Redactions

Dr. Greg McIver has an awful lot of things he’s been putting off. Situation normal, he would say, except that it’s a bit worse than usual. He would win Olympic gold if running away from your problems was a sport.

Forrest, his long-suffering best friend and seasoned anthropology professor, has got it into his head that Greg ought to write up some kind of academic memoir. Greg's experiences are compelling, Forrest had said. And informative, too. He didn’t specify how.

“You take notes, don't you?” Forrest had asked, long ago. “About important things in your life?”

Greg had stared at him as if he’d grown another head. He’s an art historian, not an English professor, and for that matter, he has mixed feelings on the English.

Forrest had explained that he finds it a good practice to summarize each day’s events in a small report, for future reference. Greg had dismissed this as the most Forrest thing ever. Forrest had said he ought to try it. “You have a distinctive voice,” he said. Well, that part is true.

But Forrest is the voice of reason, so Greg eventually caved and gave creative writing a try. It didn’t take – or so he thought. Irritatingly, he quickly realized he liked it. Forrest was right. Greg now finds it to be a fairly useful habit, even if he’s just dumping his unfiltered thoughts onto a blank page, never intended to be seen by another living soul. Worse yet, he’s good at it. Forrest was right about that, too. Damn it.

Now Forrest wants him to put it all together into some kind of coherent narrative and send it in somewhere. “People would love it,” he keeps telling him. God forbid. Greg would have to actually reconsider and relive everything that’s happened to him, instead of just letting it slip away into the vortex of memory.

Greg’s torn between a hard place and another hard place. He can’t back down from a challenge. Forrest must be counting on that. Greg’s actually started to review all those piles of old notes. The temptation of beating somebody else in academia is luring him on like a siren song. There’s no way Roderick is a creative writer, is he? That man doesn’t have a creative bone in his body. For that matter, not even an X-ray could locate a backbone.

Still, there’s a lot Greg would have to redact for the sake of his image.

- - -

Greg bangs on Forrest’s door, receives a vague noise from inside, and lets himself into the familiar office. “How much should I cut?”

“Huh?”

“The memoir thing.” Greg gestures, trying to convey his frustration with the general premise. Specifically, he’d like to disabuse the rest of the world of the notion that somebody else has successfully convinced him to do something. He hates arriving at a conclusion that he didn’t find on his own. “If I do it – if – I’m going to have to take a lot of things out.”

“I don’t think you should worry about that,” says Forrest calmly. “Be honest. People love authenticity.”

“But I can’t put in all the stuff with the genies,” objects Greg. “Can I?”

Forrest just stares at him.

“I told you about that.” There’s a very long pause. “Didn’t I?”

And then Greg has the abrupt realization that he didn’t mention the supernatural events of last semester. Not even an explanation for what happened to Forrest’s minivan.

Forrest wonders how much of this to play along with. Classic Greg.

Fortunately, their quandary is interrupted by the latest faculty member’s arrival. Dr. Chris Weathers, aka Junior, pokes his head in the door. Forrest had graciously made an offer to meet him personally to smooth out the re-hiring transition. Greg had no knowledge of this and was not supposed to be there.

That’s the benefit of being co-chairs. Forrest has free will and full authority to handle all these sorts of tasks. Greg would rather volunteer for excruciating dental work than spend any extended amount of time with the son of the man whose career he accidentally dismantled. He only feels bad for Chris’s sake, though, not out of any sympathy for Dr. Jeremy Weathers, Ex-Vice Chair. That philandering bastard had it coming.

Forrest greets him politely. “Chris,” he says. “Or would you prefer Dr. Weathers?”

“Actually, I’m here to talk to you about that.” Chris Weathers awkwardly smiles, anticipating a conversation that is absolutely worsened by Greg’s presence. “Can you change my last name in the employee directory?”

Greg thinks, We should change it to Chris Hansen, so your father wouldn’t dare come visit.

Instead, he says, “Yes, we could do that. To what?”

“Considering… everything that happened with my dad… I’ve decided to go by my mom’s maiden name for a while.”

“I don't blame you. What is it?”

“It’d just be Dr. Chris Miller. Is that fine?”

“More than fine,” says Greg, noting that the Junior Weathers quandary is now nicely solved. He supposes everything sorts itself out if you wait long enough. “Forrest can take care of that for you. Nice to see you here. Welcome back to Halloran University. It’ll be better this time!” And with that, he scoots out the door. There’s things to do and paintings to fix.

- - -

Greg sits in front of his laptop, staring at the blinking cursor of his word-processor. The page is as blank as his mind. It’s a good thing operating systems were invented, or else he’d have to tolerate a typewriter, and can you imagine that?

You’re procrastinating, Greg, says Greg.

There’s a wall of unfinished papers surrounding his computer, resembling a medieval moat. That’s not going to go away on its own.

He sighs, and switches to his other half-complete document, which he hates looking at. It hates him just as much. Then, doing his best to block his self-sabotaging worries, he starts spilling words onto the page. We re-hired Weathers’s son today. I think he’s glad to be back. At least, Forrest thinks so. Frankly, I don’t see what’s he got to be embarrassed about. The scandal wasn’t his fault at all. He never should’ve quit in the first place.

