Chapter Eight

Press

The Communications Department locked the printing room when they cancelled the newspaper-journalism program.  In true cheapskate fashion, they also cut off the power and phone lines.  Phil fed Nell this story, but failed to discourage her.  “Every problem is an opportunity!” she would say, every time Phil presented her a roadblock on their path to journalistic stardom.

The first problem was getting into the printing room.  Phil tried and failed to get the keys into the room, mostly due to his inability to lie about lost textbooks.  The staff of The Radical agreed that kicking in the door would be the fastest way to get in, but would leave the most evidence.  One evening, out in the hallway, Nell suggested, “Phil, why not just go over the wall?”

“What?”

“Over the wall.  You know that these walls aren’t load-bearing.”

“What does that mean?”

“They don’t support the ceiling.”

“You want me to crawl over the tiles!?”

Cullen was there, and said, “The tiles won’t hold your weight.  Try the air ducts.”

“The air ducts!”

Nell shouted, “Great idea!”

“Oh God…”

Cullen continued, “We’ll need to unscrew the nearest plenum, then Phil will have to kick another one out when he’s over the printing room.”

“You want me to destroy University property!?”

Zaid arrogantly said, “We’re already misusing some of their stuff.  Why not go ahead and destroy some, too?”

Phil head began to swim.  “I can’t!—I can’t believe you seriously telling me this!”

Nell replied, “Fine.  I’ll do it.  Culhwch get a screwdriver.”

He ran off, and returned a few minutes later, carrying a screw driver and a plenum.  “The opening is just around the corner.  I left the chair where I used it.”

Nell thanked him and disappeared in the direction that Cullen had come from.  The rest of them heard some scrambling, which moved from an area a couple a feet down the hall that Nell had gone down into, closer to them, and then more muffled.  They heard a banging sound, a crashing, and some shoes landing on tiled floor.

She unlocked the door, and let them in.  A surprised Helen remarked, “Wow.  I can’t believe this.  Now if we can just bribe some security guards…”

Cullen replied, “That won’t be necessary.  The Computer Science Department phreaked the video cameras months ago.”

Zaid, Helen, and Phil didn’t understand.  Zaid asked first, “Freaked?  Waddaya mean?”

Cullen answered, “Phreaking is where one eavesdrops on electromagnetic fields, generated by such things as monitors, cables, and so on.  Some of the people in the CS Department found out about this, and phreaked everyone out.”

Nell laughed.  “I think what he means is, is that they tapped into everyone’s computer screen and portable music players.”

Helen asked, “What do you mean, everyone’s?”

“Everyone who came within twenty feet of their classrooms and labs.”

“Yeah, but the CS Department is a quarter-mile away in a different wing.  How does that affect us here in Communications?”

“There are video cameras near the labs, too.  Some of them tapped into the signal, brought in something like a broadcaster, and began broadcasting a powerful enough signal to override the video camera.”

Zaid asked, “So, how long before they died cancer?”

Nell responded, “No one died.  They blew a fuse a couple seconds later, and rushed the equipment back into their cars while the University tried to restore power.”

Phil began to look very worried.  “I don’t remember the power going out.”

Nell looked at him reassuringly.  “This was last year, during the summer.  You probably didn’t have summer classes.  Anyway, before they blew a fuse, they had another phreaker stand near the security room, and phreak the monitors in there.  He confirmed that right before the fuse blew, the video camera that they targeted flickered, and showed a slightly snowy image of the video that they were trying to broadcast.”

Everyone responded with a “Cool!”

Nell smiled.  “Yep, and so over the past few months, right as security shift changes, they have managed to ‘flip a switch’ and jig all the cameras to show a static image of whatever they are supposed to be showing.  They can rotate which cameras to jig randomly, so that security doesn’t notice that the custodians never show up, or that the exact same cars park in the exact same spots every single night.”

Zaid looked at Nell suspiciously.  “How do you know all this?”

“I work-studied as a secretary one time, flirted with one of the security people, and he invited me over.  I noticed that their cameras didn’t match the image that I had when I left the garage to bring them donuts or whatever.”

