Substack High 2
The Escalation
This story is the second installment of Substack High. The link for the first story, The Bomb Threat, is below. You did not need to read the first installment to follow.
There most certainly was a bomb. The Substack High students and administration, including the neighboring economic engines, had had the bomb’s existence unequivocally confirmed. The students had accepted the new reality without fuss- continuing with classes, gross domestic production, and the laundry of daily life.
A dark tint had overtaken the school. Saturated the color. The Typewriter Mascot now wore a trench coat and coughed incessantly. The jazz was soft and rainy, a lot of saxophone.
scratched his wrinkled, dying hair. He sat in “Grow Your Company While Saving Your Company 101”. The teacher, , no longer taught from the assigned NY TIMES textbook, but worked with his students to update his model to include multiple potential bomb explosions. failed to provide useful solutions, so fired him from Substack High altogether and assigned to teach the class himself. fiddled on his phone. To look at the news, or not to look at the news, that was the equation. The chatter on social media was almost exclusively about the bomb, including various versions of Why is no one doing anything to stop the obvious coming explosion?Others argued the bomber just wanted attention, his whole sickness was his desire for a crowd. Disengage, they said. Don’t look. Many claimed nothing to see here anyway, except a much needed dismantling of the entire network’s clandestine bureaucracy.
People talked into cameras; people watched faces, upper bodies, sometimes costumes in cameras, from cameras, and none were sure if their eyes might happily watch the scarred black of their own skin on fire if only captured inside that tiny screen, with lots of likes!
The school bell sighed like the end of a long rollercoaster line.
stood and comforted himself with the hip pockets of his dark lime green Dandy Detroit suit jacket.He walked the school hallway-ongoing arguments with a rotating series of people, his inner dialogue- and muttered about his latest focus.
One of his comrades earlier that day, his favorite classmate, had questioned him about having double standards. He understood the comrade had flashed back and confused him with others-ones who had in fact betrayed the movement- but the suggestion stung. He soothed himself, understanding the nuances the comrade still needed time to master.
Posters on the walls that said “Free Akulah” had been spray-painted over with Nazi imagery. The recent Substack election results had shocked the student body. The candidate everyone expected to win lost by a small margin, and the winning side used the surprise to claim a fully erect ManDate. They had Akulah arrested the day after inauguration.
The new Substack High President, a former stewardess in her mid-fifties, who had personally messaged a version of “my heart belongs to you, darling” and “ur my fav” to every Substacker on the platform, was now ostensibly in charge of the student body.
Her first order was to control the fashion. She enforced a strict code around a starkly early nineties look. Everyone was “encouraged” to wear wide jeans, nondescript t-shirts, loose fitting clothing, easy breezy, apathetic-chic. She made exceptions for 1950s white working class cos-play, the looks of beer drunk prom kings and queens who transformed Americana gas stations into grainy soft-porn music videos. Phone addicts aspiring to fuck fishermen.
passed a group of people wearing the most realistic, shit-grinning Billy Clint masks you could imagine. People hated that club, but the waitlist had more signers than the constitution.The Special Assigned Hall Monitor’s new policy, set to go in effect tomorrow, demanded students report every thought upon conclusion of its bubble. He super-manufactured Fannie packs for carrying thoughts, so the students could download the previous day's inventory every morning to share with their homeroom teacher. The policies, traditions, understandings of the Substack network were being updated at such a frenzied pace, life felt like a glitching video game.
Nothing artistic was allowed to penetrate the circus of nonplussed, half-sassy, half-easily triggered, fully depressed, gender war debaters, race-obsessed commentators, scammy tech bro baby mamas, television eyeball clout chasers. No route to escape the doom loop was school-permitted.
turned right and opened the door to a laboratory and escaped through the class window. Ducking, he rushed to a darkly tinted Black SUV. A passenger opened the back door for him, and the SUV sped off. spent the drive not nervous, but focused on his breathing. If anything, he was perversely excited and a tiny bit guilty – psychotic ego-wanderings feared he was the bomber, wired for excitement, hidden from himself.He glanced outside and noticed an 18-wheeler with spiked rims jutting from its massive tires. The front windshield featured a golden decal that read NOT ON OUR WATCH.
gripped his cellphone.They arrived. He was taken inside an empty bar mitzvah sized restaurant. Six other leaders sat around one large, circular table. All rebels from alternative schools of thought, assembled with a shared -if different- understanding of the existential importance of the multiple threats to the collective Substack network.
