Section 1 - Debt

He walked slowly around in a large circle, confusing the librarian, but ignored by all else. He would speed up and tap his finger across the back of the book then slow down and quiet down, following his path more closely. He’d been in the building for the past 2 hours, and it was visually disturbing to others, thought the librarian. The librarian stood up to approach the man, and inquire about his strange habits. Yet, the man seemed to be aware of this, as he had slowed his pace, stopped tapping, and diverted from his circular course. He walked the same direction as the librarian, picked up his back, and exited promptly. The librarian, satisfied by their heroism, returned to their seat and checked what book he’d been reading. No account had checked out a book with the same orange-blue-white hardcover back to it, so he must’ve come in for the quiet study space, only to ruin it. 

The man walked through the halls of a strange space. Large columns on the side of the wall, squared off with no color other than a dull gray loomed overhead, forming an arcade at the top. The tiles on the floor frustrated him deeply, always had. While the hallways walls and roof were dull, large concrete, with only a few extra details added (a slight bevel to the base of the pillars as well as concrete pieces that extruded outwards with seemingly no purpose), the tiles were 2 colors, and formed a pathway. They had divots in them, supposedly to help the blind, as he had only ever seen them used in any meaningful way by an old woman with a long cane with a rock that made a loud clicking noise when it came across a divot. The colors were ugly, purple and orange, the campus colors. The tiles with divots were orange, and they were 2 parallel lines 3 feet apart. They would split off at doors and turns, but there was an inconsistency to it. Further down the building, he noticed there were overlapping lines, especially at the diagonal, where the parallel lines would intersect the new path as the building changed directions. This was at 2 of the 4 45 degree turns, yet not present except by the administrative office when it came to doorways or the 90 degree turns. Seeing such simple rules about tile design being tossed aside for some purposeless inconsistency that his classmates called “aesthetic” caused a slight throbbing to the right of his head, as well as sweat to drip down his back. The tiles were octagonal and squared, so they formed a slightly interesting pattern. 

He continued down the hall, inconvenienced. He left the building and crossed a never-busy street (barring the occasional bike group and a faculty car which had no windscreen and a speed limit of 20 miles per hour). The pattern did not continue outside, though the colors did. A green streetlamp, designed to look like a corinthian pillar on anti-steroids with 2 ugly bulbous lights to either side, with a purple and orange banner hanging from each outstretched arm. Too much land had been dedicated to grass, and as the rains lessened each year, patches of death had begun to overtake the yard. What had previously been long green hairs, hiding the lower legs of students and staff as they walked along the 2 foot wide and windy path was now an inconsistent mess of high grasses and dead brown patches. No effort had been made to fix them in the past 5 years, and he doubted there would ever be one. 

The book fit nicely into his right knee pocket. He wore pants with many pockets and filled them with many things. A compass in the right foot pocket, a stargazing manual in the left foot pocket, an assortment of pens, pencils, pencil shavings, uncovered pencil sharpeners, an overpriced mechanical pencil, half broken pencil lead (0.5 mm) and a spiderman eraser he had taken from the younger brother years prior when he needed to make an adjustment, filled his left knee pocket. His right thigh front pocket had his dead phone, and the left had a secondary alive phone. He logged important information in that one, which is why it was still alive. His back pocket had keys and a wallet filled with monopoly money and an applebee's gift card in the main compartments, and $12 in a hidden compartment. He passed through the metal detector in the second building, and had to give the security guard his pocket knife tool-kit which was hidden in the secret compartment of the secret pocket inside the pants, as well as return the spiderman eraser. The security guard promised him he’d return the eraser to the younger  brother, yet proceeded to chuck something rubbery into a metal container as soon as the man appeared to be out of earshot. 

