Dark Application: ONE (The Dark Application Series Book 1) (3 page)

But
when he got home, his heart rate quickly returned to normal, and by the time he
sat down for dinner with Amit he had already forgotten about it. When
Chris made his grand entrance later that evening with a bottle of rum and a
liter of fruit punch, the phone became the last thing on his mind and he didn’t
even check it until the next morning. Luke truly only had two friends,
and they were both sitting there drinking fruity rum drinks next to him.
It’s not like he was expecting any calls.

T
he
clock struck 1 PM and Professor Jones called the class to attention.

“Alright
folks, I’m going to come around and check your phones to make sure they are
off, and then I will lay your exam face down on the desk. DO NOT flip the
test over until I say go,” he said.

Luke
picked at his fingernails nervously. Outside, the sky was cloudy and the
rows of juniper trees in the quad ruffled and jerked in the sharp wind.
When Professor Jones came by, Luke held up his phone, pressing the
buttons and indicating that it was off. Professor Jones grunted and
placed the paper on his desk.

Luke
tossed his phone down on top of his backpack on the floor.

“Okay,
you may begin,” said Professor Jones.

Luke
flipped the paper over and began to read through each problem, knowing that he
was completely unprepared. Each question was as equally incomprehensible
as the last. He turned and gazed again out the window into the quad.
A short lady in high-heeled boots clicked across the sidewalk with a black
umbrella. The grass was matted down and drowned by large muddy puddles
mottling the green with brown and gray. Rainfall obscured the reflections
of the sky in the puddles, making everything seem like one conglomerate mass of
gray and brown. He began to wonder about his mom and his brothers, how
they were all doing. Forgetting the time, figuring the exam was a lost
cause anyway, he zoned out, thinking about home. He had been on a mission
since grade school to get out of poverty. After sharing a room with two
older brothers, growing up on government cheese and rice, never meeting his
real dad… it had been his life’s dream to make something of himself, and to
show his mom and brothers that he
could be somebody
. And what was
he doing now, sitting here failing a test?
Luke, you dumbass
he
thought.
Just try! You can at least guess…. That’s better than
sitting here like an idiot… …

He
looked at question one.
What would be the volume in liters of 640 g of
oil if the density is 0.8 g/mL?

Luke
pulled his fingers through his hair and began to panic.
It’s just
math, Luke. C’mon. You are good at this stuff. You know this stuff.

A
strange noise came from under his desk. He peered, frowning over the
corner, and saw his phone lying on his backpack. Slowly, he looked left
and right to see if anyone
had
noticed the
noise. Everyone else was still bent over their exams, writing away.
Professor Jones was leaning over a textbook, taking notes on a paper.

Luke
peered closer and stared intently at the phone. Sure enough, it vibrated
again, but not like the long buzzing vibration that phones usually made.
It was three short bursts; buzz-buzz-buzz. And that was it.

In
horror, Luke realized his phone was about to turn on.
Whatever I
downloaded from Kevin’s terminal yesterday and that DARK server must have had a
virus! Can mobile phones even get a virus?
He wondered.
He’d forgotten to check it out and erase it off his phone last night.
He shifted nervously in his seat, waiting for a moment to reach down and
flip it under the open flap of his backpack. He reached slowly down,
letting his arm drop beside his chair. As he put his hand out to grab his
bag, he saw the screen of the phone change. A series of numbers flashed
across the black screen in a dim blue color, and then they were gone.

Luke
straightened up a bit. It had said, “
0.8
.” At least, he
could have sworn that’s what it had said. He looked at the problem in
front of him. If he first converted the grams to milliliters… using the
density as the conversion factor… then converted that back to liters… he would
end up with an answer of…

0.8 liters.

Luke’s
face turned a pale shade of gray as the blood drained out. He moved on to
question two. Again, a series of buzzes, but this time two short buzzes,
and then a flash of numbers across the screen.
Very
brief and dim.
Apparently no one else saw. He worked through
problem two, feeling a flush of adrenaline as he did the problem backwards and
realized that the answer was right.
Then questions
three and four.
The next exam section was Introduction to Gas
Laws. Again, the phone flashed the correct answers, but this time did not
buzz.

