Chapter One

Chapter One of Darwin's Theories.

Chapter 1

Tucked away on the third floor of a gleaming centuries-old mansion on top of a hill on the campus of Wilson University, down a narrow, twisting hallway, and through the waiting parlor for a long-dead oil baron’s palatial bathroom that’s been converted into a classroom, Professor Darwin continued his lecture on 18th century science fiction. 

It was a class that he had devised several years earlier whose content and pacing was made to seem as if its semester-long duration had been going on for longer than the entirety of his students’ undergraduate education. It was going well in this regard, as several of them had already fallen asleep in this lecture and one may have died at some point between his elucidation of Simon Tyssot de Patot's Voyages et Aventures de Jacques Massé and Samuel Madden's Memoirs of the Twentieth Century. This pleased him to no end since he was only halfway through the semester and was already growing bored of the whole thing. And if he was going to be bored, he argued, he better spread it around before people started thinking it was just him.

Besides, tenure had already lost its appeal two years earlier when he uncovered a massive embezzlement scandal at Wilson involving the new dean and the Board of Trustees. While Darwin succeeded in making the dean resign in disgrace and in sending several board members to jail, the whole affair had cost him his good parking spot, and that was enough to make anyone begin to sneer at their job a little.

He supposed his interminable lectures were a bit of punishment for his students, as well: this year’s crop was a sorry lot, and with each year that passed it seemed the fundamentals of teaching America’s recently graduated high school students’ literature, history, and how to drink heavily without dying skills had given way to subjective interpretations of the value of education, leading to a very weak curriculum in its place (such as "Napping 101," "The History of Reality Television," and "Advanced Drinking"). 

His own courses had been similarly perverted over the years, from “American Literature in the 20th Century” and “The Novel and Society” to courses titled “Top 10 Books You’ve Never Read From the 90’s” and “F**k! A History of The F-Word.” He subverted this new approach to education in a classic bait-and-switch: he would write a course description as insipid as: “TOTALLY WILD TALES (NSFW): The most f**ked up, twisted, and weirdest stories ever told are surveyed in this EN-300 level course. M W F 2:00-3:15.” 

Then when the class started, Darwin would skateboard into the room, make a few flip remarks about how higher learning is a scam, light a cigarette, and then show sci-fi movies every class until the add/drop period passed after the first few weeks.

Then they would start in on the real work: an in-depth survey of the development of science fiction in literature starting with The Epic of Gilgamesh. It seemed like a cruel trick--and it was--but at the same time, he had to trick his students, or else they would drop the class after the first real lecture and never learn anything. To be fair, those that did survive until the end of the semester thanked him for teaching them, or at the very least would lead them to delete the meaner comments they had written about him on the internet.

And usually the lectures would be as fun and whiz-bang interesting as he could make them, and he truly did love the subjects he taught, but he was growing more and more bored with the process. The greasy-looking students, the pedantic wonks that comprised the English department, the scurrilous janitorial staff--at this point he just wanted out.

The last time he had any fun at this job was by not doing anything remotely near his job description: investigating the new university president, Warren Joffs. 

And the only reason he did that was because he simply detested the man. In his first address to the faculty and staff of the university, Joffs warned that he would be discontinuing any department within five years that couldn’t cover its own cost of operation. Sure, if you were the big-shot Business school with its successful graduates and students, or had the sexy allure of Computer Science, you could get by on your looks, but given that the Literature department--while existing to cover core Literature and Composition course for every BA curriculum--only had 10 students at any given time in its major, it was likely to be the second department to go right after Philosophy. He felt a sinking feeling at this thought, like his boat had sprung a leak.

“I wish I was a pear,” muttered Dr. Raffel, the head of the Philosophy department, knowingly to Darwin during Joffs’ speech. It was statements like this that made Darwin glad the Philosophy department would be the first to go, but since he had just received tenure, he figured he better plug this hole before his job drained away and started snooping into Joffs’ life.

It was easy enough to decide to plug Joff’s hole: there was something about the man that made Darwin instantly dislike him in a way that he disliked smiling preachers on television and over-friendly waiters. He had dark, slicked-back hair and Darwin could swear that he saw a spider crawl out of his mouth during Joffs’ speech. But then again, there was an open bar that night and he had also sworn that the head of the History department had shape-shifted into a large gerbil at some point. He finished his drink and handed it off to a teacher’s assistant, who used the stirrer to suck up the last of the booze at the bottom and between the ice cubes.

“Wonderful speech. I loved the part about threatening to shut down under-performing departments.” Darwin had made his way up to Joffs, slinking past the scrum of Communications professors that seemed to be popping up like weeds across the college in the past few years. The mole on his left cheek, small elfin ears, and his dark, awful, slick-backed hair somehow angered Darwin on a semiotic level.

“Thank you. Department?” Joffs asked in a way that Darwin knew was asked to immediately provide Joffs with his standing at the university.

“Literature. We just do the small, idiotic job of teaching all of the students here how to read and write.”  

