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Walking through the campus gates, Ethan Mercer had a clearer mental picture of what was waiting for him.
The conversation in the noodle restaurant had been an unexpected gift. He'd gone in expecting a polite faculty audience curious about a young guest lecturer. He was now walking into a building where, by all indications, a meaningful portion of the senior faculty was actively annoyed at his presence and inclined to push back.
He stopped on the path between two stately stone buildings, took out his phone, and dialed.
"Hello, Dean Sutton."
On the other end of the line, Vance Sutton, Dean of the Hartwell University School of Physics, paused a beat to identify the unknown caller. Then his voice climbed several octaves of professional excitement.
"Professor Mercer."
"It's me, Dean Sutton."
"Welcome, welcome to Hartwell. We're honored. Are you on campus? Where are you?"
In the background, Ethan could hear the muffled hum of multiple voices. A meeting. Dean Sutton was in some kind of departmental gathering, and based on the audio quality, the meeting was taking place in a fairly large room with a number of participants.
"I'm on campus, Dean. Don't let me interrupt. I came in early. I'll wander around and find the lecture hall on my own."
"Wander around — Professor Mercer, I am in the meeting that is literally about you. The senior faculty of the school are gathered to coordinate logistics for your visit. If you can spare the time, I'd love for you to join us. It would be the perfect opportunity for you to meet the people you'll be working alongside."
Ethan's first instinct was to politely decline. Walking into a meeting full of senior physicists who were predisposed to hate him was not, on the surface, a great way to spend the hour before a high-stakes lecture.
His second instinct caught up about a half-second later.
The students in the noodle restaurant had been parroting something. Their anger hadn't come from nowhere. Someone in the faculty had been venting about the visiting lecturer, and the venting had filtered down to undergraduate gossip. If he didn't address that resentment directly, he was going to walk into a lecture hall full of students primed to dismiss him before he opened his mouth.
Better to neutralize the problem at the source.
"That's very kind of you, Dean. I'd be glad to attend."
Sutton, who had been worried Ethan would refuse, was visibly relieved through the phone.
"Wonderful. I'll send someone to escort you. Stay where you are."
The line went dead.
-----
The Physics Building was a five-story structure of weathered limestone and modern glass annexes, sitting at the center of the Hartwell campus like the cornerstone it was. The third-floor conference room was, the staff member who escorted Ethan informed him, the largest meeting space the department had — large enough to seat the entire senior faculty for emergency or ceremonial occasions.
Today, every chair around the long oak table was filled.
Twelve senior professors. The dean. Two department heads. A handful of administrative officers. Every face in the room turned toward the door as the staff member opened it.
Ethan stepped through.
The reaction was instant and uniform.
A dozen pairs of eyes widened. A dozen jaws — well, six or seven jaws, the older professors had better facial discipline than the younger ones — went slack. The polite, focused expression of a faculty meeting transitioned, in the space of a single heartbeat, into the dazed, evaluating stare of a roomful of academics trying to reconcile an unexpected reality.
The honored guest was, apparently, a teenager.
Even Dean Sutton, who had known exactly who was coming, found himself momentarily disoriented. He'd seen Ethan's face dozens of times on national broadcasts. He'd watched the press conference replay on his office monitor more than once. He had thought, in advance, that he had a reasonable mental model of what Ethan Mercer looked like.
Apparently the camera had been adding a few years.
The young man standing in the doorway looked closer to sixteen than to twenty. The custom-tailored suit, the precision haircut, the calm posture — all of it made him look professionally polished, but it could not change the fundamental fact that his face had not yet finished settling into its adult bone structure.
This was a teenager. Hartwell University had moved heaven and earth, called in favors from cabinet-level officials, paid for the personal involvement of national academicians, and arranged a guest lecture for a teenager.
Sutton recovered first.
"Professor Mercer. I almost didn't recognize you. The new look suits you."
Ethan smiled, the same composed half-smile J.A.R.V.I.S. had simulated for him during dressing.
"I figured I should put in some effort. It's not every day I get invited to lecture at Hartwell."
The line was disarmingly modest. Sutton, hearing it, felt a small wave of relief wash through his chest. He had, in his pre-meeting briefing earlier, picked up signals that some of the senior faculty were gearing up to push back on the appointment. Ethan's opening — humble, respectful, properly framed — was the perfect tone to defuse hostility before it escalated.
It worked on Sutton.
It did not work on Professor Sherman Greaves.
-----
Sherman Greaves had been Head of the Physics Department for eleven years. Before that, he'd been a senior research physicist at a national laboratory for nineteen years. Before that, he'd been one of the youngest full professors in the history of the institution that had hired him. He was sixty-three years old, had a chest of greying hair he was still proud of, and considered himself one of the principled defenders of academic standards in an age of declining rigor.
He had been told, two weeks ago, that the department was bringing in a guest lecturer.
He had been told this guest lecturer was prestigious enough that the dean had personally lobbied for the appointment.
He had been told the guest lecturer would only commit to one or two lectures per academic year.
He had been told this with the implicit expectation that he, Sherman Greaves, Head of the Physics Department, would simply accept the arrangement and proceed with logistics.
Sherman Greaves did not appreciate being managed.
Sherman Greaves did not appreciate the implication that the department's most senior leader could be presented with a fait accompli rather than consulted.
And Sherman Greaves, looking at the teenager who had just walked into the conference room — the teenager who, despite his polished appearance, was clearly young enough to be his graduate student's grandson — felt his already considerable annoyance crystallize into something sharper.
