How an Institute of Higher Learning Becomes a Zoo
The teachers’ lounge of the Alternaut Academy was reminiscent of a nineteenth century men’s club, with its many small areas separated by bookshelved walls, its comfortable furniture, its gloomy natural light (especially gloomy in some of the areas in the lounge’s interior). In fact, it was a floor of what had once been a nineteenth century men’s club on Earth Prime 0-0-0-0-2-7 dash omicron (the first floor having been taken over by a male fertility clinic, the third floor housing the offices of Wine and Company, which advertised its services as “karmic adjustment and massage therapy”). The door to the lounge was a Dimensional PortalTM that allowed people to travel between that universe and the Alternaut Academy’s main campus on Earth Prime so seamlessly that many students who wanted to find their profs to argue about a grade didn’t realize that they were walking into a different universe.
Don’t tell them. Getting a professor to change a grade is stressful enough.
Professor McHenry was sipping tea in the teacher’s lounge and going over her notes for that afternoon’s lecture on Advanced Differential Magic (a course which dealt with compensating for the different way magic works in a universe foreign to a mage when casting a spell) when Professor Dunderblaast rushed up to her.
“Professor McHenry!” the man huffed, “there is an elephant in the dining hall.”
“An elephant, Professor Dunderblaast?” Professor McHenry responded, as concerned as if he had informed her that it was Wednesday. (It was, in fact, Thursday, but that just intensified her metaphorical lack of concern.) As if to underscore her lack of concern, she took a long sip of tea, although, to be fair, she wanted to drink it while the beverage was at just the right temperature for her taste.
“That is what I said, yes. An elephant.” His tone of voice heavily suggested that, if she wasn’t completely to blame for the aberration, she nonetheless had information that would lead him to the party or parties that were, and she had best give it to him chop chop!
“In the dining hall?” Sip.
“Yes! The dining hall!”
“Well, that is highly unusual.” Sip.
“I should say so!”
“On Thursdays,” Professor McHenry dryly informed him, “the dining hall serves mutton stew. I can’t imagine there is much call for mutton stew among the elephant population.”
Professor McHenry (as far as anybody at the Alternaut Academy knew, she was born without a first name) was a middle-aged matron, in the sense that she could have played blocker for the Vancouver Matrons of the North American Roller Derby League: she was tall, broad and gave off the vibe that she wouldn’t hesitate to use her elbows against somebody who angrified her. In the face of crisis, unflappable was her factory reset. That, and an imposing Irish brogue. In fact, she was so difficult to flap that friend and foe alike considered her formidable, in the original sense of being the forme diablo. In the film version of this story, she should be portrayed by Maggie Smith.
Professor Dunderblaast looked at Professor McHenry like she had just swallowed her own head. He appeared to have had a lot of practice perfecting the look. He was as tall as Professor McHenry, but instead of broad shoulders he had a broad belly; it was as if somebody had inflated his stomach with a bicycle pump in an effort to see how many pumps it would take before he exploded, but grew weary of the jape before it could be brought to fruition. Perversely, his voice did not rumble around in all that room in a deepening baritone; it was high as a kite. In the film version of this story, he would be played by Robert Morley, but Robert Morley had gone to that big auditioning room in the sky, so he should be portrayed by Don Lake in a Santa suit.
Before Professor Dunderblaast had a chance to respond, Professor McHenry continued: “Is the elephant enrolled in classes, or is it auditing?” Sip.
“The elephant’s student status is irrelevant!” Professor Dunderblaast shouted.
“I’m not sure the Bursar would agree with that,” Professor Mchenry calmly stated. Sip.
Professor Dunderblaast smoothed his smoking jacket like it was a ruffled feather and sternly stated: “Something must be done about it. It’s making a mess of the rug, and reports are that it has blocked access to the slushie machine!”
“No access to the slushie machine?” Professor McHenry tutted. “That is serious.” Sip.
“I’m glad you finally see the gravity of the situation,” Professor Dunderblaast, who had all of the obliviousness of a dinosaur that never looks up, commented.
“But what do you expect me to do?” Sip.
Stop drinking your tea – it can be bloody unnerving! Professor Dunderblaast thought. He stated: “It is said that Professor McHenry is such an implacable force that she could move elephants.”
“I have heard it said,” Professor McHenry allowed. Sip.
“So move the blasted elephant!”
