Eccentricity
A topologist can't tell the difference between a donut and a coffee cup. Topology is a branch of advanced mathematics that deals with unchangable properties of objects. Given a ball, a topologist might squeeze, flatten, stretch, bend, twist, contort, and invert it, and then ask what the hell it is. No matter what, one must never allow a topologist to get ahold of any amount of silly putty. Unfortunately for the entire mathematics department of Yolanda Oberweiss University, Dr. Wallace Poeingk was completely wrapped in it.
"The nonflexible open set of the points is equivalent to the...distance to the floor!"
Dr. Poeingk hit with a solid thud. Luckily for him, he had fallen onto a relatively soft mat. He slowly straightened up, like a fire truck ladder, groaning all the way. Somehow he had gotten tangled in a sticky mass and fallen down a flight of stairs. Standing by the mat was a freshman male named James Kelter, who was terrible at basketball.
"Hello Dr. Poeingk."
"Hello young man! Can you tell me where my classroom is this period?"
"I think I'm supposed to be in your class, but no one was teaching when I got there, so I was on my way to the rec center. What do you teach?"
"Young man, I profess the wisdom of topology to the youthful ears whose brains yearn for knowledge! I teach the methods of viewing and manipulating all objects as a collection of sets of numbers! Do you understand?"
"No."
"Excellent!"
James was not supposed to be in a topology class. Freshmen do not take topology. Somehow there had been a mistake in the computer, and a woman on the track for her masters degree was taking a freshman calculus class. Her name was Rachel Jeuille and she already knew all this stuff.
"Yeah, yeah, yeah...de^x = e^x...and so on...I'm supposed to be in advanced mathematics..."
Rachel began to daydream. This was costing her and her parents $2300. After this class, she decided she would go to the department and get it straightened out. That meeting would be interesting.
"I should be in topology right now," she thought.
Dr. Poeingk finally got to his class with the help of James Kelter. No one was there.
"They've all left without me again! James, is it such a crime to continually be twenty minutes late?"
"Well, I'm here, so you can teach me."
"Excellent!"
Dr. Poeingk took his chalk and began marking all over the board while spouting theory like a madman. Dr. Poeingk actually was a madman, but nobody had analyzed exactly how.
James watched him write all over the board, and the walls, and himself, and the overhead projector. Before he could go for a ladder, James stopped him.
"You're saying that everything is basically putty?"
"Exactly, James! You're learning!"
"Actually, I'm guessing," James said, shrugging his shoulders as he took a pencil from his pocket.
"That pencil - what color is it?"
James looked at it. It was yellow, like all pencils. "Blue," he said.
"It's blue?" inquired the professor. "It's blue? THAT'S BEAUTIFUL!"
He ran to the nearby window and chucked the pencil outward, watching it fall in a parabolic path. He threw several similar pencils and measured their exact trajectories. After equating it to a family, he wrote the equation and danced around the classroom. "I've found it, I've found it! Thank you my boy, you are a true mathematician!"
Dr. Poeingk dashed out of the lecture hall and left James blinking at the wall. James felt pity for the man in a way that can only be felt by a neophyte of advanced mathematics; in other words, by someone who is not yet completely nuts.
"See you tomorrow, Dr. Poeingk!" he called airily as he sauntered out of the building. Topology was going to confuse him over and over again. James began thinking back to the words of his high school physics teacher:
"You're all a bunch of morons! I've experimented on plants that were smarter than you! At least they responded to relatively basic stimuli! You're a bunch of lumps! How am I supposed to teach simians like you who don't ever think about anything? Are higher brain functions completely lost on you? I'm 54 years old and I had to write everything by hand when I went through physics all those years ago! You don't even have the foggiest idea what matter is! What the - "
James' brain stopped on the words "what the - " because he had just bumped into something vaguely solid. As he came back to reality, he began to make out what the vague shape might be, slowly, until it came clearly into focus: a very irritated woman.
"Watch where you're going! Can't you see people who are right in front of you!? I almost dropped all my books and a fish in a tank that I have to carry around with me!"
"Sorry. I'll help you pick your stuff up."
"I didn't drop any of my stuff! Just get out of my way!"
"I'm not in your way."
"Well, move anyway!" The woman shoved him back a few feet into the wall outside the math building.
