The Unnamed Protagonist

XXIV

Auckland, New Zealand, October 31st, 2003. It was school conferences. A sizable portion of the teachers hadn’t shown up for some reason. Anyway, I went to my first period classroom.

“Good morning! How are you today?” asked my teacher.

“Good. I brought my parents here.” I replied.

“I can see that”, replied the teacher.

The teacher and my parents had a long discussion about my behavior in class, the quality of the work I submit, and how I interact with others in class. All went very well. After that chat, I decided to leave the classroom with my family.

“Wait!” exclaimed the teacher.

“I need you to move these boxes across campus.” said the teacher.

I did tell the teacher that I’d help moving stuff across the campus. I had to put my money where my mouth was and move the boxes. My family then went off to my other classes while I worked hard at moving the boxes across the campus.

After twenty minutes, I was still moving boxes. But I saw a bunch of my friends. I dropped the boxes and went over to chat with them. Fully knowing I should be moving the boxes, I still engaged with my friends. I started feeling a bit guilty because of me breaking my promise to my first period teacher.

My first period teacher walked by and saw me talking to my friends. I was then retorted for five minutes straight. After being retorted, I felt too ashamed to do any more work. I walked around the school looking for another activity. But then, I found the custodian’s room, door open. Normally it’s locked and nobody can access it, not even the principal can find his way in.

I entered the custodian’s room and fell into a pitch-black void. I’d say I was falling for a good fifteen minutes. Bored, I decided to go on my cellphone during the fall. I tried calling my friends but there was no cell service. “What place even is this”, I asked myself.

I finally landed. The sky was beautiful; reddish-purple with orange clouds. I was at a construction site. The construction site’s colors were green and golden yellow, it was also exclusively made of metal. I wondered why there were no other materials but whatever.

Walking around, I found robots hard at work, laboring by moving pieces of metal so they can be used in the construction. Maybe a factory was being built? I saw conveyor belts scattered around the place. The temperature at the construction site was very hot. I started sweating from the heat.

The robots started giving me dirty looks. I gave an ugly mug back and the robots stuck their tongues out at me. All seemed well until I accidentally bumped into a robot while walking across a hanging girder. The robot fell and broke to pieces, along with it, the materials falling. All the robots were staring at me after that incident. The robots dropped their building materials, grabbed hammers out of their belts, and chased after me.

While I was running away, I fell down one of the buildings in the construction site. Luckily, I grabbed onto another girder. I could have very easily died right there, maybe I’ve been blessed by a God. In the heat of the chase, I spit on the metal ground. The saliva made the robots slip and break apart from falling. I had found their weakness.

I spit around me to make a barrier between me and the robots. They were too dumb to throw their hammers at me, so they just waited for me to try and leave. But eventually I got bored and tried walking away, forgetting about the saliva I left on the metal.

I slipped down the building, falling into a mud pit under the construction site. The robots assumed my fall was a casualty and got back to work. I survived that fall. I walked around the mud and it appeared to be part of a rainforest. I looked around and saw a bunch of teachers from my school.

I escorted my teachers through the construction site, making sure they didn’t hurt themselves. Obviously, the robots were mad at me but gave up on trying to harm me. The robots couldn’t fight off a bunch of teachers and a person who knew their weakness.

We made our way back to the void I fell through. We all climb up through the void and go back to school. The custodian door was closed, however. We were able to open the door back up because we were inside the room.

All the teachers went back to their classrooms, and I met my family. I shared my adventure with them, but they didn’t believe me. However, my first period teacher came back to retort me. Looks like I still had to move those boxes.



Published Nov. 12th, 2021