The Perfect Schedule?

Today is the day that schedules come out. Opening up your laptop, you quickly sign into Talos, preparing yourself for a long wait as the site loads—but somehow, the page opens up immediately. That’s strange. Normally, the site struggles when more than 12 people are on it at a time. Ignoring this, you examine your schedule. You read it over once, twice, three times, looking for that disastrous 10-floor hike or the name of that god-awful teacher everyone warned you about. You are prepared for, and are practically anticipating, disappointment, yet it never comes.

You got all the classes you wanted. You don’t have to run up more than three flights of stairs in a single passing. You’re especially excited about that senior-priority elective you got, despite being a mere sophomore. This is insane! Excitedly, you log onto Facebook to squeal about the good news to your friends. They’ll be so jealous. However, looking through your messages, you see nothing but excitement. Everyone else, it seems, has gotten their perfect schedules as well.

No one is complaining? On schedule day? Something is up. You’re gonna go to the first day of school and everything will be chaos because everyone’s schedules are wrong or something. There’s no way, right?

On the first day of school, schedule in hand, you walk to your third period class. Nothing’s gone wrong yet. Maybe everything is alright? You find your classroom unnervingly quickly and look around at your fellow students. You spot two of your friends, who wave for you to sit with them. Your besties have ended up in the same class as you, and in adjacent seats! As you three squeal about your insane luck, something catches your eye in the doorway. It’s a man wearing a black jacket and oval-shaped sunglasses. He’s staring directly at you. Then he disappears.

You look at your friends. Concerned, you ask them, “Did you see that guy?”

Your friends shake their heads. You look around the room. Everyone else is going about their business. You were the only one to see him.

Just then, your phone buzzes. You take it from your pocket and, to your horror, watch the screen turn black. Is it broken? No, something else is happening. Green text rolls across it.

GO TO THE HALF FLOOR

You jump out of your seat and begin heading toward the door. Your phone buzzes again.

NOT NOW LIKE DURING A FREE DON’T SKIP CLASS

Scared, you sit back down. How did they know you were going to skip?

Class passes in a flash. Afterward, you run down to the half floor and look around. It’s devoid of people, except for that same strange man. You breathe a sigh of relief, knowing the half floor-dwelling freshmen are gone, and approach the man. He says, “Hello. I’m sure you have many questions.”

Hesitantly, you respond, “Not really. I’m just confused about how everything is working so well. I mean, obviously, I’m grateful, but—”

The man interrupts. “No, you’re right to be suspicious. Realistically, all of your schedules would be hot garbage. There is no perfect schedule. This world isn’t real.”

You pause. “What?”

“Have you heard of the Matrix?”

“That movie with Keanu Reeves and the funny bullets?”

“Precisely. That’s… Yeah. You’re there, like, right now. The Matrix. You’re in the Matrits— Matrix. The computer’s been programmed to give you a perfect life and everything you want to make you want to stay in the simulation so the robot overlords can keep draining your body for energy.”

“What?”

“I’m here to offer a choice.” The man presents to you two capsules: one red and one blue. “Take the red one and return to reality with its god-awful schedules. Or take the blue one, forget everything, and enjoy your life.”

Immediately, you lunge for the blue pill. Concerned, the man says, “Whoa, hold on. Aren’t you gonna, like, think this through first? Don’t you want to see how far this rabbit hole goes?”

You shake your head. “No way. I’m not risking having to scale 10 floors in five minutes. Those robots can parasitically steal as much energy as they want. Just let me keep my two frees in a row.”

Before the man can stop you, you throw the blue pill down your throat and swallow it. The strange man fades from your vision as the fourth period bell rings. You don’t remember what you were just doing, so you look at your schedule again. Two frees? Slay! You turn around and head toward the bridge, blissfully unaware of your phone buzzing in your backpack.