Chapter 19
Quill
Someone to Talk To
On My Own Time
Paul Leonard-Morgan
No one except Anthony had noticed that I had been out on Friday night. At least, that’s what I’d thought until my father had roughly grabbed me by the wrist on Saturday afternoon and dragged me through the house.
If Anthony hadn't appeared out of nowhere and verbally stopped him, I would have ended up in my father's study, listening to a drunk tyrant yell at me through a hail of broken glass about what a whore I was. Just like he had done eight other times before.
The question of why I wasn't numb inside yet came to me every time I collapsed in tears on my bedroom floor and stared at the ceiling until my eyes closed and I woke up freezing in the middle of the night, ready to let all my demons out in new stories.
That was how my first seven-part steampunk fantasy series, Dying Engineers, had come about, and I had been firmly convinced that I would publish it at some point.
But the urge for validation from readers was less of a driving force for me.
Besides, I didn't want to be bossed around and criticized by a publisher, nor did I want to sell my rights to them.
Better to be an unknown author than one with clipped wings.
Playing Mr. Ganz
Carlos Rafael Rivera
One minute before the start of the lecture, I stuck my foot in the closing door of Fitzek Junior's small lecture hall, who stared at me as if I were a fly that had been sitting on his nose for three days, and before this madman could get physical, I gave him a cheeky smile and pushed past him, once again attracting everyone's attention.
As I had done with Fitzek's father in the last lecture, I sat down at the back, unpacked my things, and immediately began to write down my ideas before they could escape my mind.
My hand was already inked to the knuckles at this time of day, and old Fitzek had looked at me reproachfully with the word “Schmierfink”.
I was sure that if canes were allowed, he would use them.
The lecture with him had been just as tense as the last one, and he had called each of us, including me, to the front and made us all demonstrate, so that in the end, no one had been smiling gleefully anymore.
However, it weighed heavily on my mind that – when I hadn't even been able to utter a single sentence in front of all the students there because he had presented his legal jargon to me in all its glory – he had immediately begun to give a lecture on what women had been used for in Germany in his day.
After each of his lectures, I breathed a sigh of relief and I had even decided to behave as inconspicuously as possible and at least make some effort so that he wouldn't immediately throw me out of the department.
Now I watched as Fitzek Junior – once again in a black three-piece suit with no jacket and a white shirt – marched to a table like a pompous rooster and neatly unpacked his files with a murderous look in his eyes before popping a mint candy into his mouth and passively aggressively clutching the chalk as he wrote something on the blackboard.
Criteria?
He turned to us.
“As it may have dawned on even the last of the pea brains among you, five privileged individuals from this rabble will have the opportunity to rise early in the ranks of the elite.”
I raised both eyebrows, snorted quietly, and immediately he looked at me.
“Do you have something to say, Miss Veritas?”
I just smiled and leaned back, shaking my head to avoid his trick question.
“Good for you.”
He looked back at the group, apparently too euphoric to present his battle plan to us.
“And I make no secret of it. The one I pick won't just be handed a silver spoon, no. Work. There will be a lot of work to do, because so far I see all of you as unsuitable, lazy, and inattentive.”
The students looked at each other with telling glances. Some of them actually seemed to be taking this guy seriously.
“But I am confident that I will lay bare the crystal among all the rubble here. The one who best meets these five criteria.”
In other words, whoever this poor guy turned out to be, he would probably have to spend the next few months worrying not only about his place at university, but also about his sanity.
During the last break, I had overheard a group of young men discussing how this September, you either tried extra hard not to be among the best so as not to risk your place at university, or you were one of the ten percent who were currently competing against each other.
Everyone was sure that Zachary Faber would get one of the five spots, and no one even tried to compete against him.
The situation was different for his best friend, Lucas, whom I had already seen twice exchanging rolls of cash for notes with fellow students.
Fellow students who had then said something very stupid in front of the professors, which Lucas had subsequently corrected, as if he were the most informed prospective lawyer who had prepared best for the lectures.
