Disclaimer: It all belongs to Frank Herbert and Camilla Sandman. The great
ideas of Arrakis and Official Fanfiction University belong to them, not me.
Mara groaned as she got up. The sudden burst of Arrakeen light into the room caused by the shades violently lifting up at the touch of a button by Meg was a little too much for Mara in the morning.
"Good morning sunshine!" Meg said both cheerily and sarcastically at the same time; Mara had not a clue how. All she could do was grunt in response as she tried to get up, but quickly fell back on the bed again. Knowing only too well how sharp a face dancer's teeth could be, she wouldn't be surprised if "mini me" had torn muscle. Although all the students had learned to greatly fear the face dancers in one night a week ago, apparently Smiley had not learned enough. Unfortunately for her, Alia had decided to teach that lesson.
Shrieking could be heard bouncing of the walls of the corridor from the end closest to the main door and Mara's room. Smiley had apparently tried to seduce Duncan Idaho, which was not a good move. Well, actually, she had planned to seduce Duncan Idaho, and Paul had foreseen it and told Alia, which was not a good thing. After Alia smiled satisfactorily at the look of horror on Smiley's face, she turned and walked out to the large open doors that led outside.
Most of the students had learned to fear the face dancers, as well as Alia, already. If you got Paul mad you were in for it, but seeing as how everyone got chills up their spine when he walked into the room, or talked, or breathed even, he wasn't much of a problem. Alia on the other hand was a totally different matter. Most of the students had by now learned not to trust anything that wasn't native, which was good seeing as how Mara had overheard Chani happily informing Paul that pretty soon if the brought in the Revered Mother Helen Gaius Mohaim she would probably be tackled to death by the entire student body. The students had formed a coalition against the Face Dancers, and although some people were still fooled by Matt Damon walking around with his shirt half undone, most of them just unified and tackled the Face Dancer if they ever saw Gimli strutting around the halls.
Unfortunately, the Face Dancers got smarter too; they loved taking the forms of characters from Dune now to trick the students. Hufflepuff was the first to find out when she decided to wear Potter-style glasses, a Hogwarts uniform, and a magic-marker lightning bolt scar on her forehead to their Arrakeen ecology lesson and ran into Leto III who was usually mild- mannered. He then proceeded to.they all swore never to breath a word of what happened to Hufflepuff to spare her the shame.
The first real scare came last night, though, when it was announced that when Alia was dislodging a crysknife from Ally's elbow (it was Alia's doing that put it there), she had "accidentally" mistaken a gom jabbar for the painkiller, and that Ally was now in a coma in the hospital wing of Lecture Hall 3. (It had been deadly only to animals, and Alia had used Ally as a test subject on the effects of animal instincts in teenage girls.) There was one in all of the lecture halls (two in Lecture Hall 1) and three in the main dormitories. Everyone was even more cautious of Alia after that and to the students' horror and the Face Dancer's delight, they promptly took on the form of Alia and made the students practically jump out of their skins upon sight of them.
After her first two classes, which are always great since there is never a set schedule at OFUA. You just have to show up in whatever lecture hall is assigned for that half of the day with all of your books (not just the ones for the classes in that lecture hall since sometimes the teachers decided to switch on you at the last minute) and wait for the teacher to show up, which usually took a half an hour so that the students could stand up for 30 minutes holding their entire library of school books. Harmony had insisted that they have the finest (and heaviest) books and that microfilms should not be allowed. Also to the students dismay and the teachers' delight, the only set times were for meals, so you could make your class as long or as short as you wanted. How many classes you had a day depended on how much homework they felt like shoving onto you; how long those classes were depended on how boring or torturous the class was.
Kynes had decided to end their ecology lesson early, so that they could hurry off to Training Room 6 off the third corridor on the right from the main hallway in Lecture Hall 3 (that was the sort of thing they expected you to remember at OFUA) for a quick lesson in knife-fighting with Duncan Idaho and Gurney and of course, overseen by Thufir Hawat. Knife-fighting was always boring since it only consisted of being yelled at for holding the knife the wrong way and then Stilgar coming in and commenting how they should never be allowed to how their own crysknife with that kind of block or parry.
They were supposed to be in their Bene Gesserit class, which was taught by the Lady Jessica and Irulan (to the students' great relief since Irulan was the kindest teacher there and always had at least a little sympathy for the students if they had some intelligence) but had been cancelled do to the fact that Alia insisted on teaching too, but kept on losing control over the Baron Vladimir Harkonnen (who had not returned to his body like some of the others since he had was in a way still alive) and kept shouting things like "Bah, Bene Gesserit witches!" It had taken both Jessica and Irulan to drag her to Paul to continue the argument and since this was always a source of interest to the teachers, classes had been cancelled until the end of lunch.
