| THE LORELEI SIGNAL |
.
| Written by Rena Sherwood / Artwork by Lee Kuruganti |
| Make a donation to this writer |
| Cataclysm Class |
“Today, class,” Sister Yoko Benjamin announced, “we’re going to learn about martyrs. Martyrs are very inspiring to us,
for they are models of selfless devotion to God. Jane—get that out of your nose. Now, there are martyrs from all sorts of
countries and all sorts of times. The first recorded Catholic martyr was St. Stephen—yes, Dinah, you needn’t keep
waving both of your hands like that. One will suffice. What is it?”
“I hate to interrupt you, Sister,” eight year old Dinah piped up, her hands still in the air, “but the word is pronounced
murders.”
Matthias bit his lip to keep in his laughter but it still escaped. He faked a coughing fit to cover up his unprofessional
editorial comment. Sister Yoko Benjamin wasn’t fooled. She shot Matthias a look that would definitely be pronounced
murderous. She had made it quite clear in September to him that any teacher’s assistant assigned to her from the state was
to back her up at all times.
Matthias had no idea catechism was still being taught. He expected reading, elementary holographic genetic sculpture, even
finger painting but not a catechism class. He glanced up at the digital scrolling readout atop their syntho-whiteboard. The
Comic Sans font comfortingly read: “October 13, 2090.” He was still in the twenty-first century. He looked back at
Sister's gray and white habit. Surely all this religion stuff was too irrelevant for a modern American public elementary
school. Last month was Hebrew month, now it was Catholic month. At least this month, he didn’t have to explain
circumcision to a room full of eight year olds. He couldn’t wait for Atheist month in June.
He caught Marco looking out at the cloud forest slowly drifting by the windows, and cleared his throat. Marco quickly
peeked at Matthias, realized he was being watched, and then grudgingly looked at Sister.
Matthias leaned back and felt the familiar hum of the zeppelin engines. All schoolrooms were aloft for safety reasons.
Schools were a fleet of zeppelins, so if one went down not all of the students, teachers or supplies were endangered. A
zeppelin could be raised and lowered easily depending on the weather, giving the children ample experience in flying,
which they would need later in life, especially if they decided to be teachers. Now, that was practical teaching—unlike this
catechism class.
Marco raised his hand. Matthias had another coughing fit while Sister Yoko Benjamin braced herself. Marco’s questions
always needed bracing against. “Sister,” Marco whined, “God created everything, right? So what created God?”
“God always was, Marco.”
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“It’s a mystery, Marco. That’s why mysteries are called mysteries.”
“So did God have to kill someone before He could be God?”
“What? Of course not! Where’d you get that idea?”
“You said it’s a mystery, and all mystery stories have killings and martyrs and stuff in them.”
“Murders,” Sister corrected, then took a deep breath and seemed to count to ten. She was admirably trying to explain the
meaning of the word mystery when the turbulence alarms went off.
Matthias made sure all thirty-three students had their safety belts on when the zeppelin suddenly tipped sideways, sending
anything not belted down smacking into the windows. The children screamed in delight, “Do it again!”
“Say your Hail Mary’s, children, while I take a look at the altimeter readings, pesky things.” Sister Yoko Benjamin sighed,
punching up the automatic stabilizer backups. “Well, seems a suicidal helium balloon struck the school’s side. I think it’s
caught in the fuselage.”
“Where did a balloon come from?” Matthias babbled. “They’ve been illegal for years!”
“That has never stopped people from keeping them. At least no poor sea turtle will eat this balloon.”
“Why would a sea turtle eat a balloon?” Marco demanded.
“Because they look and apparently taste like jellyfish, their usual food,” Sister answered. “Keep up with the Hail Mary’s,
class, sounds very good.”
“Sister, do turtles have souls?” Marco asked.
Sister ignored that.
“Shoes have soles!” George, the class clown, replied instead.
Sister rapped her knuckles on the desk. That quieted them. She removed magnetic boots from the bottom drawer and
slipped them on, frowning at her read-out screen. She crooked a craggy finger at Matthias while the room shuddered and
the lights flickered.
The children started to gasp. They had finally cottoned on that something was happening.
Matthias unbuckled. He grimly worked his way up to Sister, hauling himself from one bolted desk to another. “We’re
ascending,” she told him. “The computer keeps saying we are level, but look out the window.”
“Shit!”
“Language, Matthias.”
“Sorry, Sister. If only the county could raise our budget, we could update these sensors and stop going through this.
