“HOW COULD they do that?” Johnny asked.

“Technically or morally?” Tape Deck replied.

“Well, morally, I know. They have none. They’re evil,” Johnny said with a flourish.“Johnny, what did we say about calling people one of two things? People aren’t just evil or villains,” Ms. Frankl said. She was trying to control the class. It wasn’t going very well. She’d given up on the day’s lesson once Johnny’s hand shot up and he started in on last night.

Johnny pointed one long finger at her and said, evenly, “Chamberlain!”“Johnny!” Ms. Frankl admonished.

He muttered a sorry.

Ever since Johnny’s Social Studies class covered WWII and he’d become obsessed with appeasement and the early English response. In his evolving worldview everyone who wasn’t on his side was either a Chamberlain, an Eichmann, a Good German, or a Hitler. Ms. Frankl was not a fan of his new classification scheme for the world, though it did seem to align with her favorite book, A Misshape’s History of the United States.Johnny took on a more controlled tone and asked Tape Deck deeper questions. “So, technically, the Internet is free. It’s everywhere. But how can they just close down every source of information and silence every voice? Isn’t that censorship?”

Tape Deck had a reply. “You’re wrong, Johnny. Check out my phone.” She pulled the black mirror out of her pocket and pulled up Facebook. “The Internet isn’t free. It isn’t everywhere. It costs billions of dollars to maintain.”

She paused. The class was silent for a second, and it looked like Ms. Frankl was about to continue with the discussion. But then Hamilton sprung up and sat on his desk, ready to speak. “She’s right, dude. The Internet is a big giant forest, a rainforest where everything is so interconnected that if a butterfly flaps its wings everything goes wrong. Large multi-national companies pay billions of dollars to keep servers alive so they can profit off of the Internet. Because of that, they have an interest in keeping certain people happy, like the governments that allow them to operate.”

I loved watching Hamilton talk. I could listen to him all day. He actually talked in a way that made heady ideas seem approachable, down to earth. Lately I felt like he’d be a better teacher than Ms. Frankl. While I was daydreaming, Tape Deck was in a heated conversation with Butters. He was sputtering about scary groups online, and how they were proof that the Internet was a free market.

“Entire nations have blacked out their Internet during periods of unrest, and other places have controlled what people can and can’t see. It could happen here. You’re a fool if you think otherwise. The Internet is not above the power structures of the world. It’s beholden to them.”

Having just smoked Butters verbally, the Spectors joined in. “FOOOOOOOOL!” Butters blushed.