The tiles on the floor of this building were special. It was a bunch of einsteins, specifically the t-shirt variety as the turtles weren’t as “satisfying” to the architect. They tiled the floor in a perfectly pleasing way, all gray. They extended 1 foot up the walls before they appeared to disappear and fade away. A poorly done gradient, but the idea had gotten across. The walls were painted white, and the ceiling was unusually short. The upper floors each had a different design, none as utterly repulsive as that of the humanities buildings. He walked to his study room, and realized he was 20 minutes late to an introductory lecture to his introductory course to number-theory. 

He’d let a maximum of 23 students into his class, since he’d gotten 24 chairs and needed 1 to himself. He disapproved of the chairs provided by the college. They swiveled poorly, and were all green but 1 ugly yellow chair. The back support was unideal, and the armrests were shaky, but redeemingly cushioned. He spent over $4,000 on the chairs, but they did not swivel and make a high pitched squeak when students or himself turned in place. The wheels came waxed but seeing as they were still cheap, they were made of brittle plastic. Whenever the seat he used had a slight crack, he would switch it with a student's chair. They never noticed, so he did it over and over. While only having the chairs for 0.5 years, he was on the last chair. 

A debtor was waiting by the door, though he had a skateboard, baggy jeans, and a notebook that was unzipped with a textbook inside of it. Maybe it wasn’t a debtor, thought the man. He wasn’t in debt, so this made sense. 

“Professor, uhh, Ka-plan? We’d like to get in the lecture hall but it’s locked.” spoke the possible-debtor. The professor looked past the first possible-debtor and saw a row of them, leaning up against the wall. If they were debtors, he felt he should be quite worried. If these debtors were here for a debt he didn’t know about, he couldn’t pay them on the spot. He had spent $4000 on something important 6 months prior, and had nothing left in his savings account. Uncashed checks from the university were on his desk. Maybe he could give-

“Uhh- professor?” This man looked worried. His baggy attire made the professor smile. But only this change in facial expression made the professor notice he had a puzzled-gaze expression beforehand. He sighed, and gestured towards the door. “It’s still locked,” chimed one of these people. He reached into his back pocket, past the wallet with $12 and 835 monopoly dollars. The keys were easy to grab, but he’d have to spend a while sorting through them. He saw one key at home-depot that he particularly liked. It had a geometric pattern on the part held by the thumb and pointer, and a different metal for the key portion. He had gotten all his keys to be this key, meaning 5 keys that looked identical would have to be used. A groan came from the baggy clothed one. The professor ignored it, but the thought of him being a debtor was reignited.

Unluckily, the 5th key tested was the correct one. This was a new classroom, and only the chairs and desk with the checks (that were soon to be taken by these debtors) were the same. The keys were on a circular keychain with no second ring to restrict their movement. If he had one, he’d make use of it. But they were expensive, and the professor hated wasting money. He walked in and the debtors followed him- at first, until they eventually settled into their seats. He walked along the path that split halfway through, continuing forwards and bringing him to his desk and chalk-storing area, while the other path brought him up a slight slope and the rolling chairs. There were plateaus so that the chairs would not roll down. He had built them out of wood from home depot. The venture took all summer, since he wanted there to be fewer people in the classroom. He doubled the plateau length from 3 feet extruded to 6 feet, and built shelves behind for different textbooks, all of which he had stolen from the library. The librarian never noticed, she always paid attention to the circular rhythm he was in (though he didn’t initially use this as a distraction) while he had the cousin (who was a student of architecture at the same university) take 2 to 4 textbooks and hide them in his backpack, removing the small detection sticker and placing it in the trash as the librarian approached the professor. It happened like this everytime, and the librarian would always fall for it as they were student volunteers, and so changed weekly. They split up and the cousin left later, giving the stolen books to the professor at night. There must’ve been thousands of dollars worth of textbooks that had been stolen-

Were the “students” actually the past librarians, here to take back what he had stolen? He couldn’t disregard that possibility. He walked in circles to distract them, but was distracted himself. He’d begin to read and everything around him turned off. He wanted to feel the information, allow it to flow through him, and so he disabled all other senses.

