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The recognition cascaded through the room.
"I remember now. The teenager who built the powered armor, the serum, the Transformers… he was named Mercer."
"You're right. Ethan Mercer."
"Of course it's him. Who else could the President, the Dean, and Hargrove personally lobby for? It's not like there's a deep bench of national-treasure-tier physicists his age."
"I was wondering why Sutton would entertain those terms. If it were anyone else, I'd be furious."
"It's not anyone else."
The hostility didn't so much fade as collapse. The senior faculty who, ninety seconds ago, had been taking turns proposing alternative candidates for the position now sat in their chairs reorganizing their understanding of the meeting.
There were many distinguished physicists in the room. Several professors who had been considered for national academician status. Two who had served on international peer review committees for decades. The intellectual horsepower around the table was extraordinary by any measure.
There was, however, no Nobel laureate.
There was no internationally recognized inventor of foundational technology.
There was no person at this table whose work had, on its own, been credited with realigning the strategic posture of the Republic.
The teenager in the well-cut suit standing at the front of the room had, by the age of eighteen, achieved all three.
If the senior faculty pressed forward with their objections now, they would be opposing the appointment of the most accomplished physicist their department had ever hired, on the grounds that he was too young.
It would be career suicide.
The discussion did continue, but the discussions were now about logistics rather than approval. Who would handle his administrative onboarding. How the lecture schedule would be coordinated around his other commitments. Whether his appointment would carry an honorary chair designation.
The objection train had, in the space of a minute and a half, become a coronation.
What the senior faculty did not know was that the appointment was about to look even better in retrospect. Ethan, having recently acquired the Stark Element synthesis technology, was now positioned to make significant contributions in materials chemistry. The next year was going to involve him producing, at minimum, work in physics, applied chemistry, and possibly biology. The senior faculty, looking at his age and accomplishments, had been thinking he might be qualified for a future Nobel Prize.
In reality, they were probably underestimating him by a factor of three.
The Nobel Committee, over the next eighteen months, was going to receive the kind of nominations that triggered emergency meetings.
-----
In the small silence that followed the cascade of recognition, Sherman Greaves cleared his throat.
"I still object to the appointment."
The room turned toward him.
The professor seated next to Greaves discreetly tugged on his sleeve under the table. The expression that accompanied the tug could be roughly translated as: Sherman. For the love of God. Stop talking.
Greaves did not stop talking.
"Don't misunderstand. I have no doubt about Professor Mercer's professional credentials. The body of work speaks for itself. I'm not contesting his ability."
He folded his hands on the table.
"But teaching and research are not the same discipline. Research demands depth and originality. Teaching demands consistency, presence, and a willingness to engage with students across an extended commitment."
"With only one or two lectures per academic year, regardless of the brilliance of those lectures, the students will not be able to integrate his teaching into a coherent curriculum. The format itself is incompatible with how undergraduate education works."
The objection had a different texture from the earlier complaints. Greaves had retreated from his original position — this teenager is unqualified — to a more defensible one — the structure of the appointment is pedagogically problematic. It was the move of a man who could feel public sentiment shifting against him and was scrambling to find a critique that would survive scrutiny.
It was also a legitimate point. Several of the other senior faculty, hearing it, nodded.
Sutton, at the head of the table, raised his hand for a moment of patience. Then he turned to Ethan.
"Professor Mercer. Would you like to respond?"
Ethan stepped forward.
"Professor Greaves. Thank you for the question."
He had been thinking about this exact concern for the last forty minutes. He had, in fact, been thinking about it since Hargrove first raised the teaching commitment in the noodle restaurant. The pedagogical problem with infrequent lectures was real.
"You're correct that one or two lectures a year cannot replace the consistency of a full-time professor. I'm not under any illusion that my appointment substitutes for proper instruction."
He paused.
"But I would gently push back on the framing. My role isn't to be the students' primary instructor. My role is to provide them with exposure they cannot get from any other source. There are concepts and design principles I work with that don't yet exist in the public literature. There are research directions that are years ahead of what's being taught in this department. When I lecture, the students don't get a textbook chapter. They get to be in the room with someone working at the frontier."
He glanced at Greaves.
"That's not the foundation of a curriculum. It's a supplement. And I'd argue a meaningful one."
Greaves's jaw worked. He didn't, immediately, have a counter.
The other senior faculty were looking at Ethan with refreshed interest. The response had been thoughtful. Articulate. Not the response of an arrogant teenager. The response of someone who had genuinely considered the role and understood what he was offering.
