Surrounded But Alone

Chapter 9- The Show Must Go On

Gail's Point Of View;

The research I was doing on the Professor wasn't easy. I saw pictures of him and he was a very mature and aged man who sported his silver hair with pride. He never smiled in any of his photos so I guessed he was one of those strict and stuffy Professors. His hairline was slightly thinning but the rest of it laid down neatly. His blue eyes though a little faded, were hidden behind large squared spectacles. I expected that would probably be the most interesting thing about him.

Other than his professional career there was practically nothing about him. He was either wearing a suit when collecting an award or a lab coat. He was impressive on paper but still not even a smile among his fellow scientists. As I continued to search through for his socials I actually found something I didn't expect to see of the Professor. But I was also hearing the conversation between Presley and Homer as they were looking through the clips from earlier that day after the morning class during the lunch hour. I couldn't really block them out as I tried to pay attention to what was on the monitor.

"So what do you see Homer?" Presley asked.

"Well, it's Professor Smith checking the machine out after we all left the morning class. He's doing all the basics and, wait... That's weird." Homer responded causing Presley to edge him on to explaining.

"Well, it's just that it's strange. I mean why he would take out that specific component of the machine in the first place to just hold it for a few seconds and then put it back? That part works like a microchip that stores the engine's information about what it's supposed to do," He continued.

I didn't look up from my monitor as I was reading through the Professor's social media feed, but I still said, "Maybe he took it out by mistake or had a lapse in memory. He looks old enough for that."

"Hmm maybe, continue watching Homer. Did you find anything, Gail?" Presley asked as he came over to me.

"The guy is a social media ghost, he has a Facebook account that he never posts anything on. The only information on it is his date of birth, city, and profession. So I googled him along with his profession. And apparently, he worked with some of the top aerospace engineers before he decided to come here to the university five years ago." I exhaled in exhaustion at the end then looked in his direction.

Homer also came over to us and gave Presley his phone back, then agreed with what my research brought up. "That's true, he told us that in the first year of our class. By the way Presley, he left the classroom in the footage."

"That's OK, anything else you found Gail?" Presley said putting his phone away in his pocket and answered Homer before shifting his attention to me.

"Well I decided to search for his friends on Facebook all of whom are only his family members. Some of them post too much and others like him don't post at all. All I managed to find about him on their pages were short video clips. Mostly his niece posted them and there about him doing some magician tricks at talent shows that he won. He's pretty good and it kept my interest all the way up to the end," I pointed back at the monitor screen so he would see what I was now doing as I explained.

"That's it!" Presley snapped his finger and exclaimed.

It seemed like a lightbulb went off in his head but Homer voiced what I was thinking when he asked, "What's it?"

Presley started pacing up and down and muttering to himself. I think I heard him say something like, "It's so obvious and why didn't I see it before?"

He wasn't talking to us and I doubted that he even heard what Homer had asked him. But it turned out that I was wrong and he did hear Homer's question as he answered while looking over at us, "I'll tell you on the way; Gail make copies of the footage Homer called weird. Use my phone to send it but you will have to do it on the way."