Good story. I'm waiting for next chapters. 

I remember you asking about this concept over at FF.net, good to see you continued it and stuck to what you wanted to do so far. Everyone seems more or less in character, a big plus. It also looked like you switched projects, do you plan to continue this? You're so close.

Well here's chapter twelve, hope you enjoy it. Shout out to CalculatedChaos, who is an awesome author - read his stuff at http://www.fanfiction.net/~CalculatedChaos. I would like to hear what you think a little more specifically. Reference to the Tracy Ulman shorts here. If you seen them, or 'Simpsons behind the Laughter' should be fairly obvious.

Chapter 12

Lisa awoke that morning more tired than she'd ever been in her life. Even more tired than the time Willie was trying to kill them in their dreams. She groaned at the unfairness of it all. Now she could understand what Homer felt like when he had a hangover. She managed to get out of bed and walk unsteadily downstairs. She slumped down at the breakfast table and propped her head up with her hands.

"Lisa!" exclaimed Marge "You look terrible, pale as a ghost, why don't you stay home from school today."

She considered it for a minute. She wanted nothing more than to stay home and sleep, but she had a class today at the university, so she would need school as an alibi.

"No Mum," mumbled Lisa groggily "I'll be fine, I'll go to sch –"

Lisa's words were cut off when she fell asleep into her bowl of cereal, splashing milk everywhere. Marge shook shoulder to wake her

"Young lady," ordered Marge "you can't possibly go to school in this condition. You are staying home whether you like it or not."

Marge took Lisa upstairs and tucked her into bed, then returned to the kitchen to pack Bart's lunch.

Both Homer and Marge looked at Bart expectantly.

"Aren't you going to tell us that you're sick too?" asked Marge warily

"Nah," said Bart "I actually want to go to school."

"Why?" Homer asked deeply suspicious "This isn't going to get you arrested again is it."

"No Homer," answered Bart "No pranks I swear."

"OK, but I've got my eye on you boy." threatened Homer

Homer then started choking Bart.

"Homer, he hasn't done anything yet." yelled Marge

"I'm seizing the initiative Marge." Homer explained proudly "Normally the boy would do something and then I would strangle him, now I realise the futility of it. I was just creating a cycle, but now I'm breaking the cycle Marge."

"That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard." said Marge

"I've realised now that school is worthwhile," said Bart.

Homer looked at Marge triumphantly. She sighed.

When Lisa woke at noon she felt much better. She reached into her bag and pulled out her timetable. The class today was only 30 mins long, a tutorial rather than a lecture, and it took place at 1pm. She needed a way out of the house without her mother noticing. Lisa thought about it and came up with a plan. Marge entered her room.

"How're you feeling sweetie?" asked Marge

"I'm feeling much better Mum," said Lisa "I think, I'll soak in the tub for an hour."

"OK, just call if you need anything." called Marge, as she left

Lisa jumped out of bed, and felt a little bit dizzy from getting up too fast. It passed after a moment. She took her clothes for college and folded them into a square, which she tossed into the bathroom. She then took her bag and packed it taking a few extra items from under her loose floorboard, throwing it into the bathroom as well. She then walked into the bathroom and locked the door. She ran a bath but didn't get into it. She changed into her college clothes, and unzipped her backpack. She took out a small black box about the size of a matchbox and placed it on the floor next to the tub. She attached a spool of wire to the device, which she ran over to the windowsill. Then she climbed out the window and holding on with one hand, wrapped the wire around the drainpipe. After that she carefully slid down the drainpipe to the ground and rode her bike to the university.

The box of course was a microphone/speaker and the cable was a radio antenna, which now used the metal drainpipe as an extension of the antenna. Her first prototype had used a cell phone transmitter, but she found the quality wasn't good enough to fool anyone. She kept one earbud of her Mypod in and listened in case her mother tried to talk to her.

At the tutorial, Colin looked tired too.

"So," asked Colin "how much of the textbook did you manage to get through?"

"150." said Lisa glumly

"150!" said Colin "I only managed 80."

"Yeah," said Lisa "But I stayed up all night. I can't keep this up Colin, I'm only human."

"The weekend's coming up at least." said Colin "We could study together. I'm sure we can do this. Just remember what we're doing here Lisa. We're trying to learn an entire college level course in a week, not even college kids have to do that!"

