Disclaimer: All similarities to real people or places are coincidental.

An excerpt from The Honey Badger’s Guide to the Galaxy:

“Far out on an uncharted blue and green planet of mostly water lies a piece of land known as the United States. As its name suggests it’s made up of smaller lands known as states within which are cities with streets.

One of these streets, Villa Street, is known for its Villains, as the name suggests. Specifically, a group of children living in an office building with odd smells, and occasional loud ‘scratching claws against a metal pipe’ music. 

Despite the office building, these children are not underaged workers. On the front of the building is a sign in bright blues and reds: Khan Lab School.

This is, or perhaps now was, where I, the Honey Badger reside(d).”

It was a bright morning, the first day of school, and students filed through the halls. One particular trio of students were meandering through Collective to find the New Grading presentation.

“Whoa look! Why is there a mural on the wall?” Zoey questioned, stopping midstep. 

“They painted it during the summer,” Kate said.

On the wall in bright hues of blue, green, and various other colors was a mural. In the center was a colorful flower, the logo of the school. At the top left was a constellation, the logo of Antares, the school’s robotics team. On the bottom right was an incredibly beautiful, amazing, awe-inspiring looking girl, who you will be introduced to later.

But what caught the students’ attention was a magnificent Condor that spanned a small portion of the wall with its wings stretched out.

“Ehh Condors. It should have been the Labradors.” The voice came from a tall, stick-like figure with glasses named Sam.

“No, it should have been Lab Rats,” Kate corrected. She, like Sam, had glasses, but was a couple inches, or maybe a foot shorter.

“Yeah! Lab Rats! Cause we live in a lab and are experiments,” Zoey agreed.

Sam laughed.

“You know there is a badger here as well.” Kate said as she walked to the left side of the mural and pointed to the triangular gray and black face of a badger. It had a pointy vampire’s chin and iddy-biddy eyes. 

They were interrupted by a teacher calling, “The New Grading presentation is in Agora!”

Meanwhile, Shiny Pen, a fellow eighth grader, was being hoarded from Commons to Arena for a tech-presentation by Chief Guy. Shiny could only hear parts of conversations around her:

“You know the silverbench score for chrome—”

“—finding unblocked games—”

“—minecraft during class.”

“Can ducks use computers?” Shiny questioned as she turned to her friend.

“They can slap the keyboard with their feet.” Her friend responded.

“But they also have webbed feet, so they can’t type specific keys.”

“What about a touch screen?”

“Oh! Touch screen might work,” Shiny exclaimed. 

They sat down on swivel office chairs that varied in height and tiltedness. In front of them were black tables that had rolly wheels locked in position.

A thought occurred to Shiny: “But their feet would be wet!”

Chief Guy called the attention of the students, “Using computers is a privilege. These chromebooks–” he held up one in his hand “are owned by the school. Even if you aren’t using a school computer, you are using the school network…”

And so the tech presentation moved on going through cyber attacks, microcracking, and finally not leaving trip wires when plugging in a computer.

It was for the last one that Chief Guy had a demonstration. He left a computer plugged in and started saying, “This is what happens when someone trips over your computer wire—”

The demonstration would have knocked the computer off the desk and shattered it on the floor, but the next event did that anyway.

The ground began to shake, beginning towards the far side of the room near the door that led back to the Lobby, before getting closer to the students. The tables shuddered, and the demonstration chromebook launched off the desk and crashed into the floor. 

Shiny’s seat rolled suddenly, jerking in a random direction and throwing Shiny off. She crashed towards the floor barely catching herself by holding a table.

Random shouts erupted from the students, trumped by the loudest from Chief Guy.

“EARTHQUAKE,” Chief Guy shouted. “GET UNDER THE TABLES AND COVER YOUR HEADS!”

Shiny pulled herself under the table and put her hands over her head, curling herself into a ball. All she could see was the yellow of her hoodie that seemed brighter than usual and felt slightly furry like a duck.

Slowly, the shaking stopped and several minutes later, Chief Guy directed the students outside.

Zoey, Sam, and Kate were lined up outside in the order of their advisories. The sun’s heat pounded on their heads and their gazes wandered around.

“That felt like a magnitude 6.0 earthquake,” Kate commented, shaking with leftover adrenaline. “There were cracks in the ground.”

“Was this the Sierra Nevada Fault earthquake?” Zoey asked.

“It doesn’t feel strong enough. That earthquake would destroy buildings,” Sam replied.

Behind the fence, the road was visible. Several people had pulled their cars to the side and a few had gotten out and were shouting. The reason was clear: there was a crack in the road that looked like a paw print with five small lightning shaped lines branching from it.

Zoey pointed out the crack, “That’s an oddly shaped crack. Like a paw print of a giant dog that ran on the road or something.”

Debby, the trio’s advisor, who was walking by to count the number of students in her line, heard the comment and looked towards the road. She pulled out her walkie-talkie and said something into it.

“Debby has a walkie talkie?” Zoey exclaimed.

“Yeah, it’s for emergencies so the teachers can communicate,” Kate said. “Or at least she said something like that last year.”

A few minutes later, once the chaos had settled a bit, Chief Guy announced, “It looks like we are missing a few people. Please raise your hand, BUT STAY QUIET, if you have seen Tamantha, Peter, Murphy…” he continued listing a few names.

An eleventh grader, Ant, raised his hand. “There was a giant hole in the Lobby. Tamantha might have…fallen in.”

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