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Write a story in which a jaded academic makes an unexpected, rash decision.

Posted in Angst on Nov 3, 2023

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✍️ 41 stories

Solution-74

Submitted to Contest #223

Dr. Marla Keen carefully brushed Solution-74 on both sides of the guillotine blade. Her hands shook, but she wasn’t sure if that was because of the arthritis, or the tequila, or the fact she was still in her lab at two in the morning. Or, because of what she was about to do.Not only was her latest grant still up in the air, no doubt thanks to that asshole Dr. Becker in the next lab over throwing his hat into the ring, but the university cut her funding today too. Small mercy she didn’t have any grad students left to disappoint, tho...

33 likes 54 comments 54
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Two Eggs for Breakfast

Submitted to Contest #223

It was nine-fifteen and later than usual when Mrs Prettejohn shuffled into Donald Musgrove’s dining room clutching a tray with his boiled egg and soldiers, and a small pot of Earl Grey.    “Your all-day breakfast, Professor.”   “Very droll, Mrs P,” he said, wafting his hand at the cluttered table as he read his mail. “Over there’s fine.”    The housekeeper hovered in abeyance to watch her dishevelled employer decapitate his egg and offer her culinary criticism.    Cru...

32 likes 29 comments 29
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Omelets 101

Submitted to Contest #223

"Umm, is Mrs. Mariere in?"The boy's voice betrays him, squeaking in that pre-pubescent way despite his likely eighteen or nineteen years of age. His mispronunciation of my name doesn't bother me; most freshmen at this tiny liberal arts college take a while to acclimate to addressing adults who aren't their parents or teachers they've known since kindergarten."Mrs. Mariere—" my assistant correctly enunciates, with a nice, long rolling R, "is on a call. As Dean, she’s a busy woman. Is there something I can help you with?""Umm…" I can hear the ...

29 likes 17 comments 17
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The Uncertainty Principle

Shortlisted for Contest #223 ⭐️

The white board was filled with equations, graphs and language that the ordinary layperson would have had no clue as to the function or meaning. The students in Professor Howard Tappan’s Quantum Physics seminar largely had no understanding of them either. At least according to Professor Tappan. He’d been at Cornell for the better part of two decades. Published widely, an expert in his field, respected for his studies in the field, Professor Tappan was generally detested by anyone who knew him on a personal level. His demanding standards le...

28 likes 25 comments 25
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The Point

Submitted to Contest #223

Ms. Montgomery, I’d like to write something about your grade. First, I should give you some background. I am not, as you know, a teacher who attempts to endear herself to students by blurring the line between the personal and the professional. You will have noticed, I suppose, that at no point this year have I ever disclosed anything about where I live, whether or not I’m married, whether or not I have children, what I like, what I don’t like, or even how I feel. I speak. You listen (hopefully). I distribute education. You absorb inf...

22 likes 13 comments 13
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Jack in a Box

Submitted to Contest #223

TW: Violence, death, gore, and septic tanks.“Why would we go back?” asked Jack, drinking water which had been purified from the waste of the entire crew. Far from putting him off, Jack found that funny. Others rarely shared his mirth when he pointed out the closed water system on spaceships. He was a student of life in the void. No matter how many resits it took.“Because Copernicus is starving. The Pierce Dynasty will hold the blockade until they all die or surrender!” Doctor Annie Brie yelled, holding her cup of instant coffee. “Exactl...

21 likes 27 comments 27
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Myth and Miasma

Submitted to Contest #223

Lost, his eyes try to pierce through the fog. The unearthly, all-enveloping mist that had settled around him and brought with it a bone-chilling cold. The kind of cold that penetrates the holes of your skin and seeps into your core. The air is thick, pale, and opaque, and his breath comes out in smoke, weaving with the vapour around, making him question if it is inside him.  The calming susurration of the wind in leaves is gone, and the sun is hidden behind clouds that undulate endlessly in the sky. With only greys and whites around h...

