Chaos Theory on Dimensionally Stable Objects on Earth College Campuses (4/27-ish)
Title - Chaos Theory on Dimensionally Stable Objects on Earth College Campuses (4/27-ish)
Author - earlgreytea68
Rating - General
Characters - OCs
Spoilers - None
Disclaimer - I don't own them and I don't make money off of them, but I don't like to dwell on that, so let's move on. (Except for the kids. They're all mine.)
Summary - Brem goes to university.
Author's Notes - jlrpuckis my wonderful beta. She's remarkable.
Many, many, many thanks to Kristin, for all the ideas. Thanks also to bouncy_castle79, who once again gave it the first outside-eyes read-through.
The gorgeous icon was created by swankkatfor me, commissioned by jlrpuckfor my birthday.
I'm not sure when I'll steal time to answer comments, so thanks in advance for your patience!
1 - 2 - 3
Chapter Four
Brem decided it was best to be upfront about it, and told Matt that he didn’t sleep much, when what he meant was that he didn’t really sleep at all. But at least it would take the pressure off having to pretend to sleep.
So he spent his first real night at Harvard in the common room of the dormitory, while people came and went around him, with a listing of Harvard’s concentrations. He went through the list, placing a star next to any that appealed to him. And then he realized he’d placed a star next to all but three: “Special Concentrations,” because he didn’t know what that meant, really; “Visual and Environmental Studies,” because he didn’t fancy himself much of an artist; and “Women, Gender and Sexuality, Studies of,” because he thought it possible he’d fail that concentration.
Brem frowned, and went through the list again, culling as much as possible, but he still had an impossible number of concentrations that he couldn’t decide between.
Sun began creeping into the room. Brem sighed and gave up, showering and then commencing, in front of the mirror in his room, the process of fixing his hair.
“What are you doing?”
Brem looked at Matt. “Oh. Sorry. Didn’t mean to wake you.” He looked back at the mirror, tongue sticking out of his mouth in concentration. “I’m trying to get my hair to look presentable.” He pushed it this way and that, adding more gel.
Matt, yawning and shaking his head, pulled himself out of bed. “I’m going to take a shower. We still going grocery shopping after your advisor appointment?”
“Yeah,” said Brem.
“So that’s your schedule for today, Lord of Time. Advisor appointment at ten, then grocery shopping, then the activities fair. Got it?”
“Got it,” said Brem, a bit irritated.
“Hey, I wouldn’t bother you with this if you hadn’t told me you can’t keep to a schedule.”
Brem watched Matt leave the room, then turned back to the debacle of his hair. Giving up on that for the time being, he grabbed his concentration list and a blank notebook and headed out.
It was another beautiful late summer day, and Brem, typically, got lost trying to get to the advisor appointment, all turned around, and he wondered if there would ever be a time when he knew where he was in this bloody place.
“Sorry I’m late,” he said, when he finally found the office.
Professor Choate, an older man with an enormous moustache, smiled kindly. “Did you get lost?”
“No, I…” Brem decided the lie wasn’t worth it, especially since Professor Choate looked as if he knew it was a lie. “Yeah, totally lost.”
“Happens to everyone. Come on in, Bremsstrahlung, and close the door.”
“It’s just Brem,” he corrected, closing the door.
“I figured you must shorten it, but it’s a lovely name. Your parents must be scientists, to have named you after electro-magnetic radiation.”
It was the first time anyone had ever known what his name was. Brem was astonished almost to the point of speechlessness. “Er,” he managed. “They are. Kind of.”
“Have a seat,” said Professor Choate. “Your schedule’s a bit all over the place: a little here, a little there.”
“Wellllllll,” began Brem, trying to determine how to defend his idiocy.
“It’s quite alright,” said Professor Choate. “You’re getting your core curriculum requirements in. Good plan, considering you’re undecided.”
“Yes,” said Brem, relieved. “Exactly what I thought.”