“So…?”

“I told them.  They laughed at me, so I left.”

Helen still didn’t understand where Nell got her information.  “How did you run with the computer geeks?”

“I thought it was some video hack, so I went to this department, the Communications Department, but no one was there, so I walked over to the Computer Science Department, and there they were.”

“And?”

“That was it.”

Phil quit being shocked, opting for numbness.  “Great story.  How do we get power?”

Nell turned to Cullen.  “Did you flip the circuits?”

“Yes.”

Nell looked back at Phil.  “The custodians let the architect students have a key to the fuse box, in case they blow a fuse if they’re using power tools or whatever.  The school was too cheap to actually buy different locks for all the fuse boxes.”

Phil asked, “You can buy the exact same locks?”

“In some third world countries, yeah.”

Zaid began counting on her hand.  “So!  We’ve broken into and entered University property, actually destroyed University property, and are now stealing their services.”

Helen leaned over to Zaid.  “Think of it like this: we’ve all paid our tuition, and we pay city taxes, so in essence, this room belongs to us just as much as anyone else.”

“I’m sure somewhere in-”

Nell held up her hand.  “Pssh.  When you’re on the way to Hell, don’t bother quoting the Bible.”

“Great motivation.”

Nell began walking to a computer.  “Now that you’re motivated, at least, hopefully Phil is…”

Phil chimed.  “I…feel…nothing…”

“Now that Phil is a shell of his former self, he can do what he was trained to do, and have at it!”

Phil did just that.  He loaded the master copy of the newspaper issue into the computers, did whatever it was to send it to the printers, and ordered the rest of them to do miscellaneous tasks (check this, load that, make sure what’s-it is there…).

He pressed some keys, and the machines came to life.

Most of them were surprised by the machines loudness, and with Phil’s encouraging, they left.  Zaid asked, “What do we do now?”

Phil replied, “The machine somehow knows how much paper is in it, and will do all the printing and folding and stuff.  It’ll do its thing for a while, then I’ll come back and reload, and do it all over again.”

Helen asked, “Do you need our help?”

He shook his head.

“Do you want me to stay?”

Phil shrugged.  He was too tired, too stressed, and beyond fear that he was going to get caught.  “I want to be alone, actually.”

Helen smiled weakly.  “OK.”

He played around on the computer for a few hours, then reloaded the paper into the printers.  He read through one of the copies, seeing how it actually looked.  He had organized the whole layout.  It was pretty thin, since they had no advertisers and no paid staff.  Some of the articles were obviously amateurish, but considering the old paper, many students wouldn’t notice. 

The front page featured The Radical in a standard, Arial font, in all capital letters.  The front headline, “University Screws Students”, was tastefully controversial, and would last maybe an hour before someone in the administration began removing them.  The articles detailed a depressing account of misery and woe, thanks to the folks who ran the place.  You had the case of the student given the run-around with her SAT scores, you had the story of Phil and Cullen, and there were accounts of double-billing, secret fees, mandatory-this-or-that, mid-semester changes to the curriculum, and allegations of fraud, perjury, embezzlement, and one case of combined sodomy and statutory rape.  That last one was given its own spread on page three.

He wondered if any of it really mattered.  All five of them were graduating, so it’s not like they would have to pay tuition ever again, or get out of loans because the University that they went to was corrupt or incompetent.  He ultimately came down to just thinking about all the time that he put into his education, and now it didn’t matter.

Phil decided that he needed some chocolate.  He had no cash, and the vending machines always rejected his debit card.  He left the printing room unlocked, but closed the door.  He walked back to his car, and drove to a nearby gas station.  As he drove, he noticed that he was low on gas, and began to find someplace cheap.  He drove for ten miles, and found nothing cheaper than $1.93 per gallon.  He filled the car up, bought some candy, and left.

When he got back, he saw that Helen was pulling into a space.  It was now four o’clock in the morning.  They walked in silence, because Phil offered some of his chocolate to Helen, so they both chewed on the way over to the printing room.

They picked up the papers, and repeated the exercise of covering the entire University with papers.  They dropped them off on top of bins holding The San Antonio Current, in public seating areas, in front of large lecture halls, and anywhere people might hang out.

