EPISODE 2 – MORNING CLASS OR NO CLASS AT ALL
by Robert J. MorrisAn hour late.
Professor Steurung eventually made it to his class to teach his eager students all about quantum physics. He rushed into the class like a silent ninja amidst a bustling marketplace, searching for his podium. It’s quite likely that no one even noticed his entry. He decided to make some noises on one of the podium microphones which echoed and amplified across the small lecture room, resulting in minor feedback that was handled by some guy that nobody really cares for, to be fair.
After obtaining the classes’ attention Cruise quickly continued on his lecture on quantum entanglement from the previous day. He had the entire class’s attention for twenty-eight minutes and 12 seconds.
Here was his introductory opening, “So class. Moving on from yesterday where we left off with the effects on the quantum state of an entangled inten..ten…int. aeuh.. (under his breath, ( “phawk me… aeuhhh.)), quantum state of an entangled entity…”
Better late than never is what historians presume and it continued on quite well for the next twenty-seven minutes and 21 seconds. Until his brilliant last words in front of a podium, “…and in a sense we have all possible values that could ever be represented, dimensionally or inter-dimensionally, by a particle in superposition with its extra-dimensional counterpart or counterparts. I’m fairly certain that many of you may feel a bit, ‘off put’ by all of this. I didn’t grasp the idea myself for the longest time. Does anybody have any questions? ”
The blank stares stared blankly at Cruise. He wondered briefly how he had gotten here to this place in his career. A place of wonderment where intrigued minds soak in profound knowledge like little cerebral sponges. As he looked at all of the faces before him in this classroom that he had watched grow over the last few months, he felt a sense of pride in knowing that he somehow will have had a lasting effect on their development and sense of purpose.
Somebody broke the silent wind and sense of purpose simultaneously in a slow, muted ‘G’ sharp. Several muted chuckles and giggles responded, leaving Cruise rather silent. Then one of the deathly faces in the front row spoke out, “I have a question professor.”
“Yes miss, go ahead,” Cruise asked with fervor. The eagerness of this group was profound. Cruise could not wait to fill this young mind with answers.
“Who the hell are you? What are you on about?” The young lady eagerly asked.
“Who am I?” Cruise repeated.
“Yes professor.”
“What?” Cruise was overcome by a sudden deflated feeling, similar to that one where you forgot your passport at home upon arrival to an airport. He glanced about the faces in the class, attempting to re-connect.
He hopelessly reiterated, “I’m professor Steurung. This is Experimental Physics. I have been teaching your class for three and a half months now.”
“Nope I’m afraid you haven’t. This is Experimental Theology. We have never seen your face before today. I also believe you are countering the argument for singular importance and personal redemption in the face of a messiah that is non important to you… ” the young lady also sarcastically added,”in YOUR opinon…”.
Cruise took a good hard look at the group in front of him. He scanned the classroom right to left and it dawned on him he had no idea what room he was even in. Then suddenly, the P.A. system came to life in the building. A raspy female voice echoed throughout the hallways and rooms of the building.
“Will Professor Steurung please come to the administration office. Thank you. Professor Steurung please come to the administration office.”
There were a few more snickers and grunts from the class. Embarrassed and turning a deep shade of red, Cruise hastily collected his things off of the desk near the white board and bustled out of the lecture room. He was now on his way to the administration office.
Upon his arrival, Cruise asked the lady secretary to see the Administrator.
“Hello,” he said to the lady secretary behind the counter.
“Hello,” she responded.
“I’m here to see the administrator.”
“She’s busy with someone. You will have to get in queue. Wait times are up to thirty minutes. Help yourself to the water fountain down the hall. ”
He turned around and got a good look of the long bench in the corner of the office wait room. There were four students sitting in queue on the long, varnished, traditional pine bench you would find in any high school office. There was a large constituent of staff doing nothing in the office made up of stalls and glass rooms. He turned his head back to face the lady secretary.
“I have nothing but time! Thank you,” and he ponied up a smile for the very unattractive woman before him. She ponied up a fake smile in return and Cruise sat down on the bench next to a smart looking young man who instinctively inched away immediately from Cruise. Cruise turned to the young man.
“Good morning! What are you in for?” The young man’s response was turning to look at him before stating.
“You smell bad, ” fat little shit responded, er, I mean young man. Cruise responds…
“Right. Yes. Fair enough, ” he looked away and no less embarrassed than earlier. He took his mind elsewhere. Cruise discontinued any further conversation at this point as he watched the clock for the next 47 minutes.