Did it
not need to buzz now because it had Luke’s attention? The ridiculousness
of it almost made him laugh. Instead, he sighed deeply. The
students in the desks around him began to shift as they finished up their
exams. A few started getting up and packing their books, turning in their
tests to the professor.

Professor
Jones stood, took a piece of chalk to the board and wrote, “15
mins
.” Luke hadn’t realized how much time had sped by.
Quickly he began to fill in the spaces, the phone giving him the answers
almost as soon as he had read the problem to himself. He finished the
exam, packed up his things, and buried his phone deep in his sweater pocket. He
walked toward the front of the room, passing by Amy and the boyfriend’s desks.
Looking over her shoulder, he could see that she was almost done.
He
was not, though. He was peeking over at Amy’s paper. She was
apparently letting him cheat.

It’s
none of my damn business
, he thought bitterly. Amy was too smart to
fall for these jocks who couldn’t even spell their own names. Sometimes
he felt angry at her, angry that she was wasting herself on stupid guys that
only dragged her down. She had been one of the top students in high
school, like Luke. But she didn’t act like it. She didn’t value it.
She was only in college because her parents gave her the choice of going
to college or finding a job. Why should she care if her jock boyfriend
couldn’t multiply?

As
Luke stared over their shoulders, the strange impulse came back again. A
swelling heat crept up Luke’s back, and the intense rage he had felt on his
bike that day rose up again. His blood was boiling; his mind was filled
with hatred. He looked down at the boyfriend’s back, gripping his
sharpened pencil in his fist. He imagined himself raising the pencil over
his head and stabbing deep into that spoiled prick’s back. Straight down
the back of his neck. For a split second, he could visualize the blood
spurting hotly up his wrist, the pencil snapping over the vertebrae, ripping
the broken stump out the back of his--

“Luke,
are you done?” Professor Jones’s voice interrupted his fantasy. Quickly,
Luke thrust the test onto Professor Jones’ desk and ducked out the door into
the dim corridor. He wiped the sweat from his forehead with his sleeve.
His heart was still pounding from the vivid daydream. The lights
were never on in this wing. It was little more than a cold, concrete wind
tunnel with doors. His feet echoed in the darkness, and he cracked his
knuckles, hearing the cracks echo as well. Then his phone vibrated again.

He
pulled it out and turned it on, looking hard at it. The screen lit up and
came on as usual, showing his normal icons and apps. “Thanks, phone,” he
murmured, and slid it back into his pocket.

*****

“Honeys,
I’m
hooome
!” Chris hooted as he clamored into the
kitchen carrying two large pizza boxes and a huge case of beer.

Amit
quickly shut the door and began to toss the beers into the refrigerator.
Luke was bent over the fireplace, blowing the freshly lit kindling.
Wisps of smoke escaped the chimney and swirled into the room, smelling
like oak and filling the house with a rustic aroma.

“Dudes!
I passed that exam with flying colors,” Luke
said.

“What
the hell kind of teacher gives an exam like that before mid-term?” Chris asked,
cracking a beer and taking a long swig.

“No
kidding, that’s what I said,” said Luke. “But I realized that it was
mostly just review since everyone in the class was supposed to take the
prerequisites. The dean said they are going to start cracking down on
pre-rec’s
this year. Had too many people slip through
without the required major units and shit like that.”

“Yeah,
mostly organic
chem
majors,” said Amit.

“Yeah, like
Amit’s
wild little Chinese
girlfriend.
She’s a chemistry major,
ain’t
she Amit?” said Chris.

Amit
rolled his eyes. “She’s Korean, and yeah she’s majoring in organic chemistry.”

“Asian
girls go
good
with whatever you are, Amit.
You’re like,
kinda
Asian, aren’t you?” said
Chris. “I mean, you’re like, from over there somewhere, right?”

“Actually,
I’m American and I’m from New York,” said Amit.

“Anywhere
that’s not Virginia is ‘
over there’
to Chris,” said Luke.

They
all laughed.

“God,
I can’t believe my day,” said Luke, laughing and chugging his beer. The
three of them stood around the kitchen, leaning back against the counter tops.
“What are we doing hanging out in the kitchen? Let’s kick it by the
fire,” he said.

