Chapter 6: Interlude: In the Teacher's Lounge

Etched above the main gate at Time Academy was the motto of that incomparable institution: Tantum Nunc, which translated roughly to: “Only the Present”. It was a tribute to the founding tenet of the school, the idea that only when you accepted that there is no such thing as past or future, could you begin to understand the nature of time. Students entered the Academy at age five depending on the results of the Glowac test, and remained there until the final exam in their 20th year. They were a close knit group with a special bond. They also tended to be a mischievous lot.

Today, the 9th graders had quite literally turned their classroom upside down. This was not a particularly difficult task requiring high levels of technical skill or even ingenuity. One simply needed the will to do so, and such a will was something in which this class was definitely not lacking. They had adjusted the gravity of the classroom to focus on the ceiling rather than the floor, so that when viewed from outside, everything but the doors and windows appeared to be upside down. Upon entering the classroom, the sucker would fall to what was formerly the ceiling, and slowly become acclimated to his new position as the pain from the fall subsided. Now the sucker would look around, and it would be the windows and doors that appeared to be upside down, including the views of the outside world beyond.

After Ball entered the classroom and fell up onto poor Jenny McCarthy’s desk (as well as poor Jenny McCarthy), she cancelled class, sent the three prime suspects to the Dean’s office, and tasked the rest of the students with resetting the gravimetric determinator. Enraged and exasperated, she limped across campus to the admin building. Soon enough, she sat, worn out, in the teacher’s lounge, across the table from her best friend, Amanda Kingsley.

Amanda was thirty-something, like Ball, and carried the aura, there was no other word for it, of an overgrown flower child. She wore a colorful, and loose fitting dress that hid her less than athletic figure, kept her hair long with a variety of decorations, and provided an ongoing soundtrack of jingles and jangles everywhere she went with the masses of jewelry that finished her look. She was decidedly “back to the earth”.

“Manny, I’m not sure how much longer I can take this.”

“Don’t let them get to you, Ball. That’s just what they’re trying to do.”

“Manny, they literally turned the classroom upside-down.”

“A prank.”

“How can you be so nonchalant about it?”

“Just think about how much work they put into it. Not only did they reprogram the gravity whatevers, which I imagine is quite challenging...”

“Not as hard as you think.”

“Well, ok, but they did a lot more than that, didn’t they? I mean that place must have been a complete mess. Upside down desks and paper and trash all over the floor”

“Ceiling.”

“Ok, ceiling. But you see my point. To actually re-hang all of your posters. I mean, that actually took some work.”

“Your point?”

“My point is that at least they’re not lazy. You just need to find a way to channel all that energy.”

Ball gave her the look. The look that said, with a little, mixed in. Amanda knew her well enough that the words were not necessary.

“You can’t let it get to you. Therein lies the road to ruin.”

“It’s just…I’ve been here for 12 years, Manny. 12 years. And I feel like all of my energy has gone into managing chaos, with nothing leftover for my work.”

Amanda picked up Ball’s mostly empty cup of tea and went to the counter to make a new cup. “You’re just in a slump. You’ll come out of it.”

“Manny, I haven’t had an original idea in six years. At the end of the school day, what little energy the rugrats haven’t stolen from me goes into those ridiculous abstracts. When I finally got tenure I thought, ‘This is it. Now I am really going to get back to work. Do some real science. Discover something.’ But it’s everything I can do just to keep up with what the rest of the scientific community is doing. This place stole my youth, Manny, and now I’m just … treading water.”

“Seriously, Ball, it’s just a slump. Didn’t you publish that thing about the inverted wave forms just a few weeks ago?”

“That tripe? There wasn’t an original idea in the whole piece. I only wrote it to satisfy my teaching requirements.”

Amanda was in the midst of making tea “the old fashioned way”. Distracted, she bumped the hot teapot and shouted. “Ow!”

This broke the tension a bit for Ball, and she laughed at her friend. She never could understand why Amanda disdained so many modern conveniences, although she saw this more as an endearing personality quirk than anything worth taking too seriously. She had been that way ever since she was a child, and Ball had been ribbing her about it almost as long. “Manny, why don’t you just make it in the kitchen?”

“Because, best friend, the kitchen is just a tool of the Consortium to make us all the same. Did you know the word kitchen used to describe a whole room where people prepared their own food by hand? Now it’s nothing more than a sophisticated vending machine. If we don’t fight back in these little ways they win and we lose. Take for example, the vid-wall in your apartment…

“Ball, why don’t you take a vacation? You’ve certainly earned enough credits, and you’re obviously overworked.”

Ball inhaled the steam coming off of the hot tea, and took a cautious sip. She let some of her tension go and allowed herself a smile. “For all the hard times I’ve given you, Manny, I have to admit, you make one great cup of tea.”

“It’s worth the time, Ball. And I enjoy making it, too. But you’re avoiding the subject at hand. Now about that vacation.” Amanda was not about to be put off.

“And what am I supposed to do with Whit?”

“Send him to my place. I’d love to spend some time with him.”

“Into that 20th century monument to work you call a house?”

“That monument, as you call it, is a tribute to people who actually do things for themselves. You can’t argue that a little hard work would be good for him. I could teach him how to trim the bushes, or wash the floor.”

“A regular wicked stepmother.”

“And I can certainly teach him how to make tea better than that kitchen of yours. I know you’d like that. Besides, he loves it at my place and you know it. I think kids instinctively like it when they accomplish something for themselves.”

“Like washing the floor.”

“Even washing the floor.” Amanda grabbed Ball’s hands from across the table and squeezed. “Ball, I know you are not worried about my watching Whit. You’re falling apart, deep in a slump, and you desperately need a vacation. Yet, for all that, you’re making excuses to avoid taking one. What’s really keeping you?”

Ball took another sip of tea, and spoke to her cup, “I don’t know, Manny. I think if I’m really honest with myself, I feel the same way you do about the world. Like I’m just a tool in a great machine, with no control over my own destiny. Yes, I’m exhausted. But I don’t think I would mind that if I weren’t exhausted from spending all my energy doing things for other people. I don’t need a break so much as a chance to do something for myself.”

“Then do that.”

“I can’t.” She looked up at Amanda. “I have my job.”

“Your job will wait.”

“I have Whit.”

“He’s older than you think.”

Ball looked up from her cup and waited for the words. “The truth is, Manny,” she managed to say, “I don’t know how.”

Amanda took her hands again, and gave a small laugh. A laugh of understanding and love.

“Send Whit to my place for a couple weeks and turn in your vacation credits. Jump to the continent and stay at the manor. The lab is still fully functional, if a little outdated. You could mess around. Do some experiments in peace – without pressure. Maybe something will crop up. If you latch on to something, you could apply for a sabbatical, and I could bring Whit for visits.” Amanda leaned back in her chair, and this time gave a hearty laugh. “If not, at least you could get away from the rugrats for a couple weeks.”

“Silver Maples?”

“What’s wrong with Silver Maples? It’s quiet, beautiful, and most importantly, it’s far from the Academy.”

“But it’s so….big” Ball looked up at Amanda and laughed. Amanda was immediately infected and they had a good laugh together. Silver Maples, Amanda’s ancestral home, was in fact frighteningly large. It was a mansion built for dozens of servants, and since the death of Amanda’s parents, had sat completely empty.

One person, alone in that monstrosity seemed comically out of proportion. “I’ll think about it.”

And before she could finish her tea, she was prodded by the bell to teach her next class. She headed out of the building, took a deep breath, and prayed the kids had only undone the damage, and not created more.