"Agh, you crazy...woman! What the hell are you doing!?"
"Screw you!"
"That would be nice."
"You - ..." She calmed down. "I'm sorry. I've had a stupid day."
"Tell me about it!"
James and the frustrated woman began walking together towards her next class. She continually rubbed her slightly tanned hands against the right side of her head, which was covered in black hair that was starting to get disheveled with moisture from her palm. "I am a graduate student, damn it! Not a freshman, not a sophomore...but a graduate student! I was supposed to be taking topology this semester, but instead I'm in freshman calculus! This school is unbelievable! Who the hell is Yolanda Oberweiss, anyway?"
James grew silent as a cat who has sucked back air through his teeth and shrunk into the shadows. He was supposed to be taking freshman calculus. The woman noticed his silence and had plenty to say about that.
"Hello? Are you listening to me? What's wrong with you?"
"Oh, um...I'm...a freshman, who got put in...um..."
"What!?"
"I'm currently enrolled in..."
"What!?"
"I just got out of the class I'm in, which is..."
"What!?"
"...Topology, with Dr. Poeingk."
On the word 'poeingk,' she literally hit the roof. James had timed it so that they were in a relatively low elliptical tunnel, and she jumped so that her head, a distance of 5'7" from her feet, bumped the top of the chamber.
"Owwww. You little prick. Where am I?"
"You're under the highway, over the tracks, next to the bus depot, and on your feet. Dr. Poeingk was saying something about how we are actually all upside down, but he didn't really explain it."
"Can you take me to the Union?"
"Is it a date?"
"Who are you?"
"I'm James Kelter. Who are you?"
"I'm Rachel Jeuille."
"Awesome."
"What is?"
"You."
"Shut up."
Rachel and James walked together down to the university Union, which contained a food court. It was only a few minutes after noon, and time to eat. Rachel had a simple deli sandwich, and James had a problem. He enjoyed his class in a strange way, despite having no idea what Dr. Poeingk muttered to himself about. Yet, if Rachel switched classes, he might be moved into freshman calculus, which for him would maintain the lack of comprehension and lose the excitement. He liked the old man's eccentricity.
"Bye, freshman!" Rachel got up and left the bill sitting there. James' indignation reached a level where he was utterly apathetic. He made incomprehensible squeaking noises as he pulled out a $10 and left it on the table to run after Rachel. Catching up to her, he matched her pace and they went to the Registrar's office.
The registrar is the person in charge of registration. Colleges will take every opportunity available to use a dead language to describe a part of their campus or personnel, and Yolanda Oberweiss University was no exception. The Registrar's office appeared to be a remodeled pay phone booth. In actuality, it was a confession box that had once belonged to St. Joe's, a Christian campus with an enrollment of 150 which operated out of an Italian restaurant.
"Hello?" rang a high, nasal voice which made it impossible to discern whether its owner was screaming at, questioning, or insulting you. "Welcome to the office of the Registrar. Would you like to stand up?"
The middle-aged, strawberry-blond woman peered over the top of her large, coffee-hued glasses. The reason she had asked them to stand was that there was no place to sit. She didn't say it to be funny; she had no sense of humor and was proud of it.
"If you would like to switch classes, press 1. If you would like to add and/or drop a class, press 2. If you would like to file for graduation, press 3. If you would like to see your advisor, press 4."
The inquisitive expression on James' face defied description. This was why he liked Dr. Poeingk. That batty old man was consistent in his nonsense, whereas this troll of a woman was inconsistent in her sense. Rachel shrugged and walked over to a needle-point on the wall, which displayed a push-button system much like that of a phone. Rachel pushed one of the large numbers with her hand while the registrar leaned over the counter and watched.
"You have selected '1.' Please stand by."
The registrar turned around slowly and haltingly, and after half a minute, she was facing Rachel again. "Which class are you dropping and which are you adding?"
"I'm adding Topology and dropping Calculus I. That's a drop for Math 124 and an add for Math 582."
"I need a letter of recommendation from your professor."
"But I'm a graduate student! I shouldn't be in Calculus I!"
"I need a letter of recommendation from your professor."
Rachel started to say something, but she held herself back and turned to James. "Get Dr. Poeingk here, please."
