Enemy Airship
02-11-2006, 08:04 PM
Professor Jonah Styles stood patiently at the front of the auditorium, his eyes transfixed to the clock on the back wall. His lecture was to begin in 4 minutes and he calmly waited for the seats to fill in front of him. He watched as the slow trickle of students eventually filled the ancient lecture theatre. His thoughts began drifting aimlessly as he double checked the time on his watch. He began to wonder how much knowledge could have possibly been shared in this very room over the years and how much insightful philosophy must have bounced off of oblivious pupils, only to be absorbed by the dull concrete walls.
His thoughts were interrupted when the background chatter died out into a respectful silence. He peered up at the clock again and this time, it was appropriate for him to begin. He greeted his class with his usual courteous acknowledgement and proceeded to dim the lights and start his presentation.
Jonah Styles had been made a professor at the university at the relatively young age of 35 after his prolific work in cancer research. Now, over a decade later, he had emerged as one of the most prominent scientists in this particular area of study. He had worked at the university ever since he joined it as an undergraduate in his late-teens.
Almost thirty minutes later and his lecture was running smoothly. He essentially delivered it from memory, which often caused him to forget to alter his slideshow. The fact that his presentations never ran parallel to what he was saying was a characteristic of all of his lectures.
“I feel I must interject here” came a familiar voice from the crowd.
He recognised the voice instantly as that of Alexandra Beckett.
“Go ahead” He replied, scanning the crowd for the source of the interruption.
He always encouraged his students to ask questions during his presentations and Alexandra took full advantage of this fact. As usual her question was relevant.
“That is a question that I will answer later on in the lecture”. Came the reply. He tried not to appear too dismissive, but he simply didn’t have any other tones.
Immediately afterwards came the sound of another student, this time a boy. He did not recognise the voice.
“If we know this much about it, why haven’t we cured it yet?”
There were several tuts from the crowd. Styles took a degree of offence to this question. Not only did it essentially question why his life’s work had failed to find the answer to an ‘easy’ riddle, but he had also carefully explained why overcoming such a disease was so difficult in previous lectures.
“It’s probably because the scientific community has not had the benefit of your infinite wisdom working on the case.” Replied Jonah. He masked his lividity unsuccessfully.
“O…Kaaay” Replied the boy in a fruitless attempt to salvage some sort of dignity in front of his peers.
Jonah had achieved an almost cult status amongst students of the university. His unquestionable dedication and apparently infallible knowledge of his chosen subject inspired many students. He was notorious for his cutting retorts and vitriolic rants as well as appreciated for his totally selfless desire to help people who genuinely needed his guidance. He had gone on record as saying that he preferred plants to people and he regularly let his students know this. A third of the audience probably regarded him as a cantankerous fool, whilst another third saw him as a brilliant man, the final third at least admired his dress sense. He was regularly seen around campus buying his lunch from the same outlets that the students frequented and it was not unusual to see him enjoying a single malt whiskey inside the various bars located in the university grounds during the day.
The lecture proceeded without interruption until the end, at which Jonah sincerely thanked his audience for listening. Approximately five minutes later a small queue of students had formed a line waiting to ask him questions. At the front was a fat man who Jonah knew only as someone who chronically underperformed in exams. He raised his eyes from his papers and shot him a dead pan stare. The fat man was wearing a jumper that hosted a wide array of stains ranging from the bright orange glare of spaghetti sauce to white smears which Jonah hoped were toothpaste marks.
“I just had one question?” Began the fat man.
He then proceeded to question a subject that Jonah had described very thoroughly during the course of the lecture.
“Not only was the general topic described in detail during this lecture, but the exact answer to your problem can be found on no less than three slides on page 9 of the handout.” Jonah’s voice never strayed from an unimpressed monotone.
“I…I’m sorry professor” His voice shook but contained a sincerity which Jonah accepted. He seemed genuinely regretful that he had wasted the time of his mentor.
