupid grunge band. I thought they practiced someplace else.

Seth was about to ignore them and go to bed when he could have sworn he heard his own name. It was still somewhat muffled, so he opened the window a crack to hear better.

"You sure this is the way, Ryan?" one of them said.

"Yeah, I'm sure Kyle. This is the only way out to the part of the city where the lab is."

The lab? What would he want at the lab?

"What are we doing this for again?" another boy asked.

"To bring that stupid Sanders kid and his dad down from their pedestals, Max. Maybe then they won't think they're better than guys like us any more. When I wreck whatever big important thing they're working on in there, they'll get a taste what it's like at the bottom with the rest of us, where nuthin' goes right."

What? He's gonna ruin Project: Zeus! That'll send Dad's research back months, even years! And I don't wanna think about what that'll do the company's stock, not to mention our stake in it!

Seth watched Ryan and his cronies take off out of the neighborhood and toward the city. He wondered about what he should do. Almost without thinking, he put his street clothes from that day back on and dashed out the door. He went down to the street and unlatched his own bike. Quickly mounting it, he took off after them.

I'm not going to let you get away with this, Ryan! I'm through taking all your crap! No more! I'm not gong to let you hurt my family! I'm going to stop you myself!