“Hey Pat!”

Pat dropped his toothbrush into the sink in surprise of John smacking the bathroom door with gusto, stumbling backwards and knocking his box of antibiotics off the sink.

“Are you done? It’s 8:45, and our lecture is at 9!”

Pat caught himself and stared into his own eyes in the mirror. He had woken up in his own bed, completely unsure of how he got there. His door was unlocked with keys on his table, meaning that someone used his keys to drop him off.

When he went downstairs to get a glass, to see John passed out flat on the kitchen counter, so it wasn’t him.

It must have been Ben.

He was carried up and tucked into his Ben… he meant ben… he meant bed.

He spit toothpaste out of his mouth into the sink, discarding it along with his inappropriate thoughts.

Hiding the box of antibiotics into his pocket, he rinsed his mouth and passed a patiently waiting John outside his door.

“I got your backpack for you Pat.”

”Wasn’t my bag inside my room?”

“Well, we are going to be late!” He places the bag in Pat’s arms, and dashes down the stairs to grab his bag from his room.

Feeling freshly startled into action, Pat found himself struggling to put on socks as they caught on his toes. John kept yelling to hurry with every passing moment.

As Pat hopped down the stairs pulling his shoe’s heel over his ankle, he saw John brows furrowed over his phone.

“What are you doing right now?”

“Checking!”

“Checking what?”

“Checking where our lecture hall is!”

”Wait, why were we rushing if you didn’t even know where we were going?”

“Give me a moment! The university wifi is failing me right now!”

“Maybe everyone else is using it too! Shouldn’t more people know where their lecture halls are going to be?”

“You think the first thing people think about when starting a 3 year educational journey at a university we pay a fortune for, is where we class is?”

“Is it not?”

John looked over in surprise at the unexpected snark, but Pat’s innocent eyes spoke of someone who was genuinely confused, and he retracted his prepared counterquip.

As the page finally loaded, John clicked into the campus map, but just as quickly as the pandemonium began, it ended.

“John?” He noticed his fingers halt.

“Oh my god Pat.”

John spent a good few moments laughing at himself being so panicked. “You will never guess how far away we are from our lecture hall.”

“C-close? Or far?”

John jumped like a guitar lead in a solo, and pointed out the window in a pose. “The first year lecture halls are right there!”

“Oh… wait right there?”

“A minute walk.”

“I… are they supposed to be that close? I guess they should. I mean, halls are given to first years, so surely they should be close to the first year lecture rooms right?”

“Mate, you’d be surprised. I went for a tabletop game at a mate’s hall, and it was a solid 30 minute walk from here. He has to *commute* to lectures! You might as well stay home at that point!”

The two of them stared each other in the eyes, before deflating to the floor as the adrenaline drained out of them both.

“I guess we have some time then, Pat.” John chuckled, sweeping his legs around and shuffling the unopened letters on the ground.

The two of them just exhaled laughs for a few moments, before Pat sighs and looks around him.

“Why are there so many letters on the ground?” Pat said, picking one up.

“The door’s letter box empties directly into the corridor.”

“Should it… not?”

“I think there is usually a metal box which catches it on the other side, but it doesn’t seem to be here so maybe it broke.”

John rummages around and finds one with his name.

"Look! I got my second TV licence letter.”

“License?”

“You know that the BBC is government run and tax funded right?”

“I think so?”

“The tax is on everyone who owns a television.”

John rips open his letter and shows it to Pat. It was quite a lot. Pat found his mouth hanging open at the figure.

“W-why is the letter all red? S-should I be worried?”

“The BBC needs your money, so even if you don’t need it and pay for it, they win. It’s mainly a tax on football fans at our age, so knowing you, you don’t need to worry about it.”

Patrick looked through the sea of letters to find his own, but found one to Ben instead. Apparently, even to those from another world, the BBC will still try and force you to pay for a TV license.

The two of them brushed themselves up and left. As the fire door slammed behind, Pat looked back at the house and felt as if something… someone was missing.

“John? What subject is Ben taking again?”

“Ben?l” He blinked twice before realising. “Oh right, the Ben from our hall.”

“The Ben from our hall… there are multiple Bens?”

John suddenly halted his step to give a stunned comedic reaction.

“Yes. Two people can have the same name. This isn’t a twitter handle.”

“But… two Bens at university?”

“Pat, you do not know how many Bens there are in uni. Our school year was only 60 people. Just in first year, maths is over 100!”

“Wait… that many people?”

Pat tried to imagine 100 people in a room, and he could feel his feet sweat at the thought.

“So to answer your earlier question Pat, I think he also does STEM, but given he isn’t coming with us, he might be on physics or something.”

Upon reaching the building, they encountered an obstacle.

A revolving door.

“A mate told me, the glass revolving doors save electricity or something, so all the new buildings have one. Do you want to go first?”

“Huh? Why?”

“You can experience your first revolve. Viva la revolution!”

“Is that even a… okay I will go first.”

Pat walked in, and the door began to turn… very… very… very… very… very slowly.

In 10 seconds, the door revolved enough for Pat to squeeze his way out. To him, it might as well have been solitary confinement.

“What was that!? John, you knew this would happen!”

John was on the other side, laughing like a sugar-high leprechaun.

“Well, at least I’ve done it! You still have to go through too!”

“Hey Pat!” He yells from across the door.

“What?”

“Do you want to see a magic trick?”

