The Dossier

The heartwarming tale of my attempt to destroy my academic nemesis, Dr. Jamie Bumbles.

Mar 21, 2026

Little Jamie was my nemesis because he got away with doing no useful work. He had no research grants and a dire publication rate, and yet he taught no courses, sat on no committees, and had no departmental management roles. As far as I could tell he didn’t do a damn thing! I was determined to learn how he achieved this dream life — and destroy him in the process.

[The genesis of my nemesis is recounted here. You can enjoy the present story without reading the earlier one, but I can’t guarantee that it works the other way around. One day I will learn to write stories that commute.]

I went to my friend Dr. Zadie Revell-Ludovic, to get the dirt on him. As soon as I mentioned his name her face lit up as if I’d shown her a puppy video.

“Oh Jamie!” she gushed. “Isn’t he delightful!”

Her tone set off disturbing movements within my stomach, but I bravely withstood them and asked what was so wonderful about him.

“His research is just fascinating,” she said. “He has a truly brilliant mind. We’re so lucky to have him.”

So that was his angle. He played the deep thinker. I should have guessed, given his predilection for quantum fluff. When I was starting out I too played the deep thinker. I worked myself into an attitude of the utmost arrogance, and stood up straight, and put on a deep, serious voice, and intoned with pompous solemnity on the profound questions that my work addressed. Sometimes I stroked my chin. Sometimes I furrowed my brow in apparent distress and said, “What especially concerns me is…” I even, for a year or two, grew a beard.

It worked like a charm while I could pose as a young hotshot, but it’s hard to maintain as the years of pointless academic tedium wear you down. And even at the height of my powers, I never got out of my share of teaching classes. This little shit was really putting me to shame!

I tried another approach. “That’s great!” I said. “Inspiring young minds are just what our undergraduates need to see in their courses.”

“He truly loves teaching,” said Zadie. “But for now his research must come first.”

Oh for fuck’s sake! I struggled to maintain my calm.

“Of course,” I said, somehow, brightly. “We shouldn’t burden him with a first-year course. But in something like Advanced Quantum Mechanics his connection to cutting-edge research would really enthuse the students.”

Zadie nodded. “He completely agrees with you. He was all lined up to teach it. Then Archie insisted on doing it instead.”

“Archie? Dr. Johnson?”

I went to Dr. Johnson’s office to find out just what that idiot was thinking. The blinds were drawn and the lights were off. His office had been a temple of mourning ever since his girlfriend dumped him.

In those days Johnson was always on the verge of tears, but he brightened a little when I mentioned the Advanced Quantum course.

“It would have taken up so much of his time,” he explained. “He’s young and doesn’t understand that good teaching is a massive time sink. I couldn’t let him do that to himself. Or,” and here his eyes twinkled with noble zeal, “to science.”

“But…” I tried to protest. “But… you’ve been teaching it for five years.”

Johnson reverted to his sad face. He was clearly disappointed in me. “You can’t rush great research.”

I left his office in disgust. How had this charlatan turned these people into such suckers?

I tried many times to meet the great Dr. Jamie Bumbles. I wanted to experience the quality of his blarney all for myself. Guess what? He was never there. They said he often worked from home. He travelled to conferences and to visit collaborators. Sometimes — this story forced me to spend an entire evening sharpening my kitchen knives — sometimes he went for long walks with his thoughts that lasted several days.

Everyone I talked to loved him. They not only admitted stepping in to save him from teaching or departmental administrative jobs or even doing his basic paperwork for him — they boasted about it. It was like they all wanted to claim a small role in his success.

But what success? There was no success! He didn’t do a single fucking thing!

I seethed and I fumed, but I also worked hard. I compiled a dossier of all the tasks, big and small, that he had conned someone else into doing for him over the six years he had been here. And man oh man, by the time I was finished it was one thick file! I wouldn’t take it to any of the saps in our department. I would take it to the Dean. I would take it to the university’s Executive Board. I would take it to the Vice Chancellor. None of those people gave a damn for quantum hype.

I dug up every scrap of evidence I could find. I double and triple checked every one of them. There could be no room for mistakes. There could not be a single accusation that was open to doubt. Finally it was ready, and I was in a fine mood that Thursday morning after my driver dropped me at the office, as I sat with my full report attached to a brief email, ready to press Send.

Just then I heard yelling in the corridor. People were running and shouting and making wild noises. I sighed and stood up from my desk and went to the door and looked out. Zadie was running towards me, quite literally leaping into the air as she ran, and whooping.

“It’s happened!” she cried. “He’s done it!”

“What? What?”

“Jamie! He’s made a breakthrough!”

Seriously? “What breakthrough?”

Of course she couldn’t tell me. “I don’t understand it, obviously, but they’re saying it changes everything. Our whole conception of what is possible is overturned. And not only that — the potential applications are huge. It will have reverberations throughout industry and the economy.”

Wow — Bumbles had taken his swindler’s performance to an entirely new level.

Hype can infect the entire population. Deep down everyone is a Romantic, and they all desperately want something to believe in. They can fight off silly ideas and goofy lies for only so long. When the most beguiling stream of hype flows their way, they’re ready and waiting to drink it in. To fight this calibre of cant I would need the most rock solid of cynics, the most pure and incorruptible of intellects.

I knew exactly who I would speak to. Professor Bruno Rottweiler. He had spent his early career in obscurity, stupidly and recklessly and thoughtlessly sabotaging every opportunity for promotion and advancement by exposing each piece of fakery he encountered. It was like he had a career death wish. He didn’t just identify flaws in the works of the most respected and powerful scientists of his field, he took perverse delight in exposing and mocking them with as much noise and spectacle as possible. Occasionally a big shot would hire him after he had ridiculed one of their rivals, but then Bruno would stand up at a conference and harangue them for a series of unforgivable errors. He survived only because he was hired by a third-rate backwater university, which quickly regretted its decision because not only was he never awarded a single grant, but as a result of his presence on the faculty neither was anyone else.

Outside his field no-one had heard of him, not even me, until a decade ago, when a funding-agency whizz realised that he was the perfect tool to cut costs. Bruno was immediately propelled to one of the most senior roles in national scientific strategy and prioritisation. For every year since he has shed tens of millions from the science budget. He can be guaranteed to find the flaw in any idea that is wrong, and quite a few that are right.

When I finally got through to him, I asked, “What’s your take on Bumbles?”

“Bumbles?” he snapped. “You know him!?” He sounded furious. My heart leaped.

“Yes,” I said. “He’s in my department.”

His voice transformed immediately. “Oh, really? Do you know him well? Could you get me a meeting with him? He’s a genius.”

Could it be? Could Bumbles really be a true, no bullshit, honest-to-God, brilliant and creative mind who had made an actual discovery? Such people must exist — there have been several scientific discoveries throughout history — but who has ever met one? In real life? I refused to accept it.

No matter. I would bide my time. Eventually we would know the truth.

For now I put my dossier to new use. Our faculty swelled with pride over the small parts they had all played in Bumbles’ success. Yet no-one had thought to document it. Enter yours truly. I had a record of every single act of generosity — every meeting attended, every teaching assignment taken over, every committee quietly filled. Within hours I had put together a touching press story about how our entire department had rallied behind our brilliant young colleague, and a tearful TikTok accompanied by “With a little help from my friends”. As the only academic with all the details so vividly at the forefront of their mind, I was the natural choice to well up on camera when the hordes of reporters arrived. And since it would have been improper to tell any stories about my own generosity, that was the perfect way to conceal that there weren’t any.

The Fictional Aether

Discussion about this post

Ready for more?