As the fat man turned to walk away, Jonah caught the pungent smell of body odour. He couldn’t remember this boys name but he represented exactly what Jonah hated about student life. He stood up and shouted after him.
“Hey! Why have you turned up to my lecture today wearing clothes that I wouldn’t even consider washing my patio with!? Why haven’t you had a shower yet?”
“I would have but…”
“Save it. Go home and clean up. It is people like you who perpetuate the negative stereotype about undergraduates that tars every other individual in this room.” Once again the background chatter died out, but this time it was a silence born of curiosity.
Aside from the flexible working hours, Jonah liked working at the university because he was always surrounded by youth. He never let anybody know this fact, but by definition he was consistently in the company of the nation’s future. It was always this underlying cause that led him to reject job offers from bigger companies. The university always provided him with the equipment he needed to carry out his research and that was all he requested from his employer. As a result his loyalty had managed to put the university on the map and to that they were eternally grateful. It was precisely this reason that he felt so strongly about the student reputation. They were the future of the country, not a ridiculous sub-culture that deserved to be on the receiving end of a negative cliché.
Jonah sat back down at his seat and took a moment to compose himself. The next girl to see him wore copious amounts of blue eye liner on her face. He had seen several girls recently who had copied the style. He merely attributed it to another fad which would die out just as quickly as the many others that he’d witnessed during his teaching career.
“Professor Styles, I would like an extension on my coursework please”
Her question prompted several gasps from the small groups who often stayed behind after the lecture to watch the professor in action.
He peered out into the crowd causing a panic filled rustling of papers as people pretended to be doing something relevant. The professor had issued this particular task almost two months ago. It was merely a short essay of a thousand words. He looked the girl in the eye and noted that she was chewing gum. He wasn’t sure, but he thought he caught a smell of vodka on her breath. He also noted that she had a very dark sun tan for this time of year, as well as sun bleached blonde hair.
“I see. What seems to be the problem with the current deadline?” The professor enquired.
“I can’t meet it”
“Why not?”
“Period pains” exclaimed the girl.
She raised her voice on purpose and Jonah tried to deduce whether she was genuinely trying to fluster him or whether she was simply being as obnoxious as she possibly could. She chewed her gum with her mouth open.
“Do you have any medical note to substantiate your claim?”
“No…I wouldn’t go to a doctor for…”
“In which case…” He took a deep breath and clenched his fists on the desk. “What on Earth makes you think that you are a special case that deserves special treatment because you have suffered from a few abdominal cramps? Cramps which not only affect every other girl in this class, but approximately 3 billion people on the entire surface of the globe!” He paused for breath and rose to a standing position before continuing.
“I can not believe that you have the audacity to come to me after inappropriately talking to your friend throughout my entire lecture and ask me for an extension. It’s not only discourteous to me, but also discourteous to your entire gender that you wield menstruation as a shield for laziness. The deadline remains in place and I will not accept anything less than a death certificate as an excuse for you not giving your work in on time.”
There were some giggles from the remaining crowd. They sat mouths aghast, waiting desperately to hear the girls reply. It did not come. She turned abruptly and marched out of the room. Jonah sat down and rubbed his head before letting out a deep breath.
“You do not suffer fools gladly, do you professor?” The familiar voice caught him off guard and forced him to raise a smile.
“Indeed” his reply.
Alex Beckett had come to provide the professor her email address and request that he sent her some further information pertaining to her question in the lesson. She was the last person in the line and by this time there was nobody left in the seats of the auditorium. He agreed and she turned and walked away. As the door shut behind her he was left alone in the room.
*
Jonah slowly walked back to his office. By his standards he was walking at a normal speed, but his painfully slow pace had caused some students to liken it more to a glide, like that of a massive ship slowly pulling out of a harbour. His long, dark coat knocked against his knees as he moved towards the adjacent building. He was greeted by two students on the way, although he did not recognise either of them. Upon returning he placed his papers on his desk and sat down. He starred blankly at his computer before preparing the email to Alex. Once he had completed the task (he once again provided information that was probably far too in-depth) he edged back on his chair and peered around his office.
