After his initial rage, denial, and bargaining with everyone he knew, Mr. Ivanov had settled into mute acceptance of the new status quo. It wasn't like him to be so bothered by what everyone else was doing; he was no stranger to the administration's harebrained schemes, and despite the new idea of student involvement, chances were that they'd have come up with something equally stupid in the future. When Mr. Ivanov saw Frank in the hallways, he thus didn't needle him too much; Frank was still a good kid, with a sense of humor Mr. Ivanov could appreciate, and despite Frank's refusal to ever censure Jason or Alan Mr. Ivanov was sure that Frank was on his side.

Jason, now, was another matter. Jason had grown emboldened over time, observing that nobody stopped him from spying on whomever he wanted whenever he wanted; it was like nobody cared at all. Jason had incurred some losses in his quest to see and hear everything: Mr. T had taped over his camera after seeing it follow Juliet around the classroom from too revealing of an angle. Frank assumed it was Alan, but some quick process of elimination proved that it couldn't be him or Behrooz. While both Mr. T and Frank assumed the most innocent of motives—it seemed entirely logical, in fact, that as Jason couldn't monitor Juliet's phone, this was the next best thing—when Mr. T casually brought up this observation to Mr. Ivanov, he was displeased:

"So you're saying Jason is a Peeping Tom? God, maybe I need to tape over my camera too!"

"I think you're overreacting, Igor," Mr. T assured him, "it's just some innocent espionage. I have nothing against it."

"But you taped up your camera, clearly you too are against this surveillance state they're building."

"Jason is free to spy on Juliet, Regina, Frank, or myself in any other place in the school. I personally would just like a little peace of mind. It's no big deal that I noticed, but what if someone else did? Then I'd look bad! Plausible deniability, you know. And if it turns out that I inspire copycats, well for the good of the school I'll take the tape off." Mr. Ivanov was not satisfied with Mr. T's train of logic, who after that conversation went to take the tape off in case he inspired Mr. Ivanov, and he accosted Jason when he came to class the next day as cheerful as ever. Jason's face betrayed nothing:

"Oh, Mr. T's classroom? Well, you know, I do routine security checks. Random chance. And if I just so happen to be following Juliet, Alan, or Behrooz around, from any angle I so choose, it's luck. That's all there is to it. They should be honored, actually, that they're so privileged to be examined so closely."

"And you don't see anything wrong with doing this during lecture, when you ought to be paying attention? Think of how disrespectful that is to your teachers. As a teacher, I take offense for all of them."

"I'm adept at multitasking. I serve a higher power, Mr. Ivanov, and He commands me to secure his legacy."

"Who, Frank?" Mr. Ivanov asked sarcastically, watching the security camera in his classroom from the corner of his eye.

"No, Joseph Stalin."

"Don't joke about Stalin like that. He massacred millions of people, and you think that legacy is something you want to implement here? My God, you're crazy! All of you are. Go sit down, Jason. And stop playing with the cameras when I can see you, it drives me crazy. Do you understand how scary it is to know that anything I say, anything I do, anywhere on this campus can be used against me? I'm going to have to start taking my calls in the restroom at this rate."

"We have cameras there, too," Jason added.

"Be quiet." Jason couldn't understand what all the fuss was about. Sure, spying on the club officers all day was going above and beyond whatever duties he promised Mr. Kurtz and Ms. Wolfe he'd handle, but then again, wasn't everything? And really, if Jason thought about it hard enough, their phones were spying on them anyway. Nobody walked around all day with their phone encased in aluminum foil. So what difference did it make? At least this threat was easily quantifiable; who wouldn't prefer kindly Jason to the NSA? That was why Jason left class that day entirely certain of his moral infallibility, and that was why Mr. Ivanov angled his desk so he was always facing the security camera; it was quite clever of Jason indeed to have the cameras randomly move, that way Mr. Ivanov never knew when he ought to start swearing loudly and flipping off his personal guardian. He couldn't always be watched; presumably he was not that interesting to Jason, who had spent enough time in his classroom to know that nothing interesting ever happened.

As if the universe had heard Mr. Ivanov's silent musings, at lunch one day Mr. Ivanov heard knocking on his door. Mr. Ivanov begrudgingly agreed to open his classroom during lunch for Tom and Regina, who at this point were starting to get tired of their newfound infamy, when Tom said he brought pizza. The three of them sat down at the desks and Tom passed out napkins and plates. The first meeting of the How To Be A Bad Person Club had begun.

"This is a complete violation of our freedoms. I don't care what Frank says, this is tyranny," Tom began with his mouth partially full.

