The climax of the Eimacs Answer Key saga came in the spring of 2007. A massive standardized test, the "Eimacs Cumulative Mastery Exam," was scheduled. It was worth 25% of the semester grade. Panic was palpable.

Instead, the Eimacs bird chirped a happy, rising two-note chime— ding-ding! —and a green checkmark bloomed on the screen. And right beneath it, in calm, blue text, was the answer:

Eimacs was a terrifyingly bland piece of educational software. Its logo was a swooping, primary-colored bird that looked perpetually disappointed. For forty-five minutes each day, students would log in, their faces illuminated by the pale glow of bulky CRT monitors, and be greeted by a relentless parade of algebra problems, sentence diagrams, and questions about the Reconstruction Era. The software was adaptive, which was a polite way of saying it knew exactly which concepts you found most confusing and then asked you about them, repeatedly, until you cried.