, wearing a soft wool sweater with a witch hood, started the conversation.: I don’t know about the rest of y’all but last year was a rollercoaster of relationship drama — romantical, business, friendship, familial… all the thangs. By the end of the year-I declared I was happily in my VILLAIN era. And my whole school has followed suit.Not an uncommon sentiment among the most frustrated of the populations. They/us was the chart topping chorus of the time.
wore an Arabic inscribed cravat that matched the brown of his bruised peacoat.: To me, the central concern is that a revolution in literature is now a necessity. Literature stopped breathing years ago. The enemy of innovation in fiction is the Modern Literary Establishment. Guerrilla writers are the antidote. If literature is to have a renaissance, we must arm the rebels. and sat next to one another, naturally. wore a guerrilla green Dickie’s jumpsuit and lawyer thick black glasses. They passed one another lit. codes. The last note said, tell [Classified]. would WhatsApp them a voice note top of tomorrow morning. hid behind a kermit the frog tuxedo costume. Mask and all. You couldn’t see his face and he had a bullhorn to project his voice.His school had long been ruined by environmental damage that had rendered much of its inhabitants to be RGR-ed (Robot Gear Required), so he was familiar with being covered and communicating through machines.
He made the table laugh with a story about digging his tire out of snow on Valentine’s day last year, a romantic night he shared with a talking robot vending machine. This was before he got word his fiance had been kidnapped.
The group mourned his anxiety. Good reminder, times were more dystopian at many other schools than the neurosis that pervaded Substack High.
was wearing a thick plaid lumberman jacket and a dark blue beanie. He had the most guileless demeanor at the table, often leaning forward, attentive to whoever was speaking. He asked more questions than he talked. And he was impossible to offend. Speaking barely above a whisper. stood right foot in the chair, wearing a full length maroon colored yoga outfit and a black cape stitched with Dark Femininity in lipstick pink. She chewed sugar free gum and bopped her head often when spoke.The group met for seventy-seven minutes before the first break. Many heated, intellectually rigorous, ego-driven discussions took place. The key questions were who would become Chair and represent the consortium at the gathering in a month, and what principles were to be signed and presented to the larger Railroad.
The break helped.
and stood in front of an art piece surrounded by foliage. Three unclothed, indigenous women, two raising their hands, volunteering themselves and their God-Dove, another sitting on the fence, flower shy, intoxicating stare hiding dead eyes, hugging her skyscraper.: Absurdity for the sake of absurdity is distraction from the pursuit of meaning. Meaninglessness is ice cream for the comfortable, but diabetes for the poor.: You speak of things only the hopeless understand.: Inshallah.The discussions restarted. Two more seventy-seven minute sessions finally broke the stalemate.
was voted Chair and the principles were signed by all. The turning point had been an antidote gave from his wife based on her research into leftist and rightist extremism on social media. There could be no compromise on truth, but this was not a time to burn all to the ground for promises of a new earth. left the restaurant still bothered by the prior quarrel with his comrade. The classmate had also accused of having a woe-is-me attitude that degraded his leadership.Takesonetoknowone, he had thought, but the comment had haunted him, even the next day. The truth never blinked if you continued to look at it.
listened to Two Small Mountains in the morning and cried while writing.Art never made him sad again.
the ARChitect built substack high brick by brick! i hope everyone’s seated because class is back in session! and you all better be sharpening your pencils under the desks because me and ALUKAH are still taking lunch money
forget a rap beef, im trying to get the party lit!