Mara was walking down the fourth corridor on the left off of the second corridor on the right from the main hallway of the second story of Lecture Hall 1 (the good part about remembering all the pathways was that you rarely got lost, well, if you managed to remember it all), which was fine since it wasn't forbidden. In fact, it was promoted considering you were more likely to do something deserving a punishment if you did that.
"A week? A week?! How did you manage to make your students act that well behaved in a week?! Only one minor lusting incident and not a single stampede! I am amazed Juno, how do you do it?" Mara heard a voice call out behind the door on her right. She didn't recognize the voice and by now all the students knew who all the teachers were. If you didn't they got very mad or upset which was not a good thing.
"Face dancers," she heard Juno respond, and then to her horror she heard her say, "Ah, yes, Ms. Gentry, please come in, I would like you to meet someone." The door slid open to reveal Juno sitting in a plush lounge chair next to a small, polished mahogany table with across from a similar chair with a harsh looking woman as its occupant. "Ms. Gentry, this is Miss Cam, the administrator at the Official University of Middle-Earth. She's here on a quick visit to discuss some of the crossover plans. Cam, this is one of our more able students at OFUA, Mara Gentry," the tone seemed to say that she was showing off to Miss Cam, but knowing Juno, Mara wouldn't be surprised. She was way too conceited to pass up an opportunity to gloat, even if it was about someone like Kari and Chelsea, the school's most infamous lusters, earning their fame in just two days after an unfortunate incident with the spice. (They tried to use massive amounts of spice to get the location of Leto III's bedroom
"Why isn't she at class?" Mara remained silent, she knew what happened if you answered a question that wasn't directed to you.pain.
"I do believe there was an argument that broke out between some of the teachers, am I correct?"
"Yes, between Alia and the Lady Jessica and Irulan."
"Yes, yes, as I expected."
"Excellent, Juno. You've handled them well," Miss Cam said in a superior tone. "Not even speaking out of turn." the last with a bit more awe in it. Mara thought quickly and decided that the benefits of saying the quote outweighed the penalties of saying it without being talked to.
"A beginning is a very delicate time." Juno's smile of triumph brightened just barely enough so that it wasn't offensive, but still obvious on her face.
"Do you not fear Juno or myself?" Miss Cam asked with a manner that said that Mara would have a hard time getting out of the hole she had dug herself into, but Mara had just the plan to get herself on to the pile of dirt she'd made herself when she dug that hole.
"I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration." Juno's face could have lit the entire room by itself by now it was so bright, but owing to the scowl Miss Cam's face had on it, the lighting remained the same. Everyone, by now, had learned of the rivalry between Miss Cam and Juno, which was why Miss Cam would not often by seen at OFUA or Juno at OFUM. Juno's contempt for magic and fantasy was well known throughout the school, which was why no Potterholic was safe at OFUA and Juno had pleaded with Paul that they could just do a tour of the major houses' planets instead of going to OFUM. No one really knew if Miss Cam had a problem with sci-fi or not, but Juno was just so adamant in her struggle against fantasy that it seemed impossible for any Lord of the Rings supporter to not go fight against her. Even the LOTR fanatics and Potterholics had joined together in a secret society against her just last night.
"You may go now, and I do think lunch is ready now in Mess Hall 3. Ta ta!" Mara quickly stepped outside the door as it shut just as fast as the door shut with a hiss. She ran out as fast as she could to the main hallway to head for the 3rd mess hall in the students quarters. Chani and Paul had come up with the great idea of giving the students riddles to figure out where each meal would be served to accelerate natural selection and only feed the bright students. Meg was in the midst of planning a black market to sell water rations (which were going to be reduced soon according to Harmony) and answers to the mess hall puzzles.
Mara stopped just short of the doors to the cafeteria as it suddenly struck her that it had only been a week since she was lying sprawled on her bed with Sara and Roxy discussing whether Josh Hartnett or Ben Affleck was cuter. 'All of this happened in one week,' she thought. Maybe it was the atmosphere of knowledge that was at OFUA; maybe it was the fact that the student building now reeked of spice since the escapade with Kari and Chelsea, and half the students were high all the time, or maybe it was simply that you could just get more things done when classes went from sunrise to sundown.