"Jason during class today mentioned how Stalin's policies were an inspiration for whatever school project he's up to. Stalin killed my grandparents. Not cool," Mr. Ivanov added. "Thanks for bringing the pizza, by the way. One positive of this, I suppose, is that our weekly morning staff meetings have actual breakfast now. Frank and his people cooked us French toast last week."

"He cooked us French toast over the summer too! It's just a manipulation tactic."

"Whatever you want to call it, it tasted damn good. What disgusts me more about this entire thing, more than that students were given unfettered control over the school, is that all my colleagues signed off on it. Well, I wouldn't say that they're all in favor, but they just don't care. They think that just because it costs them nothing extra to wear a suit or say the pledge that it's of no consequence. First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me."

"Niemoller, right? I remember Mr. Simon read us that," Regina offered. "It's a classic quote, and as much as I hate to admit it, history repeats itself."

"Mr. T would kill me if he heard this, and knowing the cameras, maybe he will, but Jason's been spying on everyone through the security cameras. He has access to your phones, too."

"We know," Tom admitted. Ever since he had become an Epsilon, someone had been rearranging the apps on his phone while he slept and changing the alarms by just a few minutes; Tom's first hypothesis was that he had suddenly began sleepwalking, but Mr. Ivanov's explanation made so much more sense.

"And does that bother you at all?" Mr. Ivanov asked, knowing fully the answer.

"Of course it does!" Regina interjected. "Some things, you know, are private business. There are some texts and pictures on my phone I hope Jason hasn't seen, girl business."

"It's not just him. I have access to everything through TigerTalk—not the security cameras, at least—but if I wanted to I could hack into your email right now. Just because I was feeling spiteful or something. Don't worry, I haven't touched any of those features."

"I think what bothers me most about all of this is that the balance of power is uneven. I talked with Frank the other day, and he made it abundantly clear I was just a number to him. It's not like they get performance bonuses for any of this, and they still have the rest of school to deal with. Classes, normal people things. If they were forced into it, I could understand some of this, but if they're doing it of their own volition it's just sadistic!" Tom continued.

"Let me ask you a question, Tom. Answer honestly. If you were in charge instead of, I don't know, Alan, would you be using your power in the same way? Would you be a force of good or evil, knowing that the power lay entirely in your hands?"

"How about you, Mr. Ivanov? It's a good question." Mr. Ivanov put his hand to his chin and wiped his face with a napkin.

"My high school self would have staunchly refused. These people would be my friends, whom I'd have known since my early youth. And I couldn't bear to see them reduced to statistics. I'm sure Jason has used this quote before, but: a single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic. It's not like anyone's dying here or anything like that, but they all start to blend together. I would know my friends not by name, but by their ID numbers. Now, as an adult with a great job, a loving wife, and a good salary, sure, why not? I don't think I would use my power in the same way as Jason; for one, I'd do what he suggested at the beginning of the year and use it to check for academic dishonesty, but it does make things very efficient. Before the celery juice incident and everyone shifted to just doing drugs off-campus, you'd get people smoking marijuana in the bathrooms at least once a week. Security cameras there would do a lot of good."

"But you see, Mr. Ivanov, that's the exact same argument Jason's using. Both of you think you're doing this for the right reasons. But all I see is tyranny, everywhere I look. I don't give a damn if Jason's busting people using marijuana, he's still looking at my phone for proof of secret Epsilon rebellion. They've all deluded themselves into thinking that they're doing the right thing, that they're good people. But there's nothing to keep them accountable."

"So do we want to keep up these meetings?" Regina asked, thinking next time they could eat sushi.

"I don't see the harm," Mr. Ivanov admitted, "when I'm free, of course. I think we're only scratching the surface of what's wrong with Heller, and together we will make it right." Tom and Regina cleaned up their mess and left, and Mr. Ivanov went back to his desk. Mr. Kurtz would have the solution, that was it! He would at least have a touch of sympathy and pretend like he cared. Mr. Ivanov began typing an email, but realized that Jason undoubtedly could be spying on that too; he took out a notepad from his drawer and began jotting down scattered thoughts. He wrote his reminder to himself in a heavy and decisive hand, amplifying it sharply with a series of coded punctuation marks and underlining the whole message twice. There were connections everywhere to be teased out and unraveled: this tangled web spanned from Jason to Frank, Ms. Foster, Mr. T, maybe Ms. Liu—she was a crafty one, and undoubtedly to anyone and everyone who could have some stake in this conflict. It was a war, one fought for the soul of high school education, and it was finally time for Mr. Ivanov to take up arms.

