On Tuesday, Stuart's friends sat at a different table.
The group didn't have a "usual" spot, per se, but he couldn't remember them ever sitting in such an open, visible position. Between Ned's omnipresent keyboard and Darren's insistence on wearing a cape, the group attracted a measure of negative attention from the rest of the student body. For everyone's general gastronomical comfort, it was simply easiest to take their lunches at the edge of the cafeteria. He set down his bagged lunch and slipped into the chair next to Topanga, as he did every day.
"Of course, the worst part about it is the consequences for our free will," Ned stated loudly, smiling at them over his keyboard. He might have been delivering bad news, but the tone of his voice bordered on gleeful.
"IF it's true," Hillary countered, "And that's a pretty big if."
"It is true," Topanga said breezily. "You have my word."
"What's true?" Stuart asked. Five pairs of eyes all turned on him at once as, for a moment, no one spoke. Stuart felt a flutter in his heart as the suspense built over the ensuing silence. "Seriously, what is it?"
"What, you haven't figured it out yet?" Ned tittered.
"Figured what out?" Stuart pleaded.
"Oh, I'm sure Stuart Minkus, the smartest kid in the sixth grade, can puzzle it out on his own," Ned chortled. "Consider it a thought experiment, Stuart. What is so special about Cory?" Ned's eyebrows bounced suggestively with challenge. Hillary and Darren looked back and forth between the two. They were the smartest kids in the school, and games of intellectual one-upmanship were common. Ned had issued the riddle to Stuart, and his reputation hung in the balance.
"Cory Matthews?" Stuart asked. His eyes drifted to the adjacent table, where the curly headed boy in question sat with his thug, Shawn Hunter, likely talking about their hair or one of their many sports teams.
Ned shook his head. "You're not off to a very good start, Stewie."
"I am merely seeking clarification of the challenge!" Stuart insisted.
"Yes, of course Cory Matthews!" Ned thundered.
"Cory Matthews…" Stuart mumbled. "What's so special about him? That's the whole puzzle?" For response, he received only nods from his lunch companions. His mind began churning the question, reviewing the many years of their association. "Not very much, I'd say. He is of average size, possessing a most pedestrian mind. On the whole, he's rather unremarkable, although… I suppose he's popular. He seems to be well-liked by the rest of the class. Oh! And, Mr. Feeny seems disproportionately patient with Cory's antics…"
"Ooooh, he's getting it!" Hillary interjected.
"No hints!" Darren exclaimed, cutting off a similar objection from Ned. They both looked disappointed – as if Stuart were about to spoil their fun.
"Now that you mention it, he has been behaving rather strangely lately…" Stuart mused, tapping his fingertips lightly on the table top as he thought. He could feel his neurons firing as his brain slipped into a higher gear. Stuart Minkus the person receded to a distant point on the horizon while his whole being focused on computation. Mentally, he reviewed the archived footage of Cory's recent actions, the way the boy had grown louder, more expansive, and maybe even funnier over the course of the school year. Of course, he grew correspondingly more self-absorbed – like he felt that he should be the center of attention every time he spoke. Stuart's mind lurched as it churned out the next realization. Cory actually became the center of attention every time he spoke. "At least to say, people have been behaving rather strangely toward him."
"Oh, spit it out already!" Darren said.
" It's almost like a…" Stuart trailed off. There were peculiar behaviors in his own past, he suddenly realized, lurking in his memory like snakes under a rock, just waiting to be uncovered. Sometimes, when Cory Matthews was around, he started acting… like someone else? Not exactly. He behaved like himself, only more so, like someone had cranked the Stuart Minkus dial up to eleven. The fingers of Stuart's perception grazed the glassy surface of the idea which hung tantalizingly in front of him. For a moment, he thought he had it – a sensation intense and painful, jarring him like an electric shock. The idea slipped away. "I don't know," he muttered, feeling more comfortable with the admission than he normally would.
"Oh come now!" Ned growled, looking thoroughly disgusted. "I figured it out, Topie figured it out, you-"
"You didn't figure it out," Hillary protested. "You only guessed. Topanga confirmed it for you."
"That doesn't matter. It's a question of intellectual courage, of integrity – the strength of the scientist's convictions," Ned went on. "I glimpsed the idea, was able to form the hypothesis, and that's all a scientist has to do. Stewie sees it, but he won't admit it. Even Topie had the courage to name it for what it is."
Stuart felt dazed, as if they were all sitting in an extremely small room. Something important was happening, but he didn't want to know what. He simply wanted lunch to be over, so that he could go back to class and focus on arithmetic or history or something tangible. Ned was criticizing him, which bothered him a little, but not as much as the way he kept calling Topanga "Topie". Was that some kind of a pet name? Did she like being called that? or was Ned just trying to get under his skin again? Still, she had figured it out, so that made it important to him.
"Do you watch television, Stuart?" Topanga asked suddenly, her voice unusually severe. When she spoke this way, she was usually lecturing them about gasoline consumption or where they set their thermostats in winter.
"I do… from time to time," Stuart answered weakly. It felt like an illicit admission. "I watch Saved by the Bell regularly."
"I wouldn't admit that, if I were you," Darren put in. "They'll know we're on to them. If they ask, you only watch Murder She Wrote."
"Who will know?" Stuart asked.
"Them," Hillary hissed, her voice low and serious.
"And this show, have you noticed a certain, shall we say, narrative redundancy occurring on that show?" Ned asked pointedly.
"Well, sure, it's certainly formulaic, to an extent…" Stuart fumbled for his words. "It gives a sense of familiarity and comfort to the viewer, makes the story easier to digest. It's been an integral part of television since the earliest serials. More broadly, the whole realm of literature follows a traditionally accepted structure-"
"Yes, yes, we all know that!" Darren cut him off.
"But what about Cory Matthews?" Hillary asked, looking increasingly excited. "You must see it. You said it yourself – he's been acting strangely, and people have been treating him strangely. Don't his antics seem a bit, um… scripted? Hasn't his life grown a bit… what's the word… episodic?"
"No…" Stuart didn't speak any actual words, the sound simply slipped between his teeth.
"Topie saw it first," Ned whispered conspiratorially. "But now we all do."
"I felt it," Topanga corrected him. "Just this morning, in class. When we held hands, I checked his aura, and I sensed his nature."
Stuart nodded a bit, dumbfounded. When Topanga and Cory had clasped hands earlier, she had declared him "vibrationally acceptable." Now she seemed to be saying otherwise.
Ned had been waiting to deliver the coup de grace. "It's right in front of you, Stewie. Cory is the star of a television sitcom… and we're all living in it."