Collision Course. Part 3.
Recoil.
Are you surprised that this story has a third part?
While you were reading the first two parts, and while being absorbed by the story and thrilled by the characters and feeling spiritually and intellectually and aesthetically enriched by the refinement of the author's art, you will also have felt an undercurrent of dread. As much as you wished otherwise, you will have had to face the near certainty that this might be... a literary story.
We all know what “literary” means. It means showing off. It means perverted attempts to be original. Most of all it means messing with the reader. The standard technique to mess with the reader, an almost compulsory technique – because, hey, as our friend Morrow would be sure to understand, literary originality is just as rare as truly impressive scientific research – is to take the story to the most interesting place possible, and to crank up the tension to the highest conceivable level, and to manipulate the reader into the most intense longing to know what is going to happen next. Then stop. Just cut them off.
The poor suckers are left gasping. “Whuh? Whuh?” they're stammering. “Aren't you going to tell us what happens to everyone?”
Nope! Now it's your turn to use your imagination. You have to guess. You have to ponder what you have read. You have to ask what it all means and reach your own conclusions. And what are those conclusions? Invariably: you just read a bona fide piece of literature!
Don't worry. This isn't that kind of story. I will tell you what happened to our two objects after their collision.
Then you can decide whether you would have preferred to use your own imagination after all.
We'll start with a quick look at Morrow.
There's no point asking what he thought after Deborah left. He didn't have time to think anything. His phone rang. It was the Head of Undergraduate Studies.
“I still need that course outline.”
Morrow snapped out of his daze. “I'm sending it now.”
Of course he was not sending it now, because he was instead filling out the forms to apply for authorisation to... To what? He couldn't remember. He plunged back into his emails and Word documents and pdf guidance notes, desperate to work out what it was he was trying to do in order to do something else that was necessary to make yet something else possible, so that eventually he could get back to whatever it was he really wanted to do with his life.
Deborah was forgotten. For now.
Deborah got herself out of the physics building purely by primitive motor instincts. She acted with no more conscious thought or deliberation than would a dog in the same situation, and a sick dog at that, without the capacity to understand why it was moving so slowly, and apart from a simple instinctive desire to get out of this building, just wanted to lay down and sleep, maybe forever.
Once outside the building Deborah's student habits fortunately kept her moving, towards the library.
Her natural instincts began to assert themselves. What does the brain do with a flood of shock and high tension? Of course – they must be converted immediately into anger!
She went to the library and opened her laptop. She started to compose a letter of complaint.
For several minutes she discharged her feelings through the keyboard. A stirring evocation of her aspirations. Her faith in the nobility of scholarship. Morrow's great responsibility to her and to the future. Her deep disappointment. His appallingly unprofessional behaviour.
It was good to get it out. She charged ahead. Propelled forward as her angry momentum transformed into righteousness verbosity, she wrote that it was irrelevant what had caused his outburst, but began to speculate nonetheless.
Then she slowed down.
Really, what was there to complain about? That he was bitter and cynical? That he was miserable? That his office was shabby? That he was shabby?
Was she really going to complain that this pathetic middle-aged man had given her a stark and honest vision of the future she had thought she wanted?
Her email turned sarcastic. She congratulated the university for providing her with a tutor who was so honest and forthright.
She soon realised that the tone was not sarcastic after all. She was pleased that he had been honest and forthright.
In her residence hall one of her direct neighbours was studying computer science. The other, engineering. She had quietly sneered at them for following boring careers, driven by shallow motivations of money and security, while she was inspired by a greater calling, to resolve the greatest mysteries of the universe. She now wondered if they were in fact smart and realistic, and she was naive. They had made a grown-up decision. She was still thinking like a child.
She deleted her email, and instead looked up procedures to transfer academic major.
When Morrow had finally submitted all the forms and emails and documents to deal with his course outline, he closed his laptop and stood up from his desk.
He decided that he deserved a coffee break. This morning's blast of bureaucracy was so draining that he was justified in going not to the closest cafe to grab a takeaway coffee to bring back to the office, but to walk to one of the furthest cafes he could think of, and order a coffee and stay there. Maybe he even deserved a piece of cake as well.
Was that too luxurious?
Ok, fine. He would take his laptop with him. Then he could take as long as he wanted.
It wasn't just the course bureaucracy that had drained him. It was also that first-year student who had interrupted him.
Now a terrifying thought struck him: what if she complained?
While he walked out of the building and towards the furthest cafe, he began to compose in his mind a defence. Dealing with a complaint would take up a lot of time, just like everything else, but, also like everything else, it would be only a formality. Nonetheless, a detailed and spirited defence entered into the appropriate text box could only help to squash the issue more quickly.
It was good to make people aware of the difficulties they faced. It was important to build up students' resilience right from the beginning. That's why he had decided to say what he did to this one student. No, that sounded almost defensive. Better: it was now his policy, aligned with his entire educational philosophy, to speak this way to all students.
As he walked, he warmed to his subject. Think of all the challenges students now faced. Unprecedented challenges. It was his job, nay, his duty, to train them to be strong in the face of those challenges.
After all, science required people who could handle all of the burdens and responsibilities of teaching and administration – extremely important responsibilities that he took extremely seriously! – and yet also find the energy, and the inspiration, and indeed the irrepressible determination, to make possible great scientific research.
Isn't that what he did?
He had to admit that it was not. He had allowed himself to get overwhelmed. He had lost sight of his purpose.
By the time he reached the cafe he felt invigorated. That student, whatever her name was, had reminded him of why he became a scientist in the first place. She reminded him of what his true purpose was, and what it was that fulfilled him in life.
He ordered his coffee and piece of cake, but he would probably come back for more later. He had decided to spend the rest of the day there, working on a research project.
And when he saw that student again, he must remember to thank her.
Nice twist for both characters!
Plot twist!
Im just happy to not have to think for myself