Morris clicked through the slideshow and suppressed the frustration in his voice even as his students stared out the window. In his ten years as a Philosophy teacher, he'd always had stiff competition with the car park outside, but this time it was shitting all over him. He'd tried everything--YouTube videos, video games, quizzes they could complete on their phones--but apparently none of that was any more interesting than a stretch of asphalt with some white lines across it.

“According to Hume,” Morris announced as much to himself as to any of the clueless youngsters, “Cause and effect doesn't exist. Why do you think that might be?”

The class gawped at him, and then went straight back to gawping at their phones.

“Okay, nobody cares,” said Morris, trying for the cool teacher route despite wearing a pinstripe suit.

They snickered for a millisecond, and then went straight back to gawping at their phones again. Such was the established routine.

“I know, sir!” Violet in the front row raised her hand. Her hoodie read TEACHER'S PET.

“Uh,” said Morris. “Anyone else?”

Silence.

Violet crowed, “Hume argued that when we observe cause and effect, we're actually just making a correlation between two events, and there's no way to tell with one hundred percent certainty that event A will always cause event B.”

“Yeah,” said Morris. He would have encouraged her a lot more if she hadn't told half the student population that she was attracted to him. She didn't even like philosophy, she said she'd just read a bunch of books to try to impress a thirty year old man. It had killed dead his chances with Emma from the English department. He was accused of paedophilia in hushed whispers in shadowy corners of the staff room. With the amount of stern talks he'd had with the director, who refused to move her to another class on account of him being the only Philosophy teacher, his policy with her now was to only use monosyllabic words.

He picked up a pen. “Alright, everyone, so what will happen if I drop this?”

Violet put her hand up.

“J-Jake,” said Morris, “What do you think happens when you drop a pen?”

“You? That's not xy preferred pronoun,” said Jake as xe stormed out of the room.

“Wait, he didn't mean it!” Violet ran after xem.

Morris thought about how much paracetamol he had in his cabinet back at home. Probably enough to end it all. It wasn't that he'd lost faith in humanity, just faith in the young.

“If you drop the pen, it'll fall,” mumbled one of the kids with self-esteem issues, which was all of them.

“Are you sure it'll fall?” asked Morris. “Do you think if I dropped it enough times, it would definitely fall one hundred percent of the time?”

The kid crumbled at this interrogation, covering her head with her arms and blushing as red as a strawberry.

“Well, it probably would,” said Morris. “But the point according to Hume is, we can't be sure. There's no cause and effect, only correlated events.”

“Drop it, then,” said the fedora kid with the authority complex. This level of student engagement was so unprecedented that endorphins rushed through Morris' veins and he remembered briefly why he'd wanted to become a teacher. To usher knowledge into the new generation!

“I shall drop this pen,” he bellowed, “And we shall see whether the sun really will rise tomorrow!”

Morris dropped the pen, and the pen didn't fall. It hung there in the air as if by an invisible thread. His eyebrows furrowed, and he poked it, but it was like poking a brick--it didn't budge.

“Woah, lit,” cried Fortnite cap. “Is this a prank, bro? Is this a prank?”

Twenty mobile phones were now recording him.

“I... I don't believe it,” said Morris. He put his entire weight behind shoving the pen, and still it remained hovering, immovable. “This shouldn't actually be possible.”

“Are you using like a hologram?” asked Fedora Kid. “I know that's what they did with 9/11.”

“Get out of my class with that conspiracy bullshit,” said Morris, a liberating feeling swelling up within him like a crescendoing brass band. “I've been hearing you mumble about that rubbish all term--it's not true, you're not as edgy as you think you are--get out of my class, I mean it!”

“Woah, chill,” said Fedora kid, getting out his vape as slid through the doors. Violet came back in, pouting, then stopped dead in her tracks as her face went pale.

“That pen,” she said, “It didn't fall!”

“Violet--you're a scraggly, scrawny, pimply teenager,” shouted Morris. “You look like a baby, and I've had enough of your inappropriate crush ruining my relationship with my co-workers! It's one thing to fancy someone, but it's another to be so blatant about it! Out with ye, wench!”

“I'm getting the director,” she screamed and ran out crying.

“Gaze upon this pen.” Morris turned off the projector. “You kids don't understand the fucking implications of this! Hume was right! Cause and effect isn't correlated! He was right, you bastards! He was right!”

“Morris?” said the director, a stout woman named Gunhilda. Violet hid behind her, bawling her eyes out. “What exactly is going on here?”

“Come here, Hilda.” Morris beckoned her. “Look at the pen. What's up with it, do you reckon? What's gone on here?”

She marched over, and tried to pluck it out of the air, but her fingers slammed into it uselessly.

“Unbelievable,” said Gunhilda. “This... what on Earth did you do?”

“I dropped it,” said Morris. “But it didn't fall! Event A without Event B! No opposite and equal reaction!”

“Hush, Morris,” said Gunhilda. “This is definitely rather... atypical. Children, you stop filming us right now before I wrest those devices away from you.”

The class quickly stuffed their phones in their bags.

Morris threw another pen at it, but it rebounded.