They
grabbed the pizza and began to dig in, two of them sitting on the ragged couch,
Chris sitting closest to the fire in the battered recliner that no longer
actually reclined, but popped out to one side.

“Man,
this would be such a cool house to throw a party at, you know? We could
light a fire, and Luke could bring his stereo system down,” said Chris.

“What’s
wrong with our party of three? You
gotta
have
friends to have a real party,” said Amit.

Chris
laughed and put a hand on his thick gut. “Why don’t you tell your
girlfriend to bring over some of her hot Chinese friends? That’s a good
enough party for me,
haha
!” His laugh was
loud
and obnoxious yet it always made Luke feel good
to hear it.

“She’s
Korean, you dick,” said Amit with his mouth full.

“Oh
man, if we cleaned out some of this space, put our bikes, those furniture parts
and boxes outside, cleaned up the floors and the kitchen a bit, this house
could be really presentable,” said Luke.

They
all looked around and nodded. There were marks on the walls and huge
areas of floor that were scratched up before they’d moved in. Houses like
these were little more than over-market-rented, high turn-over college flop
houses, but it had major party potential. The split-level stair case had
an old-fashioned banister, and the floors were covered in a tattered carpet
that had some sections that were completely bare. When they had moved in,
they
tried
to spruce the place up and cover the
damaged walls and floors. Although the bathrooms and kitchen needed real work,
overall it served its purpose. They lived in relative comfort for the
price.

“I
should really bring my stereo system down here anyway,” said Luke.

“Yeah,
go get it right now!” said Chris, jumping forward in his seat enthusiastically.
“Dude, I’ll help you bro,” and he was standing, headed up to Luke’s room.

Within
the hour they had Luke’s stereo and speakers wired and placed, then Luke began
equalizing the levels.

“Wow,
it sounds so good down here!” said Amit. “Why didn’t we think of this before?”

“Oh
man, now we just need girls!” yelled Chris over the thrumming bass.

Luke,
half-buzzed and feeling giddy over his amazing luck that day, pressed in a dub
step CD and began to dance around, lifting his beer and throwing his pelvis
forward. Chris joined in, and Luke and Chris jumped into a duo.

“Yeah,
we really need girls before you two start freaking on the couch!” screamed
Amit. “I’m calling
Mi
!”

“Woo-
hoo
, we’re having a par-
tay
!”
screamed Chris, and howled wildly.

Luke
fell to the couch laughing. They would look like real fools to anyone
else right now. Three guys, hanging out alone,
dancing.
“Yeah, the best party ever man! Check us out!”

Chris
held a slice of pizza over his head and rotated his hips, jiggling his gut and
staring at Luke with mock lust.

“Damn
Chris, you can actually move your body pretty well for a big guy,” said Luke.
They hollered and hooted until Amit came running from his room, frantically
tossing a wet rag around the kitchen as though he were cleaning. “Shit you
guys,
Mi
and her friends are coming over! They
think we’re having like some huge party, dude. Help me clean up!
Quick!”

“Oh
shit, is she bringing her hot friends?” Chris shouted.

Luke
turned down the music and started to help Amit clean. In a subtle state
of confusion, he grabbed a laundry hamper and started throwing everything in
it, then shoved it in the laundry closet. He frantically ran to his room
and threw his backpack into his closet, tossing in his shoes and random items,
making the room look neat and tidy. Why was he suddenly so certain Amit
was serious? After today’s exam, maybe anything really was possible. He
slipped his cell phone into his pocket and left the room, closing the door.

Amit
was in the bathroom scrubbing the toilet. “We can’t have our bathroom
like this with girls here, man. They have to sit down every time they
pee. They will never come here to party ever again if our bathroom
grosses them out. And
always
make sure you have a ton of toilet
paper.”

“Oh,
right,” said Luke and fell to his knees, scrubbing with all his might.

When
Mi
arrived, she brought four of her gorgeous friends with
her. “Hi you!” she squeaked, throwing her arms around Amit. He
shyly kissed her and gave her a soft hug. She was smaller than him, which
was not easy to do. He was a small guy to begin with.