"Fly on the Wall"

“Class, say thank you to Mr. Grabnell,” Mrs. Stephenson said.

“Thank you, Mr. Grabnell” was the swift and unison response. Well, almost in unison. Paul was still reeling from their group romp through time. 

Mr. Grabnell nodded his head. “You are certainly welcome. I hope that you enjoyed your “Fly on the Wall” experience. Are there any quick questions while I pack up all these headsets?” 

“Can we do it again right now?” asked one kid. “That was awesome!”

Most of the room laughed and agreed. 

“I am sorry. I wish I could stay here all day and let you explore the past on your own, but other kids deserve a turn. Now, by my count, there is one headset missing.”

“Are you sure? Did everyone turn in their headset?” Mrs. Stephenson asked.

“I can count again and make-”

“It’s me, sorry,” Paul said getting up from his desk. He walked up to Mr. Grabnell and handed his headset over. “Can you go to the future with these? There are flies in the future aren’t there?”

“Yes, there are flies in the future. This planet will always need something to dispose of the waste. But, no, we can’t go to the future with our technology. It has been tried, but there is something too fluid about the future and our signal just can’t get through.”

“That stinks.” Paul said, “I would love to see what it’s going to be like.” 

“I think we all would, but our machines have a hard limit set to 25 hours before the start of the signal.”

“Why is that?”, asked a random student. Paul lingered near Mr. Grabnell to await the answer. 

“I am not one hundred percent sure, but I think it has to do with making sure that the past is the past. There are some places on earth a day ahead or 24 hours ahead of each other. It helps with the neural connection too. The further in the past a time is, the weaker the brain bond between the host fly and the operator.”

Ashley, Paul’s crush, asked, “Is that why the images were a little fuzzy in the first ‘past zone’?”

“Yes. Most people don’t notice the difference. You must have really good eyes.” 

Paul watched Mr. Grabnell take a step and look directly into Ashley’s eyes. If Paul got that close to Ashley she would have slapped him. 

Mr. Grabnell smiled, backed up slowly, and looked at his watch. “How much time do you have left Mrs. Stephenson?”

“Two minutes.”

“Okay.” Mr. Grabnell closed his shiny case. “One more question.” 

“Has someone’s fly ever been eaten by a frog?” Ashley asked. 

“Of course! We’ve had people’s “Fly on the Wall” eaten by about every animal that eats flies, as well as squished in every way imaginable.”

“And no one has ever gotten hurt?” Ashley added.

“No. Our technology recognizes these events and breaks the connection. It happens more often than you” would think. The worst I have seen is a small headache after being squished or a bad smell in your nose from the frog’s gut. Our connection is strong enough to see, taste, smell, and feel the past through a fly but weak enough to be cut in an instant to escape any pain.”

“All right class, pack up quickly,” Mrs. Stephenson said. “And remember your journal entry for homework.”

The bell rang out signaling the end of the school day. All the kids but one streamed out of the class with Mrs. Stephenson trailing behind. Her son Paul was the student still at his desk, as was his habit. He would stay in the classroom and get an early start on homework while his mom would finish her daily duties and attend the staff meeting today. 

Paul didn’t hesitate to begin on his project, though it was not homework. He wanted to do more time traveling. He pulled the headset that he had swiped from Mr. Grabnell’s case out of his hoodie pocket. He had never stolen anything before, at least nothing like this. 

He hesitated before plugging it into his computer. He was confident that he could “find” it tomorrow in this classroom and that his mom would believe him. Why wouldn’t she? He had never stolen anything before. Heck, he could probably keep it for a few days or even a month. 

What if Mr.Grabnell noticed that it was gone? Paul didn’t think that was likely. He had not counted all the headsets, just the ones that he had let our class use. That was negligent considering how expensive each headset must be. Mr. Grabnell seemed to be negligent in general. Paul was shocked at how forward he was with Ashley. Paul thought Mr. Grabnell was just short of winking to her and asking for your phone number.

As Paul logged on he felt secure in his excuses for his behavior but he didn’t know what “past zone” he wanted to visit. He looked around his mom’s history class for inspiration. 

There were pictures of presidents, wars, and the Wright brothers. None of these captured Paul’s imagination. Then a fly landed on his arm. He didn’t swipe it off immediately. An idea landed had landed in his mind. Ashley. 