Mr. Ivanov would have thrown in the towel had he known that the superintendent was scheduled to come by the school that afternoon to meet with the "visionary" and "revolutionary" student council, as Mr. Kurtz had described them in an email. Mr. Mudd was a portly, squat man with a bushy mustache and the voice of a drill sergeant; all the teachers, and even Mr. Kurtz, spoke of him in whispers. They avoided saying his name, the rumor having been started a while ago that like Beetlejuice, if they said his name three times he would appear in a puff of smoke. Mr. Mudd did indeed often appear in puffs of smoke from fragrant Cuban cigars, although out of respect for the students he only indulged in his own office. Mr. Kurtz woke up one morning, a comfortable ninety minutes before he would have to think about work, to a voice message from Mr. Mudd:

"Patrick, I'm coming to check out your school today. What on earth is happening over there? Good things, I know, but I need to see this for myself. 3:30. Bring in the student council too. You aren't in trouble, don't worry."

The student council stood assembled in Mr. Kurtz's office, backs straight, waiting for the arrival of the mythical Mr. Mudd. Mr. Kurtz coached them on etiquette until it became clear they knew exactly how to hold themselves in polite company. At exactly 3:30, Mr. Mudd opened Mr. Kurtz's door and walked over to his chair and sat down, forcing Mr. Kurtz to stand next to the others. Mr. Mudd avoided the pleasantries and instead gingerly removed the photo of Frank and his staff from Mr. Kurtz's wall and examined it carefully.

"Who are these people? They look like waiters."

"Well, uh, I'm in that picture," Frank offered.

"So you must be the president then. You're the one we have to blame for all of this," Mr. Mudd laughed, and after Mr. Kurtz nudged them, everyone else started laughing too.

"I couldn't have done it without Mr.—Dr.?—Kurtz's leadership. Blame him for all the bad parts and praise me for everything good," Frank joked.

"I only go by 'Dr.' when trying to impress parents," Mr. Kurtz explained.

"But anyway, Patrick, why do you have this picture? Out of all the things to celebrate, this seems like a strange touch," Mr. Mudd continued. "The matching uniforms must have cost a fortune."

"I don't know why Frank had the photo taken originally, but I think it's a nice reminder that behind all the bright lights and celebration, there's hard work that goes into everything we do too. We can't just take the good parts and discard the bad. That's not how life works."

"So why did you have the photo taken, Frank? Do you agree with your principal?"

"You may not believe it from how I act, Mr. Mudd, but I try to stay out of the spotlight. I've settled into my role as deuteragonist, believe it or not. When I have such an excellent team of people surrounding me, I can occupy my time with delivering philosophy lectures, planning menus, and living normally. Delegating tasks I don't want to do to those below me, and trusting people like yourself above me to grease the wheels when needed. So I think that photo represents how I'm really happiest when I serve as a backdrop for everything else that happens. That's why I usher for the plays, too; I make things easier for everyone else, and thus I set the stage for each and every individual to live their life as they see fit."

"And is that how a good person acts? I've read your manifesto, and as illuminating as it was for reasons that I can tell by your facial expression, you don't want me to mention in front of everyone else, there seems to be a greater emphasis on realpolitik. That's what you've turned the school into, if I'm not mistaken. What do you think, Mr. Kurtz? It's unusual, dare I say unprecedented, that you're treating your student leaders as equals like this."

"Ms. Foster, if you know her—our student leadership director—had a good way of thinking about it. We can certainly control what goes on in the classrooms, but our goal is also for students to develop emotionally. And we can't control every facet of their being. You and I were teenagers a long, long time ago; we don't know how they think. We certainly couldn't plumb their psyches like Frank and his team do. It's efficient, if anything else. And we're still doing our jobs as teachers. I promise, the four of you, that any employer will be fascinated by this. I'm willing to write each of you a recommendation letter for college, and over the years I've built up a fair number of connections; Stanford's not that far away, and the dean and I play golf every Sunday. If you want an internship at Google, who cares about your resumé, masterminding this operation alone should qualify you!"

"I have an alternative offer," Mr. Mudd interrupted. "We could use folks like you working for the school district, or even as teachers. You won't become millionaires, at least not immediately, but as any of your teachers could tell you, we pay quite well for top talent. You can spend your days doing things exactly like this, mentoring students as they imprint on the school in new and exciting ways. Who knows what's next—you could come back in five years and we'd have a communist collective! But anyway, the school. That's what we're here to discuss."

