Chapter 86: My School Had It Too

Chapter 86: Chapter 86: My School Had It Too

At seven the next morning, the first screening on the Capital planet ended.

Thirty minutes later, the Interstellar Connection network began to jam for five solid minutes. The technical specialists and the Central Smart Unit of Interstellar Connection had to run their brains without a pause through those five minutes to bring the transmission back to normal.

Under the Arts Committee’s post and on the home page of the New Generation Film Producers Studio, viewers’ comments flooded in.

[I have just come out of the cinema. I sat on the steps outside the door for twenty minutes before I could stand up. I cannot write anything. I only want to say, all of you go and watch it.]

[I am 41, I have never cried in a public place. Today I cried in the cinema, and when the lights came up I found that the whole row of seats I was in was wiping their eyes.]

[THAT LAVATORY SCENE. THAT LAVATORY SCENE. That actress was not acting. I swear she was not acting. The last knock on the door faded away then stopped altogether, I listened and I could not breathe.]

[Those bastards switched off the location tracking on Ella’s smart watch then threw it into a rubbish truck. That is murder! And yet the school and the police recorded it as an accident. An accident my arse!]

[I am a doctor, I sat in the five in the morning slot. In my screening room two people had to go out and use the medical pod. And I will say it plainly, the Committee did not overdo it at all. My heart rate at that moment was 148.]

[That moment when the camera closes in on Ella’s corpse, slowly zooming into her eyes and then those eyes suddenly snapping open, our whole cinema screamed out loud. I saw one fellow clapping a hand over his crotch, he must have been pinching the "water hose" shut to stop it spraying out.]

[Now I understand. I understand why they banned people with gland disease. That scene where the character Wyatt takes a pair of scissors to his own gland in the fourth-floor corridor, the whole of my screening room shuddered at once, I even saw people unconsciously put a hand over the back of their neck.]

[Wyatt’s youngest uncle was right outside that room at the time, looking for Wyatt as well. If he had gone on and opened the door, he would have saved Wyatt from that Alpha!]

[He did not know. His hand was already on the door handle, but a phone call led him away. I hate whoever called at exactly that moment!]

[How desperate must Wyatt have been? When his hand reached out towards the door, I really did stretch my own hand out, wanting to pull him out of that room!]

[Hold on, who is the actor playing Wyatt? The credits list only gives the role name, not the person’s name. In the whole film only this one role is done that way. Why?]

[I wondered about this too. The other twenty-three roles all have full names, only Wyatt is left blank.]

[Stop guessing, they probably do not want the identity revealed. And that kid acts frighteningly well. That look in his eyes while he sits under the staircase... that is not the look of an ordinary seventeen-year-old.]

[The last scene of the film, that final section when the bitch Sofia hits the ground, the line of words laid out in her blood gave me gooseflesh. "YOU ARE NEXT!" — is that speaking to a character in the film or telling the ones out here in real life? The Committee did not put a warning on it for people who have taken part in school bullying, was that deliberate so they would watch it?]

[Are the Committee and the director not afraid those people will sue?]

[You up there, do you know who the main backer of this film is? Alexander Hall, the Hall family! Let me see which one of them dares to come forward and sue.]

But the thing that flared up most fiercely that day was not the praise.

At around three in the afternoon, on the Interstellar Connection network’s search chart, a new hashtag climbed into second place, wedging itself between the film’s name and Benjamin Martinez’s name.

#MySchoolHadItToo#

[My school had it too. The year I was fourteen, there was a Beta classmate of mine shut in the physical education room. The teachers and the headmaster all knew, but in the records it was written down as "stayed on at school outside hours of his own accord".]

[My school had it too. I was the one who stood and watched him driven into a corner until he had to go into a psychiatric hospital. I am sorry. Nineteen years, and only today have I dared to type this line out.]

[My school had it too. I was the one shut in. I am luckier than Ella because I am still alive. Today I bought a ticket for the three in the morning slot because I did not want anyone to see my face as I came out of the cinema.]

[My school had it too, and the ringleader is now a councillor on my planet.]

That last line was shared more than six million times in three hours.

By seven in the evening, the Lumina Galaxy Education Committee issued a statement so brief as to be suspicious, the gist being that the Committee noted the citizens’ reports and would "review them at an appropriate time".

Fifteen minutes after that statement, the Ministry of Internal Affairs issued another.

The Ministry of Internal Affairs’ statement had only four lines, announcing the founding of an inter-agency task force to receive reports of violence in educational institutions across the whole Galaxy, with the receiving line open twenty-four hours, starting tomorrow morning, along with a pledge of absolute confidentiality for the identity of anyone making a report.

At the very bottom was the name of the signatory.

Minister of the Ministry of Internal Affairs – William Hall.

On Sirius, Liam looked at that name on the screen, the corner of his mouth slowly curving up.

He opened up Light of Time, calling Mr. Hall: "Father, you really did act fast."

Mr. Hall said with a laugh: "I only want to win justice back for those children. Even your mother, if she had not been an adopted daughter of the Royal family back then, would have been one of the targets of school violence. Now I understand why you wanted this decision issued only after the film was released. You had it all worked out, did you not?"

"Yes. One section of society speaking up is not enough, the whole of society has to speak up before this gets carried out thoroughly." Liam asked softly: "Is Mother well?"

"She is still well. Once the work on this side is done, we will come over to visit you children. We will certainly be there before you give birth."

Liam nodded: "Yes." He lowered his head, placing a hand on his belly, his voice carrying some sorrow: "Father... What happened to Elijah, he recreated it himself in the film. In the film, he is seventeen, but the truth is that he was only nine at the time. Father, I feel so wretched. The one who should have borne that was me..."