Where’s the manual override?”
“I’ve hit it already.” She did so again, but nothing changed. A window on the computer screen popped up, reading “All
systems normal. Have you remembered to take attendance?”
“Can you communicate with the other classrooms?” Matthias asked desperately. “I think Miss Linder has the emergency
manual print out.”
“What’s going on!” cried a child.
“Are we crashing?” yelled another.
“Hooray!” George cried.
While Matthias punched out an emergency signal to Miss Linder’s zeppelin, Sister Yoko Benjamin serenely calmed the
children. “This would be a good time to song a song, children. Let’s sing Amazing Grace.”
The kids loved to sing. They loved to try and sing as loud as they possibly could. This was still great fun, no matter what
their seating position. Matthias strained to hear Miss Linder read from her emergency print outs. He longed to tell the
raggedy choir to “shuteth upeth”, but did not dare to face Sister afterwards.
“The easiest and fastest way of fixing the nav sensors is to shut off the computer and reboot,” said Miss Linder.
“Wait,” Matthias said. “You don’t mean turn off EVERYTHING?”
“Yes. For three full seconds.”
“Won’t we plummet out of the sky?”
“Only for three seconds. You’re high enough not to hit the ground.” Miss Linder chided. “I’ve notified the fire department.
Give it a minute and they’re sure to be there with foam rubber vats under you just in case. But you better not wait too long
to reboot or you’ll all black out from the altitude change.”
Matthias rolled his eyes and wondered why he had to choose teaching as a career. Lion-taming was surely safer and
probably had a better dental plan. “Okay. Will do. Thanks.”
“Have a nice day.”
“Sister,” Matthias said into her ear as best as he could, “I’m going to have to completely shut down the zeppelin for three
seconds, and then reboot.”
“And that will fix everything?”
“Um, theoretically.”
“In other words, it’s our only choice.”
“Correct.”
“Things happen for a reason, my son,” Sister smiled in that annoyingly calm way of hers. Matthias thought the situation
called for blind screaming panic and it seemed obscene that Sister just kept smiling. “Do not shut it down before I say so.”
She clapped her hands. “Children! We will talk about faith all school year. Does anyone know what faith is?”
“It’s a word!” George called.
“It’s a firm belief,” Dinah answered, “despite all proof.”
“Very good, Dinah! Would you like to learn about faith, children?”
“Yes!” they cried simultaneously in the way all eight year olds seem able to do.
Matthias would’ve wiped the sweat from his face if he hadn’t needed one hand to grasp the desk and the other to get to
the computer. Shouldn’t Sister be telling them about where the exits were or what to do should those goofy little oxygen
masks dropped from the ceiling?
Instead, she asked, “What do you have faith in?”
“That Jane has cooties!” George answered.
“That George is a total jerk face!” Jane snapped.
“SERIOUSLY, now, class! What do you firmly believe, beyond all proof?”
They paused. Dinah said softly, “My Mom loves me.”
Marco couldn’t be left out. “Asking questions is fun!”
“I like squirrels!” another cried.
“Very good, class! Matthias has faith in this school, don’t you, Matthias?”
“Uhh—yes, Sister.”
“Turn off the computer now, my son.”
BEEP.
They did indeed plummet out of the sky in darkness that reached into their mouths and threatened to throttle the very last
breath hidden at the bottom of their bellies. They fell too fast for the children to scream. Matthias, wanting the luxury of
fainting, grimly counted aloud, “ONE MISSISSIPPI! TWO MISSISSIPPI! THREE MISSISSIPPI!” He jabbed the reboot
key.
The free fall stopped. The darkness released their bellies and vanished.
Matthias was stunned. It worked! The sensors were all back on line, reading that bits of illegal helium balloon were
clogging sensitive neuralways and recommended immediate landing. The zeppelin had returned to its usual upright and
locked position.
The kids gasped, coughed and a few turned green.
Marco gasped, “Way cooooool!!!!”
“Very good, children,” Sister Yoko Benjamin said. “You all get gold stickers today. And, due to a sudden technical glitch,
you will be sent home early today.”
“Holy crap,” gasped George. “You mean there is a God?”
Sister said, “That’s not for anyone to tell you except for your own faith that lies deep in the very center of your heart.
Now, why don’t you color in your workbooks while Matthias and I clean up the vomit? Okay?”
“Okay,” they said, and again somehow said it in unison.
