Clark couldn't be more bored in math class. It wasn't that he didn't like math, or that he wasn't good at it. He could finish an average geometry problem in the time it took an average human to read a sentence. He always got perfect scores, and actually had to slow down when taking tests so as not to arouse suspicion.
In Smallville, he'd spend most of his time in math class staring out the large windows that were placed in every classroom in the school. Here at Metropolis High, however, Clark was stuck in a classroom with no windows, and nothing to do but listen to his teacher drone on.
"So that's all I think that's all the new material we'll go over today," Mr. Frank said. The students breathed a simultaneous sigh of relief, and hurriedly began reaching for their bags. "No, no, wait a minute. I didn't say we were done for today," Frank said with a slight smile. "We should do some review. After all, we do have a test coming up in a couple weeks; we might as well take this time to make sure we've all got everything down thus far. So! Any questions? Anything you're unclear on? Anything at all?"
A tall boy who wore a letterman jacket and slouched back in his seat responded. "Yeah, I've got a question."
"Yes, Nelson?"
"Why do we have to learn math anyway?"
The room had a few muffled giggles.
Mr. Frank relaxed a bit as he sat on the front of his desk. He spoke calmly, almost like a father explaining the facts of life to his children. The students actually felt somewhat like he was treating them like his children, which made them slightly uncomfortable.
"Quite simply, math is everything. Every single thing in the universe can be quantified with math. To be even more specific, everything in the universe is math. It's a series of facts and informational existences that not only define the world and everything in it, but actually create and sustain it."
Frank could see that he'd lost his students somewhere around "informational existences." He began again.
"It's like this: everything in the world can be defined by numbers, algorithms, and calculations. not just things that we can see and understand in a concrete way, but even things that we have yet to fully comprehend. The keys to life and death may be held within some unknown equation that one of us may yet discover."
The entire class was fixated on him, and every face had an expression of either "wow," "you're crazy," or "what the hell did he just say?"
Clark, meanwhile, was only halfway paying attention. His eyes were shut as he listened intently to something else. He could hear a gathering of adults a hundred feet down the hall, in the Teachers' Lounge. They were talking about something that Clark could only hear small bits of—after all, his super-hearing wasn't very precise, and he had a lot of trouble distinguishing different sounds from one another.
"How could this have..."
"Where did..."
"...harmed any students yet?"
Clark's eyes shot open. Harmed any students?
He listened closely, doing his best to aurally "scan" the building. He heard nothing out of the ordinary: no commotion; no loud noises. Whatever was going on was apparently not in this school.
He was getting frustrated with his hearing and its imprecision, when finally he had an idea. If he focused his hearing very specifically, he might be able to pick out the humming electronic noise of a TV speaker. After a few seconds, he found it, clear as a Kansas summer sky.
"Live from Metropolis, the Excelsior Academy—a famed private school for the wealthy—has been taken over by armed gunmen. All of the building's occupants are being held hostage, and, while the captors have made no demands as of yet, it is believed that they are holding individual students for ransom, including the heirs to the Luthor, Queen, and Wayne fortunes."
No comments:
Post a Comment