Ron-Goron
Communications Technician
Level 1: Equipment and Procedures

Story 2: Communications Operations, Procedures, and Techniques

My Teacher Trap

"Are you kidding me?" Ron thought to himself.

He was told that after the first exam, things wouldn't be as difficult... he had no idea. After passing his last exam, through unorthodox but acceptable means, Ron was now enrolled in the next of his required classes. It was taught by a young officer, fresh from the front; who upon showing certain dis qualities on the battlefield, was removed for his own (and his families) honor, to a lower teaching position. It was quite clear that for everything he lacked on the front line, he also lacked in the front desk. For as much as he wasn't a soldier, he certainly wasn't a teacher.

And it was in this very class room that Ron now sat, his eyeballs rolling up like slot machine windows, and his mouth hanging open just wide enough to dry out his tongue. This cause him to, every now and then, suddenly close his mouth and lick his lips to keep them from dehydrating... after which he would look up at the board to see if any new material had been gained, which never really happened. This continued for some weeks.

And it was one of these fine days that Ron now found himself; trapped in three hours forty-seven minutes of pure absolute boredom. It wasn't like he was missing anything either... for the instructor, named Aarnus Makko (or Mr. M to his students), taught strait out of the book, which was only as thick as their breakfast cookbooks which were distributed round the troops.

Ron stirred from his seat and looked at the rest of his class. Some of them were sleeping, some of them were reading (other books for other classes), and a select few up front were actually taking notes. He looked in his own book to review today's lesson, which was extremely easy and almost a disgrace to both teacher and student to teach and learn.

Basically the lesson entailed the operation of some thirty communication channels that were most commonly used in and out of battle. Access to these channels was extremely easy, with just a simple typed command, one came up to a sort of "table of contents" in which all the channels under a specific category were listed. These channels were under a server, the server was under a sever base, and so on and so forth. The most important part of the lesson was learning how to get into the server, which gave access to all its hosted channels.

That was it. Extremely easy, and not difficult to understand, as long as you didn't have an idiot as a teacher. He knew what to do, but he clearly had not an ounce of talent in relating that nformation to other people, which in turn jeopardized the lesson as a whole. Ron for one couldn't believe that he was teaching a two week course by himself, never mind the ridiculous idea of making such a simple concept into the two week course in the first place.

"I wonder what Tibbs is doing." pondered Ron, as he looked up across the room.

Tibbs, or Tabbulla Sawn, was one of the smarter students in the class. She was one of better friends of Ron too, although she was not as good as hacking systems as he was. She was more into creating her own gadgets and trinkets, which required a different skill. While some thought she could've been a combat engineer, she preferred to learn how to program her inventions instead of letting someone else.

In any case, Tibbs was sleeping, as usual in this class. Ron picked up his personal datapad and logged into the campus' chat-room, which was of course, protected from use in the class rooms. Ron entered the password (which he pinched off a teacher's assistant) and sent a message to Tibbs. Then setting down the datapad so as not to be noticed, he waited for a reaction from Tibbs.

Tibbs didn't notice the message at first, but she soon found the message invite from Ron. After typing in the password that Ron so graciously gave her some days before, she joined the private chat-room.

"Hey Tibbs, want to collect a tip for the teacher?" Ron said.

"Sure." replied Tibbs. "I know a lot of people who will donate for him: 'Mr. M, get a life.' 'Hey M... go back to the war, and this time get shot.' 'Makko the wakko'."

Ron grinned. "We have such generous hearts. But how can we refuse giving such a thoughtful gift? He deserves it for all the work he's done."

"Humph. Tibbs said. "If you can call it work."

Ron wanted to laugh, but he held it in for the sake of not getting caught. He knew what the punishment for getting caught chatting was... but he just didn't want to go the next few hours as bored as the rest of the class.

"Hey Ron." said Tibbs. "I just had a fantastic idea." She paused before saying, "Let's get M to let out the class early."

"How?" Ron replied.

Tibbs said, "Easy. We wait until he gives the class an exercise to work on, and then we invite him in the chat room. You and I can switch our names to the screen names of some of the people he hangs out with, you know, Paddy Vert or James Grimes, people like them. Then all we do is tell him that they are letting out their classes early due to last minute scheduling that didn't make it out to the teachers in time to make the FYI. It'll be easy, this guys a moron. And besides, we are technically participating in the class... the chat-room is a communications channel."

"Tibbs, you're a genius." Ron said.

After another ten minutes of pointless lecture, Makko finally gave some practical exercises for the students to do. Ron winked at Tibbs to engage in the master plan.

Makko took out his own datapad. It had been such a long day already, he hoped that Vert and Grimes were on. As he turned it on, he was instantly beset by an instant message.

[YOU HAVE AN INVITE TO ROOM #445656, WOULD YOU LIKE TO ACCEPT?]

Makko instantly accepted, and uploaded the private chat-room which included both Vert and Grimes.

A message appeared on the screen. [Vert: HEY MAK, WHATS NEW IN COMTECH?]

[Mak: HEY GUYS. NOT MUCH. IM REALLY HATING THIS CLASS, I HAVE NO IDEA HOW TO GET THROUGH TO THESE KIDS, THEYRE SO DENSE, YOU KNOW?]

Ron rolled his eyes at this statement. Blame it on the kids why don't you. He responded as his alias GRIMES, who was an easy-going well liked instructor in the campus.

[Grimes: NO FEARS MAK, KIDS GET EASIER TO HANDLE AS YOU GET OLDER.]

[Mak: I SURE HOPE YOU'RE RIGHT MAN... WHAT TIME DO YOU GUYS START YOUR CLASSES TODAY?]

Tibbs' and Ron's eyes grew open with shock at this statement. Makko had just opened the door wide for them.

[Vert: CLASSES? MAK, MAN WE JUST LET OUT, WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?]

[Mak: WHAT?]

[Grimes: YEAH MAK, HALF-DAY TODAY, WE LET OUT EARLY.]

[Mak: WHY? I DIDN'T GET ANY MESSAGE.]

[Vert: THEY ONLY TOLD THE OLDER GUYS, WE WERE SUPPOSED TO TELL YOU YOUNGER PEOPLE TO LET YOUR CLASSES OUT EARLY... SOMETHING ABOUT A FACULTY BREAK.]

Makko put down the datapad and looked up at the class. They were all still working on their practical, or at least most of them were. He leaned back and looked out the window... the campus was bare, hardly any students or teachers were on the grounds.

[Mak: WHY DON'T I SEE ANYONE OUTSIDE IN THE YARD?]

Damn. He wasn't as dumb as he looked. Now for the back-up plan.

[Grimes: EVERYONE ALREADY LEFT, MAN. WE TOLD YOU. NOW HURRY UP AND GET OUT OF THERE, THE GUYS ARE GOING OUT TO HUNT DOWN SOME HOT INTERNS AND UNLESS YOU WANT TO STICK AROUND IN A CLASS ALL DAY...]

[Mak: INTERNS? NEW?]

[Vert: YUP. YOU'D KNOW IF YOU GOT YOUR BUTT DOWN HERE.]

[Mak: AWESOME GUYS... WAIT UP, IM COMING!]

[EXIT: Mac (INTERNS!)]

Ron closed his datapad with a silent click. A job well done, and a lesson well learned. Tibbs and him would be drinking beers and puffing Lung-blaster's within the hour... or the next five minutes for that matter.