This is a short preview of Misplaced Fools, a prelude to the upcoming novel The Futility of Esoterica. It is a late version of chapter two of the book.
Misplaced Fools is a satirical story about time travel, tenure, and the foolishness of the wizards of the University of Esoterica. I might also take a few jabs at string theory (“squiggle theory.”)
Chapter Two
Albie Easelstein smirked in triumph, lifting his head from the mathematical chaos spread across his desk. Ninety pages of dense mathematics had finally paid off. A startling truth emerged from his work: time travel was possible!
Neat nine-dimensional sketches interrupted the equations. They weren’t flat approximations of nine-dimensional geometry; they were nine-dimensional geometrical constructs rising from the page to baffle the senses. Creating them required considerable expertise and a magical stylus. Don’t attempt it at home unless you enjoy losing your sanity. If you do, you are likely to become a raving lunatic. Your friends will find you in your basement gibbering about tentacled monsters and anti-vaccination conspiracies.
“Esmer, I’ve mathematically proven time travel is possible!” Albie’s voice rang with excitement.
Esmer Hamilton glanced across the cramped office she shared with Easelstein. She flicked a tanned hand through long waves of black hair tumbling over her short frame, her sharp, captivating gaze studying Albie with curiosity.
Thin and wiry in dark formal robes a decade out of fashion, his graying black hair appeared freshly shocked by a charged comb. A fuzzy, graying mustache clung to the end of his long nose, aging him despite his foolish belief that it gave him an aura of sophistication.
“Oh, Albie?” Esmer leaned back in her chair. “So when will you test this thrilling new idea?”
“Why this obsession with experiments? The math is robust. It tells us everything we need to know! Isn’t that enough for you? I don’t understand the obsession you or the donors have with observation! The math works! You don’t need blasted observation to see that!”
“How do you know it works?” Esmer smirked as she leaned towards him.
Blinking, he brandished the ninety pages of mathematics at her. “I admit we can’t know with total certainty.” He waved the papers as might a priest clutching scripture.
“It’s nothing so radical as an experiment! Imagine me stooping to such depravity!” Esmer said. Her eyes swept upward in a display of theatrical disdain. “It surpasses a mere experiment that proves nothing. It is mathematics! Why bother peering at atoms through a microscope? Our senses lie; mathematics doesn’t. We must shut up and calculate. Why don’t you shut up and calculate?” Esmer asked with a smirk. Albie suspected she was mocking him.
“What is your problem? You were mad when I tried to talk to you about my model of supersquiggle theory. Do you have a problem with it?” Confusion furrowed Albie’s brow. “Most of us think supersquiggle theory is the best mathematical model we have to describe the fundamental underpinnings of reality. Don’t you think so?”
“You call it a model. Then tell me: what’s it for?” One eyebrow quirked higher up her forehead.
“To make accurate predictions! Unfortunately, supersquiggle theory is so convoluted and poorly understood that predictions are almost hopeless.”
Supersquiggle theory claimed that reality emerged from microscopic squiggles—whatever those were—that the math described as squiggly objects curling around themselves 933.6 times in a minimum of nine dimensions. Understanding it meant mastering forty-three years’ worth of incredibly complicated mathematics.
Esmer leaned forward. “Can you perform any experiments to test for these squiggles? Is it possible to observe your squiggles by any means whatsoever?”
“Practical methods remain entirely and stubbornly nonexistent.”
“If you cannot test it, you cannot verify whether it is true. A theory is only useful if you can verify whether it is true. If you cannot, then it is worse than useless – it is an intellectual weight around your neck. It’s a model, much like toy soldiers are toys.”
“You are aware we have yet to verify it.” The paper flapped wildly in Albie’s hand. “However, that does not mean it is not real!”
“That is what the Cult of the Nine-Sided Cube of Asazor says. We trust science over religion because science requires us to test our claims. Unlike the assertions of religions, which are accepted uncritically. Are you sure squiggle theory is not a religion?”
“Really Esmer? Are you seriously comparing science to religion?” His head bobbed with disdain. “Come on now, do better than that! No serious wizard doubts this theory, not if they wish to keep their degree.”
Esmer smirked. “The priests are honest when they ask us to take their nonsense on faith. The priests sit about arguing about stupid things. They love authority and consensus. They excommunicate dissenters too.” She paused, letting the comparison sink in. “What is the primary difference between priests and wizards?”
