The Homework Machine Read online

  MISS RASMUSSEN, FIFTH-GRADE TEACHER

  I really didn’t know all that much about chess myself. I had played a tiny bit as a child. All I knew was how the various pieces moved. I didn’t understand strategy.

  But when I saw Sam and Brenton talking over a chessboard, it seemed like one of those wonderful teachable moments we live for. So I scrapped our lesson plan for the morning. I drew the chessboard on the chalkboard and explained to everyone the basic rules of play.

  The students started giving their ideas about which move Sam should make next. Sam and Brenton stood at the front of the class and explained why some moves might be smarter than others. It was fascinating for the whole class! I could almost see the wheels turning in their little heads.

  We spent the whole morning doing that, and finally Sam decided to castle. That’s when your king and rook sort of switch places.

  It was a wonderful learning experience that I’ll remember for the rest of my teaching career.

  JUDY’S MOM

  I couldn’t help but notice that Judy wasn’t spending much time doing homework. In fourth grade, she used to come home from school and work on it for hours. Even if she didn’t have too much homework, she would go over it again and again until it was perfect.

  I naturally assumed that her workload would be a little heavier in fifth grade, but that wasn’t the case. It seemed like she never did any homework at all. I was worried. Maybe she had lost her enthusiasm for school.

  I asked Judy about it and she said that Miss Rasmussen was a really easy teacher who didn’t believe in giving a lot of homework. When we had our parent-teacher conference, I suggested to Miss Rasmussen that maybe she should give the students more homework. She told me that some of the students felt there was too much homework as it was, and a few of the parents had complained about the time their kids had to spend on it.

  She said that Judy was just an excellent student, and that was probably why she finished her homework so quickly. I wanted to believe that, and so I did.

  KELSEY DONELLY, GRADE 5

  Then there was the day Judy made a Valentine’s Day card for Brenton, and it was like World War III broke out.

  SAM DAWKINS, GRADE 5

  So Judy gives a Valentine’s Day card to Brenton. She doesn’t give one to me. She doesn’t give one to Kelsey. I don’t think she gave one to anybody in the class but Brenton. Maybe she only gives Valentines to the smart kids.

  I wasn’t jealous. I mean, a girl has the right to like anybody she wants. It just kind of took me by surprise, that’s all. I didn’t know she liked Brenton. Actually, I kind of thought she might have a crush on me. I can’t imagine why she would pick him over me.

  JUDY DOUGLAS, GRADE 5

  I didn’t like either of them. Snik thinks he is so cool, but deep down he is so insecure. He couldn’t get over the idea that anybody might like Brenton better than him.

  It meant nothing. It was just a silly Valentine. But everybody in the class was talking about it, as if Brenton and I were going to get married or something.

  BRENTON DAMAGATCHI, GRADE 5

  I have always viewed Valentine’s Day, and most holidays for that matter, as artificial celebrations that provide opportunities for big corporations to make people feel guilty and buy greeting cards, flowers, chocolates, and presents. But it was a nice gesture. I thought nothing of it.

  KELSEY DONNELLY, GRADE 5

  There was this one day when Miss Rasmussen gave us a homework vacation. No homework for a change. Well, when we left school, we all forgot that there was no homework, and headed for Brenton’s house anyway like we always did. It wasn’t until we got up to his room that we figured out we didn’t have any homework to do! We all felt pretty stupid.

  We were going to go home, but Brenton’s mom brought in some chocolate chip cookies that were awesome. We took them down to the basement and played Ping-Pong for a while.

  It turns out that Brenton is a great Ping-Pong player! I couldn’t believe it. He even beat Snik, who is always the best athlete in gym. Snik was all mad, and he was saying that Brenton was cheating and stuff. It was a riot. I’ll say this for Brenton, he constantly surprises you.

  SAM DAWKINS, GRADE 5

  I like to hit the ball hard and slam it past the other guy. But Brenton wouldn’t let me. He kept dinking these stupid little weak shots just over the net where I couldn’t reach them and putting these weird spins on the ball so I wouldn’t know which way it was gonna bounce. That’s got to be illegal.

