Chapter 9

Emerson ignored the tears and went on with class.

“How many stars are there in the Universe?” Emerson asked.

“Infinite?” Monte said.

“Thank you for putting it in the form of a question, and no. You’re now barred from speaking until every one of your peers has spoken. We will call that round one,” Emerson said. “The number of stars in the universe is finite. We can estimate that number quite well. The Universe itself is also finite, by all the definitions of science.” He put a finger up to stop Monte from arguing. “Don’t interject. Your peers are still silent. Where was I, oh, yeah, the Universe, as we perceive it, is not infinite, but so absurdly close to becoming infinite that it can’t be reconciled in your present incarnation. By inference, we can reasonably speculate that there is a finite number of souls in a finite universe. Now, assume for a moment, a continuum of souls on a standard scale, from your most wretched, appalling, frightful souls, to the most advanced, beautiful, purified souls in your limited perceived scalability. For simplicity, we’ll use a 10 scale, with 10 being the epitome of souls. Bambi, please share with me and the class where you would fall on this scale?”

“7,” Bambi said, spoken with pure confidence.

Professor Emerson laughed. He danced his feet on the floor. He covered his face to help bring himself back into some semblance of control, but lost it, fell to the floor, rolled to and fro, as if rolling in dirt for the pure joy of it, that and to get bugs off him, before he clutched the chair like it was life raft and pulled himself out of his fit of merriness, wiping his eyes from joyful tears. He gasped for air and eventually his chest ceased its exaggerated heaving. The room was quiet.

“You disagree? I’m the most kind hearted, loving ‘deer’ ever known to man. I would not harm a soul. I am a vegan. I have tremendous love,” Bambi stated her case.

Emerson clasped his hands and breathed though his knuckles as he considered a response. The floor still belonged to Bambi and Emerson, as no one was willing to ally themselves with any of the others at this point. The terrain was too new and likely to be very thin ice that could send the whole lot of them down into freezing waters without a hope of rescue. The professor squeezed his eyes as if to push out tears.

“We are so going to be here together for a long time,” he mused to himself but out loud. “I think you should know, now, that you will all simultaneously pass my class, or none of you will be permitted to advance, even if we all have to be here for all eternity.”

“Well, that’s hardly fair,” Janet sad, crossing her arms over her perky breasts, concealed by her sweater. I noticed Bambi seemed relieved that someone else had taken over the hot seat.

“Dare I ask what world you’re from?” Emerson asked.

“Is it relevant?” Janet asked.

“Might be,” Emerson hit the ball back into her court.

“Like, there is more than one human planet?” Janet said, careful to spin it as a question.

Emerson sighed. “I do wish they’d offer a proper astronomy course before they make you take mine,” he said.

“All I’m saying is, people should pass on their own merits,” Janet continued.

“How is competition working for your planet?” Emerson asked Janet.

“How is mediocrity any better?” I asked, my own emotions getting the better of me.

The professor actually smiled as he turned to me. “Oh, I was curious if you were ever going to play. So, you think competition is healthy?”

“It has its place, don’t you think?” I said, not really happy with my question.

“Oh, I do think,” Emerson admitted, measuring me to see if I understood his play on words. “But by that reasoning, mediocrity has its place as well.”

“Indeed,” said I. “But how does it benefit society if you extinguish competition to the point of making everyone ordinary?”

“I am not asking you to raze the top, but instead to raise the bar,” Emerson said. He turned back to the class. “What I am asking all of you is this: would you prefer judgment or grace?” When no one responded, Emerson shook his head. “Me, too. This is what you need to remember. All souls wield magic…”

“That can’t be true,” Terrance argued, then corrected himself. “I mean, how can that be true?”

“Great question,” Emerson said. “Consider how terribly ordinary your lives were before school. Surprisingly, statistically, improbably, insanely, and absurdly static, with only your emotions and the drama you participated in as the measure of your hum drum existence. Rage, frustration, disappointment being the most prevalent, interspaced by maybe a laugh, or an orgasm if you were lucky, as highlights to tease you a little further down the road. If any of you had any sense of wonder or awe, you wouldn’t be starting in my class.”

“What are you saying?” Janet asked.

“What do you think I am saying?” Emerson asked.

“Are you saying we’re already magicians?” Bambi asked, before Janet could figure out how to spin her argument as a question.

“How do you feel about that, miss living emoticon?” Emerson asked.

Bambi didn’t like his name calling, as evidence by a micro-flashed frown, but whatever she felt was suppressed and gone before she could even register the emotion. “We’re not magicians,” she said, adamantly.

“So, if I suggest you’re a magician of the highest caliber ever known to exist, you dismiss me as a crazy old fart, but if I flat out call you the torn thread from a dead, sexually abused sock, lying in a gutter collecting broken leaves, you protest? I am confused,” Emerson said.

“Stop saying that!” Bambi snapped.

“Either you are all expert level magicians who have used all of your skills to maintain your dreadfully, pathetic lives to a degree of consensual consistency that it would appear immutable from your perspectives, or you are the victims of some cosmic calamity that out of the hundreds of trillions of souls, only you have absolutely no authority over your lives. Either one of those might drive a lesser person to suicide, but you hold your ground, unwilling to accept the possibility of change, which is one of the great truths, but not ‘the’ Truth.”

“How can the absence of magic be evidence of magic?” Olga asked.

“It was never absent! Your own spells have locked you into your perversely narrow and self-absorbed paradigms. Jon. There are 8 plus billion people on your planet. Do you really think your life was that dreadful?” Emerson asked.

“Contextually, no,” I said. “But then, are you saying a person’s perceived suffering is invalidated by true suffering?”

“So, you believe there is true suffering,” Emerson stated.

“I suspect both perceived suffering and true suffering are indistinguishable from the perception of the one suffering,” I said.

“Yes!” Emerson said, as if that was profound. “And that is where the magic lies! All suffering is perceived suffering. If you can shift just far enough that you can make a distinction between perceived and true suffering, you will have found a doorway out of suffering. You, sir, have touched that door, but you have chosen not to explore it because if you opened it, or God forbid, stepped through it, your world would change and for the first time in your life you would have had to take responsibility for all your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.”

Timmy sighed, and spoke his first words in the class. “Oh, God, I have died and gone to hell. I’m stuck in a philosophic course of pseudo, positivistic, solipsistic trite dialogue, where Eastern and western idealistic sentimentalities are artificially inflated and merged into some blanket rationalized explanation for esoterically defined existentialism.”