The man harrumphed and adjusted his papers on the lectern.
“The teacher’s name is Dr. Borealis Clive, an alias, naturally, since they would be watching for him, the sleepers, regulators, according to the principle that he feared they would be on the lookout, so they would be, sadly. If only he could have willed it otherwise, sufficiently, but alas the subconscious is so difficult to correct — yes, even knowing now the way of things, the unreality, the singular objectivity of his perception. No matter now, he has hibernated within the confines of soliloquy long enough. Now he must address the audience, no matter their fictitiousness!”
The undergrads stared wide-eyed and alarmed at one another around the semicircular auditorium.
“The undergrads stare wide-eyed as Borealis echoes his narration. To the benefit of these moldable young minds! Heh, more than they know. They nudge and fret their fellows, as if they sense, they would sense – that is, if they had any sense – the professor’s imminently revolutionary endeavor, that is the revelation of illusory reality, unto the matrix. An introduction.”
Several students leapt up from their seats suddenly and waved as two police officers barged into the classroom.
“Help!”
“Officers we don’t know who this guy is—”
“—he’s not the professor, he just walked in here—”
“Huh, huh.” Borealis guffawed humorlessly, stepping back, stumbling on the single stair of the dwarfed proscenium before the scholarly mob that couldn’t quite convince him of their corporeality. “Ha.” He straightened his tie and leered at the security guards coming cautiously, anxiously towards him, hands outstretched, beckoning him. Borealis narrated some more, saying, “Borealis narrates some more, bracing himself for the grand struggle with these provocateurs of paranoia – how futile is their task! Dr. Clive cannot be made paranoid of that which only exists by his leave, which is everything. To be mutinied by his own projections! Absurd! His Majesty refutes them!”
“—sir just calm down.”
“Now they go forth into the nether regions of the neocortex! Abscond back to the neural network! Now! Only Borealis is the master of his own reality!”
“Hal just grab this guy, damn it.”
The officers launched forward and seized the crazed Borealis by both wrists. Borealis could not comprehend how he was being subdued, or rather he could comprehend it all too well, he thought, since his own mind was betraying him.
“Borealis is escorted down boulevards of his contrivance, for reasons inscrutable this instant to anyone — the only One, Borealis,” the crazed impostor informed the officers sagely. His feet swept the floor behind him as he was carried, since there seemed no need to cooperate, not with shadows on the wall. He looked between them, trying to catch either of their gazes that ashamedly they denied him. “Where is the fathoming coming from? Where is the fathoming coming from?”
zoologic Woo 