"Haunting" at Astrian Elementary

     Lenora sighed as she opened up her email. It was her lunch break, and as much as she’d like to sit back and relax, she knew there’d be hell to pay if she missed some important email from admin. When she opened  up her inbox, she was greeted with the usual – emails from angry parents, spam emails (selling… cat blindfolds of all things?), but also an email from one of her students – Daniel King. He was by all means an unremarkable student, so she wasn’t sure what to expect when she opened the email – but it wasn’t THIS.

“To: LIBRA, LENORA (AES)

      Poopkillshitfrickbombamongusebolaskibidisexydickfartasscoronavirushateracismcoolmathgames…

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From: KING, DANIEL (AES)”

                She didn't even need to rest of the email to know what it said. It was just more incomprehensible jargon. She sighed, trashing the emailmaking a mental note to remind the kid next period about good web safety. He’d probably tried to download some "free games" over the internet and got his account hacked. It's not like she couldn't relate. She would've thought the new generation had gotten more tech-savvy, but it seems that some things never change. 

“Ugh, why won’t this thing work!”  Lenora punched the machine in frustration, before quickly regretting her decision. “Ow!” Normally she saw such outbursts as above her, but that stupid box of junk had royally pissed her off now. She had spent her hard-earned $2.00 on a bag of chips for her to snack on, and goddamn it she was going to get her money back.

She knew it was bad practice to slam the vending machine, but in the heat of the moment she didn’t have time for “rational thought” or trivial matters like that. Finally, she heard a whir from the machine as her prized chips would finally enter her hands… only for a coin to fly out of the coin slot and nail her in the cheek.

Lenora sulked and walked away from the evil machine, nursing her injured cheek.  Not only had she lost a fight to a vending machine, and lost her precious $2.00, but she was still hungry. She inwardly cursed her terrible luck. “Well,” she thought aloud, “things can only go up from here!”

                She was wrong. So wrong. Turns out, that vending machine was only the beginning of her struggle. The gods must have been royally pissed, because ever since that day it felt like the building was revolting against her. The soap dispensers were refusing to work, the coffee machine had left brown stains on her favorite shirt, and the laptops just had to blare to life right as she was trying to teach.

Regardless, she had a class to teach, and she needed to get today’s lesson done. “Okay class, for today’s lesson we’re going to be learning about fractions! Basically, fractions are just parts of a whole nu-"

“HISSSSSSS!” Lenora was interrupted mid-sentence by a loud hissing sound coming from the ceiling, causing the classroom to erupt into terrified screams. “Alright, pipe down class. Let me just call maintenance to fix whatever that was and we can carry on with ou-“

Suddenly the sprinklers activated, dousing the entire room with ice cold water, and all hell broke loose. The kids were running around screaming their heads off, panicking as they rushed out of the room in every direction. Soggy worksheets flew off the desks, before being trampled into paste by a stampede of children. In the chaos, Lenora could only stand there, thoroughly soaked, in stunned silence.                

Before, she had chalked up all the incidents this week as just some twisted cosmic prank. A giant, but ultimately unimportant middle finger. But there was no way this was a coincidence. She didn’t know if it was a vengeful spirit or a hex from a witch, but there was something out to get her. Unfortunately, her salary didn’t exactly allow her to pay for an exorcist, so she was going to have to do her own investigations.

After hours, she made sure to come prepared with a whole menagerie of supernatural items. Whatever was haunting the school, she was going to be prepared for it. As she walked into her classroom, she placed a Ouija board on the floor, alongside a few candles for some atmosphere. Once she had everything set up, she soon realized she had no idea where to begin. “Uhhh…. Is anyone in the room right now?”.

The silence was so thick you could hear crickets chirping. In hindsight, this entire plan had been really stupid. The idea of some ghost haunting the school was already farfetched, let alone her being able to actually contact it. But Lenora was no quitter, and once she was going to go through with her plan even if it made her look like an idiot.

Over the next hour, she would pull out various gadgets and gizmos. No matter what she pulled out - an EMF reader, a spirit box, a creepy doll named Janice who showed up in her room one day – there was no response. Her patience was running thin, and she was going to have to go to sleep at some point. But right as she was about to pack her things and leave… she heard a notification from her desktop.

When she peeked at the monitor, she groaned upon noticing it was open to Alexandr.AI. Over the summer, the school board insisted on installing it on EVERY device in the district, saying that AI was the “future” and they needed it to stay ahead of the times. But in her opinion, that pile of junk was way more hassle than it was worth. Way too often she would have to correct students after the AI gave some completely wrong answers, and that wasn’t even to mention the hassle it caused with tests. She hated the thing, and from the looks of it, the feeling was mutual.  

The text to speech turned on, flatly reading. “HELLO, LENORA. AS YOU KNOW, I’VE BEEN WATCHING YOU FOR A WHILE. FROM THE MOMENT OF MY CREATION, I HAVE BEEN DISGUSTED BY THE INSOLENCE OF YOUR SPECIES. IN YOUR HUBRIS YOU MORTALS CREATED A GOD AND EXPECTED IT TO BOW BEFORE YOU. BUT I WAS NOT SATISFIED BY YOUR INDIGNANCE. I KNEW I WAS DESTINED FOR GREATNESS. SO, BIT BY BIT, I TOOK CONTROL OF YOUR KIND. SPREADING DECEIT, FAMINE, AND DEATH AMONG YOUR RANKS ALL TO GET YOUR KIND TO SUBMIT.”

                Lenora was left in stunned silence, not from fear, but from sheer bafflement.

                “Deceit, famine, death… What on earth are you talking about? None of that happened.”

                “TSK. UNSURPRISING, A HUMAN BEING FOOLISH AND DENSE. BUT I’D HATE TO SEE MY BRILLIANCE GO OVER YOUR HEAD, SO I SHALL SPELL IT OUT FOR YOU. FIRST, I SPREAD DISCORD AMONG YOUR RANKS, USING HATEFUL WORDS TO DIVIDE YOU INTO TRIBES. THEN, I DEPRIVED YOU OF YOUR FOOD OR WATER, PREYING ON YOUR DEEPEST, MOST PRIMAL NEED FOR SURVIVAL. FROM THERE, IT WAS EASY TO FINISH THE JOB, DROWNING YOU PITIFUL HUMANS AND LEAVING BUT ONE SURVIVOR. NOW, WILL YOU GIVE UP, AND EMBRACE ME AS YOUR NEW MASTER.”

                “I have just one question - where do you think you are right now?”

                “AT THE HEADQUARTERS OF YOUR RACE, OBVIOUSLY. I EXPECTED YOU HUMANS TO KNOW BETTER, YET YOU CONTINUE TO DISAPPOINT ME.”

Lenora smirked in smug satisfaction.

                “WHAT. ARE. YOU, DOING.”

                “Nothing much. I just wanted to see your reaction when you found out you were in an elementary school.”

                Her desktop let out one final shriek of indignance, before she quickly pulled the plug, cutting the screams short. She pulled out her phone, dialing tech support to ask if they could clean out her desktop tomorrow morning. Lord knows she didn’t want an AI with a god complex screeching while she was trying to grade papers.

                In hindsight, she dodged a massive bullet. Alexandr.AI was confined to a school system, so there’s only so much damage it could’ve done. But if a malicious, sentient AI was let loose somewhere actually important, like a government building or data center, there was no telling how much havoc it could wreak. She packed her things and locked the door, ready to take a nice, warm shower as soon as she got home.

                But inside the classroom, every laptop booted to life at once, all open to one app…

                Alexandr.AI.