The doors flung open suddenly (they had a tendency to do that and knock students in their faces) and out burst Meg and Chad, one of the very few males the girls knew at OFUA. The staff members kept arguing (which had started long before the students had arrived) on whether to segregate the students by gender would be better or worse, so most of the girls didn't mix with the guys since you always ran the risk of winding up at Alia's mercy. They'd only seen Alia in action once or twice, but it was never pretty.
"Where were you? Please don't tell me you had trouble with today's riddle. I mean how easy was that!" Meg cried, which was true.
"I know, 'How many major houses are in the background of Paul and Irulan Atreides?' We figured it out in two seconds and made 20 bucks off of Marilyn," Chad added. Even though you couldn't use American money on Arrakis, people still used it as their main currency for the black market, which had started their second evening when it was discovered that sugar was not included in much of the food and Kari had a huge pile of candy in her closet. Mara made sure her personal stash of chocolate was kept secret.
"Sorry, I got lost in the hallways and accidentally stumbled upon Juno and get this, Miss Cam."
"Miss Cam?" Chad and Meg said in unison. "The infamous Miss Cam we have heard about nonstop since we got here?" said Chad.
Meg decided to do a halfway decent impression of Juno, "Come on, slackers, how are we ever going to beat OFUM with that work ethic? Are we going to reduce to the level of fantasy? That woman needs some Prozac and Tolkien.and fast." All three of them loved Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter, but they were all very careful not to vocalize this in front of Juno who would probably send you straight to the face dancers for that. No one knew why Juno hated OFUM, but they all had their theories starting from day 1.
Mara's was that she was bitter for having Miss Cam chosen over her for the job at OFUM (which would also explain the hatred of Miss Cam) and desperately tried to prove her school was better in an attempt to console herself. That sort of thing happened when you had too much time on your hands. In addition to working from sunrise to sunset (which included an hour and a half for homework), the students had all the time they couldn't sleep in their rooms since, as ironically as it sounds, it was too humid. The air locks trapped just about all the water in so the air circulation was terrible, which was especially bad for Chelsea and Kari.
One good thing, though, about being on Arrakis was that the pep pills that they let all the students have were wonderful. They would have been sold amongst the students, but no one was willing to give up theirs for cash. Mara was just thinking how if the One Ring had been in an OFUA students hands, all Sauron would have to do was offer them pep-pills and only realized until two late how she never should have combined the One Ring with Arrakeen pep-pills when the three Alias came toward her smiling happily.
Mara groaned as she got up. The sudden burst of Arrakeen light into the room caused by the shades violently lifting up at the touch of a button by Meg was a little too much for Mara in the morning.
"Good morning sunshine!" Meg said both cheerily and sarcastically at the same time; Mara had not a clue how. All she could do was grunt in response as she tried to get up, but quickly fell back on the bed again. Knowing only too well how sharp a face dancer's teeth could be, she wouldn't be surprised if "mini me" had torn muscle. Although all the students had learned to greatly fear the face dancers in one night a week ago, apparently Smiley had not learned enough. Unfortunately for her, Alia had decided to teach that lesson.
Shrieking could be heard bouncing of the walls of the corridor from the end closest to the main door and Mara's room. Smiley had apparently tried to seduce Duncan Idaho, which was not a good move. Well, actually, she had planned to seduce Duncan Idaho, and Paul had foreseen it and told Alia, which was not a good thing. After Alia smiled satisfactorily at the look of horror on Smiley's face, she turned and walked out to the large open doors that led outside.
Most of the students had learned to fear the face dancers, as well as Alia, already. If you got Paul mad you were in for it, but seeing as how everyone got chills up their spine when he walked into the room, or talked, or breathed even, he wasn't much of a problem. Alia on the other hand was a totally different matter. Most of the students had by now learned not to trust anything that wasn't native, which was good seeing as how Mara had overheard Chani happily informing Paul that pretty soon if the brought in the Revered Mother Helen Gaius Mohaim she would probably be tackled to death by the entire student body. The students had formed a coalition against the Face Dancers, and although some people were still fooled by Matt Damon walking around with his shirt half undone, most of them just unified and tackled the Face Dancer if they ever saw Gimli strutting around the halls.
Unfortunately, the Face Dancers got smarter too; they loved taking the forms of characters from Dune now to trick the students. Hufflepuff was the first to find out when she decided to wear Potter-style glasses, a Hogwarts uniform, and a magic-marker lightning bolt scar on her forehead to their Arrakeen ecology lesson and ran into Leto III who was usually mild- mannered. He then proceeded to.they all swore never to breath a word of what happened to Hufflepuff to spare her the shame.