She would be in the locker room changing for cross-country practice. He tried to resist but the obsession took root. He wondered if he could hack the system to choose a present-time fly. He told himself if he couldn’t get it to work in ten minutes he would quit and choose…something. He would figure that out when he had to.

It only took Paul four minutes to change the parameters in time selection. Days of his life had been spent on YouTube learning how to customize his gadgets, and the Fly on the Wall system was surprisingly easy to access. Now, with a flick of his finger, he scrolled the selection box to the current time and place. He told himself that he would do whatever it took to access the future, if it was possible, later. 

When he donned the headset Paul was transported to the consciousness of that same fly who had landed on him earlier. Knowing he was on the clock, he headed out the classroom door, down the hall, towards the gym. 

When he arrived he found all the gym doors closed. He had to shimmy his fly avatar under a door to get in. This was no easy task but he managed. 

When he finally emerged on the other side he was mildly surprised that no one was in the gym. Paul flew as fast as he could toward the girls’ locker room. He was too late. The locker room hallway was dark and showed no rays of light from the room itself.

“Dang it” he semi-cursed. He was angry at himself for hacking slowly and having to crawl under the gym door. He let out a breath. Then he allowed the satisfaction of avoiding sin to wash over him. 

Paul told himself that he should be thanking the door for slowing him down. There was no thanks for the technology, though; it was too easy. Mark that down for more negligence, though not specifically on Mr. Grabnell.

He landed his fly on the dark hallway floor and thought about what to do next. Paul visualized the gym, all its doors and windows, trying to find a better exit for his fly. Squeezing under a gym door wasn’t easy and wasted time. There should be some easier way to get back down the hallway to the history classroom. 

Then Paul realized that he didn’t have to exit the gym at all. He could just log out of this fly and leave it right there on the floor. Then he would be back at the menu screen and could pick whatever new time and place that he wanted.

Paul opened a new tab on his browser and typed “best places to visit in the past”. Up popped lists of places that he never would have thought about. 

“Woah, maybe I need to narrow it down,” Paul said to himself. He added “middle school boy” to the text already in the search bar. Since he had switched his window to the search engine he didn’t notice Ashley making her way into the gym and the hallway where Paul’s fly sat.

When Ashley entered the hallway she saw a fly on the ground as the motion-activated lights winked on. Not for the first time she aimed to kill a fly by stepping on it. For the first time, she succeeded.  

That surprised her. Flies were common in the locker room but they never let someone get close enough to swat them, let alone step on them. She hadn’t even tried hard to kill it. The fly had just not moved at all. On any other day, she probably would have not thought this much about a dead fly, but they had just gone back in time by tapping into the consciousness of flies. 

Ashley thought “What if someone in the future had come back to spy on girls in the locker room? Only a middle school boy would think of that.”

“Wait,” she said out loud. “Was that Paul?”

Ashley had seen Paul swipe a headset from the case while Mr. Grabnell got close to her. She had already planned to confront Paul and convince him to let her use it because he had a crush on her. As smart as Paul was, she thought, he could probably figure out a way to hack the system for the present or maybe the future. Ashley decided that a quick and quiet trip to history class was in order. 

When she got to the eighth-grade hall Ashley saw light spilling into the dark hallway through Mrs. Stephenson’s open door. All the other class doors were closed and their lights off. Ashley peeked her head in the classroom expecting to see Paul sitting at his desk with the stolen headset on. She was right but his head was resting on the keyboard. 

“Oh, crap. I killed him.” Ashley rushed over to Paul and put her fingers on his neck. Just then she heard footsteps approaching down the hallway. She thought Mrs. Stephenson must be coming back. “Crap!” She whispered to herself.

Ashley yanked the headset off of Paul’s head, unplugged it from the computer, and stuffed it down her shirt, into her sports bra. She put her fingers back on Paul’s neck. Then she froze, thinking about her next move. 

Mr. Grabnell walked through the open door. “Hello? Oh, sorry. Is Mrs. Stephenson still here? I wanted to talk to her about coming back soon since your class…is he okay? Is he sleeping?”

Ashley’s mind raced. She was relieved that it wasn’t Mrs. Stephenson in the room, but what would she say now? “Uh, no, he is not sleeping, Mr. Grabnell. He’s dead.”

“Dead? Dead! Are you sure?” Mr. Grabnell took a few steps toward Paul but Ashley intercepted him.

