March 20th, 2987

Weather: Nicely overcast Mood: Awed Music: Grateful Dead - Dark Star (version off Live/Dead)

Sup Diary.

So, like, a lot has happened since I've had time to write anything down. This is gonna be a long one.

I've been to the Lyceum campus twice already. It's humping huge. They have this little fortified city set up in a seldom-used mountain pass about ten miles from Wizard City. It's protected by four huge stone towers with battlements and everything, and a circling wall that one could comfortably land small airplanes on top of. Inside, it's like a small city, complete with parks, city squares and shops. There's libraries and buildings for taking classes in, and a church like the one where... where...

Never mind that. So the first time I went to the campus, it was for information. This was about seven days ago. I went by a rented magic carpet since I was still too exhausted to fly. I went early in the morning so I didn't have to worry about losing my parasol, but it was lucky, because they put me through hell before letting me see a single person who could answer a damned direct question.

So eventually, after seeing all these bureaucrats that would put Dad's staff to shame, I was taken to see the chancellor. Now here's a man who would put Dad to shame. The chancellor is an enormous, bald mutant man who sits behind a desk in the exact center of a perfectly round office, like one of those machines that talks to a satellite or something, the kind that has to be in the right place down to the millimeter or they won't work. He wears a suit that looks like it cost a thousand pieces of silver, and he eats peanuts. He eats them constantly from a little crystal bowl without, like, dropping a single crumb. And he signs important documents without reading them. No, literally, from everything I've seen and heard, that's all he does.

And this was the guy who could answer all my questions? Of course not, but he was apparently the only person who could refer me and my questions to the "vice-provost," whom I'd already seen! Not only that, but he took a fripping hour to stop with his damn rambling about the economy and tell I needed to see the vice-provost. By this time, the sun was beginning to show behind the wall in the window behind him, and I was nervous that it'd get bright in there and I'd have to excuse myself.

Finally, he said, in a voice like tectonic plates, "well, Ms. Balladeer, hum, dee dee dum, yeeeeees, what I'd really think would be key is if you took a note from me down to the vice-provost and referred these specialized questions, that you, hemmm, haaaave, to him. As you understand," he said, stretching every word out to the breaking point, "my time is raaaather, mmmmm, valuable."

And then he took five more minutes of mumbling about the economy to actually get around to scrawling the note down on a piece of paper. What he handed me said "steve just deal with this won't you. signed, CHARLIE."

And I thought my father had invented bureaucracy...

I got out of the office just before the sun became too much, and made my way back to the vice-provost's office. I'd been in about an hour before, for five minutes because I needed him to refer me to the scholarship office. Like, they use the word "refer" in such a fucking strange way here. As far as I can tell, it means, like, "tell me to go to a place," only I can't go to the place if the wrong person tells me at the wrong time.

I hadn't been able to pay much attention to my surroundings during that mess of paperwork and referrals, so when I entered his office the second time, it might as well have been the first. I recognized it, I recognized him, but more like I'd passed the office while walking down the hallway.

He was one of those standard mutant foxes that evolved in the Atlanta radiation zone. These people, I can get along with perfectly. They're all sad, solitary animals who spend most of their life scavenging for food, shelter and company. Yeah, they're basically my spirit animal.

The vice-provost sat in a cramped windowless office, at a low, scarred-up desk. He was using a pre-war typewriter that looked to be held together with bandage tape, rubber bands and shoelaces. Scattered everywhere across the desktop were books, most of them about a thousand years old. Some were falling apart in plastic baggies, and some were in stacks or between marble bookends, but five or six were lying open in a loose semi-circle around the fox, and he was always pausing to look at one or the other, then nodding and typing in short bursts.

As I came in, he looked up and gave me that half-hearted but sincere smile that all foxes give. I very apologetically showed him the note.

So finally, there was someone sensible to talk to. I explained to him that I was a Candy Kingdom citizen (which felt weird as fuck), and that there was supposed to be money for me to go to college. He knew what I was talking about immediately and said it wouldn't be a problem. He told me several things about the test I was going to have to take. He made it sound bad, but... not-bad at the same time? Like, it was going to be hard, but in a good way?

"But now that you're here," the fox said, "it'd be a shame for you to leave until you've met some of the faculty you'll be studying under. Do let me... um... do let me show you around."

"But you're working on something," I said.

"Oh, nonsense. It's just a little project of mine. I'm translating Faust into Inglish. Do you know Faust, Ms. Abadeer?"

"I think I've heard the name somewhere."

"Well, take my class in the fall and you'll learn all about it. Anyways, I'm Dr. Steve Foxham, but you can, em, call me Fox for the time being. I'm the VP, Chair of the Inglish Department, Bursar, Dean of Students, and anything else Charlie tells me to do these days. God, I'm gunning for that tenure..."