The first real scare came last night, though, when it was announced that when Alia was dislodging a crysknife from Ally's elbow (it was Alia's doing that put it there), she had "accidentally" mistaken a gom jabbar for the painkiller, and that Ally was now in a coma in the hospital wing of Lecture Hall 3. (It had been deadly only to animals, and Alia had used Ally as a test subject on the effects of animal instincts in teenage girls.) There was one in all of the lecture halls (two in Lecture Hall 1) and three in the main dormitories. Everyone was even more cautious of Alia after that and to the students' horror and the Face Dancer's delight, they promptly took on the form of Alia and made the students practically jump out of their skins upon sight of them.
After her first two classes, which are always great since there is never a set schedule at OFUA. You just have to show up in whatever lecture hall is assigned for that half of the day with all of your books (not just the ones for the classes in that lecture hall since sometimes the teachers decided to switch on you at the last minute) and wait for the teacher to show up, which usually took a half an hour so that the students could stand up for 30 minutes holding their entire library of school books. Harmony had insisted that they have the finest (and heaviest) books and that microfilms should not be allowed. Also to the students dismay and the teachers' delight, the only set times were for meals, so you could make your class as long or as short as you wanted. How many classes you had a day depended on how much homework they felt like shoving onto you; how long those classes were depended on how boring or torturous the class was.
Kynes had decided to end their ecology lesson early, so that they could hurry off to Training Room 6 off the third corridor on the right from the main hallway in Lecture Hall 3 (that was the sort of thing they expected you to remember at OFUA) for a quick lesson in knife-fighting with Duncan Idaho and Gurney and of course, overseen by Thufir Hawat. Knife-fighting was always boring since it only consisted of being yelled at for holding the knife the wrong way and then Stilgar coming in and commenting how they should never be allowed to how their own crysknife with that kind of block or parry.
They were supposed to be in their Bene Gesserit class, which was taught by the Lady Jessica and Irulan (to the students' great relief since Irulan was the kindest teacher there and always had at least a little sympathy for the students if they had some intelligence) but had been cancelled do to the fact that Alia insisted on teaching too, but kept on losing control over the Baron Vladimir Harkonnen (who had not returned to his body like some of the others since he had was in a way still alive) and kept shouting things like "Bah, Bene Gesserit witches!" It had taken both Jessica and Irulan to drag her to Paul to continue the argument and since this was always a source of interest to the teachers, classes had been cancelled until the end of lunch.
Mara was walking down the fourth corridor on the left off of the second corridor on the right from the main hallway of the second story of Lecture Hall 1 (the good part about remembering all the pathways was that you rarely got lost, well, if you managed to remember it all), which was fine since it wasn't forbidden. In fact, it was promoted considering you were more likely to do something deserving a punishment if you did that.
"A week? A week?! How did you manage to make your students act that well behaved in a week?! Only one minor lusting incident and not a single stampede! I am amazed Juno, how do you do it?" Mara heard a voice call out behind the door on her right. She didn't recognize the voice and by now all the students knew who all the teachers were. If you didn't they got very mad or upset which was not a good thing.
"Face dancers," she heard Juno respond, and then to her horror she heard her say, "Ah, yes, Ms. Gentry, please come in, I would like you to meet someone." The door slid open to reveal Juno sitting in a plush lounge chair next to a small, polished mahogany table with across from a similar chair with a harsh looking woman as its occupant. "Ms. Gentry, this is Miss Cam, the administrator at the Official University of Middle-Earth. She's here on a quick visit to discuss some of the crossover plans. Cam, this is one of our more able students at OFUA, Mara Gentry," the tone seemed to say that she was showing off to Miss Cam, but knowing Juno, Mara wouldn't be surprised. She was way too conceited to pass up an opportunity to gloat, even if it was about someone like Kari and Chelsea, the school's most infamous lusters, earning their fame in just two days after an unfortunate incident with the spice. (They tried to use massive amounts of spice to get the location of Leto III's bedroom
"Why isn't she at class?" Mara remained silent, she knew what happened if you answered a question that wasn't directed to you.pain.
"I do believe there was an argument that broke out between some of the teachers, am I correct?"
"Yes, between Alia and the Lady Jessica and Irulan."
"Yes, yes, as I expected."
"Excellent, Juno. You've handled them well," Miss Cam said in a superior tone. "Not even speaking out of turn." the last with a bit more awe in it. Mara thought quickly and decided that the benefits of saying the quote outweighed the penalties of saying it without being talked to.
"A beginning is a very delicate time." Juno's smile of triumph brightened just barely enough so that it wasn't offensive, but still obvious on her face.
