The Homework Machine (5 page)

I didn't get it. He could have gotten just about
anything
out of me. For all his smarts, the
guy just didn't know how to cut a deal. Fine with me. That was the way I looked at it. If somebody's gonna give you something for nothing, take it.

JUDY DOUGLAS, GRADE 5

The three of us rode our bikes over to Brenton's house after school that day. His mom kind of looked at us like she couldn't believe we were back. She made us popcorn and some of those slice-and-bake cookies with designs on them. They were yummy.

It was all so easy. Miss Rasmussen had given us a worksheet with a bunch of questions about the Grand Canyon on it. We didn't even bother looking anything up. Brenton just slipped the worksheet in the scanner and a few minutes later the worksheet popped out of the printer with the answers on it. Like magic.

Brenton had each of us produce a handwriting sample, and he scanned our handwriting into the computer. Then he programmed it to print out separate sheets with the answers printed in our own handwriting. It was impossible to tell that we hadn't filled out the worksheets ourselves. Our homework was done in no time.

KELSEY DONNELLY, GRADE 5

When Brenton gave me my worksheet with the answers on it, I pulled a dollar out of my backpack and handed it to him. I figured the least I could do was give him a buck for doing my homework for me and saving me an hour of work. But he wouldn't take it. He said don't be silly.

We used him. I admit it. We used him all year long. But it's not like he got nothing out of it. We had some fun.

SAM DAWKINS, GRADE 5

So we were over Brenton's house and I see that he has a chessboard on his desk. I wonder who he plays. I mean, the kid had no friends. So he says, “I play against myself.”

He would actually play the black pieces
and
the white pieces against each other, and take turns playing both sides. Do you believe that? It sounded nuts to me.

He asks me if I play and I say no way. He says he would teach me how to play if I want to learn but I say no thanks, that game is boring.

I didn't tell him, but I figured there's no way a dummy like me could learn a game that complicated
and play a genius like him. I don't like losing. I've got a reputation to uphold.

KELSEY DONNELLY, GRADE 5

We went over Brenton's house to do our homework the next day too. And after a while we were going over there every day.

BRENTON'S MOM

I was so pleased that Brenton was forming this small group of friends. Finally!

The kids always kept the door closed. I assumed they were doing their homework together and they needed to concentrate. I didn't ask a lot of questions. I was just happy that Brenton was beginning to fit in.

BRENTON DAMAGATCHI, GRADE 5

While we waited for the pages to come out of the printer, Snik kept looking over at my chessboard. I remembered how he showed so much enthusiasm when we were building catapults in October, and he was always talking about his dad in the military and war and things like that.

So I said well you know, chess is essentially a virtual simulation of war. He seemed to be unaware
of that. He thought it was a slow, boring game for “eggheads.”

I explained to him that when you play chess, you're like a general with a whole army of all kinds of soldiers at your command. It's not at all like checkers, where you just jump over the enemy. In chess, you get to attack and destroy the enemy. You try to hunt down and trap the opposing king while making sure your own king is safe. It's actually very exciting.

I showed him how the various pieces moved. How the bishops slash across the board and kill. How the queen can do just about anything and is all-powerful, but the king is very limited and must be protected. How the pawns are your foot soldiers on the front lines who protect the more powerful pieces and sometimes must be sacrificed for the greater good. I believe he was intrigued.

JUDY DOUGLAS, GRADE 5

I don't remember whose idea it was, but somebody said we needed a nickname for the homework machine. We needed a code name so we wouldn't have to say “the homework machine” out loud in front of other people.

I wanted to call it Doris, myself. Snik said the
homework machine wasn't a
girl
. We had this big argument about whether or not a boy's computer had to have a boy's name or not.

We tried to think of all the names that could be a boy's name
or
a girl's name. You know, Pat. Chris. Casey. Nicky. Randy. Alex. Jamie. Jordan.

Then Snik let out this really loud burp and we all laughed. After we finished saying what a disgusting pig Snik was, Brenton suggested we nickname the homework machine Belch.

I thought it was a little crude, but the others thought it was perfect. So from that moment on, we started to call the homework machine Belch.

KELSEY DONNELLY, GRADE 5

I said fine. Belch. Whatever you want to call it is fine with me. As long as it works.

SAM DAWKINS, GRADE 5

My dad had an old chessboard in the bookcase. So I pull it out one night and put the pieces on the squares. No way I was gonna try to play in front of a genius like Brenton, but it was kinda cool fooling around with it. Brenton was right. The game is a lot like war, but in slow motion.

JUDY DOUGLAS, GRADE 5

I knew from the start that what we were doing was wrong. In the back of my mind, anyway. There was no question about that. I should have stopped everything before it ever got started. But I didn't. The only thing that I thought about back then was making sure we didn't get caught.

We had an informal agreement that Belch would be our little secret, but I thought it should be more official. So all four of us put our hands together and promised not to tell anybody,
anybody
about Belch.

If any kid ever found out, we agreed, the person who leaked the secret would be doomed for the rest of his or her life, and afterward, too. They would live a horrible, unhappy existence and they'd get straight F's on their report cards and they'd never go to college and all their pets would get run over by SUVs. And if anybody's parents ever found out, well, you could just forget about your childhood. It would be over.

Everybody agreed, and then we played kickball.