Matthias drew in a shaky breath and gratefully wobbled to the cleaning closet to molecule sanitize the floor. At least things
were back to normal. Perhaps that was why Matthias loved teaching so—he had faith in it.
for they are models of selfless devotion to God. Jane—get that out of your nose. Now, there are martyrs from all sorts of
countries and all sorts of times. The first recorded Catholic martyr was St. Stephen—yes, Dinah, you needn’t keep
waving both of your hands like that. One will suffice. What is it?”
“I hate to interrupt you, Sister,” eight year old Dinah piped up, her hands still in the air, “but the word is pronounced
murders.”
Matthias bit his lip to keep in his laughter but it still escaped. He faked a coughing fit to cover up his unprofessional
editorial comment. Sister Yoko Benjamin wasn’t fooled. She shot Matthias a look that would definitely be pronounced
murderous. She had made it quite clear in September to him that any teacher’s assistant assigned to her from the state was
to back her up at all times.
Matthias had no idea catechism was still being taught. He expected reading, elementary holographic genetic sculpture, even
finger painting but not a catechism class. He glanced up at the digital scrolling readout atop their syntho-whiteboard. The
Comic Sans font comfortingly read: “October 13, 2090.” He was still in the twenty-first century. He looked back at
Sister's gray and white habit. Surely all this religion stuff was too irrelevant for a modern American public elementary
school. Last month was Hebrew month, now it was Catholic month. At least this month, he didn’t have to explain
circumcision to a room full of eight year olds. He couldn’t wait for Atheist month in June.
He caught Marco looking out at the cloud forest slowly drifting by the windows, and cleared his throat. Marco quickly
peeked at Matthias, realized he was being watched, and then grudgingly looked at Sister.
Matthias leaned back and felt the familiar hum of the zeppelin engines. All schoolrooms were aloft for safety reasons.
Schools were a fleet of zeppelins, so if one went down not all of the students, teachers or supplies were endangered. A
zeppelin could be raised and lowered easily depending on the weather, giving the children ample experience in flying,
which they would need later in life, especially if they decided to be teachers. Now, that was practical teaching—unlike this
catechism class.
Marco raised his hand. Matthias had another coughing fit while Sister Yoko Benjamin braced herself. Marco’s questions
always needed bracing against. “Sister,” Marco whined, “God created everything, right? So what created God?”
“God always was, Marco.”
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“It’s a mystery, Marco. That’s why mysteries are called mysteries.”
“So did God have to kill someone before He could be God?”
“What? Of course not! Where’d you get that idea?”
“You said it’s a mystery, and all mystery stories have killings and martyrs and stuff in them.”
“Murders,” Sister corrected, then took a deep breath and seemed to count to ten. She was admirably trying to explain the
meaning of the word mystery when the turbulence alarms went off.
Matthias made sure all thirty-three students had their safety belts on when the zeppelin suddenly tipped sideways, sending
anything not belted down smacking into the windows. The children screamed in delight, “Do it again!”
“Say your Hail Mary’s, children, while I take a look at the altimeter readings, pesky things.” Sister Yoko Benjamin sighed,
punching up the automatic stabilizer backups. “Well, seems a suicidal helium balloon struck the school’s side. I think it’s
caught in the fuselage.”
“Where did a balloon come from?” Matthias babbled. “They’ve been illegal for years!”
“That has never stopped people from keeping them. At least no poor sea turtle will eat this balloon.”
“Why would a sea turtle eat a balloon?” Marco demanded.
“Because they look and apparently taste like jellyfish, their usual food,” Sister answered. “Keep up with the Hail Mary’s,
class, sounds very good.”
“Sister, do turtles have souls?” Marco asked.
Sister ignored that.
“Shoes have soles!” George, the class clown, replied instead.
Sister rapped her knuckles on the desk. That quieted them. She removed magnetic boots from the bottom drawer and
slipped them on, frowning at her read-out screen. She crooked a craggy finger at Matthias while the room shuddered and
the lights flickered.
The children started to gasp. They had finally cottoned on that something was happening.
Matthias unbuckled. He grimly worked his way up to Sister, hauling himself from one bolted desk to another. “We’re
ascending,” she told him. “The computer keeps saying we are level, but look out the window.”
“Shit!”
“Language, Matthias.”
“Sorry, Sister. If only the county could raise our budget, we could update these sensors and stop going through this.
Where’s the manual override?”
“I’ve hit it already.” She did so again, but nothing changed. A window on the computer screen popped up, reading “All
systems normal. Have you remembered to take attendance?”