If Professor McHenry was moved by her colleague’s passion, she did not show it. “I would rather have thought that moving elephants would be your department.”
“What’s that supposed to mean‽”
“You teach zoology. Surely, you are the person best suited to dealing with a slushie-denying elephant.”
“I am an exo-zoologist,” Professor Dunderblaast corrected her, haughty creeping into his voice. “I study life forms from other dimensions. So, unless this elephant has three trunks, purple eyes and a heavy Swedish accent, I’m not sure what -“
Without warning, a barbarian aardvark appeared in the room near them.
One second it wasn’t there, the next it was, with only the slight smell of singed fur to mark its arrival.
It was four feet tall and wore chainmail armour and a metal hood. In its paws, it improbably carried a sword that was almost as long as it was tall. The barbarian aardvark was crouched as if ready for battle. In the film version of this story, it will likely be portrayed by bargain basement CGI.
“This is why I hate teaching on Thursdays!” Professor Dunderblaast muttered.
Perhaps mistaking the barbarian aardvark for a student, or possibly a donor, Professor McHeny rose, the tray with the tea kettle, sugar, cream and an extra cup for, well, not quite occasions such as these, but occasions such a these with fewer broadswords, offered it to the barbarian aardvark. “May I offer you some tea?” she asked in her most diplomatic voice.
Perhaps mistaking the academic for the beast he had been about to engage in mortal combat before he found himself…wherever he was, the barbarian aardvark gave a mighty guttural roar (with a slight undertone of squeak, a perfectly understandable sound given his size) and attempted to cleave the professor in twain.
It was a twain in vain. Professor McHenry parried the lunge with the tea tray. Then, improbably freeing one of her hands, she hit the barbarian aardvark in the chest with her open palm, sending him flying backwards into a book shelf. Jane Eyre was irreparably damaged by the impact.
“Have respect for a place of learning!” Professor McHenry sternly admonished the barbarian aardvark.
The rebuke only seemed to enrage the creature further. Setting himself on his feet, he ran at Professor McHenry, swinging the broadsword in an arc that was meant to disembowel her.
Professor McHenry parried the thrust with the tea tray, then brought it down on the aardvark barbarian’s head. This seemed to momentarily stun it. Professor McHenry took the opportunity to free her hand and hit it with her palm once more. The creature hit the bookshelf with a loud * THUNK * and slid to the ground, books all around it. It was not a good day for the Bronte sisters.
“That will be quite enough of that,” Professor McHenry stated. She put the tray back on the table and, as the barbarian moaned, removed the broadsword from its paws.
Turning towards the exo-zoologist, she demanded, “What is that thing?”
Cognizant of the fact that she held a deadly sword in her hands, Professor Dunderblaast thoughtfully replied, “Hmm. It is obviously a member of the order Tubulidentata, genus Orycteropus. Judging by the armour and weapons, I would say that it makes its living as a violent rogue adventurer.”
“So, in short…?”
“It is a barbarian aardvark.”
“Your salary is money well spent,” Professor McHenry dryly remarked. “Can you communicate with it?”
“Was it even communicating?” Professor Dunderblaast wondered in exasperation. Exasperondered.
Professor McHenry never sighed, so the sound that escaped her must have come from somebody else. “We need to find out why it’s here,” she stated. “Which means we need a way to communicate with it.”
“What about the new fellow?” Professor Dunderblaast eagerly suggested. “The new professor of Defence Against the Dark Arts? What was his name? Rancidputzle?”
“Are you referring to Professor Princetwizzle?” Professor McHenry’s nose wrinkled in mild disapproval. Her first, and to date only, meeting with the man had not impressed her.
“That’s the one,” Professor Dunderblaast concurred.
Another phantom sigh escaped the vicinity of Professor McHenry’s lips. Not seeing any other course of action at the moment, she commanded, “Be a good lad and fetch him, won’t you?”
Whatever other faults he may have possessed, Professor Dunderblaast recognized a reason for escaping an awkward situation when he was handed one. “Right away!” he said, and scarpered.
Professor McHenry sat down and continued to drink her tea with her right hand (it was cooling rapidly, and would soon be undrinkable) while her left hand held the sword at the chest of the semi-conscious, moaning barbarian aardvark. She noticed a drop of tea had escaped her cup during the fracas. I’m slipping, she thought, and dedicated herself to several more hours of meditation a week.