As much as she was glad to see Colin Lisa was glad when the tutorial was over. Luckily Marge didn't call while she was in the actual tutorial, but she did call a couple times on the way back. Lisa managed to sneak back into the window without anyone noticing. The perfect crime, she thought. Then she jumped into the bath to complete the ruse and fought the urge to scream. The water was ice cold.

"There is no perfect crime." she whimpered to herself.

Next chapter whenever someone posts

Here is lucky 13, the second last chapter.
To Calculated Chaos: When I was writing this I was on a chapter-a-day schedule, so that's why most of them are so short guess I could have merged some of them together. It was my plan to write it like an episode I would like to see made. I hadn't really noticed the separation of the plots in the later episodes, but now that you mention it, I have to agree, that's why they seem so jerky I guess. I LOVE plotlines which interweave, like Lisa says "I just wanted to save those animals while Bart became a drummer, but I never thought the two stories would intersect!" Thanks for the compliment.

Chapter 13

Over then next two weeks Lisa and Colin did manage to catch up with their class and become a valuable part of their group. The experiment was double blind, not only didn't the students and teachers know which students had received the fake IQ scores, but neither did the researchers, eliminating any bias in the experiment. The experiment was being conducted across several schools and grade levels. Unfortunately for Lisa one of the classes was Bart's, and while she didn't know whether he received a fake score, she knew that she could not be completely unbiased towards him. She managed to avoid working with that class by telling everyone that Bart was her younger cousin. They referred to the students by numbers that had been randomly selected by the computer. The names and real IQ scores were in a sealed envelope, which would not be opened until the conclusion of the experiment. They had carefully charted the student's progress for a month before the IQ test, and were continuing to do so afterwards. Lisa had missed the pre-testing, but this was the important part, the results. The work itself was actually quite dull. Entering endless numbers from paper reports into computer spreadsheets. The payoff was the mining of the data. Graphs and charts examining every possible variable, scores by subject, scores by day of the week, scores by age, they even drew up one chart for scores vs. ambient temperature. They wrote page after page of analysis, but the real question was, would the students who received artificially raised IQ's score better than those who had received their real IQ or those which received artificially lowered results. They would find out when they opened the envelope at the end of the experiment. Lisa giggled when she remembered that this wasn't the first experiment she had performed on Bart. Her science fair project one year had been proving that he was dumber than a hamster. She felt kind of bad about that one – but at least this one didn't involve electrical shocks.

xxxxxxx

As Bart's grades improved, his popularity declined. Now he finally understood what his sister meant when she said that happiness and intelligence were inversely proportional but it was too late to do anything about it, a real catch 22.

Now even Milhouse didn't want to hang out with him, and Bart wasn't going to hang out with Martin. Just because he was smart didn't make him a nerd, why didn't anyone get that. All that he had left was to retreat further into his studies, he had almost finished the whole year's worth of work. Last term they were talking about holding him back a grade, but now he was nearly ready to skip forward. Mrs Krabaple's classes had always seemed boring to him because he didn't know what was going on. For a week or so he enjoyed the classes as he powered through the textbooks. Now he found them boring for another reason, he knew the topics too well, and the classes were laughably predictable.

Bart knew there was one person who would understand, Lisa. He thought about how badly everyone treated her and he was ashamed, sometimes had even joined in. He never knew her burden until now. When he tried to find Lisa however, she was nowhere to be found, he gave up as the bell rang, he would find her after class.

School finished and Bart waited outside Lisa's classroom, everyone walked out, except Lisa. Bart looked in and saw all the desks were empty.

"Hey Mrs Hoover," asked Bart "where's Lisa?"

Mrs Hoover looked pretty out of it and Bart wondered if she had been drinking again.

"Oh, she was here," said Mrs Hoover "She's always here."

Bart walked out of the school and got on the bus. Lisa was there and Bart took a seat next to her.

"Hey Lise," said Bart "couldn't see you in Mrs Hoover's class."

"Oh," said Lisa, panicking slightly as if she wasn't used to the constant lies her double life necessitated "I wasn't in that class, I was, uh, helping principle Skinner with something."

"Really?" asked Bart "because Mrs Hoover said you were there."
Lisa knew she was caught, she had to reveal something, but it didn't have to be the truth. She decided to give him part of the truth; if she told him everything it could destroy the experiment.

