Rave

Alan was not a simple man, his eyes, as beady as they were, held a sardonic look while he wore a constant frown because he was always caught up in some conundrum plaguing his mind. He was not the type to relax or chill and it showed in his own appearance.

He was wearing his usual waist high trousers bound by his loose belt with his immaculate shirt tucked in while sporting a wool vest that was nothing more than some distant memento of his years in youth when college life was his surroundings. He never admired the world for any feat for he always believed that the glass was half empty and it would never be full...

Leon, on the other hand, was an astute man with a character that was charming as it was welcoming to everyone who approached him. He was usually loitering the school faculty lounges or chatting about life to some of the students sitting on the stoop of the school steps, always playing the "cool cat", the "bee's knees" and the "Awesome prof."

Today, however, Leon had gone to far and Alan was going to enjoy every minute of grinding him down for ever blurring the lines between students and teachers.

"She's 16, Leon. Did you father ever teach you to count or did he just make you sit around some tree and bang drums like the worthless hippie that he was?"

"- I know I fucked up, Mr. Braithwaite but I seriously had no idea...she said she was 18."

Alan's eyes popped open as if, for the first time, human stupidity had shocked him.
"18...AND STILL ATTENDING THIS SCHOOL?!!!"

"- What planet do you live on, Mr. Delange, where an 18 year old is still attending mid-Highschool...Stop playing us for a fool and just admit what you did and hand in your resignation you sick Pervert!"

Leon couldn't get another word out...the room had turned completely hostile and he knew it would take one utterance of a word to get them started into a rioting mob ready to tear him, the Pedophile rapist, limb from limb...

...Only, he wasn't a pedophile or a rapist. Joanna had come onto him while he was out with friends at a bar, decked out in clothes befitting a rave chick in her early 20s, it didn't even make it easy that he couldn't tell at the time, being hopped up on ecstasy and partly inebriated. She was perfect for the night and she wanted him so he never knew...that is until a girl in his school started spreading the rumor that she had slept with the "awesome prof" and was expecting his baby. She was excited about it...Leon dreaded it.

"I-I understand, Mr. Braithwaite. I'll tender my resignation, pronto. "

The room split into two sides as the principal's door opened up and the cops streamed in, one firmly standing beside Leon. The end was near and he could smell it...one drug test and he'd probably had ended up in their hands anyway.

"Mr. Delange. I'm officer Edmunds and this is my partner, Officer Warren. You are hereby under arrest on the grounds of statutory rape and for impregnating a minor. Everything you say can and will be used against you in the court of law, you have the right to an attorney and if you do not have one, we shall give you one. Please come with us."

Leon could recall how his morning had begun at that moment, how he was hung over and had a half slice of pizza for breakfast, how he had flirted with the school girls in his French Class, wooing them with slight words of passion hoping they get the message of his charm, how he had lunch with Jeremy, a senior high-school kid in his class who he was teaching in the ways of pick-up and how his day had shattered when an angry father charged through the school with a baseball bat and laid him out, breaking two of his ribs while screaming "I'm gonna kill you Child Fucker!".

He was hauled out of the room, limping and bloodied, his body aching and his demeanor shrunk by guilt and shame as he passed the halls in cuffs while murmurs filled the atmosphere, giggles passed along from cupped hands to ears and how the elderly janitor gasped and stared long as he went through a walk of shame through the corridors towards the main entrance of the school.

The media had already caught wind and were waiting to interview with his busted lip and obviously bruised right eye.

"Mr. Delange, Susan McKinley, AVN News. What compelled you to sleep with a 16 year old girl after drugging her at a rave party?Did you think you could get away with it?"

"I didn't sleep with a 16 year old girl, she told me she was 18!" Leon yelled but no one cared, every one wanted their target, they wanted an effigy of all the screwed up things in the world to burn and hurt and scream at and right now he was that wicker man.

He screamed and screamed but his voice felt mute and the atmosphere was echoing loudly in a cacophonous blend of jeers, police sirens, giggles, out right laughter, inquisitive reporters and his own heartbeat slamming against his chest over and over and over and...

"Sir, your time is up. The process is terminating"

He stood up, coated in a gel-like layer of Touralinder fluid wearing his hyper-psychiatric helmet worn snugly about his head while affording him a breathing apparatus onto his nose and mouth in a joint fixture upon the helm that can only be separated by a latch on the side of the head.

"How long was I under, Jeton?"

"Approximately 3049 years. You were in too deep in the subject's memories and mind you, his gradient is a very ancient one. We're lucky his remains were preserved via a DNA- Capsule saved during 2200 AD. You were lucky to be under as long as you did...what was it like being in 2001?"

Dariun sat up off his decline in the Soma-chamber and pulled off his helmet after unlatching it and watching the fluid drain away from his holding tub.

"I was a primitive and messy world. They indulged in odd activities of destroying the mind and body via the form of drugs and performing atrocious acts while under them. The man I had just been took a minor female from a gathering called a Rave and led her to his friend's abode where three men joined him after he had drugged her. She was so lost in the drug haze that she believe they were all him...Past humans are a scary race."

Jeton, brushed lint off his long draping smock and assumed to sit in mid-air at perfect 90 degree angles on his knees, not a point or line out of alignment.

"...Why would he do that?"

"He thought it was fun...a past human notion of feeling entertainment. This remains must never be accepted into the Smithsonian, it would represent everything wrong in the world to preserve."

Dariun died that day. Jeton didn't care much for humanity for it wasn't why he had hired him to go into the hyper-psychiatric soma-chamber in the first place.

In the year, 5050, Ecstasy reared it's ugly head once more.

• Larz Graveus Wrath