“I will ignore that,” Albie frowned.
“Ignoring inconvenient things is also something they love. How about testing theories? You pretend to approve of that.”
Albie flailed his hands. “Experimentally testing it is too difficult.”
“You love to dodge the issue. Something priests love to do! Let me not belabor the point.” Esmer’s lip curled in a lopsided sneer of dismissal as Albie evaded her gaze.
“How foolish of me! I forgot I had read about how they devised a technique to estimate the mass of a supersquiggle. Unfortunately, there is just one minor wrinkle: the experiment requires eight trillion times the estimated energy of the entire universe!” Esmer’s eyebrows descended dramatically.
The wizards presented endless crazy schemes for harvesting such absurd amounts of energy. Fortunately, they were lazy and loath to engage in practical exercises, which meant the chance of their attempting such obviously futile schemes was infinitesimally close to zero.
Albie shrugged as though she had suggested a simple prism experiment. “Roughly speaking, a few orders of magnitude.”
“A few orders of magnitude? That is an enormous margin of error. It does not matter; it will not happen.”
“No, I suppose not,” Albie shrugged.
Albie pivoted in his chair and turned to the wall behind him where his splendidly decorated degrees hung: a Master’s in Dubious Geometry, a Doctorate in Suboptimal Field Squiggles, and a Post-doctorate in Hyper-Special Mega Squiggle Topology.
“I am confident in our ability to do it one day!” Albie grinned with the idiotic confidence of a priest babbling about the afterlife. His expression faded as Esmer dismissed the speculative papers.
Albie’s back straightened defensively as he turned back to Esmer. “Do you remember the Mikey and Michael paper?”
“I will never forget such a memorable experiment! They claimed twenty-six dimensions existed and said that proved the ether. Their proof was two hundred pages of math penned in the style of the Elder Demented Gods. One of those with a tenuous grasp on reality.” Esmer shuddered as a wave of dread roiled through her soul.
Albie frowned at her and shook his head. “Esmer, that paper is brilliant – one of the most outstanding papers written in the history of papers!” He ignored her as she rolled her eyes with disdain. “You would not dismiss such papers if you understood the Mikey and Michael paper! One day we will prove squiggle theory, and you will eat your irrational skepticism!”
“Is that so?” She arched her brow and stared at him. “You sound very certain! Let’s do this thing without delay! Give me a moment and I will find the energy we need.” She rummaged through her pockets and desk drawers. “I have 8 with 82 zeroes after it joules of energy somewhere on me,” she said. “No, wait, unfortunately, I don’t have that much energy on me,” she said. She exhaled, shook her head, and raised her hands theatrically.
“Please refrain from mocking me. We have more important concerns than ridiculing serious wizards!” His voice grew urgent. “Do you remember how the Board met about cost-cutting last night?”
“If I see any serious wizards, I will let you know,” Esmer shrugged.
“Esmer! How could you say that?”
“Unfortunately, I do not stay current with the Board and its latest nonsense.” Esmer’s voice took on an ominous tone. “Money’s running tight? Hardly suprisiging. We produce little more than ramblings. What do you expect?”
The Board met to maintain the status quo, which meant it did not bode well that they were considering such a drastic policy change.
“My contacts on the Board say they will revoke tenure throughout the university.”
“They want to cancel tenure? Tenure has stood for a millennium. Are one of the damn foolish wizards in dire legal trouble?” Esmer asked. She could not fathom how they had ended up in such dire straits. They seldom dabbled in dangerous magic. Legal battles used to end abruptly when someone became a newt, but wizards seldom did that anymore. Although most non-academics did not know how little wizards bothered with magic.
“I’m thrilled we agree it is a terrible idea. I don’t understand their motives for such extreme measures. Nobody is getting into more trouble than usual.”
“No more trouble than usual? We are too busy crunching numbers to cause any harm,” she smirked. Wizards no longer blew things up or transmuted their enemies into badgers. It distracted from studying and required too much messing around with magic.
“So what do we do about tenure?” Albie shuffled his papers around nervously.
She slammed her pencil and muttered the words of a dark and ancient curse under her breath. “Drak’maga Yaeter be Havewr!”