“Don’t you believe me? My mom’s a nurse. I know how to find a pulse if there is one.”

Mr.Grabnell stopped and backed up. “I believe you, I believe you. What should we do? We should call-“

Ashley tried to keep her emotions in check. “Who should we call Mr. Grabnell? He’s dead.” 

“What happened?” Mr. Grabnell was already in a panic state.

Ashley was calm and her mind was working. “He was killed.” 

“Killed? You mean someone murdered him?” 

“Yes. Your company killed him, maybe even you.” 

“What? What are you talking about?”

“While you were looking deep into my eyes, Paul took one of the headsets. After school, he figured out how to set it to the present time. I killed a fly in the girl's locker room a few minutes ago and then wondered if it was him.”

“Are you kidding me?” 

“Not at all Mr. Grabnell. And here’s how you save your job and your company. First, you hand over your cash and company credit card. And tell me your PIN. Then you take the computer and destroy it far away from here. Then your job and your company are in the clear.”

Mr. Grabnell was stunned. He shook his head in unbelief. “What is happening right now?”

“Consequence for your negligence is happening right now. And you have a decision to make. You can stand here and argue with me or you can save your job and save the company you work for from having to answer questions about the safety of their product. But you better make a choice fast because Mrs. Stephenson or another teacher could walk down that hallway any second.”

He paused. 

Ashley stepped towards him. They were as close as they were at the end of class. “It’s not even your money. You can cancel it or report it lost tomorrow.”

“You aren’t the innocent girl I thought you were.”

“And you are more dumb than I thought you were if you don’t take this deal.”

Mr. Grabnell reached for his wallet and started removing his company credit card. He held it out to her. “What about the headset? Where is it?”

Ashley took the card and tilted her head. “The headset will be mine. It can’t be the first that you have lost.”

Reservation flashed across Mr. Grabnell’s face. “Fine. I can’t believe I’m doing this.”

“I can’t believe you are still here.” She grabbed the computer and shoved it at him. “Go out the hallway door. And don’t ever come back. I will take care of everything here.”

“Okay.” He let out a heavy breath. “Why do I have to destroy the computer?”

“Because it has evidence of what Paul was doing when he died. God, you are an idiot.” 

Mr.Grabnell said a short “Oh, yeah,” and left quickly. A moment later Ashley heard the hallway door slam shut.

“You were amazing,” Paul said, sitting up slowly. He had the pins and needles sensation throughout his whole body so he didn’t move more than he had to. He was thankful to be alive. 

Ashley turned around to see him. “Thanks. How long have you been awake?” 

“Since ‘my mom’s a nurse.’” His speech was a little slurred. “Did you think I was dead?”

“You had a pulse. It was weak but there. And you were breathing shallowly. I didn’t think he would notice and I was right. Your mom would have noticed, though.”

“Yeah, probably. But why are you here? How did you know to come to check on me?”

“I saw you swipe the headset while that idiot was getting weird on me in class. Then I killed a fly that didn’t dodge near the locker room and it got me thinking.”

“You tried to kill me?” Paul became a little more animated. 

“I didn’t know it was you, but when the fly didn’t move at all, it didn’t take much to assume you hacked the system.” Ashley moved closer to Paul. Paul turned his head to keep his eyes on her. The feeling was coming back to his arms. 

“Well, you’re right. I hacked it.”

“And you went to spy on girls changing?”

“Yeah. Sorry about that.”

“It’s to be expected. Gross. But expected.”

“What you did was not expected. But the longer I listened the more I liked it. What are you going to buy with the credit card?”

“No idea. I wanted the headset more than anything. You were going to let me use it one way or another. Now we don’t have to ever give it back. And you get to try hacking it to access the future. Do you think you could do that?”

“With enough time, I think so.”

“How are you feeling?” Ashley walked around Paul slowly.

“Huh? Oh, a little better.” He raised his arms and wiggled his body. 

Ashley smiled. “We’re going to have to be careful using present and future flies I guess.”

Paul danced at the desk, amazed at the weird feeling. “Yeah. We will be careful because this is weird.”

Without warning Ashley grabbed Paul’s face with both hands and kissed him hard on his lips. “How do you feel now?”

Paul froze. His eyes were wide. “Like Jello again.”

Ashley smiled. “I bet you didn’t see that coming. The future is funny like that.”