Chapter 1 in ArcType

“There are many things in this world that are unexplained, even natural occurrences. Science does a great job of trying to understand those things and disregarding the others that it can’t explain as anomalies or once in a lifetime events. ” Murry said aloud as he wrote on the old chalk board in front of his students.
“Now. Which one of my bright students, can give me an example of this?” Murry scanned the room, and passed over the students that seem to always have their hands in the air.
“Justin! how about you, what do you have to say about any of this?”
Justin, a small framed wiry kid who usually is distracted by a fly in the room, looked up from his cellphone that he was trying to hide under his desk. “Umm, well let me read what you put up there first, putting me on the spot and all”, the class chuckled at his typical comedic responses.
“Of course, sir. I wouldn’t want to break your concentration from texting your friends about non-science type conversations” Murry responded sarcastically, generating another round of laughs in the classroom.
Justin just smiled and blurted out “Ghosts! Final answer”
Murry smiled, “Ahh, ghosts.. or the lack of them or lack of scientific evidence of them, or even the fact that most places that claimed to be “haunted” were actually just setup with ropes, pulleys, sound effects and actually just luring people in for money. Yes, that’s a good one because the ones that aren’t there for money and haven’t been explained, are what keep scientist baffled, and it keeps the option for these so-called ghosts and haunting’s to be unexplained.”
“Anybody else?” Murry swept back to the right side of the room to see his over eager red haired “A-plus” student, propping her left hand in the air with help of her right hand.
she must of kept it up the entire time.
Murry sighed “yes.. Jess?”
“Aliens!, they are disregarded all the time, pushed off as science-fiction, no proper deduction is used because they don’t even try or if they do, they keep it hidden from the public!” Murry just stood there dumbfounded, this wasn’t one of Jess’s normal answers that were super technical and on point, this was something of a fictional answer, and very uncharacteristic of her.
“Jess.. Are you feeling well?” Murry said with a slight smile curving up his left side of his face. The class all chuckled.
“yes! I feel fine, UFO’s and Aliens are something of an off interest of mine, due to the fact that many people have claimed to see them, and there is evidence out there that has been disregarded or just flat out been fake to make people not care. On top of all that, the government just seems to ignore all of it all together and we all just make movies on it and pick on it! For all we know, this is a very real thing, sitting in front of our faces, and for those who KNOW it’s real, can’t say anything without the rest of us laughing in their faces, which is just the very place the government would want the society to be, on this such topic.” Jess was out of breath at the end of her sentence and found that she was standing as if she was preaching and not realizing it. She looked down and quickly straightened out her skirt and sat down.
Murry just smiled and agree’d with her, she made a valid point and also put’s aliens on the same line of believably things as the Ghosts topic that Justin casually mentioned in his one line answer he made up on the spot.
How interesting that one student could answer the same question, with the same validity with one word, as another student did with a whole statement? Yet neither one is more correct then the other. Murry thought to himself.
Murry just laughed and walked back to his neat and organized desk with a shiny red apple at the corner. Murry was the traditional type of teacher, but also loved to engage the teens with critical thinking skills and deep diving into scientific theology. Murry always believed that without engaging these young minds on some kind of deep thinking or what-if scenarios, you’re just never going put much thought into how things work or how things can be improved. This is just something every person should have in them, it helps the human race advance, technology thrive, and a million other reasons Murry could think of.
“Ok then class! Since the rest of you just couldn’t give me any examples or even try to raise your hands. I have some prepared homework for you!” Murry pulled out some sheets of paper and plopped them on his desk. As the papers hit the desk you could hear the complaints start mumbling around the room..
“unless....” Murry barely mumbled under his breath and the whole class went silent. “Anybody in this room can tell me the speed in which an object is pulled to our Earth by it’s gravity?” almost immediately the entire class just starts blurting out “nine point eight meters per second squared!!”
“Well look at that!, I have a bunch of little genius’s in my room, no need for homework on a Friday for a bunch of kids that can memorize equations!” Murry took the papers back off his desktop and neatly placed them back into the 3rd drawer down. He wasn’t really going to give them homework, he just wanted them all to perk up a little bit and feel good before they head home for the weekend, after all this was the last class of the day at Wilson High-school and who knows how much other pointless homework they have in their backpacks that most of them aren’t going to do.
The school buzzer rang and all the kids got up and started exiting the room, almost all eyes glued to their phones and texting away, like their little fingers were designed for such things in life.
