Discovering Alien Tech
Copyright© 2025 by GMet
Chapter 9
Monday morning, I checked on who made the hockey team by heading to the front lobby after arriving at school. The list was broken up by position so I looked under the centres and found my name along with four others. The two guys I played with, Tim and Marcus, were on the left and right wingers’ list but those were the only guys I knew by name. At the bottom of the lists, it did say that the team would be practicing Tuesday and Friday going forward, starting tomorrow. After homeroom, I went to English class and Riley ignored me. It was the same in History and she didn’t wait around for me after either class either. I worked on programming during lunch and had a boring afternoon in how to study/write an essay, French and shop classes again. I was a bit surprised when a couple groups of girls said, ‘Hi Ben’ as they passed me in the hall, but I just replied back with a ‘Hi’ and continued walking. While I wanted a girlfriend at some point, I definitely didn’t need the drama it would bring right now.
I made some supper for the three of us once I got home while working hard at the programming while it cooked. After giving them the minimal scoop on my day, Base and I spent the next four hours on the sports game, getting a lot done. I was exhausted when I finally went to bed.
Tuesday’s homeroom brought something new, a guidance appointment during my lunch hour. Science and math were boring as usual and I took another route to the front lobby where the guidance department had offices next to the administration offices. I opened the door and found a small waiting area with three offices off of it with all the doors shut. Soon after I sat down on one of the three available chairs, a girl and another guy showed up, and sat down in the other chairs.
Base sub-vocalized, “Ben, I’m reading video cameras in this room and in the three offices.”
I responded, “See if you can hack them and find out where the video is stored. It would be interesting to see what they are recording and why.”
“On it,” he responded.
A few minutes later the door on the left opened and a guy my age exited the office and went out the main door. The male counsellor came to his door and read off a list on a clipboard.
“John Abbott?” he asked.
“That’s me,” the other guy said as he stood up.
The door quickly closed behind him as the girl looked over at me.
“You’re Ben Addler, right?” she asked.
“Yes,” I answered.
“Congratulations on making the hockey team,” she said.
“Thanks,” I replied.
“I’m Chase Anthony,” she continued.
“Nice to meet you, Chase,” I replied.
“I’m pleased to meet you, Ben,” she said with a smile. “You’re new to Dryden, right?”
“Yes, moved up from Toronto in the summer,” I told her. “You?”
“Been here all my life,” she replied. “Another four years before we can leave here for better things, unfortunately. I’m surprised you and your family moved here. There’s not much going on around here.”
She was pretty but I wasn’t going to explain our family’s decisions to her, especially when the conversation was being recorded. Luckily, I was saved from answering by the middle office door opening, letting out a girl. The counsellor, this time a woman, read off my name so I got up and followed her back into her office. She was a blonde woman, probably in her mid-twenties from what I could tell, with a nice figure in a green dress that clung to her body without looking trashy.
“Ben, I’m Miss Shannon, I’ll be your counsellor this year,” she said as she moved around her desk and sat down.
“It’s nice to meet you, Miss Shannon,” I responded.
“As it is to meet you, Mr. Addler,” she replied. “So, you have English, Canadian history, how to study and write essays, French and shop on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, and science, math, geography, computer studies and phys-ed on Tuesdays and Thursdays. How is it going so far?”
“Boring actually, I’ve read all the textbooks and done a sampling of all questions at the back of the chapters so I’m ready to test out of grade nine,” I told her.
She looked at me for a few seconds before saying, “Are you joking right now?”
“Absolutely not,” I told her. “None of the classes are challenging at all. I’d be happy to write any tests for all of my grade nine subjects and beyond to prove it. The more subjects I can test out of, the more time I can spend on the other subjects so I can test out of those as well.”
Miss Shannon responded, “I’ve only been a guidance counsellor for a couple of years and haven’t run into this before so I’ll have to talk with the department head and probably the vice-principal and then the principal before we go any further. I’d like to actually test you myself before I even approach them on this so I know you’re not pulling a fast one on me.”
“Understood, I know it won’t happen overnight,” I agreed. “If you can get a hold of any tests or exams for each subject; well, any of the normal subjects to start, I can write them during lunch or after school over the next few days. Shop and phys-ed and the how to study classes will be a little harder to test out of but I can show my proficiency with the shop equipment by making something much harder than what he has us doing. I just made the hockey team so that could possibly stand in for phys-ed. The results for English and history could show how well I can write an essay.”
