Page 3 of Adam, Mine

A man worthy of the letters he sent. But, as painful as it was to admit, Victor wasn’t sure if he would measure up.

Class

“I’ll have your first papers by the end of this week. Ten pages of convincing practical application, one page of a contrary argument to your previous exposition.” Professor Krempe closed his folder and stood to conclude the class.

Victor raised his hand.

“Are there any subjects not permitted?” he asked. He always asked.

Krempe sighed hard and rolled his eyes. The other students were already standing, gathering their things and grumbling, but no one could leave the room until Krempe let them out. Victor knew Krempe didn’t like last-minute questions and neither did anyone else. But Victor had to know if his work was permissible: he couldn’t afford another dismissal.

“Certainly not, Victor. Besides the obvious, just make sure your argument is sound,” he said, striding toward the door.

“I know we’re not allowed to write about the Incomparable Arts, but for the purpose of ethics, would it not be a fine subject with which to base both a convincing argument and a contrary one?” Victor continued. “I can . . . provide a synopsis if necessary?”

The men that made up his class passed him by. Patrick Houser pushed on his head from behind and muttered an unconvincing apology. Victor pet his hair back down and ignored the flutter of laughter.

“Just do the work, Victor.” Krempe yanked open the door. “Don’t try anything special.”

Hush

This was the last semester of their final year. So if not now, then when?

Every lesson was just a rehashing of what Victor already knew. He could have read these in books on his own at home. There was no exploration, no innovation.

Victor had been told he was impatient and impulsive. His parents told him, Elizabeth told him, professors had written it in his assessments year after year. But he had knowledge and experience his classmates didn’t; he had fears they had yet to realize. He could only sit beside them with it unaddressed for so long before he snapped, regardless of what punishment accompanied it.

His classmates didn’t like him. They didn’t care about medicine or the mysteries of the flesh. But Victor could never feel shame for such a thing. Not even for Henry’s sake.

He wasn’t supposed to be here. The students he shared classes with were chemists, physicists, mathematicians, cosmologists, even some geologists who sought invention over practice. Alchemy was a concentration for inventors, for people who wanted funding and support to study the very limits of their chosen field. Push those limits until they bent.

This was why Victor had gone to university years before he should have. It was the reason he would be leaving it long before the age the others had started. He knew he was born to create and refused to be embarrassed by it.

He was a physician’s son far from the surgery and medical students where he belonged. Sitting beside men who turned metals and acids into mystery and flame, men who had never once tried to hold the greedy hands of God at bay.

Those chemists, physicists, mathematicians, and cosmologists never stood in muck, elbows deep in blood. Breathed life into failing lungs with the sweet press of their own lips. Victor had saved ten men and fifteen women by his father’s side before his fourteenth birthday.

They didn’t understand, and Victor didn’t have time to force them. But he needed to learn; he couldn’t leave this place without solutions, without illumination. Trying the same thing over and over never got you anything but the same result. He wasn’t supposed to be here; he was alone here because everyone else in his major always chose to practice medicine. Why become a medical doctor if not to practice. Invention was for people with the luxury of time or absolutely no time at all, his father had said.

The luxury of time was a gift wasted by the young. Enough people in his father’s office used their last breaths to share that wisdom, and Victor was not about to waste it.

Everything was fine, as long as he got what he came for.

Roam

The day was broken up into pieces:

Seminar, Concentration 1, Concentration 2, Research Break, Concentration 3, Dismissal.

Their research break could be taken in the library or used for a lunch hour, but at this stage of their education everyone used it properly. Victor preferred to be in the library alone, but there was nothing he could do about it. He had Seminar and Concentration 1 with Waldman and Concentration 2 and 3 with Krempe, so he knew he’d have to return to his seat in that room once the break was over.

He could hear his classmates murmuring while sitting in the lounge chairs and felt their gazes heavy on his neck.

Victor didn’t turn to look back at them.

It wasn’t that they mocked him or tormented him the way he’d seen other boys tormented before university. It was something in the middle. They appeared to view him as some kind of trivial amusement. His commentary and insight had as much value to them as the baying of an untrained hound.

They acted like he was putting on a show. When he answered questions in class, they whispered among themselves at his answers. When he was forced to give presentations, they looked back at him, smug.