Upon finally returning to his room after a five-day vacation, item one on Topher's agenda was to stand on the inside of the door and just have a moment of dorkish glee. He'd been on a whole other planet! And it was awesome! And he'd gotten bitten by a weird giant bug thing and seen mostly-naked girls and half-naked Ben and Ender and almost crashed ( Read more... )

Fact: Research sucked.

But here Topher was, doing it anyway. Because Peter had told him to, and that was enough, most of the time, to get him to do things. Sad but true.

And... maybe Topher was a little bit more inclined to do as Peter said this week in particular for another reason too. Which would be the need to appease him in light of the ( Read more... )

After spending some time over at some other campfire that was not his, Topher came back to his room to resume the activity of the week. The activity? Watching loud, obnoxious videos. Except he had to cringe and lower the volume every time he heard footsteps in the hall, because he did not want to get punched again.

Then he came upon something ( Read more... )

There really was nothing like a game of laser tag to put Topher in a hacking mood, he decided as he flopped down on his bed, still laser-suited-up with his pack and his blaser on. (He'd picked this equipment out for comfort; in fact, he could probably sleep in it if he had to. Not that he could think of a situation in which he would have to.) With ( Read more... )

Topher was pretty sure that he was right on the verge of breaking into the files Peter had wanted. He'd spent most of the past week working on it, not to mention today's computer class, and while the files were pretty tough to crack, he knew he'd get it eventually. Come on. He was a genius. Just a few clicks... and... bingo. He was in.

Just what he ( Read more... )