He looked at the photograph which was displayed on his desk. It acted almost like a magnet, succeeding in attracting his steely glaze. It was a photo of him and his wife on their wedding day almost twenty years ago. He watched the photo with a burning desire to simply return to that period. To be himself in the photo once again with all of the knowledge that he’d acquired transported with him. His thoughts now fully immersed in the photograph, he found himself imagining how his hand must have felt as it clasped that of his wife’s. He remembered how soft and warm her dress felt whenever he touched it on that day all those years ago.
Today was the fourth anniversary of her death. He had attempted to ignore the fact and simply cast it off as a day just like any other, but even though he may have fooled some of his colleagues, he was unable to convince himself. His wife had died from the very same disease that he had spent his entire life trying to defeat. He simply could not believe the irony of his situation and saw it as his own fault that he himself had not provided science with a plausible alternative to help his wife. Since the death of his spouse he had worked indefatigably on treatments for the disease and it was this very event that fuelled his industrious compassion for his job.
His office was lonely now and all of his contemporaries had gone home. This wasn’t an unfamiliar scenario for Jonah. The outside air was filled with the familiar sound of rush hour traffic, which he did his best to cut out by shutting all of his windows and blinds. He decided against going home and instead returned to his laboratory. He wore his white coat and began to look over his recent experiments when an uncontrollable urge to vomit possessed him. He ran to the sink and filled it with bloody emesis. He searched through the buttons on his laboratory coat and then on his shirt to place his fingers under his armpits. The sore, hard growths were still prominent and still painful. The symptoms which he had diagnosed and scrupulously studied a thousand times before had initially gripped him slowly, but were now firmly established.
He steadied himself and flushed the blood away. He wondered just how numbered his days were now, but vowed never to face the inevitable with the same stoic indifference that his wife had.
Only his death certificate would prevent him from turning up to work every day and challenging the disease to a new battle.
Jonah found time to wash his hands and remove his white coat. He slowly glided back into his office where he shut and locked the door. As he turned his back to the exit he shut his eyes and collapsed on the floor.
His thoughts were interrupted when the background chatter died out into a respectful silence. He peered up at the clock again and this time, it was appropriate for him to begin. He greeted his class with his usual courteous acknowledgement and proceeded to dim the lights and start his presentation.
Jonah Styles had been made a professor at the university at the relatively young age of 35 after his prolific work in cancer research. Now, over a decade later, he had emerged as one of the most prominent scientists in this particular area of study. He had worked at the university ever since he joined it as an undergraduate in his late-teens.
Almost thirty minutes later and his lecture was running smoothly. He essentially delivered it from memory, which often caused him to forget to alter his slideshow. The fact that his presentations never ran parallel to what he was saying was a characteristic of all of his lectures.
“I feel I must interject here” came a familiar voice from the crowd.
He recognised the voice instantly as that of Alexandra Beckett.
“Go ahead” He replied, scanning the crowd for the source of the interruption.
He always encouraged his students to ask questions during his presentations and Alexandra took full advantage of this fact. As usual her question was relevant.
“That is a question that I will answer later on in the lecture”. Came the reply. He tried not to appear too dismissive, but he simply didn’t have any other tones.
Immediately afterwards came the sound of another student, this time a boy. He did not recognise the voice.
“If we know this much about it, why haven’t we cured it yet?”
There were several tuts from the crowd. Styles took a degree of offence to this question. Not only did it essentially question why his life’s work had failed to find the answer to an ‘easy’ riddle, but he had also carefully explained why overcoming such a disease was so difficult in previous lectures.
“It’s probably because the scientific community has not had the benefit of your infinite wisdom working on the case.” Replied Jonah. He masked his lividity unsuccessfully.