  RONNIE TEOTWAWKI, GRADE 5

  Yeah, I was the one who wrote the message on the boys’ room wall. I guess now that it’s all over I can admit it. Hey, it wasn’t as bad as what they did.

  I knew they were up to something. No way kids like Judy and Brenton would hang around with kids like Kelsey and Snikwad. Heck, no way any of them should hang around with each other. And no way kids like Kelsey and Snikwad should be getting A’s.

  So I wrote D SQUAD ARE CHEATERS with a marker on the wall of one of the stalls. I used my left hand so nobody could say it was my handwriting. That’s all I did. I didn’t know how they were cheating, but they had to be doing something. It got rubbed off the next day, but I guess word got around. People were talking.

  SAM DAWKINS, GRADE 5

  So I’m in the boys’ room and I see the graffiti. I scribble over it right away. I hoped that nobody else saw it, but maybe every boy in the school saw it before I went in there. Who knows? I didn’t know who wrote it, but I had my suspicions.

  The whole thing shook me up. If anybody found out about Belch, we would be in big trouble.

  KELSEY DONNELLY, GRADE 5

  Snik said we had to have another meeting, so we all met at the big concrete turtle in the playground during recess. We get there and he’s all whispering and stuff. Like we’re spies. He says we may have a rat. A leak. He wanted to know who spilled the beans. Well, it sure wasn’t me, I knew that.

  Nobody admitted it. Judy got all freaked out like she was gonna cry or something. She is so emotional! Brenton said one of those weird things he always says that makes no sense to anybody but him.

  Snik said we should all be cool about it and remember that we made a pact not to tell anybody. He said that if anybody asks any of us about Belch, we should deny everything. Just say none of us knew anything about it.

  I figured it was nothing. Kids pass around dumb rumors about other kids all the time. But this time the rumor was true.

  MISS RASMUSSEN, FIFTH-GRADE TEACHER

  After thinking it over for a long time, I decided to split up the kids in D Squad. I didn’t like the way they were always whispering to each other. It’s good when a group of kids bonds together, but when they form their own little secret society that excludes everyone else, it’s usually a sign of trouble. I suspected something was going on.

  I told the class it would be a good learning experience if they changed seats every so often and got to work with other students. I put Sam, Judy, Kelsey, and Brenton in separate groups, one in each corner of the classroom.

  KELSEY DONNELLY, GRADE 5

  We were constantly having these stupid meetings. It seemed like we had a meeting every day. This time it was Judy who said we had to have one. It was right after Miss Rasmussen changed our seats around and Judy was freaking out, as usual. She was starting to get pimples on her face over this. We met at Brenton’s house after school because Judy didn’t want us to be seen together at recess. She was all worried.

  JUDY DOUGLAS, GRADE 5

  Teachers don’t just move everybody’s desk around for no reason. Usually it’s because of a behavior problem. Or maybe they find out that some kid has bad eyesight or hearing and they need to sit closer to the front of the room. But none of that was going on.

  None of the other groups were split up the way we were, with each of them stuck in a different corner. Miss Rasmussen did it on purpose. I was sure. She probably figured it all out. She probably knew about Belch. Everything I had worked so hard
for was gone. My face was breaking out. I felt like my life was over.

  KELSEY DONNELLY, GRADE 5

  The phone rang one day when I was home alone. I picked it up and it was that Milner guy! He says he really wants to talk to me. The guy was like a stalker or something. I have no idea how he got my number. I hung up on him.

  Chapter 7

  March

  RONNIE TEOTWAWKI, GRADE 5

  When Miss Rasmussen switched everybody’s seat around, I was put at the same table as our genius-in-residence, Brenton Damagatchi. So I figured this was perfect! If any of those D Squad jerks was going to spill the beans, it would be him. He couldn’t tell a lie to save his life. This would be my chance to get the truth out of him.

  I tried to get all buddy-buddy with him first, making like I was his friend. I offered him gum. I asked him if he wanted to hang out after school. I asked him if he wanted to take a hike in the Canyon sometime. I asked him if he wanted to play ball or something.