"I take your pause to mean that you're concocting a lie." needled Bart

Bart had always been good at knowing when people were lying, maybe because he told so many himself.

Lisa sighed.

"OK, you win," admitted Lisa "I've been ditching school, it's just so boring, surely you can relate?"

"Yes," replied Bart. "Believe it or not I've actually ditched school myself a few times."

"A few?" she laughed

"OK, well maybe more than a few," he admitted "but that's not why I wanted to talk about. The thing is, a few weeks ago we had this IQ test."

Ahhhhh, thought Lisa. I can't do this it will influence the experiment. But on the other hand I'm his sister and he needs my support. What do I do? She screamed in her mind. Eventually her paralysing indecision made the decision for her.

"And I did really well," he continued "if you can believe that."

"Oh I can," replied Lisa, she decided to consider this an interview with a test subject; it could actually yield valuable information.

"The thing is though," he said "I tried to work harder in school, and now no-one respects me. I always though you had it easy, but I was wrong. I'm sorry I didn't notice it sooner."

My god, she thought, that's the nicest thing he's ever said to me.

"You're not dying, are you?" asked Lisa teasingly

"Only socially," said Bart "only socially."

Lisa was shocked that Bart had been so open to her about his feelings. It made sense that his newfound intelligence was alienating him from his peers, she just wished there were some way to make it better.

xxxxxxx

Mrs Hoover looked at her roll and sure enough Lisa's name was ticked as always. She thought back over the day. Had Lisa really not been there, I mean she was normally quiet, but she couldn't remember Lisa answering any questions, and when she looked through the work that had been handed in she found Lisa hadn't turned in any. She came to a shocking conclusion Lisa had been cutting school. She couldn't tell the school though, then they would know she hadn't been taking her role properly. This would take a little ingenuity. She dialled the Simpson's number and Marge picked up.

"Hello?" said Marge

"Hello Mrs Simpson," said Mrs Hoover "This is Mrs Hoover, your daughter's teacher."

"What's this about?" asked Marge

"Well it seems your daughter may be cutting school," said Mrs Hoover "but I don't recommend you tell her yet. It's more important to find out where she's going, maybe you could try and follow her."

"I'll make an appointment to see the principal tomorrow morning," said Marge

"Oh, No," said Mrs Hoover "You shouldn't do that, that way she'll find out and you'll never know where she's gone."

"OK," said Marge "I'll do it, but this does seem a little unorthodox."

"Bye" said Mrs Hoover quickly. She hung up.

Mrs Hoover sighed. She reached into her bottom drawer and took out a metal hip flask. She drained half of it.

"The things I do to keep this dead end job." she said to an empty classroom.

In this chapter I really wanted to get things moving, set up for the conclusion, from here its just a rollercoster to the end. But don't worry the last chapter is heaps longer to tie up all the plots.

Last Chapter

Chapter 14

"Marge I don't think this is such a good idea," commented Homer "The last time we tried to follow one of the kids we ended up in Peru."

"I never said you had to come," replied Marge "Don't you have work?"

"Uh … well you see, it's a funny thing," stammered Homer "the thing about that is…"

"Yes" said Marge impatiently

"Well, I was trying to microwave a burrito so hot that God himself couldn't eat it," explained Homer "which ended up using up 40% of the town's power and caused the preservatives in the burrito to react with the emulsifiers forming a highly corrosive acid, w–."

"OK I get the picture" interrupted Marge

"Which burned through the floor into Mr Burns office." He completed

"Only you Homer," said Marge disbelievingly "only you could threaten your boss's life with a burrito. Now hurry up Lisa will almost be at school by now."

Marge and Homer took different cars and each staked out one side of the school. It was 10 am when Homer saw movement, just a rustle in the bushes next to the fence. Then he saw his daughter's unmistakable hair peeking out from the fence. He took out his binoculars, and saw Lisa remove a piece of fence climb out and then replace it carefully. She looked around and, seeing no-one crouch ran across the street into an alleyway. He took out his phone

"This is Max Power, Starhead sighted," he said "south side, headed into an ally. What should I do Big Blue?"

"Do not pursue on foot," ordered Marge "repeat do not pursue, she'll see you. Move two streets south and attempt to reacquire target, I'll move to your current location in case she doubles back. Good luck Max."

Homer parked his car two streets down and sure enough Lisa emerged, more confident now that she was further away from school. After all she would draw more attention if she did sneak.