His voice already carried the sound of weeping. He was not the original owner, but at this moment he had become the original owner, feeling for himself the guilt the original owner would have produced on learning what had happened to Elijah. He truly felt wretched. While reading the novel, he had thought of it only as a paper person, feeling sympathy but nothing like this wretchedness, until he saw with his own eyes the despair in Elijah’s gaze while acting Wyatt.

No, that was not Wyatt. That was Elijah!

Mr. Hall heard his son crying, and his heart wrung tight. That was the son he had raised for nearly twenty years, and how tough the boy was, he understood better than anyone. That child was crying helplessly, yet he could only stand there listening.

William said hoarsely: "No, Liam, that is not your fault. That was an ironic joke of fate. You do not have to shoulder the guilt for a crime someone else committed. Liam, I am not good at sweet words, nor do I know how to comfort you, but I can state for certain that from now on nobody will be able to touch a single hair of yours or Elijah’s. I give you my word of honour, my son."

Liam sniffed, choking as he said: "Yes, thank you, Father. I do not know why I am like this either. I am sorry..."

Mr. Hall answered at once: "Your mother was the same. While she was carrying your elder brother, she was convinced I had someone outside, washing her face with tears all day long, which kept me stuck at home not daring to go anywhere. By the time she was carrying you... carrying Elijah, she was even more sensitive. She had only to see a piece of star-beast meat on a plate and she could weep over its fate for a whole hour." 𝑓𝘳𝑒𝑒𝓌𝘦𝘣𝘯ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝑚

Liam burst into a laugh: "Was it really as bad as that?"

Mr. Hall laughed as well: "Of course, I filmed it, and every so often I open it up to watch again. Let me send it over for you to see, but do not tell your mother. Otherwise, tonight I will be sleeping out on the sofa."

Liam’s mood lifted a great deal thanks to these words. He teased Mr. Hall back: "Of course, I will not tell Mother. From childhood until now I have always thought of you as a walking machine, I never imagined you had such an adorable side."

Mr. Hall gave a light cough: "What nonsense is this boy talking. I have to get to work, we will talk another time, all right?"

"Yes, goodbye Father."

Father and son cut the connection, and right after that Liam’s smart watch received a compressed file, which he opened at once to look at. What took him by surprise was that the file held not only the videos Mr. Hall had secretly filmed of Mrs. Hall, but also videos and images of himself and his elder brother from birth to adulthood, along with a few of Elijah recorded only recently.

He burst into a laugh, shaking his head, saying under his breath: "Truly a man with terminal-stage obsession with his wife and children!"

Nirvana came barging over as well, urging him: "Host, hurry up and let me see you as a little one!"

So one person and one cat hid themselves away in the soul space again, opening each video one by one to watch.

"Host, your mother was so beautiful when she was young. Even though she filled out a little while pregnant she was still exceedingly beautiful." Nirvana marvelled.

Liam nodded: "Naturally. She is still beautiful now."

At the part where Alexander was learning to walk, falling face first onto the grass then lifting his head to open his mouth and wail with a ring of dirt all round it, they laughed until they doubled over.

When they got to Liam, both of Nirvana’s eyes turned into hearts: "Wow, this pale, chubby little thing is the original owner? Host, when you were little back on Earth, did you look like this?"

Liam nodded: "I did. The two of us were exactly alike." After that, Liam’s smile gradually faded away with each video. He said to Nirvana in bewilderment:

"Nirvana... why... why is what I went through and what the original owner went through so alike... I too used to watch the videos Mr. and Mrs. Smith made of every step of my growing up. When I was first learning to walk, I too nearly fell three times, then toddled exactly six steps before sitting straight down again.

And this one too, when I was in primary school, I also held my own fallen-out tooth and cried to my mother, and Mrs. Smith rubbed my head to comfort me just like that. This primary school graduation photograph, my cap was tilted off to the right as well... The images, the camera angles, the movements, they match almost completely..."

He looked at Nirvana: "What on earth is going on, Nirvana?"

Nirvana was no less bewildered. Suddenly, it thought of one possibility:

"Host... could it be... that the lie you told earlier was not a lie at all?"

"You mean I really did die then was reborn on Earth, after which I came back to this world?" Liam looked at Nirvana without understanding: "But did you not say before that you could not find a compatible soul until I arrived here?"

Nirvana scratched its head, saying: "Host, I may have to be absent for the next few days. I need to go back to headquarters to investigate this situation."

Liam pressed his lips together, somewhat unwilling to let it go. After all he had grown used to Nirvana forever leaping out to prove its existence, and with it suddenly away he felt a sudden emptiness.

Nirvana laid its cat’s paw on the back of Liam’s hand: "Only a few days, host. The moment the investigation is finished I will come straight back."

Liam nodded reluctantly: "All right, remember you have to come back soon."

Nirvana gave its assurance once more. It was helpless too. Over the past half month its host’s temperament had grown softer and softer, he had a tendency to lean on everyone around him, a system like itself included. It worried as well that with it away a few days, the host would have nobody to talk to when he was lonely, and would turn himself into someone depressed.

So it dragged out the whole of its "stockpile", pushing it onto its host:

"Host, these are the films and documents I have collected. If you get too sad, you can open them and watch."

Liam snorted a laugh: "All right, I know. Thank you. Set your mind at rest and go and do your work."

Nirvana still was not reassured, grumbling out its instructions one more time. Anything out of the ordinary and he must tell Auntie Camila at once, and it would be best during this time to keep Auntie Camila with him. If he felt unwell then he must stop working, just lie down in a chair and rest. It droned on and on until Liam’s head ached.

After N times of Liam promising he would pay attention to his own health, "old mother hen" Nirvana was finally at peace, turning into a string of data and vanishing from the soul space.