Every day, he drove his McLaren F1 to campus, surrounded himself with female journalism and political science students, as well as other rich law students, and bragged about the things his daddy had put in his cradle.
Lara hated him and one of his female companions more than anything. Jessica McLoy. A blonde journalism student, two years older than Lara, who had been friends with her at school before she had played Lara off against other girls and eventually had transferred to a Swiss boarding school.
“All of these are criteria by which I will carefully select the lucky one among you, whom I will train meticulously to become an unbeatable competitive ace.”
Did this man actually hear himself talking?
He tapped point one with a cane.
“First. Achievements. I will make you do extra work at home until you can’t sleep a wink, to filter out who truly has the stamina to play in the big leagues.”
A groan rippled through the rows, and Fitzek Junior skillfully ignored it.
“Second. Participation. When asked, I expect answers. Each of you will present your notes and homework assignments in such a way that I feel as if the contents of the books have been burned into your brains.”
What were we to him? CDs?
“Third. Obedience. Anyone who thinks they can make stupid comments and not follow my rules will be disqualified immediately.”
Instantly, some students sat up straight and one woke up his sleeping seatmate.
“Fourth. Faultlessness. Out there in the courtrooms, you will not be allowed to make any mistakes when you represent the best of the best. Any of those whose names are already on this blackboard can be sure that they are not even in the running.”
He looked at me.
Oh, really? Was that so? It couldn't be better.
Grinning students looked at me. Their smiles would soon fade. Unlike me, they actually had something to lose.
“And fifth. That certain something. I'm looking for someone who stands out. Someone with hidden potential.”
So he was looking for a hard-working ass-kisser whom he could torture with his Fitzek brainwashing until that person believed they were something better. And judging by the ambitious looks on my fellow students' faces, they were the perfect target audience for this bullshit.
Why was it so important to this professor to win with his candidate? What was in it for him? Did he have something to lose?
“Every week, some of you will be eliminated until I can finally make the perfect choice. Those at the blackboard already know that they will never belong to the elite.”
He looked at me again.
His heaven was my hell. I would never want to belong to these people.
He was about to turn away when I cleared my throat, ready to use my failure to meet criterion three, along with criterion four, as a reason for him to kick me out of this torturous race once and for all.
“Why didn't you make it into the elite?”
Fitzek's jaw immediately tensed and the first students began to grin.
“I beg your pardon?”
“I mean, after all, you're stuck here as a professor, working for your father, while you probably dream at night of negotiating million-dollar deals alongside your former classmates in the world's big law firms.”
The students began to stifle their laughter, and I hit the mark, because Fitzek Junior scurried to the second blackboard and pulled out the chalk.
“One tally for speaking without permission!” He looked at me with furrowed brows. “And one for that insolence!”
After the seminar, Lucas caught up with me, accompanied by Zach, who ignored me completely.
“What’s your goal, judge girl?” I didn’t look at him, continuing to head for the building for legal philosophy and legal history. “Could it be that you want to get kicked out? You don't seem to want to make it into the debates.”
“I'm not going to waste my time with people who think they're better than everyone else and treat others condescendingly just because they have better grades or a little too much pocket money from Daddy.”
Both boys stared at me.
God, these guys even made me miss the cocky football players from high school.
“That's how the world works,” Lucas said with a playful undertone as he moved closer to me.
“It seems like you grew up in Canada in a very sheltered environment.” A glance at him told me he was grinning, his eyes hidden behind his sunglasses.
“Be glad you seem to be playing in the lower league here.” He held his flat hand up in front of him. “You wouldn't stand a chance up here.”
Borgov I
Carlos Rafael Rivera
Glad to have gotten rid of them, I sat down on the back row of folding chairs in the lecture hall and let the nervousness and euphoria in my stomach play catch before deciding to check out the list of books I would borrow or order from the library that afternoon.
John Rawls – A Theory of Justice (1971)
Robert Nozick – Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974)
Ronald Dworkin – Law’s Empire (1986)
H. L. A. Hart – The Concept of Law (1961; with Postscript, 1994)
Catharine A. MacKinnon – Toward a Feminist Theory of the State (1989)