“Can you communicate with the other classrooms?” Matthias asked desperately. “I think Miss Linder has the emergency
manual print out.”
“What’s going on!” cried a child.
“Are we crashing?” yelled another.
“Hooray!” George cried.
While Matthias punched out an emergency signal to Miss Linder’s zeppelin, Sister Yoko Benjamin serenely calmed the
children. “This would be a good time to song a song, children. Let’s sing Amazing Grace.”
The kids loved to sing. They loved to try and sing as loud as they possibly could. This was still great fun, no matter what
their seating position. Matthias strained to hear Miss Linder read from her emergency print outs. He longed to tell the
raggedy choir to “shuteth upeth”, but did not dare to face Sister afterwards.
“The easiest and fastest way of fixing the nav sensors is to shut off the computer and reboot,” said Miss Linder.
“Wait,” Matthias said. “You don’t mean turn off EVERYTHING?”
“Yes. For three full seconds.”
“Won’t we plummet out of the sky?”
“Only for three seconds. You’re high enough not to hit the ground.” Miss Linder chided. “I’ve notified the fire department.
Give it a minute and they’re sure to be there with foam rubber vats under you just in case. But you better not wait too long
to reboot or you’ll all black out from the altitude change.”
Matthias rolled his eyes and wondered why he had to choose teaching as a career. Lion-taming was surely safer and
probably had a better dental plan. “Okay. Will do. Thanks.”
“Have a nice day.”
“Sister,” Matthias said into her ear as best as he could, “I’m going to have to completely shut down the zeppelin for three
seconds, and then reboot.”
“And that will fix everything?”
“Um, theoretically.”
“In other words, it’s our only choice.”
“Correct.”
“Things happen for a reason, my son,” Sister smiled in that annoyingly calm way of hers. Matthias thought the situation
called for blind screaming panic and it seemed obscene that Sister just kept smiling. “Do not shut it down before I say so.”
She clapped her hands. “Children! We will talk about faith all school year. Does anyone know what faith is?”
“It’s a word!” George called.
“It’s a firm belief,” Dinah answered, “despite all proof.”
“Very good, Dinah! Would you like to learn about faith, children?”
“Yes!” they cried simultaneously in the way all eight year olds seem able to do.
Matthias would’ve wiped the sweat from his face if he hadn’t needed one hand to grasp the desk and the other to get to
the computer. Shouldn’t Sister be telling them about where the exits were or what to do should those goofy little oxygen
masks dropped from the ceiling?
Instead, she asked, “What do you have faith in?”
“That Jane has cooties!” George answered.
“That George is a total jerk face!” Jane snapped.
“SERIOUSLY, now, class! What do you firmly believe, beyond all proof?”
They paused. Dinah said softly, “My Mom loves me.”
Marco couldn’t be left out. “Asking questions is fun!”
“I like squirrels!” another cried.
“Very good, class! Matthias has faith in this school, don’t you, Matthias?”
“Uhh—yes, Sister.”
“Turn off the computer now, my son.”
BEEP.
They did indeed plummet out of the sky in darkness that reached into their mouths and threatened to throttle the very last
breath hidden at the bottom of their bellies. They fell too fast for the children to scream. Matthias, wanting the luxury of
fainting, grimly counted aloud, “ONE MISSISSIPPI! TWO MISSISSIPPI! THREE MISSISSIPPI!” He jabbed the reboot
key.
The free fall stopped. The darkness released their bellies and vanished.
Matthias was stunned. It worked! The sensors were all back on line, reading that bits of illegal helium balloon were
clogging sensitive neuralways and recommended immediate landing. The zeppelin had returned to its usual upright and
locked position.
The kids gasped, coughed and a few turned green.
Marco gasped, “Way cooooool!!!!”
“Very good, children,” Sister Yoko Benjamin said. “You all get gold stickers today. And, due to a sudden technical glitch,
you will be sent home early today.”
“Holy crap,” gasped George. “You mean there is a God?”
Sister said, “That’s not for anyone to tell you except for your own faith that lies deep in the very center of your heart.
Now, why don’t you color in your workbooks while Matthias and I clean up the vomit? Okay?”
“Okay,” they said, and again somehow said it in unison.
Matthias drew in a shaky breath and gratefully wobbled to the cleaning closet to molecule sanitize the floor. At least things
were back to normal. Perhaps that was why Matthias loved teaching so—he had faith in it.
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