“What trick?”

He gestured to a door a few meters off to the side, which was an ordinary doorway. Without words, he smugly pranced his way to the side and through the entrance, halting movement in front of Pat’s red face.

“The trick I just played on you!”

John smugly tapped Pat’s nose, plucking an invisible word gullible from beneath.

Noticing his face sustained its redness, as his embarrassment was replaced with petty anger, John decided to buy an ice-cream waffle from the cafe as an apology.

“It’s a vegan non-gmo high-dietary-fibre chlamydia-curing waffle apparently. I’m tempted to believe them, if only to accept the fact I spent 8 pounds on this tiny waffle.”

Pat wanted to say something mean, but the waffle in his mouth did taste good and distract him from his immediate anger.

The two of them sat in the cafe as students entered the hall early. Technically, lectures began at 5 past the hour to allow students to move between halls, so given the time was 8:56, they still had some time to lounge around.

“Sorry about that earlier Pat. I was got by someone, so it was only right that I did it to you.”

“Waffle.” Pat said, mouth full of waffle.

“You like the waffle?”

“Waffle waffle.” And he waffled away, waffle waffle.

John looked at the small lad eating a waffle like a steak, and wondered how lucky he would be if he was gay and in love with this lad.

“Wow, Ben is a lucky lad.”

“Hwmm?” Pat’s waffle concentration broke at John’s mumble.

“You still eating that tiny waffle? It appears as if I gave you too much as an apology.”

After a brief moment of brainstorming, John found the perfect way to moderate his gift.

“Pat.” He asked as his mouth was stuffed. “What colour is your desk chair?”

“Hwmm? Gwreen awnd bwue. Wwhy?”

John gives him a comedian’s glance. “Oh… do you not know?”

“?”

“It isn’t simple UV damage, as that would bleach it. It isn’t spilled water, as it doesn’t explain the blue-to-green colour change. Can you think of what it could be?”

“Nhwo?”

“Tell me Patrick. What could a young healthy man do in your room, which could possibly discolour a chair in such a fashion?”

He thought about it.

Pat thought about it.

He really thought about it.

He shook his head.

“Pat,” John says in complete sincerity, placing his hand on Pat’s shoulder. “I am going to have to explain something traumatising to you later.”

As Pat was trying to piece together what it could be via context, he noticed something in the corner of his vision. Between the thinning crowd, was a shadowy figure… standing there.

As Pat turned his head to look, it was already gone, sliding into the crowd. A cold pulse pinged down his spine.

“What was that?”

“What?” John turned his head to try and see, but he too just saw a crowd.

“I… I… I… have to check something.”

“Check? Check what? It’s 9:03, let’s go in!”

Unsure what he could say about this without getting into trouble, he looked over at where the shadow went, which was the bathroom corridor.

“I… just the bathroom! Just head in to the lecture, and I will be there alright?”

John looks at his eyes, and just signs. “Just be alright, okay?”

Patrick walks off from John, and tries to find any trace of the shadowy figure.

Nothing, but as he did, someone came up behind him.

A young member of staff pulled on Patrick’s shoulder. He couldn’t make out her face, obscured by a university-branded hat, just as on his first day.

“Patrick Charles? Is this you?”

“Erm… yeah?” A hidden staff member? What is this about?

“Come with me.”

He walked along with her into the stairwell, where she clasped my hand and gave a warning. “Have you warped before?”

“Warp?” Patrick recalled back to the first day he arrived at campus, and was taken to the director’s office. “Yeah, I think I have.”

The hidden staff looked relieved. “Good. Stand still and brace.”

The world began to spin, and spin, and suddenly reality oozed into itself. An explosion of optically sharp imagery and sensational diagrams penetrated into his cognition and mushed his consciousness like running red-hot barbed wire through his ears. What used to be carpet-muted footsteps in the foyer mangled into bird calls, violent crashing, and eventually constant pops of a microphone being plugged in and out. Every sensory nerve in his body began to saturate in information, as the penetrative rod of Zeus thrusted new orifices throughout his body. As an eternity flooded into his mind, he hit a familiar ground leaking a puddle of drool from his mouth.

“People always say the first warp is the worst, so I am a little relieved to hear that. Apologies if you have received any warping sickness, but I am committed to helping interdimensional students travel discretely around campus!”

What was that?

There was no psychological purgative he had access to to relieve his brain from this pain. What about this was any better than the first time?

Before he could even take a full breath, the director’s voice spoke from across.

“He seems to be a little sick. Please seat him down Sabine.” The girl grabbed a nearby chair and sat him down.

Oh no.

Not this chair.

Like laying a sunburn victim into a bed of nails, Patrick had reached the diametric opposite of nirvana. His ravaged and sensitive perception was barely able to handle idle reality, let alone a chair crafted and designed for maximum torture. His legs were too weak to pull himself off this abominable seating furniture, and was left to simmer in his trauma.

Clawing at dangling threads of thought from above, he eventually weaved his reality together, finding himself drenched in sweat and panting like a dehydrated hyena on an old wooden chair.

“I could have sworn you reacted better to a warp before. I will have to organise another warping seminar for Sabine and the others.”

She glossed that aside, and leaned back in her massive armchair.

“Anyways, we have some important business to discuss, Mr Charles.”

After a few more gasps, Patrick could hold enough air in my lungs to finally speak. “W… wha… what about?”

“Ben.”