Page 27 of You Had Me at Hello World
Khoi starts coughing.
HellomynameisCourtney glances up at the presentation and flushes. “Ah, sorry… I thought we updated this slide. But, uh, let this be a life lesson: technology is powerful, but humans are the ones who decide how to wield it. Being good is more important than being brilliant.”
Someone boos, and there’s another ripple of laughter. And I snicker, too, until I notice Khoi staring at me, almost like he’s disappointed.
Which, okay. He can think whatever he wants. It was just a silly moment, and everybody else was laughing too. It’s not like I actually believe in using tech for evil. I’m not about to build a drone that assassinates kittens.
Still, it gives me this pang of guilt, like I’ve let him down somehow, even though we barely know each other.
I forget all about that once the prizes are announced. A current of energy zips through the audience. There are some sponsor-based awards—I’ve heard that in previous years, internships at companies like Apple or Amazon were up for grabs—but the grand prize is $100,000 and “consideration for admission to MIT,” whatever that means.
I never thought about what it would be like to attend a school like MIT. I kind of assumed that stuff was for other kids. The College Confidential kids.
When the room has finally quieted down,HellomynameisCourtney explains the structure of the program.
There are three checkpoints. The first is two weeks from now, a written exam based on optional coursework. The second, a project proposal, is a week after that. And the last one, a final presentation and project submission, is at the end of the program. During each checkpoint, we’ll be ranked publicly, like a Hunger Games for nerds.
But hey, even if I completely flop, they won’t feed me to robot dogs. Hopefully.
Before the first checkpoint, we’ll get college-level classes that teach us computer science. That’s good, since I definitely need to play catch-up. After the written exam, the program will be more unstructured, and we’ll spend most of our time working toward the second and third checkpoints with our team members.
The first checkpoint is individual; the other two are judged per team. Our results on all three will be weighed as part of final judging. Teams can be comprised of one to four people, but the prize money is split among everyone. My heart sinks when she says we choose our own teams. I was kind of banking on those being assigned for us.
I mean, even in my head it’s a little pathetic. Like I need my teacher to help me find friends.
Kids are gesturing to each other in thatyeah?/yeahway that people in middle school do when picking dodgeball teams forgym, except now it’s not about who can fling a ball hardest—it’s about who wrote their first Hello World in the womb. Of course people are going to choose their buddies or whoever won the latest genius prize.
Whatever. Yeah. I can work alone. Totally in my solo era. And I won’t even have to split the prize money.
But there won’t be any prize money at all if I don’t win. If I don’t win, I’ll be crawling back to Chinook Shore with nothing but disappointment and a backpack stuffed with dirty laundry, and everything will be exactly the same as it always has been. Scratch that. It’ll be even worse. Because now Michael hates me even more than before.
To win, I need to find teammates. I’m not deluded enough to think I can win by myself.
So it’s time to rizz people up.
Chapter Thirteen
But rizzing people up is hard.
The rest of the day is devoted to fun, since, as we all know, scheduled fun is the best kind of fun. They split us up. Khoi and Obi get assigned to other groups, and I quickly lose track of them.
Mom and Michael sent Olive and me to overnight summer camp one year, so I recognize the classic bonding games: human knot, get-to-know-you bingo and such. But the rock-paper-scissors tournament spirals into an argument about whether the game needs blockchain integration, and two truths and a lie quickly becomes a circlejerk where everyone is humblebragging about their prestigious internships.Two truths and a lie: I worked at Google, I worked at Amazon, I worked at Microsoft!(The lie is Microsoft.)
I try talking to different people at each activity. I meet a brother-sister pair from Illinois who speak only in chess moves, a purple-haired girl who tries to recruit me into her crypto cult, and a guy who spends ten minutes explaining his theory abouthow having multiple girlfriends is actually the best approach to dating. Honestly, I’m shocked he could even getonegirlfriend.
By the time we get to the trust fall exercise, I’m seriously considering just letting myself hit the ground. Then someone taps my shoulder. I turn to see an Asian girl with auburn hair, a faint sunburn on her cheeks, and a frilly pink sundress.
“Hiya, I’m Stella from Texas,” she says. She has a slight drawl. “You’re Aisha’s roommate, right? We go to the same boarding school.”
“Char,” I say, surprised that she knows. That means Aisha must’ve mentioned me to other people. Maybe she’s not actually trying to avoid me.
She grins, revealing these lime-green gel braces. “Want to risk potential concussions together?”
Stella turns out to be shockingly normal: she doesn’t mention her IQ or grill me on my GitHub commits, and she has decent opinions on the latest season ofWhite Lotus. We end up doing the rest of the activities together. The last event of the night is a yacht party with some Alpha Fellows sponsors. My social battery is super drained, and I’m tempted to retreat back to my room and maybe FaceTime Lola. When Stella hears that, she gasps in mock disbelief. “Girlie, it’s a yacht! You have to go.”
“I’ve been on a yacht before,” I protest. Okay, it was last summer when I was picking up shifts at the Lucky Panda. We were hired to cater a wedding reception, which ended abruptlybefore dessert because the groom got caught with a bridesmaid in the bathroom. But still.
“Char, it’ll be fun. We’ll dance together.” She pauses. “Well, my boyfriend will probably also want to dance.”
