Hopper just moved to a new town with her mother and is not happy about starting seventh grade at Stately Academy. Not only does she not have any friends but she also dislikes her classes, and the school is creepy. She thinks it looks like a haunted house, and there are strange birds everywhere. She tries to make friends by approaching a boy holding a basketball because she plays basketball, but he and his friends are unfriendly. The boy accidentally throws pudding on her face, and his friend makes fun of her.

Hopper is eating lunch by herself when the boy who threw the pudding, Eni, comes up to her. He notices that Hopper has earrings shaped like the number seven, which she says was her basketball jersey number at her old school. There is a bird near them who appears to have four eyes—the first is closed, and the other three are open. Eni says he thinks the bird is a robot, displaying the binary code for the number seven with its opened and closed eyes. He shows Hopper what binary code means and how it is expressed with on/off, open/[c]losed, or ones/zeros.