Who: Ezra Abernathy and Irving Midgley. What: A conversation about mortality When: January 3rd Where: Irving’s office in the University of York Warnings: TBD, mention of death.
A person's office often said a lot about them. Between semesters like this he expected lesson plans, notes, marking, maybe even research strewn around while students weren't there. He expected it too look as if someone had dumped the remains of a paper factory in there and then set a bomb off for good measure. That was how his old professor's room had looked. Dr Midgley, it seemed, was a lot more organised. In all fairness to the guy, maybe that was one of his coping mechanisms to ensure a big green rage monster didn't turn up during his office hours. It mostly spoke of how uptight Irv could be.
The fact that everything was in its place (and everything did seem to have a place, even the paperwork) made Ezra curious. He wanted to know about the parts of a life academic or otherwise that could be compartmentalised so specifically. The fact that he had coincidentally timed his visit while Irv was out at a departmental meeting (as one of the lovely admin ladies had pointed out) gave him a good opportunity to look around. After all, while he might not look the part of a nerd who spent most of his time indoors reading books, that was mostly who he was. Other than an interest in physics the two of them probably had a lot more in common than they realised. After all, his own workshop often swayed into the territory of meticulously tidy.
Slowly he worked his way around the room, checking out cabinets and drawers, avoiding anything that looked like it might be confidential, admiring the wealth of textbooks and journals. He should consider working on the interface between him and the suit, it shouldn't be all that hard to convert data into brainwaves if he actually sat down and did it. Actually that might solve a lot of his problems if he could absorb textbooks straight into his long term memory with only a cursory nod toward optical input.
Eventually he found his way around to the desk and while time continued to march on with no sign of his friend, Ezra decided he would look through some of the papers that the students had written. He was in fact quite comfortable in Irv’s chair, engrossed in the theories these students were postulating when the door finally opened.
“You know, this…” He paused briefly as he flicked to the front of the paper to locate the name. “Sian Holman has some interesting ideas. Much better than Tom Carter whose entire paper appears to be little more than regurgitating the Experimental Techniques in Nuclear and Particle Physics textbook. If he's actually been working on any of these he should maybe just give up.” He remarked, placing the paper carefully back where it belonged and rising from the seat.