"Big Blue, this is Max," said Homer "target re-acquired, please advise."

"Hold your position, until she is out of sight," replied Marge "I'll keep her in my sights."

Eventually she led them to Springfield University. They met and discussed the situation.

"I told her last time," said Marge "college is no place for an eight year old."

"I think there's something more going on here," said Homer, displaying an unusual wit "she wouldn't normally disobey you like this."

"Oooh, maybe her brain was taken over by aliens." he said excitedly, destroying any semblance of wit he might have gained

"uh huh," said Marge "or maybe it's a person who's leading her astray. We should keep watching, see if she leaves with anyone."

An hour and a half later Lisa and Colin left the College on their bikes, unaware that they had a tail. Lisa was happy. It was the last week of the semester and the project was drawing to a close. She and Colin had more time to spend together now that every waking moment wasn't spent trying to catch up with their class work. Lisa decided it would be romantic to go to makeout point. It wouldn't really be the same because they didn't have a car, nor did they know how to drive (despite their licences to the contrary), but the important thing was the two of them. They rode side by side even holding hands in the easy parts.

When they reached their destination they looked into eachother's eyes and moved in for a kiss -

"Not so fast!" cried police chief Clancy Wiggum. "Licence and registration college boy."

"But sir, this is a pedal bike." said Colin

"Oh," said Wiggum tapping his baton "wise guy huh?"

Colin quickly offered his licence.

"Says here your 18" said Wiggum "She looks underage to me."

Lisa offered her licence.

"Oh, sorry to disturb you ma'am." said the police chief backing off.

Wiggam walked over to Marge and Homer.

"You didn't tell me your daughter was eighteen." he said "You need to let her run her own life."

"Oh they grow up so fast," said Homer "seems only yesterday she was eight years old."

"Homer, she was eight yesterday and she's still eight today," scalded Marge "and chief, if you won't do anything then I will."

Marge stormed over towards them.

"Lisa," she yelled "get away from that college boy!"

xxxxxxx

An hour latter they were all back at the Simpson house including chief Wiggum for some reason. Colin's parents had been called and were there too. Lisa and Colin had explained everything.

"Well it looks like my job here is done." said Wiggum

"But chief," said Marge "you didn't do anything."

"And that was the brilliance of my plan." said Wiggum, everyone stared at him silently. "I'll just leave now." He said backing away slowly.

They all agreed that they would have to have a meeting with the Dean of the university and Principle Skinner to sort it out.

xxxxxx

The next day Lisa and Colin along with their parents were seated in a meeting room at the university. Also present were the Dean of the university, Professor Lewis their Social Science teacher, Mark the leader of their project, Principle Skinner and Super intendant Charlmers.

"It's almost unbelievable to me that two of my brightest students turn out to be elementary school students," said Mrs Lewis "I mean, the looked small, but their intellects and work ethic are on par with some of the best students here. When I first saw them I was a little sceptical, but after I saw what they could do, I didn't suspect this at all."

"I agree," said Mark "when they were first placed on my team I had my doubts, now they have become an integral part of my team. Sure they were a little socially awkward, but there are a lot of students like that, and they proved I could trust them to get things done."

"They shouldn't be encouraged," said Principal Skinner "if we reward them for this, it might result in other students trying the same thing."

"I don't think that's a big concern," replied the Dean "I doubt there is many other students out there with the intellect and resources to pull something like this off and even fewer would even want to. This really was quite a sophisticated operation they had multiple forged documents and documents to support those documents, the fact that they remained undiscovered for so long is really a testament to their ingenuity."

"Like it or not," said Chalmers "the state law requires that they attend school until the age of 15."

"I think we can come to an agreement," said the Dean "Lisa and Colin will continue to attend their respective schools until the day they turn 16. After that we are willing to offer them full scholarships, they will be the youngest students the college has ever accepted, but I think they've deserve that distinction."

"They may have come in halfway through the project," said Mark "But they've worked as hard as any of us. It would be unfair to deny them the opportunity to finish the project. Would it be possible for them to stay for just one more week so they can see the project through to the end?"

