Morning Whisperings

Forgotten

He was going to fail. It was clear like the lines on the paper in front of him. A grunt pushed through his throat as his fingers curled and knuckles dragged on top of his desk. Outside, the elevator beeped.

His focus blipped with the high pitch.

'Must be the data swap,' Rob thought as he stared at the riddle of his thesis. He had to fix the code.

The elevator beeped again.

"Goddamnit." His voice was rough, his vocal cords having been dangerously still over the past few days. The other unfortunate souls at the university weren't very talkative either. Everybody was moving into the rhythms of their simulations.

Rob knew that getting a PhD would be tough, but straight astronomy or astrophysics sounded like a walk in the park compared to this.

"Stupid. Radio. Fucking. Waves." He dropped his pencil, pressing the heels of his palms against his eyes until a million spots danced on the inside of his eyelids like stars.

He was not going to survive his viva with this.

There was no joy in sleepless nights and in staring at the programming language, which was at times more alien to him than the idea of life in space.

The elevator sounded again. It punctured the bottom of his skull with sharp little stabs.

Beep.

The wall clock ticked well past late hours. Who the heck would be so eager to be here?

Beep.

He shot a glance towards the door. On the canvas of the obscured glass, there was a smudge of a tall figure. The black sausage poked ahead.

Rob turned his whole body now. The end of his patience was drumming through his nerves like a war cry.

"Don't even f—" Feet dug into the floor, launching Rob off the chair in a race towards the door.

Beep.

His hands curled into fists, eyes narrowed. He had heard of a man who came to the University. An odd man. He'd seen him taking lunch in the local cafe.

Rob approached the door and cracked it open to peer through.

The odd man had been escorted off the premises the other day and not for the first time. He used to walk the corridors, always dressed in a suit, with a tie and a briefcase.

Rob gripped the door handle when he saw the culprit.

White hair combed in side-parting tickled an aged neck and ended right above the collar of a dark blue suit jacket, briefcase in hand.

It hung off the old man's shoulders like bedsheets on a washing line but there was no mistaking him. And his finger pressed at the call button again.

Rob pulled away, losing a clear line of sight. His heart jumped to his throat. Why was he back?

Glancing towards his station, he thought about how the thesis was clearly giving him the cold shoulder. He did not feel like staring at it much longer or initiating another god-awful slow simulation.

So he bid the uncomfortable chair a hearty 'so long sucker' and looked back out into the corridor.

The old man was gone.

In the glass shaft, the whoosh of the elevator was like a wind coming down a chimney.

The door closed heavily behind Rob. The rapid beating of his footsteps bounced off the walls as he rounded onto the stairs that wound around the elevator shaft.