  Nothing. I couldn’t get him to crack. He always had an excuse. Whatever he was hiding, he wasn’t saying.

  Finally, I just said to him that I knew what he was up to and he’d better let me in on it or I was going to tell everybody. And he says, and what exactly am I up to? I didn’t have anything to say, so I just shut up. He had me. That got me mad.

  SAM DAWKINS, GRADE 5

  Well, I lost again. My dad attacks with his queen and rook at the same time, and it’s like there are intersecting laser beams shooting all over the board. My pieces were all locked up and in each other’s way.

  So I bring my chessboard into class and we all try to think of every possible move I could make to get out of the situation, but it’s hopeless. Brenton says I’m in Zugzwang, which means that any move you make only makes your position worse. I had to resign.

  Afterward, my dad sends me an e-mail telling he how proud he is of me. He says I put up a good fight. When I was little, I remember, he used to let me win at games and sports. I would beat him all the time. But he said I was getting too old for that, and I have to learn how to handle losing because in the real world sometimes you win and sometimes you lose.

  It made me feel good. We started a new game.

  MISS RASMUSSEN, FIFTH-GRADE TEACHER

  One day I noticed that the homework turned in by Brenton, Kelsey, Judy, and Sam was remarkably similar, except for the handwriting. This was after I had switched their seats around. I also noticed that the four of them still left school together at the end of the day.

  I don’t know why it took me so long to notice the similarities in their work. With so many papers to correct every night, I just didn’t make the connection. And their work was so well done. I tend to notice the kids who make a lot of mistakes, not the kids who get everything right.

  I hope that after I’ve been teaching for a few years, I won’t be so overwhelmed with work and will be able to pay more attention to things like this.

  SAM DAWKINS, GRADE 5

  Miss Rasmussen pulls me aside after school one day and says what an awesome job I’m doing on my homework. I say thanks and try to get out of there as fast as possible. But then she asks me if I ever copy off anybody.

  Now that I’m looking back on it all, I guess I should have been insulted. I mean, she was basically saying I’m too dumb to do such good work on my own. But I was cheating, so I wasn’t too insulted.

  I say no, I do not copy off anybody. And that was the truth, technically. I never copied my homework off Brenton or Judy or anybody. I didn’t have to. Belch did the homework for me. But I didn’t tell Miss Rasmussen that.

  KELSEY DONNELLY, GRADE 5

  The three of them got all bent out of shape after Miss Rasmussen had that talk with Snik. They decided that me and Snik had to start getting some of the answers wrong so it wouldn’t look like a machine was doing our homework for us. So now we had to cheat so it wouldn’t look like we were cheating! What a hassle. I can make mistakes just fine on my own.

  BRENTON DAMAGATCHI, GRADE 5

  It became necessary to rewrite the Belch software to program in intentional mistakes at random intervals for Snik and Kelsey’s homework. This was an interesting challenge, and I enjoyed it immensely. It’s easy to design a machine that will work perfectly all the time. It’s harder to design one that will work perfectly just most of the time. It goes against the nature of machines.

  It reminded me of what they did with Post-it notes. They created an adhesive that was sticky, but not too sticky. If Post-it notes were stickier, they would not serve their purpose. You wouldn’t be able to pull them off and stick them somewhere else. They’re perfect because they don’t work very well. In other words, they’re perfect because they fail. That was what I had to accomplish with Belch.

  POLICE CHIEF REBECCA FISH

  Received a call on Saturday afternoon, March 16. There was a break-in at the house of the Damagatchi boy. Nobody was home at the time. There was a broken basement window. Some minor damage. Nothing was stolen. Didn’t look like a professional job. They ran when the alarm went off. It was a prank by a kid, I guess. Happens all the time.

  RONNIE TEOTWAWKI, GRADE 5

  I didn’t try to break into Brenton’s house. I don’t care how many times you ask me. I didn’t do it, and you can’t prove that I did.

  JUDY DOUGLAS, GRADE 5

  We have this school paper called the Grand Canyon Times. It’s not a real paper. Just some stories and poems that kids write and it’s stapled together. It comes out a few times a year.