"I would see no problem with that." said the Dean

"It could be done – we'll just reclassify their days off as a field trip," said Superintendent Chalmers "it is educational after all."

xxxxxx

A week later the envelope was unsealed and the final pieces of data were entered. An additional column was added for the amount the IQ had been lowered or raised. Final analysis showed that there was a trend towards students who received raised IQ's improving over the course of the experiment and among students who received lowered IQ's there was a smaller trend towards decreased results. There were many outliers who bucked the trend but statistical analysis proved that the trends were mathematically significant. Their report recommended that IQ tests not be conducted in schools, because of the potential damage they could do to students' self-esteem and performance at school.

Lisa checked the list of names and found Bart's number, when she checked his actual IQ she was shocked. Bart was not going to be happy about this.

"Hey Mark," asked Lisa "do you mind if I give the results at Springfield Elementary, it is my school after all."

"Sure," Mark replied "I wasn't going to ask you to do it, I figured it would be weird addressing to your classmates as a college student rather than a peer, but so long as you're OK with it."

In the ethical considerations of the project it was decided that students would be made aware of their actual IQ's at the end of the experiment.

"I doubt it's possible for me to be any less accepted at school," said Lisa "but while I've been here, I finally felt like there was somewhere I belonged, where people respected me for my accomplishments. They're taking it away, their taking everything from me."

"Hey," said Colin "you'll still have me!"

"I'm sorry," said Lisa "I know that, and I love you, but you're going back to Ireland. They're taking everything and it's not fair."

"I'll write," said Colin trying to cheer her up "and I might be coming back to accept the scholarship."

"Uh huh" sniffed Lisa

Mark put a hand on each of their shoulders.

"I know they wouldn't let you receive credit for completing the course," said Mark "but while they do mark us on the report, we're the ones that own it, so your names will stay on this report. I would say we could hang out sometime, but with the age difference, I'm sure you understand. If you need some help or advice though you can call me."

"Thanks Mark," Lisa said as she left for Springfield Elementary "I won't forget this."

"No," Mark agreed, "this isn't the sort of thing you'd forget overnight."

xxxxxx

It was seven pm and the sun was going down. Mrs Krabable's class had come to a special meeting. They were told it was news from the university about their IQ scores so they were all surprised when it was Lisa who came to address them. Even Bart, who by now knew that Lisa had been attending College, was surprised to see that she was a part of the team who developed the IQ tests.

"I have good news and bad news." said Lisa

"What's the bad news," asked Nelson sarcastically "you couldn't find the second grade classroom?"

"No," said Lisa calmly "The bad news is that some of you didn't do as well on the IQ test as you thought, the good news is that some of you did better."

Instantly a rabble rose up in the classroom.

"Allow me to explain," she said

Lisa explained the experiment to them in terms she expected them to understand, but still received some blank looks.

"Alright then," she said "I will now hand out slips with your real IQ's on them, but don't take them too seriously, our study suggests that it is detrimental for students to know their own IQ."

She walked between the rows passing out the slips.

"I knew it," said Martin "142"

Nelson threw a pencil at the back of his head.

"Ow" he squealed

She gave Bart his slip and everyone looked at him, and he looked at the slip in disbelief, 98. He was average again. Nelson grabbed the slip.

"98!" he exclaimed, handing Bart back the slip "You're one of us again Simpson"

In that moment Bart realised that being intelligent had caused him nothing but misery, this was his chance to go back to his old life, and he took it gladly.

After the meeting the students were picked up by their parents, and Lisa pulled Bart aside.

"I have something to tell you" She said cryptically "do you still have that slip?"

"Yeah," he said handing it to her "It's right here"

Lisa took the slip and rubbed a portion of it with her thumb and flakes of white came away. He realised that one digit had been whited out and a part of the number nine had been written on top of whiteout. As the sections fell away a new number was revealed 148.
"But How…?" Bart asked

"It's very rare for siblings to vary by more than 10 IQ points, we vary by 8," she explained "Other studies have shown that IQ alone isn't really a good indicator of ability –"

"But you told everyone back there that I was an idiot…" Bart paused for a second of contemplation before enveloping his sister in a hug "Thanks sis."

Oh well you can't win em' all. To be honnest I rushed this chapter, because I just wanted the story to be finished and I was losing my will to write.

What didn't you like about it though? I, and some other people thougt it was good. So I would love to know what it was that turned you away from the chapter.

Actually I have no idea what you're saying. I understand that you don't like the story, but your description of why doesn't really make any sense to me, I guess English isn't your first language. Thanks anyway.