Excerpt: The Guerrilla Poet

The mind engaged, the student learns
With the fruit of knowledge the psyche burns
Abandon hope should learning stop
In place of fire the mind will rot.
- Alan Porter, the Guerrilla Poet

Excitement filled my very veins as I sat in my final class for the day. The most anticipated class of my educational career. Like every other seventeen year old in my school, today I would start my indoctrination into the mysteries of Writing.
The classroom door opened and Mrs. Filiman walked in, followed by a security guard with a metal case in his large hand.

"Today you will start your education in the Written Word. The curriculum we will be using was developed by The Office for the Regulation of the Acceptable Usage of the Written Word to enable you to learn without being a danger to yourselves or others. To that end you will be partaking in a series of exercises that will safely teach you this skill. There will be no deviation from the course materials. The consequences for any infractions will be quite severe."

Mrs. Filiman stopped and glared at the class for a moment. Then feeling that we had been warned enough ,she turned to the guard and gave him a small nod.
The guard pulled a small key out of his shirt that was attached to a chain that looped around his neck. Lifting the chain off of his head, he inserted the key in the lock of the case.

I held my breath as I watched this, and the rest of my classmates must have as well because the room was deathly quiet. I could even hear the click of the lock releasing as the guard turned the key. He released the latches and opened the case. i leaned forward in my seat to get a better look inside the case.

Set in protective foam was a number of styluses. Next to that was a pad of paper. I could tell that something was printed on the paper but I was too far away to tell what it was. Mrs. Filiman cleared her throat and our attention returned to her.

"I will call out each of your names, and you will come up to the desk and retrieve a stylus and a piece of paper. When you return to your seat you will wait for further instructions before proceeding."

She gave the class her glare again, then started calling off names. I sat on the edge of my seat, my toes tapping out a nervous beat on the hard floor.

"Porter, Alan."

I sprang to my feet with such excitement that the security guard started and put his hand on the butt of the gun he wore holstered on his right hip. I walked slowly to the desk to avoid spooking him further and stopped in front of the case. I picked up a stylus and held it in my hand. It was sleek, slim, and fit my hand perfectly. I lifted a piece of paper from the pad, and it came off with a slight ripping sound. I raised my eyes to meet the guard's, and I saw his grip tighten on his gun. I wondered what he thought I was going to do.

I returned to my seat and inspected the stylus. I admired the crisp lines of its octogon shape, the slope to the point where the ink was dispensed, and the rounded plastic piece that capped the other end. The stylus naturally slid into the writing posture in my hand. When Mrs. Filiman showed us how to hold it, I was pleased that my stylus and I had come to the same position naturally.

"Mrs. Filiman," came the voice of Suzie, a teenage girl a couple rows in front of me. "What good will it do to learn how to Write if we don't understand the words. Shouldn't we be learning to read first?"

Like most kids my age we had no idea what most words meant. I had figured out a few based on comments my parents had made, but for the most part Words were a mystery. So while I understood what caused Suzie to ask her question, I cringed as Mrs. Filiman's baleful gaze fell on her.

"Young lady, as I said earlier this course was developed by experts in the Written Word to teach you this material in the safest manner possible. Are you an expert?"

The teacher glared at Suzie until the teenage girl finally gave a small shake of her head.

"I thought not," Mrs. Filiman sniffed primly, and turned away from Suzie.

"There will be no discussion about, and no questioning the course materials. The Office has been successfully controlling the output of the Written Word for the last 70 years, and their expertise is not to be questioned."

She glared again at Suzie and I felt sorry for her, even though she tends to be a busy body.

"You will take you papers and write the letters you see in the boxes below. Keep your entries in the boxes, and complete everything on the page. You may begin now."

I had been so enthralled by the stylus I had neglected the paper, even though it was every bit as much a novelty. In a society where most people do not write, paper is a guarded commodity. I lifted it to my face and inhaled the dry scent, then set it back on my desk. The alphabet was printed several times on the paper with a black bordered box under each letter. Each box was far enough apart that I could not accidentally create a Word.

I began to write the shapes in the boxes. Writing with the stylus felt very natural, but I was surprised that I had some trouble at first with the letters "R" and "S". The rest of the letters came pretty easily, and by the second time through I pretty much had the forms down. I started on the third set of letters and was writing a "B" when a Word I had seen somewhere popped into into my mind. "Behold" floated in my mind's eye, and with it came an odd pressure. It's hard to explain, but it seemed to be behind the letters. At that moment I wanted nothing more than to write that Word.

As if it had a mind of its own the stylus completed the "B" and started on an "E" as a high pitched roaring sounded in my ears. The pressure grew as the stylus completed that letter and went onto the next. Something was going to happen when I competed the Word. Something wonderful. I had no idea what it was, but I wanted to see it happen. I was writing the "O" when a set of dry, wrinkled fingers plucked the stylus from my grasp.

"Mr. Porter, just what do you think you are doing?"

I didn't say anything but the "BEHO" on my paper was answer enough. The guard once again had his hand on his gun and was coming toward me.