The smart looking young man finally entered the administrators office and within 3 minutes and 67 seconds, he nonchalantly left the administrator’s office (with a smile) and Cruise could finally have his appointment. He got up and made his way towards the administrator’s door. The lady secretary piped up very suddenly.
“Excuse me sir? Where are you going?”
“To see the administrator.”
“It’s lunch time. You will have to wait 45 minutes. She has just left.”
He found himself quite angry all of a sudden but simmered and kept it under his hat. He decided to become a rational person and utilize logic.
“Just left you say. How do you reckon she just left if I haven’t seen her leave her office?”
“She has another door.”
“Another door?”
“Yes. She has another door. It goes straight to the parking lot.”
Cruise looked across the room and through a set of windows on the other side of the room and could see the administrator backing her car out of the lot.
The lady secretary continued, “What’s your name sir?”
“I’m Professor Steurung.”
“Oh! I have a sticky note for you!”
“What! You mean I could have had that at any time if you had asked my name before?”
“It would appear so. Here,” she held out the fluorescent pink sticky note for Cruise to accept. He snatched it from her hand.
“Thank you!” he barked and turned away looking at the sticky note and as his eyes rested on it, he was able to make out the short and very definitive message…
YOUR FIRED
(Please clean out
your things.)
The Admin
“What things?”
“I think she means your locker, Professor,” said the lady secretary.
“I haven’t used that in three years,” Cruise looked back toward the lady secretary, crumpling the sticky note in his left hand.
“You should clean out your things,” she fake smiled again.
So of course Cruise would clean out his locker before leaving the school. He would find there a yellow tennis ball and an old sandwich. It had turned into something resembling a new unclassified life form in a sealed ecosystem within the confines of the sealed sandwich bag. These items have absolutely no meaning in the story so we shall move on to the next scene where we find Cruise brooding over his defeat today at the school and in life in general as losing one’s source of income can be an otherwise devastating blow to one’s ego.
Meanwhile back at the Hangnail Pub and Saloon… Wait. No. Let’s go back several months. One must first be made aware of his experimental technology. The super-string microscope. This was a nifty gadget. One of the papers that Cruise had submitted to the consideration council for peer review (which was accidentally read by the staff and henceforth rejected as absolute quackery, not quarkery ironically,) involved isolating and manipulating a super-string’s vibrational frequency in order to reveal the details of the surrounding structure and neighborhood of particles, both sub and naught.
When Cruise was much younger he was involved in several particle physics experiments and projects with some very prestigious circles of technocrats, inventors, and investors. Over the years, he managed to build several particle accelerators for several clients and was quite good at it. He managed to earn a few million dollars and was quite capable of funding his own research between jobs and afterward.
That was until 1993 when he realized that jobs were declining in frequency and that he was running out of money. In February of 1996 he found out that his services will most definitely not be needed for an upcoming project in Geneva, France to build the world’s largest particle accelerator. He thought they were jerks anyway.
And in March 1996, he has now also lost his teaching job. He will also be completely unaware that he will save the silly humans in this time line from extermination when he accidentally sends himself backwards in time. This part of the story definitely deserves more explanation, however, let’s firstly fill in some more gaps in the exposition of this story (just in case you started thinking this was a voice in YOUR head. Lucky you. NO. It’s everyone.)
Cruise was a bit of a technology pack-rat.
The aging professor constantly collected and collated bits and pieces of technology from all of the builds he was involved with. He often developed bits of prototypes at home and brought the finished bits to work, leaving behind all of the left over parts and whatnot which he continued to collect over the years. It is with these bits and pieces that he quietly developed several of his own technologies. The super-string microscope was his major masterpiece, however, in order to build it he had to build several other tricky components first. The abbreviated list would look like this:
particle accelerator
charged particle containment system (CPCS)
charged particle transport system (CPTS)
super-string microscope (SSM)
Aside from some other relatively unimportant bits of equipment, these particular bits each took years to build, fine tune and program. The combined result of 20 years of basement and backyard research outside of the mainstream circles he worked with and tried to impress during the course of his mostly uneventful life. One could imagine the drive that resentment can carry with it.
Oops.
I really did not mean to say that he was resentful. The truth is he was.
He really wanted to show the world that the papers on his observations and practical applications of his Super String Microscope should have been received, not read, (re-)considered and stamped ‘Approved!’ much like the work of his esteemed colleagues and all of the others.