“Have a good weekend, don’t do anything mundane and educational, try to return with all your limbs! See you Monday!” Some kids actually heard his little jokes and looked up to smile and give him a thumbs up.
“especially your thumbs” Murry pointedly said to Mark as his thumb was still in the air. Mark smiled and went back to his phone and walking to his locker at the end of the hall.
As the kids left the hall and started toward their friends vehicle or special activities Murry looked across the hall to see Jane, she was a chemistry teacher for 11th grade and was cleaning up some of the beakers they just used. Murry walked over to her.
“Hey, need some help with all that?”
“Yes! I’m actually supposed to be out of here in the next 10 minutes so I can pick up Leslie from daycare by 3:30. I swear that daycare hates parents and doesn’t understand the laws of traffic and how people can actually get over there in time, let alone just picking them up by 3:30?!?! Don’t most parent work till 5? how is this even legal?!” Jane paused and looked up at Murry, “I’m sorry, what I meant to say was, can you help me?”.
Murry just smiled “of course, in fact, just leave. I’ll clean these up and put them away and lock the door for yah. After all I was a chemistry teacher a few years back too, so you don’t need to worry about any accidents.”
Jane just smiled and then grabbed her purse and shuffled out of the room at a hurried pace. Murry just couldn’t imagine having to do all those extra things after work. He like to educate the kids, get some jokes in there or some “oooo’s and ahhhh’s” and then go golfing after work on a nice day before retiring back to his 2 bedroom small home. It was a simple life, and it suited him just perfectly.
Murry finished up Jane’s cleaning task quite quickly and locked up shop without anything going wrong. Walking down the empty hall of lockers he could hear in the distant rooms, some chattering and lecturing going on for the more dull kids that just either don’t want to apply themselves, or actually need the help understanding. Lucky for him, none of his kids wanted to stay late today and 98% of them were passing, the only one that needed help was actually out “sick” today, along with most Friday’s it seems. Murry started to think about his days as a kid here at Wilson High and how he used to skip some classes like music and just go to study-hall instead.
Murry was lost in thought and rounded the corner by the swimming pool at the end of the science wing with his eyes closed, dragging his hand along the wall, He felt a quick shock and thought that he touched some outlet with exposed wiring and it pulled on the center of his chest for just a fraction of a second, but when he opened his eyes everything changed.
He wasn’t in the hallway anymore, he was in a teachers room with the lights off. Murry looked around and wondered what had happened, was he day-dreaming that he was walking around? how long has he been up in this empty room, he looked at the clock and it was 3:25.
Well, this is weird. I just finished cleaning the beakers for Jane at 3:20? Maybe 3:22?, and all the digital clocks at the school are sync’d, so this is correct. I’m very positive that I was just rounding the corner down by the end of the hall of the science wing. Where am I in the school? Murry headed over to the locked door inside the room, he unlocked it, opened it and locked it behind him before he closed it. He was across the library on the 2nd floor. Murry just stood there astonished “How did I just go from the 1st floor in the High-School science wing, which is practically in the Middle-School section to the High-School 2nd floor in the matter of seconds?”.
Ok.. I’m not losing my mind, something just happened, something I can’t explain, yet real. Something I can’t tell people about because they’ll never believe me, but yet something that maybe I can replicate? Murry immediately headed downstairs and then back to the science wing by his classroom, he saw the corner where he was supposed to turn on, and there on the wall was a small black spot about the size of a dime. This is where my hand was! Murry hurried to his office and grabbed some chemistry equipment that he kept in his closet for quick experiments to show the class how physics and chemistry are similar at times. Murry scraped the black powder from the wall and onto a tray, making sure he left nothing behind.
Hours passed as Murry took sample after sample and mixing it with different solutions, acids, and even putting some on a petri dish to see what comes of it in a day or two. Under a microscope the black dust seem to be be nothing more then simple carbon, the solution mixes all verified the same thing. Carbon would mean that something burnt, and my hand was right there, I remember feeling a shock or something sharp on my hand too. This is all weird, I need to work on this another time.
Murry looked up at the clock and realized that 5 hours have passed, he wrote down all that he could about this experience in his experimental log book, next to other class experiments they have done together. He cleaned up his solutions and kept the samples in a mini-fridge next to his desk along with the remainder of the carbon shavings.
Oh well, at least I know what it is now, but “why” and “how”, are going to be for another day I guess.

Last updated May 04, 2020