The following is a transcription of an unfinished story from a Sentinel reporter who went missing Tuesday. Proceed at your own risk.
Ever notice how school principal Dr. Brian Fellows is everywhere? And I mean everywhere. You’re rushing through the hallway trying to make it to first block? Chances are he’s there standing by the lockers, arms crossed, subtly reminding you to hurry up. You’re doing a projectile-motion lab in physics? There he is again, rising heroically under a siege of flying tennis balls.
You’ve probably wondered how just one man can be in so many places seemingly at once. You’ll see him in the gym and, boom, he’s chatting with a teacher at the opposite side of the school. He’s like a Scooby-Doo villain: “He’s right behind me, isn’t he?”
I now know how—and the answer is straight out of a cheesy sci-fi movie: Dr. Fellows is a clone. I know how that sounds, but once you’ve seen the evidence, you too will be convinced.
A few days ago, I was in my fourth-block English class giving a presentation worth half my grade. At 1:30, he walked in for observation with a smile and a clipboard. When I saw him, I subconsciously adjusted my posture and feigned a certain studiousness one adopts in the presence of an administrator. He left at 1:35, off to resume whatever it is principals do. When the door finally closed, I heaved a sigh of relief.
The next day, the topic of the English presentation came up, and I began to recount the story, explaining my encounter with Dr. Fellows. “That can’t be right,” one said. “He was in my pre-calc class at 1:36.” That was all the way across the school from my English class. Either Dr. Fellows was a serious contender for the Olympics, or something was awry. A shudder shot up my spine.
Later that day, I swiped my Sentinel press pass and tailed Dr. Fellows. I lost track of him for a second. Then I heard the unmistakable jingle of a Philadelphia Eagles keychain swinging from his belt loop and managed to triangulate his location. Fellows slipped through a doorway marked ADMINISTRATORS ONLY and punched a password (E@glez4Life) into a mineshaft-style elevator. I snuck atop the elevator compartment, and together we descended into the school’s secret catacombs.
What I saw next will haunt me for the rest of my life. I beheld a massive Cold War–era bunker with rows of seven-foot vats containing bubbling green liquid. Inside each one was—no, it couldn’t be—more Dr. Fellows! There had to be at least fifteen of them.
So this was how he’d managed all these years to survey the school with such an omniscient presence. Suddenly, the hundreds of thousands of ParentSquare messages made sense: Dr. Fellows wasn’t a real person; he was a meticulously engineered biological system, a violation of natural order dressed in slacks and a quarter zip.
The Dr. Fellows I’d followed down there (whom I theorize is the original) pressed a big red button. The green liquid began slowly draining through a labyrinth of tubes into a collecting pool. The Fellowses emerged from their vats and adjusted their neckties. “Good morning, y’all,” they said in unison, circling around Fellows Prime.
I bolted, scrambling back towards the elevator. When I made it to the ground floor, I ducked into a storage closet, where I’ve been hiding for the last two hours. I hope I’m not found out.
Oh, no! Here they—
[Unintelligible]
Transcription ends.