I must apologize to the reader if this is beginning to drone on a bit as we are almost near the point where we have fully established where Cruise may be in his head when he lost his teaching job and wound up hanging at the Hangnail instead of utilizing his newfound opening in his schedule for more studious tasks. Mind you, had he done this, I would have no purpose in telling you, dear reader, about this man’s compelling story. So let’s go back to Cruise, job lost and drunk staring off into the cosmos in the general direction of Jada Malarky’s bosoms as she cleaned the counter-top with a wet rag.
“Whatch’ya thinkin’ about stud?” Jada asked, breaking the link between Cruise and infinity.
“Entanglement,” he responded, still halfway linked to somewhere else.
“Oh my,” she giggled, “that’s possibly the most creepy thing I’ve heard today.”
The (not-so) college girl giggle snapped Cruise completely from his semi trance. He recomposed himself.
“Pardon me. I’m lost in thought.”
“No worries. Need another? You have been staring over your empty glass for almost 10 minutes now.”
“Yes please.”
The beautifully rugged Jada wandered over to her cash register and pulled out a paper pad used for regular clients’ credit tabulations. She flipped it to a page and tossed it in front of Cruise on the bar counter next to his empty glass.
Cruise suddenly had a mortified look on his face and looked up sheepishly at Jada.
“Aww gawd. Not you too? Do you know what kind of day I’ve had?” Cruise whined.
At that, Jada’s expression changed where she suddenly elevated to the next level of tolerant annoyance.
“The day you’ve had? What about my day, cleaning and getting this place ready for drunks, losers, drunk losers and people like you staring at my tits all damn evening? I’ll get you another, but you need to pay up,” Jada went back to DEFCON five, tapped him out another pint, while collecting his empty and wiping his space on the counter in one fluid motion.
“You know you’re amazing, right?” Cruise stated while admiring her movements.
“You still have to pay your tab,” she retorted, “anyway. What’s with you? Lose your job?”
“How’d you guess?”
“I had to roll you into a cab last night. Oh shit, that reminds me. Forgot to add that onto your tab. Pass me that back?”
Cruise let out a massive sigh before asking, “May I have one of your cigarettes?”
A rather surprised Jada stared back at Cruise with her jaw suspended, “Cruise baby, You haven’t smoked in 15 years. What’s really going on in that crazy head of yours?”
“I just want to go outside and clear my head. Maybe it’ll help me. I dunno.”
Jada procured a menthol cigarette from her pack under the counter and handed it to him, “Shit, you need a light too, don’t ya hon?” she smiled at Cruise just like she did back in their college days.
“Yes. Thank you. You don’t need to smoke it for me though. I got that part down I think,” he drunkenly said as she turned and floated over to tend to another patron whilst singing to “Sweet Home Alabama” playing in demo mode on the classic looking jukebox on the opposite side of the tavern.
Out he went into a very light rain. There was a storm brewing. He could feel the static electricity in the air and smell the ozone of nearby lightning strikes, which did in fact remind him that he had to replace a faulty surge suppressor from his experimental Super String Microscope.
He found himself staring at a glowing sign across the road in the dollar store window.
“$4.99 sale for surge suppressors. All sales final.”
He glanced back at the dull and hand chalked sidewalk pub sign next to him.
“$5.99 Jugs of beer. Premium brands not included.”
He decided at that moment that he knew his decision was a clear one.
Dollar store would be his next target. With the money saved from this purchase he would be able to afford another small jug of beer. He had made his decision.
Dollar store surge suppressor.
Small jug of beer before last call.
This would be how he extends time in order to spend more time with the love of his life.
He exited the pub vicinity. His target was across the street. Despite the very light rain, he ran across the road without any respect for the drivers. Luckily no drivers were present. He exited the Dollar Store premises with a brand new and paid for dollar store surge suppressor.
Cruise entered the pub, however the pub had actually (and on an internal level) called last call while he was out for those few minutes. Jada Malarky was already cashing out for her night. Oh, and Jada Politely asked Cruise to, “Fuck off.” Whatever that means.. Cruise was not getting a final jug and had to settle for a cab ride home. This would inevitably lead to his very first book, “Just Can’t Get It. Time and Time Again.”
Later in a different time line would just be shortened to, “Time and Time Again.”
Also leads to, “Time after Time, Cindy.”
and the ever so popular, “If I had a nickel for every time I…”
… But that is in a different time line which I will mostly tell you about in the next chapter where Cruise breaks everything he touches including time and space.