20 likes 3 comments 3
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Pig Meds

Submitted to Contest #223

Professor Smyth-Gladstone is ten minutes late. Lynn, his PA, assures me he is on campus. Standing with my back to his door, lightly tapping my head against the wood, I consider making chit-chat with Lynn but hold off as she devours what looks like a field of carrots.Twenty minutes late. I shuffle the three sheets of organic molecules, mechanisms, and tabulated data in my hand for the fiftieth time. They're still the correct print-offs; they're still the correct data. I lift on my toes, still tapping my head. The cold coat hook slides against...

19 likes 23 comments 23
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Bread and Circus

Submitted to Contest #223

“Delivery, delivery, delivery – delivery is everything.” – Cicero * ** How would Cicero have handled this inquisition? Konkle, Whipple, Achebe, Hustis, Buttersowrth, Bartles, and Diamond. They are the Faculty Grievance Committee. I have affectionately nicknamed them the seven dwarves. Because either by nature or habit, each has a characteristic quirk, and they always stay true to character in these meetings. Konkle, for instance, is the Master of Ceremonies and the Disciplinarian. Bartles is the sardonic wisecracker. Achebe is the silent...

18 likes 11 comments 11
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Timeline Homework

Submitted to Contest #223

" - topic is the Sistine Chapel, one of the great ancients Arts."Rymere almost missed his wrist sensor vibrating Class dismissed as he lifted his head from his desk. He felt his cheek burning where he had leaned it on his arm to sleep.Around him, his classmates were tapping their home coordinates into their wrists and evaporating until he was one of only two left.His head cleared and he looked down at his wrist, tapping his own coordinates in and disappearing before he had to explain himself to the teacher.His mother opened the front door wh...

17 likes 8 comments 8
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The Shift

Submitted to Contest #223

Barnaby gazed out of his office window and imagined himself smoking moodily on the steel footbridge three floors below. He missed smoking and in his daydreams about it he was often overcoated and windswept in some gritty urban setting, giving off a sort of vaguely eastern European vibe. The footbridge over Chancellor’s Drive wasn’t exactly the Berlin Wall, but the mean little bridge which stapled the concrete campus to a surrounding fringe of woodland was the best he could do.  Three papers was all he’d got through before his mind ha...

12 likes 12 comments 12
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A Theory Newly Proved

Submitted to Contest #223

For sixteen years, I have been pursuing the true substance of life. But now, with hardly two years under his belt, that welp has supposedly overtaken me. He, in his pressed robes and combed hair, took to the halls like his mere steps would transmute the stone to gold. Has the boy not learned his history? Has he not taken note of all the parables he was plastered with? It takes an old master to make miracles, and a young fool to undo them all! Does anyone heed these oft-repeated words? The whole faculty has abandoned the teachings of common...

10 likes 1 comment 1
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What Goes on in the Mind of a Bird?

Submitted to Contest #223

What goes on in the mind of a bird? Liberty Coates surely knows. After twenty years of research on the spotted Oriole, she has written countless papers on her extensive studies. The conclusion: birds do not have the emotional intelligence to think thoughts. On May 19th, 1987, two months after Liberty Coates’ less than successful paper The Spotted Oriole: My Life’s Devotion was published, her lifelong rival Bruce Davidson published his groundbreaking neuroscience study, claiming that birds are one of the most intelligent creatures o...

10 likes 2 comments 2
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I'll be seeing you

Submitted to Contest #223

“I’ll be seeing you, Melina.” “Thank you, Professor Randall.” She paused before she walked away. “And then you’ll tell me where I can find God?” “Yes, Melina.” He didn’t know why he said that to her. He taught biology, not philosophy. He waved goodbye to his student and walked out of the classroom. Windows. Lockers. A piece of crumpled paper, being blown through the hallway like tumbleweed in a Western. The afternoon sun threw its rays through the windows, pulling on the shadows, making them grow sleek, just like his dreams had become. ...

9 likes 1 comment 1
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Change of Plans

Submitted to Contest #223

“Shot of Jack Daniels.” “Don’t you think you’ve had enough?” “Did I ask what you think, or did I ask for a shot?” “Bitch,” the bartender mumbled under his breath loud enough for me to hear. He was right. I was being a bitch, in one of those moods where nothing felt quite right. The agitation was getting worse day by day, had been building for months. Looking back, the entire semester was a shit show of anxiety.  “What’s your problem?” Gen grabbed another handful of stale pretzels, grimacing, but eating them...

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