MISS RASMUSSEN, FIFTH-GRADE TEACHER

I noticed sometime in November that the D Squad seemed to be coming together as a unit.
They were very different in background and so many other ways, but they seemed to be becoming friends. They gravitated toward one another during lunch and recess. They left school at the end of the day as a group.

I was very pleased. It's so rare to see a boy like Sam forming a friendship with a boy like Brenton or a girl like Kelsey bonding with a girl like Judy.

Looking back, I feel like a fool. How could I have been so blind?

BRENTON DAMAGATCHI, GRADE 5

About a month after I got that mysterious e-mail, I got another message. I had completely forgotten about him, until I saw the name at the bottom: Milner. This time, the guy sent me an instant message. He asked me what part of the country I lived in, and what kind of computer equipment I used. He said he would pay me if I answered his questions. I didn't feel comfortable. I probably should have told my parents. But I didn't particularly want them to know about Belch. I changed my screen name and e-mail address.

SAM DAWKINS, GRADE 5

So Brenton keeps asking me if I wanna play chess with him, and I keep saying no because I know he'd beat the snot out of me and I don't like losing. But I did think the game was cool, and my dad said he'd teach me how to play. He wasn't an expert or anything, but he was pretty good.

So Dad says you wanna play a game and I say okay and he says I could be white because white goes first and I'm a beginner.

I didn't really know what to do. For my opening move I push the pawn in front of my right knight two squares forward. Dad moves the pawn in front of his king two squares forward. This didn't look so hard. So I move the pawn in front of my right bishop forward one square. Then Dad slides
his queen diagonally all the way to the edge of the board and he says, “Checkmate.”

I say, “What?!” He says, “You heard me. Checkmate.”

I ask him how he could checkmate me in just two moves and he says look at your king. So I look at my king. He's right. My king can't go anywhere. He's stuck. Two stinking moves and my king was a dead man. The game was over.

I say to myself he's never gonna do that to me again.

BRENTON DAMAGATCHI, GRADE 5

I never thought Belch was such a big deal, the way the others did. It was just a tool to make a job easier, like a hammer or a screwdriver. It never interested me very much.

What interests me? I'll tell you what interests me. When a whole bunch of people all start doing the same thing at the same time for no apparent reason. That interests me. It's psychology, I guess.

I found it fascinating that all the boys would suddenly come to school wearing backward baseball caps. Or that all the girls would start wearing ankle bracelets or ponytails. Why? Those things have to start somewhere, right? Somebody somewhere has to be the first one to do something. I thought it would be interesting to create a fad.

So I designed this software program. It was fairly simple. It took the words “wear red socks to school on Thursday” and duplicated it and inserted it randomly into documents. I guess you'd call it a virus because I sort of let it loose all over the Internet and people passed it around. I
didn't tell anyone at school about it. I just did it for the fun of it.

KELSEY DONNELLY, GRADE 5

I was in a chat room one night and somebody said something about wearing red socks to school. It sounded like a cool idea and everybody said they would do it, and we'd all tell our friends to do it too.

MISS RASMUSSEN, FIFTH-GRADE TEACHER

Every so often we have a “Funny Hair Day” or “Silly Hat Day” at school. But when I came in one Thursday, just about every student in the class was wearing red socks. In fact, just about every student in the whole
school
was wearing red socks. That was curious. I didn't recall receiving a memo about it or a flyer that was sent home in the kids' backpacks. It couldn't have been merely a coincidence.

So I asked the kids why they were wearing red socks and they said somebody sent them an e-mail or an instant message or they read it on the Internet. When I came home that night and turned on the TV news, there was a report that kids all over America had worn red socks to
school. It didn't mean anything. It was just for the fun of it.

There was only one student in my class who, I noticed, wasn't wearing red socks that day. It was Brenton.

SAM DAWKINS, GRADE 5

Sure I wore red socks. Everybody did. Except for Brenton. I figured, of course not. Brenton's out of it. He probably didn't get the word.

JUDY DOUGLAS, GRADE 5

We were over Brenton's house doing our homework after school that day. I remember we were talking about the whole red socks thing while waiting for the printer to finish. Everybody had on red socks except for Brenton, so I asked him why he didn't wear red socks. I figured he just never paid attention to fashions or things like that. But he made this cute little smile and we knew something was up because he doesn't usually smile that much. We made him tell us, and he admitted that he was the one who started the whole red socks fad in the first place. Can you imagine?

SAM DAWKINS, GRADE 5

The red socks thing blew my mind! Think of it. This one kid took his computer and with a few keystrokes got just about everybody in America to do this dumb thing. It was cool! And that kid was sitting next to me. Think of the power! He could make every kid in America hop backward and recite the “Pledge of Allegiance” if he wanted to.

KELSEY DONNELLY, GRADE 5

I remember the night of red socks day, everybody online was chatting about how cool it was. I couldn't resist. I told everybody I knew the guy who started the whole thing. I didn't mention Brenton's name. Right away, I got an IM from a guy asking me who pulled off red socks day. I didn't tell him. I didn't think Brenton wanted everybody to know. The guy gave me his name and an e-mail address in case I changed my mind. The name was Milner.

JUDY DOUGLAS, GRADE 5

One of the nicest things about Belch was that I had more time after school. I asked my mom if I could take a ballet class on Wednesdays and she said sure, as long as I still had time to do my
homework. Before we had Belch, I spent just about every day after school doing my homework. There was no time for anything else.