Mr. Mudd found the conviction of Mr. Kurtz and his staff surprising; certainly it was nothing unusual to see the student council so attached to their Frankenstein's monster of a reform movement, but the principal spoke almost reverently of the progress made. The students let Mr. Kurtz speak for them as a whole, about how with a few notable exceptions, disciplinary infractions became infrequent, and even the students deemed troublesome that logically speaking, would not benefit from the good person movement at least did not seem harmed. Drug use had also declined dramatically, at least on campus; the superintendent was even more surprised to hear the catalyst for this change occurred last year. The drawbacks, at least according to everyone involved in fomenting these changes, were irrelevant.

"But does it bother you at all that your students are less free? They were promised a high school of astonishing new freedom and independence. A brave new world! Any freshman who came here not knowing how it used to be, unaware of the context of your little ideology besides what you force-fed them, would know that this wasn't right. It wasn't how things were meant to be."

"With all due respect, Mr. Mudd," Frank interjected, "most of the new rules enforced stringently now were in the student regulations before. They just weren't enforced. Certainly that doesn't excuse any particular rule, but they work. And I'm sure that in some distant past, before students had portable gaming devices in their pockets or I was born, those policies functioned flawlessly too. Consider me single-minded, but I'm not as much of a trailblazer as people think I am."

"Don't take what I say as criticism—I commend your chutzpah. And, although I hope this is clear to everyone in the room, high school students always complain. It's a fact of life. This is the time when they finally have enough of a functional consciousness to make intelligent decisions and have intelligent ideas, yet they're never able to do anything about it. I also wouldn't have expected people like you in this day and age to relive our former glory."

"Was it really that much better then?" Behrooz asked.

"I'd like to think that we are always making progress onward. Even if we revert back to old ideas, in a perfect world they'd have been refined in the interim. And I can say that as far as I can tell, you've done that. I would never have thought that propaganda posters would do the trick, but you learn something new every day. And TigerTalk, genius."

"If I may ask, Mr. Mudd," Behrooz continued, "what's your least favorite part of this new way of doing things?"

"If you're asking me just based on gut instinct, the caste system is a bit, I don't know, tactless? I know Mr. Kurtz waxed rhapsodically about it, but if I were in charge of creating these changes, I would come up with something a bit more subtle."

"Personally, that's one of my favorite parts!" Alan piped up, now no longer too shy to speak. "It's dramatic and most certainly excessive, but I cannot think of any other way in which we could enforce our new morality on over a thousand students in a way everyone can understand. Philosophy isn't approachable to the average person; only the most intelligent even come to the club, and so we needed to dumb it down a little for, you know, the others."

"You've convinced me then: under the logical premise that we want fifteen hundred people all to follow your new philosophy, it's not like you can fine them or send them to prison, so other incentives are needed. Fear is the most powerful incentive of all, I think. And you've been able to quantify that fear, into your point system, and it doesn't matter if you call them Epsilons or dunces or morons, the message comes through loud and clear. The more I stay here, the more I think I ought to have some conversations with other principals about expanding this system."

While those in the principal's office plotted the school's continual demise, Ted pulled up into the student parking lot, immediately noticing that someone had raked the fallen leaves out of the road. He checked his suit in his car's mirror before confidently strutting on campus. He was there as a tourist; he had heard such strange things about his former school that he knew he had to investigate, and it had already become clear he had entered a foreign land. His sister was a freshman, and as soon as she came back from her first day triumphantly announcing she was a Beta, Ted knew he had unfinished business. Ted admired the posters on the walls like he was visiting an art gallery. The floors were picked clean of litter, and the few students he saw in the hallways walked with hitherto unseen stiffness in their movements, like they were trying to speed-walk but hadn't quite figured out how. It was after school, what was the rush? He remembered that once freshman year, he had been sent on garbage duty for instigating a minor food fight; now, it seemed that garbage duty was everyone's duty, for how else did the school look so sterile? It was nice, of course, but it wasn't the school he remembered—the trash bins were even sorted correctly! Ted felt a twinge of guilt and paranoia as he walked around; what would happen if he were seen? Of course he knew what happened to Tom and Regina, and it wouldn't surprise him if repeated troublemakers were drawn and quartered in center court. He felt fortunate that the first familiar face he saw was Tom, who was lingering close enough to the administrative buildings to see the student council through the glass.

"Ted! What are you doing here?" Tom shouted at him. "It's dangerous here. Go back home."

"I had to see it to believe it, Tom. A little bird told me that you aren't taking this change as well as you could be—care to elaborate?" Tom didn't respond at first, instead pointing to the security cameras under the eaves of the buildings, far across the courtyard by the swimming pool.

"Why so sullen, Tom? You're typically bursting with energy." Tom frowned, and meekly gestured toward the office.

