Free Academic Assassins by Clay McLeod Chapman

environment, students all across the country would soon be choking on her patented brand of brutal collars.
    We’re not just talking about Kesey. Teachers everywhere could shock their kids into submission with the mere touch of a button. Classrooms everywhere would be the backdrop of mass
shock-a-thons. Kids would become nothing but shuffling hordes, their brains fried from too many jolts.
    â€œYou are the perfect specimen,” she said. “If I can rebuild you, rehabilitate you,
reclaim
you—then I can reclaim absolutely anyone. I want you to lead my program
into the future, Spencer—and I want all the other rabble-rousers to follow right along behind you, just as the children of Hamelin town followed the Pied Piper into his cave. Will you do
that, Spencer? Will you be a leader for me?”
    I could just picture it: A nation of electroshocked lemmings.
    You better believe I wasn’t going to be Merridew’s test subject.
    I’m nobody’s lab rat.

Y ou hear more than you see in the Ant Farm. Sounds come at you from all different directions, but you never see their source.
    The chain-gang jangle of an orderly’s keys.
    The crashing static on a two-way radio.
    The distant shouts of an ant as he’s wrestled into a four-point restraint by the Men in White.
    Sometimes I wonder if I’m really hearing all these different sounds or if they’re just the noises bouncing off the inside of my skull.
    How did the ol’ saying go again?
    If you aren’t crazy coming into Kesey, you sure would be by the time you left.
    If
you ever left.
    It was social hour. Ants were free to roam about the ward, though I chose to hole up in my pod. I could hear the others murmuring just outside my cell, but I didn’t feel like socializing
yet. I was busy with a little science experiment:
    How to Disarm a Battery-Powered Electroshocker
.
    I studied my distorted reflection in the steel latrine, struggling to get a good look-see at my collar. The battery was encased inside a black plastic box fastened to the back of the strap,
positioned directly on top of the vertebra in my neck. A small electrode snaked out from the black box—like the sucker on a red-and-green-wired remora. Those deep-sea parasitic suckerfishes
attach themselves to the belly of a shark and feed off whatever leftovers funnel out from their host’s mouth.
    This collar was a parasite, alright—and it’s feeding off of me. It wasn’t going to let go until it had sucked me dry.
    I tugged on the collar to examine the electrode fastened to my neck.
    What’s stopping me from tugging it off? I can just peel the pad like this and….
    All of a sudden a jolt of electricity rushed through and I instantly feel like
I’m a fish with an electrified hook stuck in my mouth I can’t wriggle free there’s electricity
in my teeth there’s lightning behind my eyeballs
DAD YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO PICK ME UP AN HOUR AGO
there’s an ice pick in my eardrums there’s a jolt in my spine there is a
burning white-hot coil of electricity the filament on a lightbulb don’t touch it
YOU PROMISED DAD WHERE WERE YOU
don’t touch I just touched an electric fence I stuck a coat
hanger in a wall socket I plunged my tongue straight into a broken lightbulb stop please my mind is on fire
and the shock finally stops and I flop back against my cot. I couldn’t breathe.
My lungs had locked. Coughing, I peered out of my pod and found a surveillance camera positioned directly outside the Plexiglas partition. Its lens tightened on me, the angry red eye of its
indicator light burning bright.
    I limply waved hello to whoever was watching.
    Scratch that plan.
    â€œHey—fresh meat.” A scrawny ant leaned against the entrance to my pod. He had heavy gray bags under his eyes, as if he hadn’t slept in weeks. “You seen
Mickey?” He wiped his runny nose against his fingers, revealing a crude