Teacher of The Century

By Robert Jeschonek

The blackboard jungle has become a hell on Earth. Welcome to the school of tomorrow, a futuristic nightmare of high-tech savagery. Tribes of genetically and cybernetically enhanced students rule the classroom. Weaponized parental A.I. drones terrorize teachers. One teacher stands alone against the insanity, but her old-school ways might be the death of her. Will she sacrifice everything to protect one perfect student? Can even the Teacher of the Century oppose a savage student body and corrupt system? Or will she discover too late that Armageddon is on the final exam? Don't miss this exciting tale by award-winning storyteller Robert Jeschonek, a master of unique and unexpected science fiction that really packs a punch.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Robert Jeschonek
• Release date: Oct 16, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386969105

Robert Jeschonek

Robert Jeschonek is an award-winning writer whose fiction, essays, articles, comic books, and podcasts have been published around the world. According to fantasy and science fiction luminary Mike Resnick, Robert "sees the world like no one else sees it, and makes incredibly witty, incisive stories out of that skewed worldview."Robert's young adult urban fantasy novel, MY FAVORITE BAND DOES NOT EXIST, is due in 2011 from Clarion Books, a division of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. A collection of his fantasy and science fiction stories, MAD SCIENTIST MEETS CANNIBAL, is available from PS Publishing in England. Robert has written for POSTSCRIPTS, ESCAPE POD, DRABBLECAST, SPACE AND TIME, PODCASTLE, DAW Books anthologies, and many other publications.His credits include STAR TREK fiction published by Pocket Books. His work appeared in three volumes of STAR TREK: STRANGE NEW WORLDS, winning the grand prize in Volume VI. He was also nominated for the British Fantasy Award for his story, "Fear of Rain." His story "One Awake In All the World" was called out in a Publishers Weekly starred review of the anthology DESTINATION FUTURE in 2010.His comic book work has appeared in JUSTICE SOCIETY OF AMERICA 80-PAGE GIANT 2010 #1 from DC Comics. He has also scripted stories for various indie comics, including WAR from Saddle Tramp Press and DEAD BY DAWN QUARTERLY and COMMERCIAL SUICIDE in the UK.Jeschonek is based in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. His website, www.robertjeschonek.com, features fresh daily updates on the world of writing and other alternate realities.

Book preview

Teacher of The Century

Teacher of The Century

A SCIFI STORY

ROBERT JESCHONEK

Blastoff Books

Contents

Also by Robert Jeschonek

Teacher of The Century

About the Author

Special Preview: Six Scifi Stories Volume Four

TEACHER OF THE CENTURY

Copyright © 2023 by Robert Jeschonek

www.thefictioneer.com

Cover Art Copyright © 2023 by Ben Baldwin

www.benbaldwin.co.uk

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved by the author.

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Published by Blastoff Books

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Also by Robert Jeschonek

Battlenaut Crucible

Scifi Motherlode

Six Scifi Stories Volume One

Six Scifi Stories Volume Two

Six Scifi Stories Volume Three

Six Scifi Stories Volume Four

Sticks and Stones: A Trek Novel

Teacher of The Century

As the ring of students tightened around her, America’s Teacher of the Century nominee Cilla Franklin offered to reduce the homework assignment.  Thirty seconds later, she offered to eliminate it altogether. It didn’t make any difference.

Muscles tense beneath naked flesh, the boys and girls continued to edge toward her.  She didn’t know why they were so upset, since they never did homework anyway and were never punished for it.  The assignment should not have been taxing for anyone in the class, whatever their aptitude level; further, nothing about it impinged on anyone’s personal rights or definition of political correctness.

Periods One through Four hadn’t had any problem with the homework.  Then again, Period Five was just a bad group. They were all bad, but Five was the worst.

One minute after Cilla had transmitted the details of the assignment to their brainware wireless implants, the kids had risen as one from their hammocks and formed a circle around her.  One of the boys had come up behind her and urinated on her legs; as she spun around, he had directed the stream upward, spraying her hips and abdomen and even splashing her face.

Though Cilla did not understand most of what the godlings (that was what they called themselves) did or said, she knew what this much meant:  she was marked for death.

It had happened six times before in her fifty-year career.  Each time, she had managed to save herself by begging for mercy from the class Chief or moving to a new school...but it was always possible that death could claim her like this.  She knew of colleagues who had died this way; only three out of thirty thousand teachers nationwide died per year in executions by godlings, so the odds weren’t bad...but her own mentor, Ruby Churchill, had been one of the unlucky few.

Dying at the hands of a tribe of hive-minded, techno-savage students wasn’t anything she had envisioned while playing school as a child with her friends decades ago.  

Times had changed.  For Cilla Franklin and the other teachers at All Einstein High School, every day was another chapter in Lord of the Flies.

Slowly, the