  Anyway, there’s a gossip column in there. Usually the gossip is silly stuff like guess who likes so and so. Or which teacher wears a wig. Stuff like that. But right in the middle of the page there was an item about the homework machine. I freaked out.

  THE GRAND CANYON TIMES

  … and rumors are flying around the canyon that certain people in grade five have invented a mysterious machine that does their homework for them! Can you believe that? Where can we get one of those and how much does it cost? …

  SAM DAWKINS, GRADE 5

  I freaked when I saw it. Whoever planted that thing in the paper was a real rat. It wasn’t me. I figured it couldn’t have been Brenton. I wasn’t so sure about Judy or Kelsey.

  KELSEY DONNELLY, GRADE 5

  After the thing was in the paper, we had to have another stupid meeting. Sam tried to get one of us to confess, but nobody did. We decided that we couldn’t meet at recess anymore, and we couldn’t be seen talking to each other at school. Judy was totally paranoid that we were going to get caught.

  RONNIE TEOTWAWKI, GRADE 5

  Okay, okay, I was the one who tried to break into Brenton’s house. I had to find out what they were up to. What are you gonna do, throw me in jail? I didn’t cheat on my homework. And I had nothing to do with the item in the paper. You’ll have to pin that on somebody else.

  Look, I didn’t know if they had a secret machine or not. But it sounded believable. And if they did have a machine, it wasn’t fair to the rest of us. Why should I have to sit there for hours doing my homework by hand while somebody else can just push a button and have some machine do it for him? I wasn’t the only one who felt that way. I heard other kids talking about it.

  BRENTON’S MOM

  It was toward the end of March when a stranger knocked at our door one morning. Brenton was at school. This man asked if he could ask me a few questions. First it was simple questions like how many years have I lived in the house and things like that. Then he started asking me what computer equipment we had and what we do with it. I didn’t like the whole idea of this stranger asking me these questions and I asked him to kindly leave. I was frightened. I didn’t catch his name.

  KELSEY DONNELLY, GRADE 5

  We had to have another stupid meeting because some guy was snooping around Brenton’s house. I wondered if it was that Milner guy who was stalking me. We decided that we had to move Belch. I said I didn’t want it at my house. Judy said she didn’t want it at her house.
So we moved it to Snik’s house. What a pain it was carrying all that stuff. The computer must have weighed a ton. We had to put it in a wheelbarrow.

  Thinking back on it now, I noticed one weird thing that I never mentioned to anyone. When we unplugged the computer to move it to Snik’s house, that little red light didn’t go out.

  Chapter 8

  April

  BRENTON’S MOM

  I have never known my son to act irrationally. But I must say I was a bit shocked and angry when he gave away all his computer equipment. Sure, my husband gets it for free through his work. But even so, it was thousands of dollars worth of electronics. You don’t just give that away. And Brenton loved his computer.

  When I asked him why he gave it all away, he sort of shrugged and acted like I couldn’t possibly understand. That’s not like my son either. I thought he was going through one of those preteenage phases. Maybe this was his way of rebelling against his father. I should have punished him. Should have. You can always say that, can’t you? Only later did I find out the real reason he gave his computer away.

  SAM’S MOM

  I went upstairs to change the sheets one day and there was this fancy computer system sitting on Sam’s desk. It was much nicer than the old PC we got from the air force. I asked him where he got it and he said Brenton gave it to him. Well, that didn’t sound right. You don’t just give somebody something like that. I told Sam he had to give it back, but he said Brenton’s father got lots of free computers and he insisted that Brenton didn’t want it. I called up Mrs. Damagatchi and she said it was true. She didn’t know why Brenton didn’t want it anymore. We figured boys will be boys.

  SAM DAWKINS, GRADE 5

  My dad and I had a pretty hot game. My plan from the opening was to get my pieces onto good squares as soon as I could. I did that, and Dad actually made a few blunders. He let his rook get caught in front of his pawns so they couldn’t advance. By the time we reached the middle game, I was two pawns ahead. So I brought out my queen and let her have the run of the board.