Title: The Never Ending Thesis
Fandom: Piled Higher and Deeper (PhD comic)
Warning: It may not be wise to read if you are in a bad place with your PhD/thesis. Also, character death.
Rating: PG
Word count: 454 words
Prompt: lj sharp_teeth horror meme: Prompt from dayadhvam_triad:From New to PhD?-Brilliant, wily, and usually napping, Mike has been in grad school longer than anyone can remember.
Disclaimer: Own nothing, not being paid.
A/N: What can I say, the prompt spoke to me. Absolutely zero knowledge of PhD comic required.
The third time that a staff member said to Mike, "Wow, how long have you been here? I've been here X number of years and you were here when I started!" he started to worry.
The thing was, Mike couldn't even remember when he'd started grad school. Jen, his wife, wasn't much help either.
Then Mike started noticing...odd...things. Like he'd wake up from a nap at his desk to find that the decor of the room had changed. There were suddenly new grad students and the one that he remembered telling him just the previous week that she had another year to go was gone and graduated.
Then there was Jen and Sophy. Jen all of a sudden had more lines and grey in her hair. Sophy was no longer an adorable 9 month old but instead starting school, then high school.
But when he looked in the mirror at himself, he hadn't changed.
His supervisor had retired, but he could have sworn that when he'd started his supervisor was only thirty-five.
Mike tried telling Jen about what was going on, but she didn't seem to understand. It was like time occurred for everyone else while he stayed the same. Knowing that it might be the only thing that could help him, he switched his thesis area to theoretical physics and astrophysics.
Students came and students went, Sophy got married, his computer suddenly was some next generation computer that was almost incomprehensible to him. By the time he'd figured it out again, there was a different looking terminal in front of him.
Jen died.
Sophy died.
He was still there.
More students came and went.
Mike despaired, not working on anything.
He had to learn a new computer system.
He had to learn a new computer system.
He thought he'd made a breakthrough, but he was wrong.
He had to learn a new computer system.
He had to learn a new computer system.
He had to learn a new...
Not as many students came.
Suddenly there was no one but him.
He went outside, for what felt like the first time in a long long time. It was hot, so hot that it hurt to breathe. The campus was deserted. The trees that had surrounded the buildings were gone, the grass scorched away. The sun was way brighter than he remembered.
He walked for a long time. There were no insects, no birds, no animals or plants. Everything was dead. There was no water, not out of taps or in any of the rivers or lakes that there used to be.
Everybody else was gone or dead.
He was there at the end of the Earth.
And he still hadn't graduated.
-Fin-