Slowly, as if by magic – what else could it possibly be? – the top of the tallest document stack gradually disappears. That was Chris’s re-hiring paperwork.

Greg stares at it disbelievingly. Not the weirdest thing he’s seen all year, but near the top of the list. After a few seconds of contemplation, he throws his hands up and slumps back in his chair. “Bloody hell, again?! I thought we were done with this!”

The silver lining occurs to him soon enough. It’d be awfully efficient, muses Greg, if I can grant my own wishes. This time, he won’t be obliged to ask favors from an ostentatious, egotistical genie. Good riddance. It’s hard to imagine he’d ever missed that man’s company.

Finally, he sits up, steeling his jaw and brushing back his hair and straightening his collar, making some vague effort towards the way an actual professor ought to look. He rarely bothers with the thin veneer of academic respectability. Why bother, when it’s always hiding something worse beneath? Greg’s not overly cynical. He’s exactly as cynical as the world deserves.

He navigates to the word processor’s Help manual and clicks on it, as if that would accomplish anything here.

Would you like to compose a letter? asks the handy paperclip.

“I can think of a couple of letters for you,” mutters Greg. “Starts with the sixth one.” He starts counting on his fingers. He’s no mathematics professor. “Oh, forget it.” Clicking that red X has never been more satisfying.

He leans over and turns on his lamp. On the corner of his desk, the shiny Dr. Greg McIver: AHAA Department Co-Chair plaque glitters in the dim light. That was a gift from Ms. Lawson, the overbearing administrator, who has learned to put her distaste for him aside enough to muster up some real respect. Greg doesn’t like her, but he doesn’t hate her anymore. He’s pretty sure that’s mutual. Still, he wouldn’t be surprised to find an unflattering hidden message on that plaque one day.

Filled with renewed vigor, Greg returns to his much-loathed document, fingers hovering over the keyboard. He keeps on typing. We’d all have been better off if Weathers could keep it in his pants, wouldn’t we? Luisa wouldn’t have quit, and we wouldn’t have lost her to Harton University, and we’d still have a Department Chair, and I’d still have my graduate student, and… He goes on and on, furiously typing, following the logical cause and effect. The paperwork pile grows smaller and smaller.

Greg is so focused he doesn’t even notice the loss of the Co-Chair plaque. It disappears in an instant, just like Greg’s creativity when he tries to think of a metaphor.

He sits up, resting his elbows on his desk, and presses his fingertips together. Finally, it occurs to him that this might have been a bad idea. Not before. That would’ve been much too sensible.

“Uh-oh,” he says, pointedly, just in case anybody’s listening. He’d like to put it on the record that he’s starting to regret this.

In an unusual reversal of roles, Forrest bursts into Greg’s office without asking. “Greg!” He’s visibly out of breath. “Dr. Weathers is asking me. Did you submit your tenure application?”

“Not now, Forrest.” Greg impatiently makes a motion to fend him off. “I’ve just fucked up reality. Give me a minute, please.”

“Okay,” says Forrest, and exits, door left.

There’s his alternate-universe cue that something’s gone terribly wrong. Greg looks up at the ceiling in great annoyance, as if that damn genie is hiding there. “Fine, we’ve got the obligatory lesson out of the way! Moving on!”

His computer hovers over the backspace button. His laptop, so laboriously laggy, starts to erase his paragraph, one word at a time. The cursor slows to a halt, and finally freezes.

Greg lets out a string of curses that would qualify him as an honorary sailor. “Oh, no, you don’t!” He smashes the Backspace key harder, as if that’ll fix it, but it’s too late. His computer screen is now the worst shade of blue.

Serves him right for not updating when IT told him to.

But Greg’s not entirely behind the times. He keeps backups of all his documents in one of those cloud accounts, the kind where they pretend they’re not stealing your data. Greg takes small comfort in the fact that he’s not important enough to have his identity hijacked. He opens up his phone, navigates to his Documents folder, and waits for it to sync, idly tapping his fingers on the desk. Longest minute of his life. It’s maddeningly anticlimactic.

Somebody’s knocking on the door, but when Greg yells at them, they leave promptly with the sound of scurrying footsteps. That, at least, he’s going to miss. Nobody respects his peace and quiet anymore. That’s the curse of being important. He’s long since abandoned any hope of having true solitude, but it’s really not worth giving up everything else.

Greg hits Delete on the cursed document.

You might lose this forever, warns the cloud app.

“Good.” He wants it gone. He won’t get his memoirs back, but who cares? He sits back in his chair, puts down his phone, and heaves a sigh of relief as the mountain of documents around his computer grows and grows, surrounding him like a wall. On the corner of his desk, the restored AHAA Co-Chair plaque glints like gold.

Probably just gold-plated, if that. No, they’d never spare the expense. It’s got to be brass. Maybe just printed plastic, but it feels too heavy for that. Greg found that out when he was thinking of throwing it at somebody.

Forrest knocks on his door again. “Hey, Greg, are you in here? Dr. Weathers is asking about you.”

Greg narrows his eyes suspiciously. He’d better be sure he’s fixed things. “Which one?”

“Oh, sorry. Dr. Miller,” corrects Forrest.

That’s more like it.