He did not let Ethan finish his second sentence.
"Dean Sutton."
Greaves's voice cut through the room. Calm. Authoritative. The voice of a man who had spent thirty years presiding over committees and was completely unintimidated by the fact that the subject of his complaint was standing six feet away.
"I will not pull rank in this room. But I cannot, in good conscience, accept this appointment as it has been proposed."
The dean's face went carefully blank.
The other senior professors, several of whom had been bottling up their own complaints, seized the opening that Greaves had just provided.
"I agree," said Professor Westley, sixty-eight, three published textbooks. "I'd like the dean to reconsider this."
"The age issue alone is disqualifying," added Professor Brennan, sixty-one, twice-recipient of the Republic's National Science Prize. "He's young enough to be enrolled here as an undergraduate. We don't have a precedent for appointing a faculty member who could be sitting in our intro classes."
"I understand the optics of the situation," said Professor Hollister, the most senior physics theorist in the department, "but a position at the Hartwell School of Physics is not a celebrity placement. It is a position of considerable academic responsibility. We owe it to ourselves and our students to be careful about how it's filled."
"Honorary Professor Hargrove's grandnephew Daniel," another professor offered, "has been considering returning to Valoria after his work in the Meridian Commonwealth. He's at the right career stage. He has the credentials. I'd suggest the position would be better placed with him."
"That's a serious suggestion," Brennan agreed. "Daniel Hargrove has produced excellent work abroad. Bringing him back would be a coup for the department."
The proposals built. Within ninety seconds, the conversation had turned from Ethan's appointment to alternative candidates, and Ethan, standing near the door, was being talked over as if he were a piece of furniture being relocated to a different office.
Sutton listened with the patient expression of a man who had anticipated exactly this reaction.
He let it run its course. He did not interrupt. He did not defend. He waited, quite deliberately, for the senior faculty to fully express their objections before responding.
When the conversation finally lulled, Sutton spoke.
"My decision is not subject to revision."
Twelve heads turned toward him.
"I will, however, ask all of you to reserve final judgment until after the new appointee has introduced himself. I think the source of your reservations will be addressed once the introduction is complete."
He glanced at Ethan with a small, almost imperceptible smile.
The smile was a tell.
A few of the sharper professors caught it. Professor Hollister's eyes narrowed. Professor Brennan paused mid-thought. Sutton was clearly amused by something. The dean of one of the most prestigious physics faculties in the Republic did not allow himself to be amused at faculty meetings unless he had the upper hand in a way the rest of the room had not yet figured out.
Professor Hollister, who had spent forty years reading academic politics, leaned forward slightly.
Sutton turned his attention to Ethan and gestured politely toward the floor.
"Professor Mercer. Please."
Ethan, who had been spaced out for the last thirty seconds idly observing the dynamics of the room, snapped back to attention.
He stepped forward.
He had a brief, nasty internal debate about how much to disclose. He could, if he wanted to, immediately reveal his identity. Hello, I'm the inventor of nuclear fusion, the designer of Bumblebee, the developer of the super-soldier serum. That would end the resistance instantly. The room would fold.
But Ethan, who had been paying more attention to the social dynamics of the room than he'd let on, had identified Greaves and the other senior dissenters. They were the ones who'd been pushing the "arrogant guest lecturer" narrative. They were the source of the gossip that had reached the students.
If he simply revealed his identity now, they would back down. They would have to. But the resentment would not be eliminated, only suppressed. The next time they had a chance to undermine him, they would. And every lecture he gave at Hartwell for the rest of his career would have a small, simmering faction of senior faculty looking for opportunities to question his credibility.
The better play was to make them reach the conclusion themselves.
He cleared his throat, stepped to the front of the table, and gave the most minimal self-introduction possible.
"Hello, professors, deans, and senior colleagues. It's an honor to be working alongside you in the coming period."
He smiled politely.
"My name is Ethan Mercer. It's a fairly common name. I look forward to your guidance."
Silence.
Then it broke.
"That's your self-introduction?" Greaves's voice was loud enough to make the table shake. "You give your name? At the introductory meeting where you're being introduced to a department of senior physicists at the Republic's premier physics faculty?"
"Is this a joke?" Westley, beside him, was equally appalled. "You can't even be bothered to list your credentials?"
"What kind of arrogance is this?"
"This is precisely what I was concerned about. This is the exact attitude that should disqualify him from the position."
"He has not made a single attempt to address his qualifications. Is this how a guest lecturer addresses a peer faculty? With a name?"
The condemnation rolled. Three minutes. Five. The professors took turns expressing their fresh outrage, and Ethan, standing politely at the front of the room with his hands folded, said absolutely nothing.
He was, internally, smiling.
Eventually, the storm exhausted itself. The professors, having vented, looked toward Dean Sutton, expecting him to formally rescind the appointment.
Sutton was still smiling.
The expression had grown, over the course of the last five minutes, from an amused smile to something close to a grin.
A few of the more politically aware professors began to feel a small, cold suspicion settle into their stomachs.
Professor Hollister, who had been silent during the latest round, frowned. He repeated the name to himself under his breath.
"Ethan Mercer."
"Ethan Mercer."
He looked at the young man at the front of the room. At the well-cut suit. At the precise haircut. At the composure that had, he now realized, been almost unnatural for a teenager facing down a hostile faculty meeting.
"…wait."
"Why does that name sound so familiar?"