ACADEMIC SOCIAL STRATA

Kae pushed the door into Lab One, ignoring the guard’s protests. She was furious. Fuming. She followed the noise into the long laboratory to where it opened up into a large open space.

The lab had been turned into a dance floor. Of course it had. Desks had been pushed against walls or, judging from the ones still dangling, half-in half-out, summarily throw out the windows. Large sound columns littered had been propped up around the room along with strange lenses meant for a lightshow. A raised platform in the middle of the open space was all that remained of what used to be a state-of-the-art robotics workspace.

Atop the platform was a circular metallic table filled with dials and keyboards. A large piano had been made into part of it. Sparks issued from the center of the donut at intervals, usually followed with curses.

“Hey!” Kae yelled. She hopped on the raised platform and looked into the circle of tables, where a mess of circuitry being disturbed from below, as if a particularly large mole had burrowed into the cables.

“Hey. Hey!” Kae repeated. “Come out, dickhead!”

A shape popped out of the cables and pieces of tech. He was naked from the waist up and he was wearing a soldiering helmet. He faced the opposite way from Kae while banging his head along to a tune only he could hear. Two neon earpieces were visible on the sides of his head.

A head which Kae leaned over to smack.

“Ow!”

The man turned, pulling the helmet up and removing an earpiece. The dark skin of his face glistened with sweat, and, unfortunately, so did his naked abs. Glistening abs did not signal a good start to the sort of conversation she wanted to have. Still, Kae would have rather focused on that rather than look up at the man’s face. Ludo’s face.

From his expression, it was a feeling he reciprocated.

“Kae…?”

Blonde mohawk came running after and grabbed her arm.

“Sorry, Ludo,” he said. “She just ran in, nothing I could do.”

“Get your fuckin’—”

“’s alright, Vidal,” Ludo said. “She can stay.”

Vidal with the mohawk shrugged. Kae shot him a victorious look, which he ignored. She turned back when the man turned to leave, and found Ludo watching her with confusion and surprise. Even after all that time, he still looked the same, though he’d shed the remainder of baby fat she still remembered. He looked good. And good was bad.

“So, you’re here,” Ludo said.

Kae hesitated, but hesitation would get her nowhere, and neither would worrying about the passing of the long years. She squared her face and her hand shot up, still bearing the flyer.

“The hell!”

Ludo grimaced.

“Ooo. I can explain, love.”

“Don’t love me, you asshole. How the hell are you going to announce Lucileeand Faeman after five shit-fuckin’ years?”

“Come on, language, love,” Ludo said, frowning and waving a hand around. “Not in the inner sanctum.”

“I’ll shove this in your inner rectum, Ludo. I don’t remember this photo op. Explain.”

Ludo passed a hand over his shaved head, wiping the moisture there. He was nervous. Ludo was never nervous.

“Kae, it’s normal you don’t remember, actually. Cuz that’s not you.”

Ooo, Kae thought distantly. That hurt.

“You found another Lucy,” she stated. “Behind my back.”

“That’s not fair,” he said. “You didn’t answer my comms.. Didn’t write, never came back. What was I supposed to do, give up the best in my life?”

“Used to be I was the best in your life,” she muttered, arms crossed.

“Yeah, and you left.” Ludo had regained his composure and gone straight to anger. “And I get why you did it, and I never took it personally.” He levelled a finger. “But don’t you dare come in here when the world is about to end and give me shit about moving on.”

“You could have found another act,” Kae said. There was movement out there in the hallway, the amateur bouncers were talking to someone. “I didn’t need to come back and find this.”

“Love, I promise you it’s more complicated than that. I never thought you were coming back, for one. And it wasn’t really my decision, if you must know.”

Kae scoffed, crossed her arms.

“Really? That’s what you’re gonna go with?” she affected an accent. “’S not me faul’ Kae, it just sorta happen’d. Be real.”

“Believe what you want, Kae.” His finger came up to her nose as he leaned on the circular DJ table. “You’re the one who left me hanging. Dora only happened because you left.”

“Oh, Dora,” Kae repeated. “Dora happened, did she. Who the hell is Dora, even?”

“Hum,” said behind her. “I think that would be me?”

Des was in a mood. Grease had led her to the Tech Tower alright, but then they’d found the elevators packed and in several gross violations of the security code. The stairwell had been worse, so full of people it had given her vertigo. The only way Des was getting through that violently loud chute was by lobbing people into it. And since she’d already decided not to put them through walls, she figured it was best to find an alternative way up.

And then she’d turned around and found Grease gone, the last of his courage coming together for a brave escape just as Des had looked away from him.

She considered her next move while she tapped her foot in the corridor. Students gave her a wide berth. Maybe if she waited long enough Kae would walk by. Or maybe she was already looking for her and Des should just have stayed put. Fat chance of finding her way back again to the corridor now.

Someone tapped her on the shoulder.

There was a very short girl looking up at her. She had a cardboard box full of flyers and she was handing them around. The flyers said Lucileeand Faeman would be giving their last performance in the Tech Tower’s Lab One. Maybe this was the party Ludo would be attending? It seemed prudent to stop by, just in case.

“Thanks,” Des said as she accepted the glossy paper. “Hey, do you know how I can get into the Tech Tower?”

“Oh, yeah!” the girl said. She had bright blonde short hair, pale almond eyes, and she seemed overjoyed that she could be of help. “You can just take the service stairs there.”

“Some… other way?” Des asked. “I tried. It’s a bit packed.”

“Oh, definitely, yeah,” the girl said. Her face scrunched up in thought. “Well, there’s the professors’ lounge portals. They were still working a while ago.”

“Portals,” Des nodded with a click of her tongue. “Sounds ideal. How…?”

“Oh, I’ll take you, if you don’t mind me handing out flyers on the way,” the girl said. “I was headed these myself. I promise it won’t take long.”

