December 21st, 1975
Stanford stood alone in the empty plaza. An orange light flickered and bounced from the lenses of his glasses as fire engulfed the towering Christmas tree before him.
Embers fluttered in the black, snowless maw of the sky. Silent night went playing on softly over the plaza's loudspeakers. Stanford closed his eyes and focused on the sound, for a moment, before the fire's crackling roar and the approaching sirens drowned it away.
A moment of indecision tethered him in place by leaden feet and a tightening ribcage. He shifted the weight of an object in his left hand, running his fingertips over the course surface. He clenched his grip tighter.
He flung the thing into the fire and ran.
May 19th, 1975
Stanford's hands were clenched so tightly behind his back he couldn't feel them. His tie clamped around his neck like a noose, and he reached to loosen it, but somewhere along the way his hand got distracted and rubbed the sweaty nape of his neck instead. Sunlight from the early summer sun bore down on him from the large, clear windows adorning every side of the room.
"Miste... sorry, Doctor Pines... this has to be the most..."
The committee chairman removed his glasses, setting them down with a loud exhale.
Stanford Pines sat at a desk in the center of a wide room, a panel of seven committee members seated in front of him at a long, elevated table.
"You're a bright student, is what I mean to say," said the chairman, haltingly, "And you've studied so many fields already, you could pick any one of them to pursue, easy! But the paranormal? Of all things? We won't back this. We can't. It's... a joke."
Stanford felt the words slam into him chest-first. His face, which had been flushed red moments before, went cold and pale. His mind whirred and scrambled in a panicked flurry. He searched every set of eyes, looked at hands, looked at papers, and last, looked at the door, before glancing back to the committee.
"Thank you for your time," said the chairman, "Now if you'll excuse us-"
"Wait!" Stanford blurted out, "That uh…. I mean, that wasn't what I wrote. I left the real thesis at home. Heh. You thought that was mine? Of course not! Why would it be?"
"It has your name on it."
"Oh, no, it's..uh...That was a novel. I'm proofreading. For a friend. Bfandor Bines. Bad handwriting, common mistake!" He snatched it off the chairman's table, scattering dozens of papers across the room and struggling to roll up what he could and cram it into a pocket.
He stood straight and cleared his throat, hands drawing back behind him as a few remaining sheets drifted to the ground.
"What if I told you," he said, "That rocks... are really cool?"