"Do you not fear Juno or myself?" Miss Cam asked with a manner that said that Mara would have a hard time getting out of the hole she had dug herself into, but Mara had just the plan to get herself on to the pile of dirt she'd made herself when she dug that hole.
"I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration." Juno's face could have lit the entire room by itself by now it was so bright, but owing to the scowl Miss Cam's face had on it, the lighting remained the same. Everyone, by now, had learned of the rivalry between Miss Cam and Juno, which was why Miss Cam would not often by seen at OFUA or Juno at OFUM. Juno's contempt for magic and fantasy was well known throughout the school, which was why no Potterholic was safe at OFUA and Juno had pleaded with Paul that they could just do a tour of the major houses' planets instead of going to OFUM. No one really knew if Miss Cam had a problem with sci-fi or not, but Juno was just so adamant in her struggle against fantasy that it seemed impossible for any Lord of the Rings supporter to not go fight against her. Even the LOTR fanatics and Potterholics had joined together in a secret society against her just last night.
"You may go now, and I do think lunch is ready now in Mess Hall 3. Ta ta!" Mara quickly stepped outside the door as it shut just as fast as the door shut with a hiss. She ran out as fast as she could to the main hallway to head for the 3rd mess hall in the students quarters. Chani and Paul had come up with the great idea of giving the students riddles to figure out where each meal would be served to accelerate natural selection and only feed the bright students. Meg was in the midst of planning a black market to sell water rations (which were going to be reduced soon according to Harmony) and answers to the mess hall puzzles.
Mara stopped just short of the doors to the cafeteria as it suddenly struck her that it had only been a week since she was lying sprawled on her bed with Sara and Roxy discussing whether Josh Hartnett or Ben Affleck was cuter. 'All of this happened in one week,' she thought. Maybe it was the atmosphere of knowledge that was at OFUA; maybe it was the fact that the student building now reeked of spice since the escapade with Kari and Chelsea, and half the students were high all the time, or maybe it was simply that you could just get more things done when classes went from sunrise to sundown.
The doors flung open suddenly (they had a tendency to do that and knock students in their faces) and out burst Meg and Chad, one of the very few males the girls knew at OFUA. The staff members kept arguing (which had started long before the students had arrived) on whether to segregate the students by gender would be better or worse, so most of the girls didn't mix with the guys since you always ran the risk of winding up at Alia's mercy. They'd only seen Alia in action once or twice, but it was never pretty.
"Where were you? Please don't tell me you had trouble with today's riddle. I mean how easy was that!" Meg cried, which was true.
"I know, 'How many major houses are in the background of Paul and Irulan Atreides?' We figured it out in two seconds and made 20 bucks off of Marilyn," Chad added. Even though you couldn't use American money on Arrakis, people still used it as their main currency for the black market, which had started their second evening when it was discovered that sugar was not included in much of the food and Kari had a huge pile of candy in her closet. Mara made sure her personal stash of chocolate was kept secret.
"Sorry, I got lost in the hallways and accidentally stumbled upon Juno and get this, Miss Cam."
"Miss Cam?" Chad and Meg said in unison. "The infamous Miss Cam we have heard about nonstop since we got here?" said Chad.
Meg decided to do a halfway decent impression of Juno, "Come on, slackers, how are we ever going to beat OFUM with that work ethic? Are we going to reduce to the level of fantasy? That woman needs some Prozac and Tolkien.and fast." All three of them loved Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter, but they were all very careful not to vocalize this in front of Juno who would probably send you straight to the face dancers for that. No one knew why Juno hated OFUM, but they all had their theories starting from day 1.
Mara's was that she was bitter for having Miss Cam chosen over her for the job at OFUM (which would also explain the hatred of Miss Cam) and desperately tried to prove her school was better in an attempt to console herself. That sort of thing happened when you had too much time on your hands. In addition to working from sunrise to sunset (which included an hour and a half for homework), the students had all the time they couldn't sleep in their rooms since, as ironically as it sounds, it was too humid. The air locks trapped just about all the water in so the air circulation was terrible, which was especially bad for Chelsea and Kari.
One good thing, though, about being on Arrakis was that the pep pills that they let all the students have were wonderful. They would have been sold amongst the students, but no one was willing to give up theirs for cash. Mara was just thinking how if the One Ring had been in an OFUA students hands, all Sauron would have to do was offer them pep-pills and only realized until two late how she never should have combined the One Ring with Arrakeen pep-pills when the three Alias came toward her smiling happily.