“O…Kaaay” Replied the boy in a fruitless attempt to salvage some sort of dignity in front of his peers.
Jonah had achieved an almost cult status amongst students of the university. His unquestionable dedication and apparently infallible knowledge of his chosen subject inspired many students. He was notorious for his cutting retorts and vitriolic rants as well as appreciated for his totally selfless desire to help people who genuinely needed his guidance. He had gone on record as saying that he preferred plants to people and he regularly let his students know this. A third of the audience probably regarded him as a cantankerous fool, whilst another third saw him as a brilliant man, the final third at least admired his dress sense. He was regularly seen around campus buying his lunch from the same outlets that the students frequented and it was not unusual to see him enjoying a single malt whiskey inside the various bars located in the university grounds during the day.
The lecture proceeded without interruption until the end, at which Jonah sincerely thanked his audience for listening. Approximately five minutes later a small queue of students had formed a line waiting to ask him questions. At the front was a fat man who Jonah knew only as someone who chronically underperformed in exams. He raised his eyes from his papers and shot him a dead pan stare. The fat man was wearing a jumper that hosted a wide array of stains ranging from the bright orange glare of spaghetti sauce to white smears which Jonah hoped were toothpaste marks.
“I just had one question?” Began the fat man.
He then proceeded to question a subject that Jonah had described very thoroughly during the course of the lecture.
“Not only was the general topic described in detail during this lecture, but the exact answer to your problem can be found on no less than three slides on page 9 of the handout.” Jonah’s voice never strayed from an unimpressed monotone.
“I…I’m sorry professor” His voice shook but contained a sincerity which Jonah accepted. He seemed genuinely regretful that he had wasted the time of his mentor.
As the fat man turned to walk away, Jonah caught the pungent smell of body odour. He couldn’t remember this boys name but he represented exactly what Jonah hated about student life. He stood up and shouted after him.
“Hey! Why have you turned up to my lecture today wearing clothes that I wouldn’t even consider washing my patio with!? Why haven’t you had a shower yet?”
“I would have but…”
“Save it. Go home and clean up. It is people like you who perpetuate the negative stereotype about undergraduates that tars every other individual in this room.” Once again the background chatter died out, but this time it was a silence born of curiosity.
Aside from the flexible working hours, Jonah liked working at the university because he was always surrounded by youth. He never let anybody know this fact, but by definition he was consistently in the company of the nation’s future. It was always this underlying cause that led him to reject job offers from bigger companies. The university always provided him with the equipment he needed to carry out his research and that was all he requested from his employer. As a result his loyalty had managed to put the university on the map and to that they were eternally grateful. It was precisely this reason that he felt so strongly about the student reputation. They were the future of the country, not a ridiculous sub-culture that deserved to be on the receiving end of a negative cliché.
Jonah sat back down at his seat and took a moment to compose himself. The next girl to see him wore copious amounts of blue eye liner on her face. He had seen several girls recently who had copied the style. He merely attributed it to another fad which would die out just as quickly as the many others that he’d witnessed during his teaching career.
“Professor Styles, I would like an extension on my coursework please”
Her question prompted several gasps from the small groups who often stayed behind after the lecture to watch the professor in action.
He peered out into the crowd causing a panic filled rustling of papers as people pretended to be doing something relevant. The professor had issued this particular task almost two months ago. It was merely a short essay of a thousand words. He looked the girl in the eye and noted that she was chewing gum. He wasn’t sure, but he thought he caught a smell of vodka on her breath. He also noted that she had a very dark sun tan for this time of year, as well as sun bleached blonde hair.
“I see. What seems to be the problem with the current deadline?” The professor enquired.
“I can’t meet it”
“Why not?”
“Period pains” exclaimed the girl.
She raised her voice on purpose and Jonah tried to deduce whether she was genuinely trying to fluster him or whether she was simply being as obnoxious as she possibly could. She chewed her gum with her mouth open.
