Kylian retrieved his personal belongings and put his shoes and belt back on after suffering through a painful, if not ego-bruising, search of his person at the robotic hands of the TKD 2000. He finally stepped through the gate and onto the grounds of the High School where Viviane waited patiently for him.

“That took a little longer than I thought it would,” remarked Viviane. She had no idea the suffering Kylian had just been through. “Your hair is all messed up.”

Kylian ran his fingers through his hair not realizing that he still looked unkempt.

“Oh, that was probably due to the TKD 2000 manhandling.”

“The TK-what?” asked Viviane.

“Never mind. I’m trying to forget the whole ordeal myself. Hey, how come you didn’t have to go through inspection?”

“Oh, it’s because they know me and I come here all the time,” explained Viviane.

“Who? The STS Agents?”

Viviane nodded innocently and shrugged. “Uh huh. They all seem to know me.”

“Gee. I wonder why.” Kylian’s voice dripped with sarcasm, but he then changed the subject before Viviane had time to react.

“You know, when I first got here, I was kind of surprised at all the security forces everywhere. Where I come from, we don’t see any of these guys, especially not these ‘STS’ Agents. I’ve only seen them here.”

“Oh, the Special Technologies Security Agents? They only guard us and whenever Dr. Renard and his most senior staff travel out of the city.”

“Is that what ‘STS’ stands for? I thought it was an acronym for ‘Stop, Taser or Shoot’! These guys really take their jobs too seriously.”

“It wasn’t always like this,” said Viviane. She looked upward with her eyes as she recalled what happened. “About a year and a half ago, the STS who guard us got new senior leadership. The new Captain of the Guard ordered more patrols and more Agents on the streets and they increased their presence. Their job is to protect the teleportation technology from falling into the wrong hands. The UEN has many enemies that would love to have this technology for themselves. That’s why this High School is here. Some of the scientists working on teleportation are such valuable targets that even their children are targeted.”

The two walked the short distance from the checkpoint over to the main building of the High School. The sun shined bright since it was noon and the teenage students lounged wherever they could find shade. They sat in groups of friends and worried not about classes or studies for it was lunchtime and that meant junk food, gossip and using their personal communicators for watching video memes or for playing games. Energy was certainly wasted on youth.

Before they reached any of the High Schoolers, however, they approached what appeared to be a very young STS Agent casually seated with his feet propped up and with a bored, half-lidded expression on his face. This Agent may have appeared young and weary, but his uniform with the STS insignia sewn onto it looked very real and the gun he kept holstered in his front waistband definitely looked lethal, too. He looked over with a mild scowl to greet Viviane and her new companion, a person he had never seen before which made him suspicious.

“Hello Viviane,” said the Agent with a drawl, “Did you know you picked up a nerd and he’s been following you around all this time?”

“Hello Luc. You’re always joking around, aren’t you? You mean Kylian here, right?” asked Viviane as she pointed out her companion.

“Yeah, where’d you find him? He looks like a lost puppy.” Luc eyeballed Kylian. Kylian, on the other hand, felt guilty of doing something when he had, in fact, done nothing at all.

“Excuse me,” interrupted Kylian, “but if you can do without the insults, I’m Dr. Kylian Bouche and I’m a colleague of Viviane’s at the National Lab.”

“Oh, is that so?” challenged Luc. “Lemme scan your personal communicator then.”

Kylian, not wanting any more trouble after what he just went through at the checkpoint, handed over his personal communicator without protest. Luc scanned Kylian’s personal communicator with his sleeve computer and after a short wait, it displayed Kylian’s personal identification information for Luc to read. Luc looked up at Kylian several times while reading his ID information always with a suspicious eye and a slight frown. Finally, he was satisfied.

“OK, bub. You check out,” said Luc and he flipped Kylian’s personal communicator back at Kylian forcing him to stumble in order to catch it.

Luc turned back to Viviane. “So, what’re you hangin’ around this loser for?”

After falling down trying to catch his personal communicator, Kylian had had enough of Luc’s insults.

“Now hold on! At least I’m not guarding a playground full of kids like you are! What’s up with that? Don’t you have some real police work to do?” shot back Kylian.

Luc looked as if he had been stabbed in the stomach with a knife.

“Augh! It’s not my fault!” yelled Luc as he lashed out. “I was assigned to be School Resource Officer because no one else wanted to do it and my Captain said I didn’t have a choice.”

Kylian jumped back on hearing Luc lash out at him. Viviane, on the other hand, leaned over to Luc with a sympathetic touch on his arm.

“Don’t be so hard on yourself, Luc,” Viviane said, “the kids look up to you, you know?”

Luc flopped back down again and sulked, pitying himself for what he considered his wretched job as “lunch lady” to the crowd of High Schoolers behind him. He played with the handle of his gun holstered in his waistband wistfully reminiscing of his past escapades shooting at enemies. Despondent, he looked back up at Viviane and Kylian and said, “OK, you guys can go. Go do whatever you came for and just leave me alone.”