"So you don't much like civilization, Mr. Savage. I see how it is." This finally prompted Tom to speak:

"You can say that again for the people in the back. I feel like I can't even walk to my car without somebody breathing down my neck, telling me exactly what I'm doing wrong. All I did was one simple little act of defiance, and now it's like I'm public enemy number one. You'd think I tried to bomb the school or something."

"On the surface, I mean, everything looks great. Everyone's dressed nicely and the hallways are clean."

"The hallways are only clean because we Epsilons clean up the trash. If not for us, this entire place would be a garbage dump."

"I'm sure you aren't that important, Tom. How is everyone else doing? I saw Behrooz at a party a few weeks ago and he seemed to be happy, I don't know. I wouldn't go as far as to call him pleased, but he didn't seem depressed."

"Behrooz is a traitor and I hate everything he stands for," Tom declared resolutely.

"Isn't he Iranian or something? I thought they believed in theocracy and dictatorship," Ted asked.

"That's right, he's Iranian."

"That crazy bastard," Tom laughed, and he steadied himself: "Wait, aren't you Israeli, Ted?"

"That has nothing to do with it. So let me get this straight: all the Alphas are partying it up, and you need to clean up their trash?"

"Yep, that's it. The rich serving the poor. Look what society's come to."

"Never speak disrespectfully of society, Tom. Only people who can't get in do that."

"Who are you to speak of society, Ted? My dad's had the CTO of Apple over for dinner before. I can say with certainty I've beat multiple millionaires at Scrabble. What have you done?"

"I have a job. I take classes at the local community college. I may serve in the Navy or do some sort of ROTC program. I'm living life, Tom, and out in the real world people aren't Alphas or Epsilons, they don't wear suits everywhere; they get up, drink coffee, go to work, come home, and sleep. It's as simple as that. Don't let all this current confusion scare you."

"But Ted, you're working your way up from the lowest rung of the ladder. The fat cats in charge act like Frank and his band of thugs: they dress nicely, fraternize, eat fancy dinners, and tell the lower classes what to do. I know that life, Ted, and at this rate it won't be mine."

"Do you understand how childish you sound, Tom? You're a senior in high school, and you're talking as if your life's destiny has been dictated to you by someone else. We're about the same age; there's no difference between us besides that one of us is in the system and one of us is out of it. Maybe you're right and in the upper echelons of 'society,' people act like this. If that's really the case, who would want to live there?" With Ted's newfound lucidity, he began to feel a distinct pity for Tom; this wasn't his previous gut feeling that Tom was a bit too big for his britches, but Ted instead knew now that Tom was mortal, just as mortal as he was. And inside his pompous shell, there was a little kid who was never allowed to buy that lollipop in the candy store and never forgot it.

Tom took Ted's exhortation to heart too as they stood there, not daring to sit on the Beta benches or the Alpha grass. Morale was deteriorating and it was all Tom's fault. The school was in peril; he was jeopardizing his traditional rights of freedom and independence by daring to exercise them. How could he win a war where he was outplayed at every turn? He had nobody on his side but Mr. Ivanov, who he thought ultimately constrained by his official position to ever do anything daring, and Regina, who after her burst of energy in protesting alongside Tom had become feckless, passive, and complicit. Even Ted, one of his most loyal friends, thought him a loser.

"Being here depresses me. Let's go somewhere fun," Tom suggested. Ted had seen enough of Heller as well, and together they walked away, Tom pointing out all the places where change had been made, just as the student council finished their meeting. The majority vote ruled supreme yet again: the four of them had decided to be ecstatic about the superintendent's reception of their ideas. Immediately upon exiting the office, Juliet gave Frank a warm hug, and gave Alan and Behrooz clearly-lacking imitations. This occasion demanded celebration, they thought, and Juliet proposed they grab food downtown to celebrate. Alas, Alan needed to go to robotics, and Behrooz had a party to prepare for, and Frank was about to diplomatically propose they wait for another less cloudy day that didn't threaten rain. Juliet looked deflated again, but Frank looked at the sky—a bit of rain was no big deal, just a bit of water. So after the others had already left, and they were walking in the same direction, he changed his mind:

"You know, we have nothing to be afraid of. Just a little California dew. Want to get ramen?" And so they walked together, like they would have anyway, and Juliet was already rationalizing the walk back uphill as extra needed exercise.

Discussion Questions:

What claims does Mr. Ivanov make about morality during his lunchtime meeting with Tom and Regina? Are his attitudes shared by others?

Compare Mr. Mudd and Mr. Kurtz, paying special attention to the competing offers they make the club leadership, and the ways in which Mr. Mudd questions the validity of the club's authority. What are some of the key points Mr. Mudd makes?

What's different about Tom and Ted's friendship now?