Several professors began to nod. Slowly at first, then with more conviction.
Sutton smiled.
"I think that addresses Professor Greaves's concern adequately." He stood up, walked around the table, and extended his hand to Ethan. "Professor Mercer. The Hartwell School of Physics formally welcomes you."
Ethan shook his hand.
"It's my honor, Dean Sutton."
The senior faculty applauded politely. Greaves applauded too, after a brief delay. He was a proud man. He had, in fairness, lost the argument cleanly.
The meeting adjourned.
-----
Three classrooms down the hall, a hundred and forty undergraduate students were getting impatient.
The lecture had been scheduled to start at fourteen hundred. It was now fourteen-eighteen. The students had been waiting for eighteen minutes, and student patience for a guest lecturer who had already developed a reputation for putting on airs was not generous.
Helena Marsh — the taller of the two young women from the noodle restaurant — was sitting in the third row with her arms crossed, doing nothing to conceal her irritation.
"Eighteen minutes late. Eighteen. The most sought-after teacher of the year cannot be bothered to walk into a room on time."
Lucas Bray — the male student who had so generously paid for a stranger's lunch and lost two hundred marks in the process — leaned over from her left. He had not yet recovered from the bill incident, but he was determined to recover his standing in Helena's eyes by being attentive and supportive.
"Helena, what are you scrolling through?"
Helena, who was looking at her phone, instinctively turned it slightly away from him.
She had been refreshing the news feed for the last twenty minutes. The most recent set of headlines was, as expected, dominated by Ethan Mercer. The completion of the Southern Sea reactor. The viral video of him eating five servings of pork rice in Ashford City. The official registration of New Future Technology Energy Co., Ltd.
Lucas's eyes caught the screen before she could fully turn it away.
"Are you reading about Ethan Mercer?"
His voice had a slightly delighted, slightly teasing edge.
"Are you a fan?"
Helena's face flushed red.
"What's wrong with being a fan of his work?"
"Oh, I'm not criticizing! I'm just surprised. You always say you don't follow celebrities."
"He's not a celebrity, he's a physicist."
"He's the most photographed physicist in the country."
"That's the country's fault, not his."
Several students in the front row, who had been eavesdropping shamelessly, turned around with grins.
"Helena Marsh? Fan of Ethan Mercer? I never thought I'd see the day."
"There's nothing wrong with admiring brilliant work."
"I'm one of his earliest fans, actually."
The whole row joined in. Helena's face went redder.
Daria Pierce — Helena's friend from the noodle restaurant, a soft-featured young woman with the warmth of someone who'd never met a stranger she didn't like — chimed in with her characteristic warmth.
"Mercer is genuinely impressive, though. He's only a couple of years younger than us, and he's already produced more world-changing work than most physicists do in a lifetime."
Lucas, sensing he could redirect the conversation by being seen as supportive, nodded vigorously.
"There's a professor who taught our intro course last semester who said it. With the technology Mercer's already produced, in fifty years the Republic of Valoria has a real shot at being the world's leading scientific power."
Daria's eyebrows lifted.
"A Hartwell professor said that?"
It mattered. The Hartwell physics faculty were not given to hyperbole. They graded papers harshly. They gave faint praise. When a Hartwell professor made a public statement that elevated a young researcher to that level of national-significance projection, the statement carried real weight.
"He really said that?"
"He did. He was quite emphatic about it."
Helena's eyes were shining now.
"That's exactly what I think. Mercer can do things that look impossible until he proves they're not. He's not just a clever inventor. He's a paradigm shifter."
The conversation rippled outward. Within five minutes, half the lecture hall was discussing Ethan Mercer's body of work, and the impatience that had been building over the eighteen-minute delay was, at least temporarily, replaced by the warm collective enthusiasm of a fanbase debating its favorite topic.
This, of course, lasted approximately seven more minutes.
By minute twenty-five of the delay, the conversation had cooled and the impatience had returned, sharper than before.
"What is taking him so long?"
"Maybe he wants us to wait. Make sure we feel his importance."
"That's exactly the kind of behavior I was complaining about earlier."
"You said you were a fan."
"I'm a fan of his work. Not his attitude."
Several students stood up, gathered their bags, and made for the door.
"At worst I'll just self-study. He's not the only physicist in the world."
"Same. If he can't be bothered to show up on time, neither can I."