James darted out of the office, ran up a set of stairs, sprinted along a hill, and flung open the doors of the mathematics hall. He switched pace to a brisk walk as he looked around for his professor.
Two feet were sticking out from a large, disheveled pile of papers, rubber bands, and writing implements of all sizes, shapes and colors in a lecture hall. James rushed to the pile and pulled the doctor out from under it.
"Thank you, my boy! Now which one of these was my pencil?"
"It doesn't matter, just take one. I need your help at the registrar's office; there's a graduate student in there who wants to switch to your class."
"Eh? You talking about that girl you met after my class today?"
"Yeah, Rachel Jeuille. She's got quite a bit of spirit."
"Oh no, not another one! All you freshmen boys are the same. Listen, my boy - 'spirit' does not equate with 'brass nerve.' You're never going to have a relationship with her. I'll come with you to get her in my class on one condition - don't add her to your list of incomprehensible subjects. Topology is the most important thing for you right now."
James stayed silent. Dr. Poeingk looked over his spectacles with a slight frown.
"I'll give the proper paperwork to the registrar. Remember this, James - we both have a word for women like Rachel Jeuille." With that, the good doctor left the lecture hall. James watched him leave, and he waited there for a few seconds. Then he, too, followed.
Rachel was arguing heatedly with the registrar when James and Dr. Poeingk showed up. Dr. Poeingk filled out a form and had Rachel sign some things. "All right, Ms. Jeuille, you are now a member of my class! I'll need page 200, #2-9 from you tomorrow. We meet in the math hall, room 352. You don't need to know the time; just hang out there for a few hours and you'll figure that out. I trust you have your book?"
"Yeah, I got my book."
"Excellent! I'm adding problems 15-27 also. Have it ready tomorrow!"
Dr. Poeingk left the scene, allowing Rachel and James and the registrar to discuss much that is fruitful. Rachel and James promptly ditched the box, leaving the registrar to make another needlepoint and read her magazines.
"Don't get the impression that I enjoy your company, James."
"You've done a decent job of getting that point across."
"I want you to go away now."
"And leave you to do what?"
"I'm sure I'll find - "
Rachel stopped at that moment because a tremendous boom reverberated all around her from a source about 50 feet away, where a burst of light had come into being at the same time. Dr. Poeingk was holding onto a tree for dear life as a large, fluctuating form, which defied comprehension, tried to pull him in. James rushed forward to help Dr. Poeingk, and for reasons unknown, Rachel came too.
The burst of light began to falter as the trio struggled to keep from falling in. James held himself fast to the tree with one arm and grasped the doctor with the other. Rachel grabbed James and kept him stable, so he was able to use both hands to keep Dr. Poeingk within the 3rd-dimensional plane. The form's paradimensional attractiveness was beginning to weaken, and just when Rachel thought she and her new friends were being pulled in for certain, it disappeared. James was bewildered and very, very scared.
"What the hell was that!?"
"That, my boy, was a dimensional warp. A singular prick in Euclidean space." Dr. Poeingk examined the surrounding area. "I believe we can recreate it."
"Why would we wanna do that?"
"We want to find the secrets of the universe, of course! That's the ultimate driving goal of mankind!"
"If you want the secrets of the universe so much, why were you screaming and clinging to the tree?"
"I dropped my glasses! How am I supposed to find the secrets of the universe if I can't tell my left hand from my right?"
Rachel was exhausted from holding two people back against the warp for a full minute's time. She lay on the ground, asleep. Dr. Poeingk walked the perimeter of a perfect circle, doing calculations in his head and referencing a paper all the way through. Finally, he had solved the equations. He pulled out a bizarre contraption and calibrated it with his answers.
"James, I'm about to open the warp. Are you coming?"
"Of course!" James said this out loud without looking at Dr. Poeingk. He was staring at Rachel. "You know, she looks so cute when she sleeps."
"Lovesick puppy! Are you taking her with?"
"It'll piss her off to no end, and that to me is a good thing." James picked Rachel up in his arms and nodded to the doctor, who pressed the big blue button. It wasn't red, because Dr. Poeingk had spilled a chemical on it.
The warp appeared, and the trio was instantly sucked into a new universe.
Chapter 2