“Remarkable,” he said. “This pen has been divorced from the laws of cause and effect!”

“Wait here,” said Gunhilda, marching away. “I'm going to get a physics teacher.”

*

Not a minute later did the physics teacher arrive. He was huffing and puffing, his belly flopping rather alarmingly up and down over his belt which was a size too small.

Gunhilda walked into the room behind him, but nobody could tell until the physics teacher had cleared the doorway.

“Cor!” said the physics teacher. “Is it really not hanging from a string, Morris?”

The class lowered their phones but kept staring at the Philosophy teacher, who blushed.

“No! Idiot, I dropped it! And it… fell?”

Before the two could say anything further, Gunhilda tried to step between them. She succeeded but was forced to brush against the physics teacher’s food baby. The class snickered. Gunhilda shouted at them. The class shut up.

“Now, why don’t you have a calm look, Mr. Dense? Surely your postgraduate will come in handy here,” said Gunhilda. She gave the teacher a sharp look.

“Uhh, yes I suppose I should. Step away, step away everyone,” he said gesturing at nobody in particular because only Morris was standing near the hanging pen.

Morris was looking at him as if to say he was a fat nobody, but maybe that was just him being paranoid. Mr. Dense had managed to have them use his surname instead of asking for his first, but Gunhilda could’ve told everyone who he was behind his back anyway.

“Are you okay there, Mr. Dense?” Morris had seen the physics teacher’s eyes glaze over and hoped the man wasn’t in shock.

“I knew it, you know I’m A-” Mr Dense began to blurt. He was in luck though, as he realised he was about to reveal the worst name in history to an entire class of pre-adults. Half of them didn’t know the meaning of the word ‘crisis’.

“No I’m good thank you,” he said in swift recovery. ”I was merely taken aback by the phenomenon and trying to think back to my PhD.”

“Okay then, did you realise anything?” Morris wanted to roll his eyes but stayed stock still. Mr. Dense was an apt name for someone who’d made teaching their career after completing a PhD.

“Well,” said Mr Dense. “I was trying to remember a particular theory. It was inspired by the works of a particularly famous Scot…”

“What, Hume?”

“Yes, what of him?”

“Uh, don’t worry,” said Morris. He went back to staring at the pen.

Mr Dense cleared his thoughts and studied the pen closely. It definitely hadn’t fallen.

Gunhilda tapped a nail against her watch.

“It definitely hasn’t fallen,” concluded Mr Dense.

“I can see that,” said Morris.

“Yes, thank you for enlightening us Mr Dense,” said Gunhilda. “Do you think you could get it to drop?”

“To the floor?”

“Where else?”

“To the ceiling?” ventured Morris.

Gunhilda stabbed at him with her eyes.

“I shall try,” said Mr Dense.

“That’s what I was asking for, Mr Dense. Do get a move on.”

Someone at the back of the philosophy classroom shouted “gay!” but nobody laughed. Morris didn’t remember taking on any GCSE students this year, so he was surprised by the use of this ‘joke’.

Apparently Mr Dense had not heard. He was scanning the room with an immense concentration that was uncommon in his line of work.

“Aha!” he shouted. “A hammer.”

“A hammer, Mr Dense? Is that really necessary?” Gunhilda shifted her weight from one foot to the next. One of her feet moved towards the door imperceptibly.

“Right. The fire emergency hammer will do,” explained Mr Dense. “We can try to knock it off its balance.”

The man teetered over to the fire supplied protected behind their glass, dusty since the last Ofsted inspection. He smashed it with his rounded shoulder and extracted the bright red tool from behind.

“There. Now we just…” Mr Dense looked up. “Should I throw it or just tap with it, Morris?”

“Why are you asking me? I’m philosophy, not physics. I don’t do forces, in this classroom we think about possible forces.”

“Right.” A bead of sweat rolled down into Mr Dense’s eyes. “Get ready everyone.”

The bright red emergency hammer wooshed at the suspended pen. And kept on wooshing. Mr Dense fell to the floor. Or at least, he was expecting to but found his body jerked to a stop just prior to smashing his face into the beige linoleum.

“Ace!” shouted another student.

The physics teacher coloured. That is to say, he blanched.

“What century are you from?” whispered another. “Nobody uses that anymore.”

The colour returned to the teacher’s face. Anything but that. He revolved slowly to look at his colleagues for their reaction. Gunhilda was doing a Gunhilda expression. Morris looked baffled.

“Was this part of your theory?” asked Morris.

“Are you kidding? Special powers are cool but do you honestly think I want to be suspended in mid fall?”

“Alfie jr., go get a nurse, or maybe a different physics teacher. No, get someone from maths! All three! Fortnite you can go with him,” ordered Gunhilda.

In the distance a clock tower tolled. Quarter to something. That meant they had about fifteen minutes before the lesson officially ended and the kids would run home in panic.

“I’m calling the emergency services,” said Morris flipping out his Motorola from good old ‘01. Maybe he could incorporate this into his lesson plans if he ever did them again. Maybe someone would grant him the Nobel prize for not dropping a pen. Hopefully they’d find a better way to phrase it.