There was a knock at the door. Jack made his way through the hustle and bustle of the crowded dorm room, mumbling to himself. It was move-in day, and Jack had plenty on his mind besides answering the door. He quickly needed to access the computer archive that Obama had made public, for Jack had been using that archive before the Commander-in-chief and it containted sensitive files.
Jack opened the dorm room door to reveal a young man that Jack didn't recognize.
"Hello, is Ben there?" he asked.
"Uh, let's see..." said Jack, looking back into the room. "I don't think there are any Bens living here."
"Oh, ok, tha-"
"Oh wait!! He's probably in the room above," Jack said was sudden realization. He led the young man back into the room to a sliding door leading to a staircase.
"There you go," said Jack, opening the door.
"Thanks!" said the young man as he ascended the staircase in search of Ben.
Jack walked back to the computer terminal where he needed to access that archive. Unluckily, there was a man parked right where Jack needed to be. Jack could still use the wireless mouse, though, so he sat behind the man and began navigating his way through the operating system. Soon he reached a point where he needed to type.
"Excuse me," he said to the man, tapping him on the shoulder. "Do you think you could type 'C' into the computer?" Jack peered at the figures on the screen. "Oh, actually, 'CG.' Thanks."
The man silently typed in the characters and the computer began to load the archive. Jack noticed his bladder required attention, so he made his way through the crowd towards the row of stalls near the back of the long room. He picked a stall and walked in, but to his surprise there was no toilet. Determined not to waste time, he reached under the divider and pulled the toilet from the other stall towards himself so that a small corner of the bowl was visible. He began to disrobe, taking off his shirt, pants, shoes and socks. After he was down to his boxer shorts, he began to urinate into the toilet. As he was nearing completion, there was a loud shout outside the stall.
"Jack!! Hey Jack!!" the male voice shouted. Jack recognized it as someone he had just met.
"I'm in here, just a minute," he shouted back. He quickly tried to wrap things up, and had just begun to put his pants on when the stall door swung open. Embarassed, Jack swung around and froze. His new acquaintance had a small entourage of four or five people with him.
"These girls are interested in you," said young man. At that, two girls detached themselves and prowled into the stall. Jack stared at them in wonderment. They were somewhat attractive, and Jack was flattered, but now was hardly the time.
Jack stood as tall as he could, trying to showcase his meager physique. With as much authority and confidence as a person wearing only boxer shorts could muster, he said, "That's great, but will you get out of the stall, please?"
The girls smiled slightly in coy amusement and slowly backed out of the stall. Jack recognized one of the girls, the one with darker skin, as the sender of a sensitive e-mail in the now-public archive he was trying to access. He hurried to put on his clothes and made his way back to the computer terminal.
The archive was open to the message the black girl had sent. Jack read the message, but the important part was at the end. It read:
"We should meet. Ham Lake Solidarity! Ham Lake forever! Ham Lake North, Ham Lake Central, Ham Lake South." Jack saw that Ham Lake South had been crossed out. He was worried about this, for that was where he was from.
Jack turned around to browse through the bookshelf behind him. Because he'd be sharing this dorm with one other guy and three girls, this particular book collection had a decidedly feminine bent. He recognized several copies of a popular self-discovery book and thought that this book was probably very common on college girls' shelves.
His search was interrupted by loud singing from the front of the room. He looked to see a male he almost recognized perched on top of a stack of full corn crates, crooning to a gathering crowd. Crooning wasn't the right word, exactly; although the young man was a decent singer, his style was pop-ish and wouldn't have been out of place in an accapella boy band. As if someone was reading Jack's mind, another boy burst into perfect harmony with the first and climbed atop the crates.
Jack had barely enough time to wonder at this development before a trio of young men erupted from a closed crate and joined the first two, forming a full five-part band. Jack saw that in their zeal they'd sent several ears of corn tumbling to the ground. He was irritated; he would be the one to clean up the mess.