Before they reached the door, the students at the front of the room spotted movement in the hallway.
"They're coming. Look."
"Holy — is that Dean Sutton?"
"The dean is here?"
"He's just the dean of physics, that doesn't mean—"
"Wait, is the dean teaching the class? Did Mercer cancel?"
"Sutton's a real academician. He doesn't lecture undergraduate courses."
"Maybe for graduate students, but not us."
Sutton walked into the room. Behind him, a young man followed, dressed in a sharply-tailored charcoal blazer over an ivory shirt, with sunglasses on and his head slightly down.
"Who's that with him?"
"A grad student?"
"Why is he wearing sunglasses indoors? Is he trying to look mysterious?"
"He looks weirdly familiar."
"Now that you mention it…"
Sutton walked to the lectern and tapped the microphone twice. The hum of the speaker quieted the room.
"Good afternoon, students. As you know, Professor Heller, who has previously taught your atomic physics seminar, has chosen to retire this semester after a long and distinguished career."
Polite applause. Heller had been a beloved instructor.
"Per the strong recommendation of the school leadership, we have arranged for a replacement for the remainder of the term. Please welcome your new instructor with the appropriate enthusiasm."
Sutton stepped back and started clapping himself. The students, sensing that this was their cue, joined in obediently. The applause was polite but unenthusiastic. They were, after all, still annoyed about the twenty-five-minute delay.
Sutton raised the microphone again.
"Allow me to introduce your new teacher. Please welcome…"
He paused, savoring the moment.
"…Mr. Mercer."
The young man with the sunglasses stepped onto the stage.
He removed the sunglasses.
He smiled.
"Hello, everyone. It's good to be at Hartwell."
The classroom went absolutely silent.
For approximately three seconds.
Then it detonated.
"OH MY GOD."
"OH MY GOD IT'S HIM."
"ETHAN MERCER IS OUR NEW TEACHER!?"
"WAIT NO WAIT — IS THIS A JOKE?"
"HE'S NOT A JOKE. THAT'S HIM. THAT'S ACTUALLY HIM."
"DEAN SUTTON. SIR. ARE YOU SERIOUS RIGHT NOW."
"I CAN BRAG ABOUT THIS FOR MY ENTIRE LIFE."
"My parents are going to lose their minds."
"He invented Bumblebee. Bumblebee. And he's going to teach us atomic physics?"
In the third row, Helena Marsh sat very still in her chair.
She had spent the previous forty-five minutes complaining about an arrogant guest lecturer at the noodle restaurant.
She had spent the previous twenty-five minutes complaining that the same guest lecturer was late and disrespectful.
She had, less than ninety minutes ago, complained loudly about all of this to a strange young man at a neighboring table who had then quickly paid for his food and left.
Helena's face was, very slowly, turning the color of a sunset.
Beside her, Daria — also recognizing the man on the stage from the restaurant — had clapped both hands over her mouth and was making small, helpless squeaking sounds that suggested her social composure was undergoing structural failure.
Lucas Bray, on Helena's other side, had not yet made the connection. He was simply staring at the stage with the expression of a man who had just realized he was about to have ninety minutes of lecture from a national legend.
He turned to his friends, beaming.
"Guys. Guys. Did you see this? We're so lucky."
Helena did not answer.
Daria did not answer.
Lucas, sensing something was off, turned to look at them.
"Why do you both look like you've seen a ghost?"
Daria slowly lowered her hands and pointed at the stage.
"Lucas."
"Yeah?"
"That man up there. Take a really good look at him."
"Ethan Mercer."
"Yes."
"Yeah, I see him."
"Lucas. That's the man you bought lunch for."
There was a pause.
"That's the man who ate five portions of stewed pork rice and walked out of that restaurant while you were still figuring out how much of your bill was his."
Lucas's expression performed an interesting transition. The cheerful enthusiasm of a moment ago drained out first. The dawning recognition came next. Then the slow, comprehensive dismay of a young man realizing exactly what had happened to him over the course of his lunch hour.
He looked at the stage.
He looked at Helena.
He looked at Daria.
He looked back at the stage.
"…did I just spend two hundred marks buying lunch for Ethan Mercer."
Daria, with the gentle compassion of a friend delivering bad news, nodded.
"You absolutely did."
On the stage, Ethan adjusted the microphone, smiled at the audience, and prepared to begin his first lecture.
It was, by any measure, going to be a very memorable afternoon.