“Do you have any medical note to substantiate your claim?”
“No…I wouldn’t go to a doctor for…”
“In which case…” He took a deep breath and clenched his fists on the desk. “What on Earth makes you think that you are a special case that deserves special treatment because you have suffered from a few abdominal cramps? Cramps which not only affect every other girl in this class, but approximately 3 billion people on the entire surface of the globe!” He paused for breath and rose to a standing position before continuing.
“I can not believe that you have the audacity to come to me after inappropriately talking to your friend throughout my entire lecture and ask me for an extension. It’s not only discourteous to me, but also discourteous to your entire gender that you wield menstruation as a shield for laziness. The deadline remains in place and I will not accept anything less than a death certificate as an excuse for you not giving your work in on time.”
There were some giggles from the remaining crowd. They sat mouths aghast, waiting desperately to hear the girls reply. It did not come. She turned abruptly and marched out of the room. Jonah sat down and rubbed his head before letting out a deep breath.
“You do not suffer fools gladly, do you professor?” The familiar voice caught him off guard and forced him to raise a smile.
“Indeed” his reply.
Alex Beckett had come to provide the professor her email address and request that he sent her some further information pertaining to her question in the lesson. She was the last person in the line and by this time there was nobody left in the seats of the auditorium. He agreed and she turned and walked away. As the door shut behind her he was left alone in the room.
*
Jonah slowly walked back to his office. By his standards he was walking at a normal speed, but his painfully slow pace had caused some students to liken it more to a glide, like that of a massive ship slowly pulling out of a harbour. His long, dark coat knocked against his knees as he moved towards the adjacent building. He was greeted by two students on the way, although he did not recognise either of them. Upon returning he placed his papers on his desk and sat down. He starred blankly at his computer before preparing the email to Alex. Once he had completed the task (he once again provided information that was probably far too in-depth) he edged back on his chair and peered around his office.
He looked at the photograph which was displayed on his desk. It acted almost like a magnet, succeeding in attracting his steely glaze. It was a photo of him and his wife on their wedding day almost twenty years ago. He watched the photo with a burning desire to simply return to that period. To be himself in the photo once again with all of the knowledge that he’d acquired transported with him. His thoughts now fully immersed in the photograph, he found himself imagining how his hand must have felt as it clasped that of his wife’s. He remembered how soft and warm her dress felt whenever he touched it on that day all those years ago.
Today was the fourth anniversary of her death. He had attempted to ignore the fact and simply cast it off as a day just like any other, but even though he may have fooled some of his colleagues, he was unable to convince himself. His wife had died from the very same disease that he had spent his entire life trying to defeat. He simply could not believe the irony of his situation and saw it as his own fault that he himself had not provided science with a plausible alternative to help his wife. Since the death of his spouse he had worked indefatigably on treatments for the disease and it was this very event that fuelled his industrious compassion for his job.
His office was lonely now and all of his contemporaries had gone home. This wasn’t an unfamiliar scenario for Jonah. The outside air was filled with the familiar sound of rush hour traffic, which he did his best to cut out by shutting all of his windows and blinds. He decided against going home and instead returned to his laboratory. He wore his white coat and began to look over his recent experiments when an uncontrollable urge to vomit possessed him. He ran to the sink and filled it with bloody emesis. He searched through the buttons on his laboratory coat and then on his shirt to place his fingers under his armpits. The sore, hard growths were still prominent and still painful. The symptoms which he had diagnosed and scrupulously studied a thousand times before had initially gripped him slowly, but were now firmly established.
He steadied himself and flushed the blood away. He wondered just how numbered his days were now, but vowed never to face the inevitable with the same stoic indifference that his wife had.
Only his death certificate would prevent him from turning up to work every day and challenging the disease to a new battle.
Jonah found time to wash his hands and remove his white coat. He slowly glided back into his office where he shut and locked the door. As he turned his back to the exit he shut his eyes and collapsed on the floor.