“If nothing else, you’ve definitely thought about this and have a good plan,” Miss Shannon noted. “This won’t be easy to get done however.”
“Understood,” I responded. “Anything not the status quo will always be hard to get changed. My only alternative would be to write the GED and then get some sort of disposition to start University early.”
“I’ll work on finding some tests and schedule some time for you to write them,” she assured me. “Let’s move on. What else is going on with you? Any clubs or teams beside the hockey team?”
“I’ve been to two Robotics club meetings but the grade twelve leader of the team want to build something that is already being done at universities – a robot nurse. The robot I built at home and showed in a video to them is already more sophisticated than that but they said my proposed designs were too complicated. I’ll probably drop out and concentrate on my builds at home.”
“You built a robot at home and showed a video in class?” she asked. “Didn’t the teacher involved look at it and step in?”
“He wasn’t at either meeting so no,” I answered.
“I’ll speak with him and see what he says,” she told me. “Having one built already is impressive as well as making the hockey team as a freshman. That’s not usually done from what I know of either.”
I just shrugged and didn’t reply.
“Alright,” she said after a few seconds. “Anything else we should talk about?”
“Not from my side,” I replied.
“No bullying, any girl issues, problems on the bus, at home?” she rattled off a few items.
“No, all good,” I told her.
“You’re a confident young man, Mr. Addler,” Miss Shannon stated.
“I don’t know about confident, but I am driven,” I responded. “Life is too short to waste time sitting in class listening to someone regurgitate a textbook I can read in a couple of days.”
“Why don’t you give me your cell number so I can contact you on when I can get some tests scheduled,” she suggested.
I got my cell out and showed her my number, trying to keep it from being seen by cameras that I couldn’t see.
“Alright, have a good afternoon, I’ll be in touch Mr. Addler,” Miss Shannon said, clearly dismissing me.
“You as well, Miss Shannon,” I replied and got up.
I left the room and walked out of the offices, heading to the cafeteria for a quick bite. I barely had enough time to eat before I had to get to my next class. After school, Dad picked me up and drove me to the rink, dropping me off instead of coming in as he had to head back to work. I did tell him about the guidance counselling meeting along the way. Once inside, I got dressed and joined a few of the guys on the ice to stretch and warmup. We got to shoot on the goalies for a bit before the coaches called us over to the benches. There was a big white board with forward lines and defensive pairings as well as the initial starting goalie. At the bottom was the five non-starters that we would carry as well as the backup goalie. I was slotted in as the second line centre with Tim Evans as my left winger and Marcus Albright as my right winger from last week’s practice.
“Alright, congratulations on making the team,” Coach Sanders started off. “As you can see, we have tentative forward lines and defensive pairing picked as well as our starting goalie. This is just a starting point; the line combinations and pairings are not set in stone and neither are the current numbers. This will change so work hard and strive to improve. Any questions so far?”
No one had any so he continued, “Official games don’t start to November, but we have lined up games with the younger players on the Ice Dogs as well as a couple of the closer school teams to get some live game experience. Our first game will be a week from this Friday with the Ice Dogs so we don’t have much time to prepare. Okay, Coach Tretiak will take the defencemen to my left and forwards go with Coach Cunningham on my right while I will talk with our goalies to start.”
Coach Cunningham had us get into our lines and then said, “Okay, we have five lines with four playing in each game. This isn’t house league so only the best lines play in the game while the final one watches from the stands. Hopefully, that will motivate everyone to play their best at all times. Obviously, there will be injuries or absences so I’m sure everyone will get into games sometime during the year.”
After looking around, he continued, “We have some new players this year that don’t know our system so we’ll have to get them up to speed quickly. We usually have two scoring lines, one shutdown line and a physical line, and they’re usually in order of line one to line four. That is a loose interpretation of things as lines can excel in more than one category. We’ve assigned you to a line based on what we know of each player or what we’ve seen in the tryouts so far. As you know, we don’t always get to put the right line out due to where we’re playing so you all have to play defense and score goals, no matter what line you’re assigned to. No person or line is one-dimensional or they simply won’t get on the ice. Understood?”
“Yes coach!” some of the players replied.
“I asked if you understood?” Coach Cunningham shouted.
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