He looked up. Another 5 minutes had passed. However, it was a 3 hour lecture, giving him time to spare. He thought he’d start off with a few tricks to please these “students”. Maybe if he gained their respect, they’d hold off on taking his books. That was a new idea. What if it was a stealth mission. He looked back from the chalkboard, and scanned the room. He made eye contact for a few seconds with every student. One of them sneezed and he stared at them, as did everyone else. He thought the sneeze might be a distraction, so he scanned everyone once more. Another 4 minutes. Nobody seemed to make a move towards the shelves. But he kept his head turned for the remainder of the lecture. He could never be too sure. He walked completely normally towards his desk, and opened the wrong drawer. He corrected his mistake. The drawer below contained many boxes of chalk, chalk he had paid for with money he obtained from selling books to desperate chemistry majors, who couldn’t seem to find supplementary information contained in the library. The systems regarded the books as present, but they all seemed to be gone every time a student was in search of them. The chalk was nice, it smoothly glided across blackboards with little resistance. It had a silky finish on the holding surface, but was matte on the drawing surface. It was from a defunct company that operated in Japan, but he obtained enough to supply him for the next 2 years. If he could not find a replacement, he planned on quitting his job and pursuing professional ice skating. He’d never been ice skating per se, but he thought the science behind it seemed fascinating. He looked to see if any of his students were wearing ice skates. None of them were.

He did not glance at their faces, but if he had, he’d certainly wonder why they all looked confused and tired, for he hadn’t started the lecture. That was, until a paper plane flew across the room. The professor had not noticed such a delicate contraption until he heard it a few feet and seconds away. He wondered what it was, looked up, and was face-to-tip with it. It was moving quickly, and so he dove out of the way, to his desk (he had been turned towards the desk since he had his head turned. In order to fully see behind himself, he needed to rotate his body 30 or so degrees, allowing his neck to turn the other 150). A few of the student’s laughed. This must be it. The forces of Babylon (or the school’s volunteer librarian program, he couldn’t be sure) had descended upon him. He expected more pointed objects to hurtle towards him, so he cowered in his desk for the next 2 hours until he heard them all leave. They had been laughing until a few of them began to talk. He heard the initial conversations, but as more and more sounds layered atop one another, he couldn’t make sense of it and began to panic. The noises of high pitched voices and low pitched voices collided like a symphony on fire, and he began to shriek after 115 minutes. He waited until the debtors left, listening for distinct footsteps as people got up, and if they dampened to his left. The sharp yet dull noise of the footsteps allowed him to differentiate from the voices. After 23 distinct walking patterns decayed into slight vibrations emanating from the hallway, he got up, assured he was safe. 

He went to check on his precious books. After 2 hours, he noted that 1 had been stolen while all others remained. Why had “A Comprehensive Analysis of the Knot Theory and Low Level Topology: 3rd Edition - R. Bacon III, K. Mann, C. Adams” been stolen? Through the professor, did the debtors plan to hang the professor? No, it couldn’t be. They’d surely know about the vault he had in his desk, containing the most important books. They wouldn’t want to kill him until they knew how to get into his precious collection of goods. He had leverage, and until they got that information from him, he’d stay alive. He jotted the realization into his notebook, put it back in, and ran out of the room.

The einsteins on the ground were pleasing to look at, but he was preparing himself mentally. There was a passage that led underground into a worn down parking garage which housed his scooter. As one descended, the paint on the wall stayed in strokes perpendicular to gravity, so it was a cut rainbow of colors from orange to yellow, to brown to purple, and again to orange. It was disturbing, disorienting, and caused his stomach to churn up the previous meal in hopes of painting it a more pleasant array of colors. He stepped off the einsteins and into a bumpy concrete pathway. Patches of death were more common in this area, he assumed because more students arrived from this side, and thus stepped on growing vegetation more often. These patches formed paths leading all over this side of the building, and none of them continued into the other side.