When they were finished, they slept in their cars.

Zaid joined San Antonio’s daily commute of horror, which involved three hours to get from her house near Boerne to the campus of the University of San Antonio, and another hour to find a parking space.  Then, hike about a half mile through the long, long corridors of the humungous Academic Center to reach her class.  She watched closely how other people regarded her, and each other.  She looked for signs that people were reading the paper (which they were) and being angry (which they weren’t).  She had a feeling that the market had been incorrectly targeted.  Why tell the students what they already knew?  She also knew that sometimes it took people to realize that they weren’t along in their sufferings, to make them do something about it.

Helen saw her, shouted, “Hi!” and ran to hug her.  “Isn’t it amazing that people are actually reading the paper!”

Zaid felt her excitement.  “Yeah!  This is great!  Can’t wait for the administration to find out!”

“What do you think they’ll do?”

“I hope they die of humiliation, but more likely, they’ll just fume and collect all the papers.  They’ll deny everything or make some excuse.”

Helen nodded.  “That’s what I would do.”

“Yeah, well, I need to make it to class, so bye-bye!”

“Bye!”

Zaid walked triumphantly to the nearest pile of newspapers, and picked one up. She made sure that she played the part of curious student, without saying a word. She pretended to read the paper as she walked into class. When she sat down, she saw maybe one out of ten people reading the paper. A few discussed it. The instructor walked in, and the atmosphere felt rifled. Zaid smiled as her observations told her that revolution was in the air.

Nell had a class the same time as Zaid, but it was a symposium, where students were invited to talk. The small class met a room with a single table, and all students sat around it. The bearded, bespectacled, thinning-haired professor asked the most dangerous question that he could have asked that day, “So, what’s on your minds?”

Instead of the canned groupthink that he always got, and expected, he got stammered comments about University-wide corruption.

Without really paying attention to anyone’s comments, he asked, “May I see the offending document?”

One the students scooted the paper across the table. As it slid, Nell tracked it with her eyes, not moving her head. The professor picked it up, and began reading. His eyebrows shot up. His face showed signs up rapidly scanning the text. He opened it up to reveal pages two and three. His mouth slowly opened as he saw the page-three sodomy spread. “I…need…to read…” He canceled his old thought, and brought in a question. He folded the paper, and slid it back in the direction from whence it came. He asked, “What do you think will come of this?”

From Nell’s point-of-view, of ignoring her classmates, the responses called for fire and brimstone upon the University, and some wanted their money back. When the class got too spirited, he held up his hands as to stop a tidal wave emanating from the table. She heard him ask, “Who do you think was responsible for this?”

Among the chatter, she stood up. “I did.”

The chatter stopped, and the professor looked at her waringly. “You’re joking, right?”

“No. I’m responsible for the paper.”

“What? Did you, you make all this up?”

“No, it’s all real.”

“You do realize that you could be charged with libel.”

“It’s not libel when it’s true.”

The silent class froze itself into locked attention with Nell and the professor. Nell didn’t raise her chin, or in anyway look arrogant or uppity at the situation. Indeed, she looked rather relaxed and calm. The professor looked confused. “If this is all true, why not go to the police?”

“Because the evidence wouldn’t have presented itself had we not done the newspaper.”

“We? There was more than one of you?”

“Yes.”

The professor paused, and thought for a moment. He understood Nell as being nearly willing to just say the names of all her accomplices, but he also knew that Nell was too smart for that. “I suggest that you don’t advertise your…participation in this stunt.”

“The paper will speak for itself.”

“What do you hope to achieve?”

“Revenge.”

The class laughed. The professor wanted to pierce through Nell’s obliqueness. “How? What kind of revenge?”

“I would think that humiliation would be enough, but if you look at the paper, I named names. All the interviews have names on them, both of the perp and victim.”

“You’re hoping to bring charges, by making this public.”

“I’m hoping for revenge, whatever form it takes.”

“But…why now? Why not wait until after you graduated?”

Nell smiled. “I didn’t have anything better to do.”