(Closed to Kota and I)
The man breathed out through his nose irritably, the sound of shifting papers the only sound in the otherwise empty class room. Written on some of the papers were equations; logarithmic and exponential equations written in student handwriting, occasionally broken up by small corrections in pen, in fortunately neater handwriting. Other sheets were grade sheets, half filled out, as if the teacher had left them but never came back.
Well, that wasn't too far from the truth. Theta Sigma had needed to find his way into a substitute position in some sort of math or computers class, and with the maths teacher drunk last night, off in a bar dancing with the american history teacher, it had been far too easy to psychically ramp up the hangover the maths teacher would have the next morning. Just as expected, the man had callen in sick this morning, 'conveniently' leaving the math sub position open for Theta... though, of course, his name was not Theta here, but Mr. James Terrell, a maths major from MIT that had supposedly been dropping by to do some college recruiting when he'd heard the news of an urgent need for a math sub.
The ulterior motive of all this, of course, was that he was recruiting; trying to find a young intelligent mind that would help him out with a problem he had, that was. He'd subbed two other days before this, in two other schools, but while many of the students there were intelligent, none of them met up to all three standards; intelligence, willingness, and bravery. It just seemed to be that all the intelligent children were wimps. But hopefully, just hopefully, the third school that he'd be searching through would yield just the right person to help him out.
Not that he couldn't handle the situation himself, of course. Figuring out how to turn off a worldwide virtual reality machine, while daunting to think about, wasn't all that hard. But the truth was, well, as much as he hated to admit it he needed backup, just in case something went wrong. In fact, he was almost expecting something to go wrong. This was far too important of a task to screw up. As for searching through ranks of high school students instead of adults, well, that was just his personal preference; they may be young, but some of the most extraordinary humans he'd ever met had been 17 or 18.
...they were likely more on par with his maturity level than adults were, anyways.
There was a shuffling from outside the door, and Theta perked up from where he'd been bent over the papers. A glance at the clock gave him all the information he needed; it seemed that it was the time when the first students were starting to arrive. Theta took a deep calming breath; while most students seemed to have an allergy to math rooms, especially in the morning when they were like zombies, there was always the possibility of a student wandering in early. For some reason, the thought of teaching a class terrified Theta. Despite doing it before, and knowing the material down to an atom on a pinhead, talking in front of a group of mentally board teenagers just wasn't his thing.
Sat Jun 12, 2021 1:03 am by 
Subject: The Reality Bug 