Albie blanched a paler shade of white than usual, but she ignored it. “I understand what this is about! I hate it when the damn Board gets strange ideas! The perpetual goal is to save money! It intends to shed excess weight.” She said it with a heavy sigh.
“I really don’t think that is it…” Albie frowned.
“The economy is rough these days. The university has lost several very wealthy donors. So, the Board has to cut expenses. I also have it from my sources that he intends to cut staff numbers. I doubt he can do it, not with so many tenured wizards. Tenured wizards come with a hefty salary, and I am sure he wants to trim several high salaries! Scrapping tenure would solve countless problems. Of course, that is a terrible idea!” said Esmer. She shook her head heavily.
“I have a plan to save tenure!” Albie gushed as he scribbled mathematical absurdities onto the nearest empty sheets of paper, failing to notice that the mathematics consumed the space and overflowed onto the desk.
“I don’t have time for your nonsense right now, Albie. You sit there and toy with your mathematics while I do something useful!” Esmer’s hand thumped flat on the desk. “Work on your useless scribbles!” She glared at him as she stormed out of the room, shaking her head.
With thick hair swaying, Albie shook his head with a scoff. “You’ll see how brilliantly I time travel.” His mutter barely rose above a whisper. He had faith that he would create a time-travel spell within the next three days. The math was impeccable! He was ready to help the wizards with their tenure. He would show her the marvels of time travel!
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Eyes blazing, Esmer strode through the maze of corridors. Her path led unerringly toward πⁱ, the Dean of Science’s office.
πⁱ gleamed in gold on the oak door. πⁱ was a complex number, and thus, part imaginary, much like the Dean’s office hours. The seal’s gold shimmer locked the door tight with enchantment. The door flickered chaotically between universes. When out of phase, it left a blank wall. The Dean did not want students or faculty members readily penetrating his sanctum.
An ominous red light thickened around her as she approached the door. The air grew heavy, forcing a grunt from her throat. Her bones became lead weights, dragging her to the floor. Each step forward felt like wading through gelatin. The door twisted gravity, slowing her as she inched closer.
Vanishing and reappearing, the door defied her command. A smirk curled at her mouth as she hissed arcane commands. The door emitted a chittering noise as if to acknowledge her presence. Anger blazed in her eyes. It creaked sullenly open, yielding to her anger.
Two massive tables at the back held vials of sinister-colored chemicals and toxic fumes potent enough to dissolve skin and organs, though fortuitously the fumes vanished scant inches from the vials’ tops.
A sprawling table dominated the center of the room. Books teetered in precarious stacks across the desk. A single misplaced breath threatened to disintegrate most of them. Among the haphazard stacks were half-assembled clockwork devices of unknown purpose.
Behind the desk towered a slender man in a black button-up shirt with white buttons and brown leather pants. The thin fingers of one hand danced spiderishly over scrolls floating before him. His other hand scrawled furiously over long, floating scrolls. Such paperwork represented one of the few concessions to his role as Dean. Judging from his scowling expression and shoulder twitches, the work was infuriating.
He had been the Dean of Science for two decades and had always insisted that his fellow faculty members use his title and not his name. Nobody could remember his name, and someone had mysteriously scrubbed it from the records. Everyone called him the Dean, or, just Dean.
“Most wizards would run a hot dog stand into the ground within a week! You are about as useful as a needle in a balloon factory. However, it is nigh impossible to fire you!” he said. Fierce blue eyes glanced up from the papers to meet hers. Weaker wizards shrank under his piercing eyes, but Esmer met them with an excited grin.
Only the pay clerks knew the number of wizards employed by the university. No precise audits were done, but the consensus settled on 734.3. Most wizards had not stepped foot outside the grounds for decades, seldom leaving their rooms except for food and supplies.
The university buildings were bigger on the inside than on the outside. Countless miles of hallways connected thousands of rooms. Once, Esmer stumbled upon an entire second science faculty — complete with its own dean. University legend asserted they’d edged out a third faculty of science in a bitter inter-faculty conflict!
“You hide in your rooms, buried in mathematics and little else. One hermit thought it was still the Century of the Vengeful Eagle — fifty years past! It has been the Century of the Spiteful Octopus for fifty years.” The Dean shook his head.
“Sorry, old friend.” A smirk played on her lips.
