“And why would we do this?” Vanhi asked. She sat cross-legged on the table, looking skeptical. As always, her sarcasm was spiky and electric, dominating the room, and Charlie would’ve married her in a heartbeat if she were interested in boys. As it was, he’d spent the first half of freshman year pining for her anyway. She’d told him, “I’ll be your best friend, but you’d have better luck flirting with a tree.”
Now she was asking them why they would take on this particular stunt. Just as she had before the phallic pumpkin patch. Just as she had before the skeleton incident, or the aptly named Hack Against Douchebags. But they knew Vanhi always came around. She had a special place as the only girl in the Vindicators. Which meant she had a slightly better frontal lobe, but deep down, she still liked to ride the edge like the rest of them.
“Well, it’s an election year,” Peter answered. “And our senior year.”
“Go class of 2017,” Vanhi said. “So … why again?”
“A special year deserves a special prank,” Charlie said.
They had decided not to mention the chatbot, or the instructions from the pearly gates.
“What level crime is this?” Kenny asked nervously. His parents’ words were echoing in his head: No false steps; second chances don’t exist. It didn’t help that his brother had dropped out of medical school to be a “writer” in LA. Kenny was now the good son.
“Class A misdemeanor,” Alex said.
“Not so bad.” Kenny felt a little queasy. Every fiber of his body said leave, but these were his best friends, smart and talented if a little mischievous, and he wasn’t going to leave them in a foxhole. Nor did he want to be labeled a chicken later.
“I’ve done worse,” Peter added, to no one in particular.
“Still…,” Kenny said.
“You don’t have to come,” Alex taunted him.
Kenny looked away, shamed.
Vanhi said, “We should do it.”
“Really?” Charlie asked, surprised.
“The guy is an asshole. Flirting with white supremacists and neo-Nazis. And the Vindicators have a strict no-asshole policy.”
“That’s true,” Kenny said, psyching himself up.
“That is true,” Charlie admitted, a little worried at how easily his friends had agreed to do this. Throwing his own life away seemed fine. But he didn’t want to take them down with him. College applications were coming due, after all. But it was just a misdemeanor.…
“We’ll need a bolt cutter,” Peter said.
“I have one,” Alex offered, surprising no one.
“Put ’em in,” Kenny said, putting his hand in the middle of their group. Everybody laid hands on top. “Our senior year. Our final prank. ‘No assholes’ on three?”
It was agreed.
“One…”
“Two…”
“Three…”
“No assholes!”
On the way to the parking lot, Charlie tugged on Vanhi’s sleeve. “You really don’t have to come,” he whispered, saying it so only she could hear. Unlike Alex, Charlie said it genuinely, not as a dare. “Maybe you shouldn’t. It’s not exactly a great time to get arrested.”
“That goes for you, too,” Vanhi shot back.
Neither of them blinked, so they found themselves with Peter, Alex, and Kenny in Kenny’s Honda Civic on the way to the highway. They had agreed Peter’s BMW was way too conspicuous for this mission.
They found the sign where they expected, having cased it earlier. The bright orange lights announced TRAVEL TIME TO WESTVIEW EXIT—10–12 MINUTES against a black background, enclosed in yellow metal and rising above the highway.
They could have done it in the middle of the night. Under cover of darkness. But what fun would that be? So TxDOT could have it down before the morning commute started? No. This was senior year, class of 2017. An election year. It called for a bold gesture. A hack for truth and justice, which were in short supply these days. They parked the car in a Whataburger parking lot and found a remote way down under the bridge, where they could slink in the darkness beneath the overpass, seen only by a homeless couple balled up in sleeping bags deep in the crevice between the grass bank and the bridge base. They had anticipated this, and Peter, with his effortless charm, passed them a couple chicken sandwiches from Whataburger and assured them that the Vindicators had never been here and weren’t here now. The chicken/secrecy oath transacted, they worked their way down and crept in the shadow of the sign, hopefully out of view from the road, and found the control box.
Its cheap lock fell easily to Alex’s bolt cutter. It fell into two pieces, which he merrily twisted apart. “Let’s do this,” he said, grinning.
He pried open the control box, and Peter knelt in front of it.
Inside was a panel with a keyboard and small screen, housed in black plastic. On prompting, it asked for the admin name. Peter typed in the default, admin, and tabbed to the password prompt. He tried the default password, which he’d looked up on .narthex.
“They never change these,” he said gleefully.
He typed DTOC and hit Enter.
Access denied.
“Not to worry.” He scowled. He held down ALT-CTL, then typed CIPC while holding the two buttons. The screen changed and informed him the password was now reset to the default.
“Easy.” He typed admin then DTOC again.
A menu came up, and just like that, they were in.
He selected Image Text, entered their agreed-upon observation, then selected Run w/o Save. Their AI archangel hadn’t told them what message to write, just that they had to pick one. Maybe that was part of the test. Charlie and Peter had come up with the line together.
The text lit up the bright, large construction sign above them, for all the world to see. Now was the time to get the hell out of Dodge.
Alex put the control pad back into the box, tucking the curly black cord inside with it. Vanhi slammed the door shut, and Alex clamped into place the new industrial-grade padlock they had purchased. Unlike the cheap city lock, it would not be so easily cut. Meanwhile, Charlie and Kenny had already put a similar bolt on the power source. Shutting this baby down would take some doing.
The first cars had started honking, whether in agreement or protest it was hard to guess.
They were halfway up the slope under the overpass when Peter grinned at the homeless couple, who had finished their Whatachick’n and balled up the garbage. He flipped them two Snickers bars. “You never saw us.”
One of the couple winked conspiratorially.
Back in the car, they U-turned and allowed themselves the pleasure of watching for a moment, engine running, as the rush-hour traffic streamed past the sign, honking, some slowing to take a second look.
It was beautiful chaos.
“Third-degree felony,” Alex said.
“What?”
“I lied earlier. When I said it was a misdemeanor.”
“Seriously?”
“Third-degree felony. Tampering with a road sign. Jail time.”
“Why did you lie?” Charlie studied Alex, trying to understand him. Charlie wasn’t worried about himself but Vanhi and Kenny and even Peter. They should’ve at least known the risk.
“I didn’t think we’d do it otherwise,” Alex said almost plaintively.
“Oh, wow,” Kenny said, with the giddy freedom of being on the far side of a rickety bridge.
“Yeah,” Vanhi said.
“Well, we did it.”
“Yes. Yes, we did.”
They admired their handiwork. The small gesture wasn’t going to change the world. But in a random, chaotic universe, it was a small, proud shot in the dark. Under the overpass, hundreds of cars passing by, their sign told the world in bright orange light:
DONALD TRUMP IS A SHAPE-SHIFTING LIZARD
A siren sang in the distance, and while it probably had nothing to do with them, they weren’t going to wait to find out.
“Third-degree felony,” Peter repeated aloud.
“Hot damn,” Charlie said.
“I’m applying to Harvard tomorrow,” Vanhi added.
“So … we should go?”
“Hell yes. Yes. Let’s go.”
They drove off, slow and steady in the opposite direction, leaving their glorious sign for the torrent of cars streaming home.