Des was fine with that. The girl was a curiously bubbly lake of calm among the drunken craziness around them. She offered to take the box while they walked.

“I’m Dora, by the way,” said the girl. “You?”

“Des,” said Des. She reached for any hanging pieces of conversation. “Y’know, you are the most sober person I’ve seen here.” It was the best she could come up with.

“Oh, I have a strict no-alcohol rule on performance days. You start with one glass of wine to calm the nerves and soon it’s twelve hours later, you’re swinging from a chandelier you’ve never seen before, the cops are coming.” Dora paused. “Don’t get me wrong, those shows were always bangers, but I like being able to remember what happened.”

Des said she understood, even though she really, really didn’t.

“So you’re performing today?”

“Yeah!” Dora turned to her, collected a handful of flyers from the box, and handed them out at record speed. “At the party. I’m Lucille.”

“Nice. What do you, hum…” she peered at the flyer. There was no clue whatsoever of what the performance consisted of. “Play?” she tried.

“Classical piano,” Dora said without turning.

Des nodded. She liked the piano. This party thrown by nice, helpful Dora who played the piano was starting to sound like a refuge for everyone whose sanity remained intact after spending any amount of time at Dumarelos University.

“Here we go,” Dora said. She stopped by a large double door with a plaque saying Professors’ Lounge. Someone had broken through the foggy glass on the door, and beyond it Des could see efforts had been made to barricade the door with large archive cabinets. Dora knocked.

“Professor Tulla?” she asked.

Silence, and then a hasty whispered conversation beyond the door.

“Don’t—”

“We have to—”

“What if it’s—”

“They got Robins!”

“It’s Dora, professor.”

Sighs of relief. Someone cautiously approached the door. Des could see frayed clothes and a messy bun through the broken window.

“Are you alone?” hissed a voice.

“She’s not,” said another, gruffer. “Who’s the muscle. Ask her who’s the muscle!”

“I’m with my friend Des,” Dora said.

“She a student?” the first voice asked timorously.

Dora looked at her. Des shook her head.

“I don’t think so, no. Can we please come in? I brought snacks.”

“Snacks! She’s got—”

“We can’t let her in! Who knows what—”

Des passed the box to Dora, then rested a shoulder against the door.

“Professors?” she asked. “I’m going to open this door now. Please stand back.”

“Ho ho ho! She says she’s going to open the door! That’s twenty-five years’ worth of folders we have blocking it, missy, don’t think you can—”

Des pushed. The door creaked, strained, and then slowly opened. Cabinets tumbled on the opposite side, spreading folders all over the ground.

“She opened it!” squealed a young hysterical professor.

“The folders! Don’t let—That’s twenty-five years of archives!”

Shaking her head, Dora made her way through the gap and Des followed, taking care to close the door behind her.

They walked into a large cube of a room. A trio of professors was standing in the middle, cowering before a paunchy, bespectacled man in a plaid vest.

“Have you come for us?” the man demanded in gruff tones.

“No, Professor Tulla,” Dora said, smiling. “I’m here to bring you snacks and to use your portals, if you’d be so kind. Oh, and you can have some flyers, if you want.”

“Portals are not for student use, young lady,” the Professor admonished.

A short, meek professor stepped out from behind her wider colleague. She was holding a pair of scissors.

“Did you see Professor Bregan, Dora? He went outside! We told him not to, but he just wouldn’t listen. It’s been hours. We fear the worst.”

“He’s fine, Professor,” Dora said sweetly. “I saw him riding the elevators and introducing himself to students as Ghil. He had a tie around his head.”

While the professors pondered this new horror, Des placed the box with the flyers on the floor. Dora took out another handful from the box, uncovering a layer of sandwiches and small cartons of fruit juice. She handed them out, flyers and food, until one by one the professors were munching away on their supplies and directing a critical eye at the multi-colored print outs.

“I hope you didn’t use the professor’s printer for this, Dora,” gruff Professor Tulla said gravely. “It’s for class material only.”

“No, Professor. I had a thought,” Dora said, smiling. “Why don’t you come to the party later?”

The teaching staff collective breathed in, horrified.

“I… I don’t think that would be appropriate,” Professor Tulla said, stern.

“Well, maybe we could just take a look, Alger,” the meek professor suggested. She sounded hopeful even as she clutched her scissors. “I mean, if Ghil is alright…”

“Professor Heikideit has a point, Professor Tulla,” Dora said. “I keep telling you the students aren’t actually trying to murder you…”

“Then how!” Professor Tulla bellowed. “Do you explain that?” he pointed to the broken glass through which the corridor outside could be seen.

“Hum, the janitorial staff broke that, Professor,” Dora said slowly. “They thought you couldn’t leave the room for some reason. You threw spare markers at them. Remember?”

Des walked around the room while Dora tried to convince the professors of their insanity. She was perfectly out of her element and had no idea what was happening anymore. Something Kae had said a few hours before, about the cows, resonated. Everyone’s a bit weirder now that the world is about to end. And you could predict weirdness, but you couldn’t, by definition, predict how it would manifest. Thinking about it, it was as reasonable to barricade yourself in a room as it was to have parties inside elevators.

But there was no moving the Professors. Dora, however, didn’t really give up. You could see it wasn’t in her vocabulary. She left the flyers, pointed out the correct portal to use, and then rejoined Des.

“Sorry about the delay. This way.”

She led them through a short hallway to a room where a series of floor portals hummed softly. To the untrained eye, they were just patterns on the floor, but the magic they were composed of was complex enough that they must have cost a a sizeable portion of the infrastructure budget. Still, the directions for where each portal led to had been written in pen and taped to the wall, because no one could be bothered to memorize them.

Dora stepped through. Des followed.