“You’re not to blame for that. Unlike 98.34% of the fools in this cursed place, you write useful papers!” The Dean smirked. “You are here to create more trouble!” He grinned at her.
“We’ll see about that, my friend. The Board is considering scrapping tenure. Did you hear? Don’t you think it is madness?” She asked as she shifted to lean against the desk.
“As you’ve probably heard, the Board needs to save a considerable sum of money. They never tell me enough,” the Dean huffed. With a swift motion, he grabbed the floating scrolls and slammed them onto the desk.
“Professor Easelstein was right!” A frown creased her brow.
A heavy frown flashed across his face as he scanned the paperwork heaped haphazardly upon the table. From the mess on his desk, he lifted a clamshell and set it hovering before him.
“Shirley, any paperwork to review?”
The shell projected the image of the Dean’s secretary’s head. A besieged middle-aged woman with wavy brown hair stared at the Dean. She pursed her lips. Sharp silver lenses and sharp triangular glasses framed piercing brown eyes. Her eyes pierced sharper than an inquisitor’s, seeking hidden sins.
“Vast mountains of it — boxes everywhere. And you yell at me when I can’t finish it on your impossible schedule,” Esmer said. Her tone carried layers of sarcasm. “And stop trying to burn it! I make sure the paper is fireproof.”
“I don’t know what you are talking about!” the Dean shrugged.
“Oh? And you didn’t lock the paperwork in the basement in a box marked ‘experimental textbooks’ and brick it up behind a sign reading ‘Beware of the slumbering dragon’?”
“No, that wasn’t me,” the Dean frowned evasively.
“Get through some of those forms! It is crucially important and you are seriously behind!”
“Shirley, don’t bother me with that! Will you manage the essential paperwork? Shirley, why don’t I ever know what’s happening?” Esmer said, knitting her eyebrows in mock frustration. That earned a giggle from Shirley and a frown from the Dean.
“Unfair! Two against one!” said the Dean. Esmer mocked as the Dean rolled his eyes.
“You’re my secretary! It is your job to know this stuff better than I do!” The Dean frowned.
“Yes, I am your secretary. So why must I do your work? If you did more paperwork, you’d be more informed. I am your secretary, not the Dean! It is not my responsibility to do your paperwork.” Shirley frowned.
The Dean crossed his arms as he petulantly sulked. His primary job was administrative. But he frequently complained that paperwork was the pastime of sadists. His motivation for becoming Dean was to avoid running lectures and to make time for his projects. His job description didn’t include paperwork (the official job description mentioned it no less than 43 times)! He had a secretary for that! Dumping papers onto his desk, which he would ignore for months, could easily have formed the bulk of her job description.
“I suppose…,”said the Deann. His guilty look suggested he was aware he was losing.
“They sent you a notice about this. I marked it urgent no less than five times. In neon yellow ink, stamped with radiant green octopus ink.” Her glare over her glasses was sharp enough to crack steel. “I do not think you could have missed it.”
The Dean shrugged. “You know me, I am very busy. I wasn’t wearing my glasses.”
“You have never worn glasses, sir.” She sighed. “Anyway, they intend to scrap tenure within three months. Because donations have dropped, they’re desperate to save money.” Shirley glanced at the Dean. “Like it or not, we’re a business. The university’s survival depends on generating income. Without that income, the professors don’t get paid. As much as we consider ourselves a higher institute of learning, we are not above the laws of economics. The staff has to be paid.”
“The same goes for the professors’ long-suffering employees.” Esmer shot Shirley a knowing smile.
The Dean nodded. “Oh yes, subtle. Your raise is coming, Shirley. Back to the crisis at hand.”
A wide grin spread across Shirley’s face. “Incredibly generous, sir! I’ll route the pay raise paperwork through the official channels.” She eyed the stack. “You could always do your job rather than offering bribes.”
“Esmer, we cannot allow tenure to be eliminated. Stop the Board’s treacherous plan,” he commanded.
“Set your mind at ease! I understand you aren’t a crazy recluse. You are busy getting actual work done.” One eye dropped as she winked.
“Yes, Esmer, I am busy,” the Dean said, placing the shell down to dismiss Shirley. A smile crossed his face as he regarded Esmer. “Someday that door will refuse to open.”
She chuckled and smiled before leaving. “You always say that.” she whispered to herself.