Foxham stood up, and read a few lines from the sheet on his typewriter. I think it was something like "And if I say to the transitive moment, 'stay! You are so beautiful!' then you can clap me in irons, for I will gladly be damned."

"Fox, I think I'm going to take your class," I said, without thinking.

He smiled again, and showed me out into the hallway. "Well, if you're interested in the liberal arts, let's go to the Arts and Letters Building."

Outside, we walked across the square. It was a bright morning, and I had to put up my parasol, but it wasn't unpleasant. Birds were singing in the row of ancient linden trees that lined the edges of the square, and from somewhere I heard a musical jangle that sounded like fencing practice. Like the old days, I thought.

I noticed that Foxham was squinting in the light.

"Night creatures for life, am I right, prof?"

He smiled. "Night creatures... Which is funny, because foxes are actually twilight animals."

"Me too! People don't know that's a thing. They think you're either nocturnal or wossname... diurnal."

"Crepuscular, that's what we are," he said, as we reached a tall brick building opposite the administration offices."

Inside, he took me up to the third floor and introduced me to some of the teachers. There was a little, fuller-bodied mutant woman, dressed in all black, who seemingly lived in her office, which was dark, dank and full of literal freaking bats. She was introduced to me as Ms. Donovan, some kind of teacher.

"So what exactly do you teach?" I asked.

She leaned forward over her desk and in the most cliche Transylvanian accent I've ever heard, even from myself, she said "poetrrrry." Then she threw her head back and gave a surprisingly convincing maniacal laugh, which escalated and gave no sign of stopping while Foxham and I excused ourselves.

"Foxham, ughh, that makes me mad!" I said in a low growl, when we were out of earshot of her door. "She's pretending to be a vampire! She's pretending to be me!"

"Ehh, let her..." he said. "Or be flattered. It's not like it makes you any less what you are."

I let it go after that, but it still pisses me...

Next was the assistant chair of the Inglish Department, Dr. Ingland. A bit on the nose? He was some kind of metal robot, and, like, I guess he was programmed to be as Inglish as possible? He had an Inglish flag painted on his chest, a portrait of some kinda Inglish Queen on the wall, and in the first ten seconds, he'd called Foxham "old bean," said "pip-pip" twice, and offered me tea. Which, you know, being sorta civilized sometimes, I accepted. I don't metabolize tea well, but I like the taste and the caffeine gives me twice the jolt, probably because I don't have a liver or some junk like that.

With a metal finger, Dr. Ingland pushed a button, and a butler robot appeared instantly from a side door with a tray with a teapot and stuff on it. I shit you not, he had a butler robot. They didn't look like Bonnie's robots or those Mo things, because they were less box-shaped and more... I dunno, like suits of armor, with the funny articulated joints covered by overlapping panels?

Dr. Ingland told me about some of his literature classes, talking extremely fast in a fake Inglish accent, and I barely had time to finish my tea before Foxham apologized to Ingland and continued the tour.

As we walked down the hall, a big bottle-rocket flew suddenly out of a half-opened office door with a hiss. Foxham ran the opposite way on all fours, so fast that he was around the corner before I could blink. The rocket bounced around and then went off with an impressive bang.

I knocked on the door.

"Come in, come in!"

Inside, in the dim, cramped office, heavy white smoke was still pouring out of the mouth of the old glass Cola bottle in the jelly mutant's hands. He was translucent green, about four feet tall, and grinning from ear to nonexistant ear.

So I said "Hey, doc, you got a valuable artifact from a thousand years ago, from, like, one of the greatest civilizations ever, and you launch fireworks from it?"

And he just smiled even more somehow and said "yah."

"Coool," I said. I was genuinely impressed.

"So while I'm waiting for Foxham to come back, what do you teach?"

"Classical languages. Everyone takes my Doich class. They all say it's quote, totally rad, unquote. Dunno why," he said. He dropped a smoke bomb, and when the smoke cleared he was sitting in his chair, with his pseudopods or whatever up on the desk.

"So tell me about Doich-if you don't mind, I mean."

"Es ist cooooooool!" he said. "Wenn Sie es sprechen würden, wären Sie auch cool!"

"Kaywhat."

"I said it's really cool and if you spoke it, you'd be cool too!":

"Oh, I been cool. I'll remember it, though," I said, beginning to excuse myself because Foxham had just shown up at the door.

Foxham looked at him funny for a minute. The green man seemed to relish the attention.

So the tour went on. I met about a dozen other professor, but I can't get those ones out of my head. They seem like the kind of people I used to hang with before, like, I got square. Well, maybe I'll take their classes and maybe I won't. I still haven't decided.

A few days later I was back on campus for the test. Oh, the test. I've got to leave now because I have to go to something called orientation or orienteering, forget which, but I'll write about the test when I get back. Later, diary. *She gone.*