“I think Literature is a wonderful department, just wonderful,” said Joffs. “Although I’ve heard you don’t retain too many students in the full degree program.”

“That’s kind of you to say: what’s your background in, if I can ask?” Darwin could swear he saw that same spider crawl into the man’s ear at this point.

“Business. I’ve spent my life making sure that organizations run smoothly and profitably.”

“You realize that without a Literature department nobody that goes here will learn how to write or understand what they’re reading.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t worry about that,” said Joffs, turning away, “I’m sure they’ll get by.”

And that was the last interaction Darwin would have with Joffs until their dynamic reunion a few months later.

He wasn’t a trained detective, but years of critical thinking and deductive reasoning in his own academic pursuits served him well as an amateur sleuth. He had published two books on literary theory, one of which contained an essay that influenced a then-popular form of postmodern theory that Darwin later completely distanced himself from, calling it “misaimed bullshit,” “the scattered ramblings of an irritating child,” and work that later helped him secure tenure.

Besides this, he had a certain charm of his own"a very silly, odd charm, but one that disarmed people. Well-spoken and witty (at least according to him and several drunks he hung out with), he dressed like a college professor from a 1950’s-era comedy film complete with sweater-vest and thick black glasses. He was tall and, if the lighting was right and he had remembered to comb his hair that morning, almost handsome, in a nerdy, Clark Kent sort of way. 

Once, after a department meeting in which Darwin criticized the idea of implementing a new reading curriculum by wondering if they should also provide Speak and Spells to their classes, one irritated colleague described his manner “as if everything’s just a private joke that he can’t wait to let you in on.” Darwin admired that description of himself so much he later thanked the man for so aptly describing him. The man said it wasn’t meant as a compliment.  

As for the Joffs appointment, it was easy enough to connect the dots through public record: the board of directors both fielded candidates internal and external, and after whittling down the list to 6 began interviewing in-person for the condition. Warren Joffs graduated from and was the former comptroller of former comptroller of Hublersburg College (home of The Fighting Coal Miners) in western Pennsylvania and had worked up to assistant dean of student affairs before being selected as dean of Wilson University. 

His nomination by the board was surprising, given the obscurity of his previous position and college, but there was a 7-5 vote and he was one of the final candidates. So far, this tracked fair enough to Darwin, even if it was all a little unusual. What sent him off in the right direction was when he was reviewing public notices online and found that Joffs had changed his name when he was 21 and the records pertaining to his original name were sealed. That was enough for Darwin to realize something suspicious was going on.

The sound of keys going clickity-click click clickity-click in the uneven rhythm of fast typing spilled out into the hallway.

“Excuse me, Miss, but I think you have the wrong department,” said Darwin to the administrative assistant in the Finance Department. Karen looked up, saw that it was Darwin, and smiled.

“Not this time. How’ve you been, Darwin?” She went back to typing. It was a very small joke between the two involving her first day at the school and entering the classroom next door to the finance department, where Darwin was holding a lecture. He had turned to her and said the same thing then and continued to say this to her wherever they happened to meet. The last time it was in the produce department of a grocery story some two months earlier. He only knew her as Karen from Finance, or to her face, Karen.

“For a man who talks for a living, I could be better. Say, you haven’t heard anything about the shake-up in the president’s office, have you?”

Karen from Finance was piqued by this; she hadn’t heard anything about a shake-up. Nor would she; there was none to speak of. She continued typing. Clickity-click click.

“Not yet, but no news is good these days. What are they saying?”

“Nothing much, just whispers as usual. Incoming dean’s from a dodgy college in the middle of Appalachia; seems to have a shadowy past; looks like a particularly cheap motel room.”

“That sounds like our new leader, all right.”

“Have you met him yet?”

“He walked through here with a coterie of board members after the commencement.”

Darwin considered this. Clickity-click click.

“Do you remember who he was with?”

“Oh, I don’t know…they all look the same to me: short, old, balding, suits.”

“How many of them were bald?”

“Three out of the four. What’s this about, anyway?”

“Just doing a little research for a series of threatening letters I’m writing.”

“Great. Send me copies.” Her click-clicks picked the tempo back up.

Darwin looked at the portraits of the board that hung on the walls of the boardroom on the second floor of Dewey Hall. There were three of his suspects/conspirators/jerks: Ernest Borrington the Third, James Alwood, Jr., and Larry Patchett: the bald triplets of the board. They really do look alike, he thought.

From what he gathered, these three were perpetual yes-men on the board"rich trustees whose fathers held their positions, and presumably their bald sons would one day inherit these positions likewise. Besides looking after the money, none of these men had the kind of extraordinary vision that it would take to place a steady chump like Joffs. It must be the other one, the fourth mystery man Karen couldn’t identify. But that was enough of a clue to push off to the next conclusion, since Darwin could see that this was a 12-man board and only one of them didn’t have a portrait of himself hanging on the wall.

Author's Note

Looking for feedback on dialogue, pace, interest level, clarity, etc.