Professor Choate smiled at him as if he knew Brem had thought nothing of the sort but that was quite alright, too. “Do you have any idea what you want to be?”
He knew exactly what he wanted to be: a Time Lord. He already was one. “Yes.”
“And what’s that?”
Brem hesitated, trying to think of how to put it while sounding sane. “I want to be…what I already am.”
Professor Choate gave a delighted laugh. “A philosopher among us! What a noble sentiment! Have you looked at the list of concentrations? Have you any idea what you might like to do?”
“Yeah.” Brem handed across his list. “I’ve whittled it down to twenty-six.”
Professor Choate blinked at him. “Twenty-six concentrations?”
“Yes,” Brem affirmed, staunchly.
Professor Choate regarded him a moment, then pulled out reading glasses remarkably like Dad’s and read off the list. “Anthropology, Applied Mathematics, Astronomy and Astrophysics, Biochemical Sciences, Biology, Chemical and Physical Biology, Chemistry, Chemistry and Physics, Classics, Earth and Planetary Sciences, Engineering Sciences, Folklore and Mythology, History and Science, History of Art and Architecture, Human Evolutionary Biology, Linguistics, Literature, Mathematics, Molecular and Cellular Biology, Neurobiology, Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Philosophy, Physics, Psychology, Comparative Study of Religion, Sociology.” Professor Choate looked at the list for a moment in silence. Then he looked at Brem. “You can’t have twenty-six concentrations.”
“Why not?”
“You can have one. If we stretch it you can have two. Maybe even three, if you can persuade everyone you can do it. But twenty-six? It’s unheard of. You wouldn’t have time to sleep.”
“I don’t need time to sleep,” said Brem.
Professor Choate smiled at him again. “Let’s see if we can get this down to five or six by the time we meet next semester.” He handed the list back across.
“Five or six?” exclaimed Brem. “It took me all night to get down to twenty-six.”
Professor Choate chuckled. “You have plenty of time before you have to make a decision. You’ll see: you’re not going to like everything.”
Brem, displeased, took his list back, but politely thanked Professor Choate for his time and met Matt on the steps of Widener Library.
“You look disgruntled,” commented Matt.
“It’s utter folderol,” said Brem, as they walked toward the drugstore that apparently was a ‘grocery store’ to human students.
“It’s what now?” asked Matt, sounding amused.
“Did you know they’ll only let you have, at most, three concentrations?”
“Three?” echoed Matt. “Why would you want as many as three? You’ll kill yourself with work.”
Brem decided Matt would not understand if he said he wanted twenty-six.
“Which three did you want?” asked Matt, conversationally, as they walked.
“What?”
“Which three concentrations?”
“Oh, I…Well, I wanted twenty-six.”
Matt paused in front of the door to the drugstore. “That’s your dry sense of humor again, right?”
“Absolutely,” agreed Brem, and walked with Matt into the drugstore.
“I was thinking snacks,” said Matt. “And maybe some soda or something. To keep in the fridge.”
“Good idea,” said Brem, surveying the thoroughly human offerings for food. He settled on ice cream and teabags. He was skeptical about the teabags, but there was no other tea evident in the store. When he met back up with Matt, Matt looked at the teabags in chagrin.
“I was going to ask if you wanted to split money for a coffeepot.”
“I don’t drink coffee,” said Brem.
“Makes sense,” allowed Matt. “You don’t sleep as it is.”
They paid for their purchases and walked back to the dorm room to put everything away. The fridge was not nearly big enough; Brem’s ice cream did not even fit in its tiny freezer.
“I think there might be a common kitchen,” said Matt. “Let me check.”
Brem watched him leave, then fished into his pocket, pulled out his sonic screwdriver, and buzzed it around the refrigerator. “Sorry, Mum,” he muttered, as he slid his ice cream easily into the newly multidimensional freezer.
“Yeah,” said Matt, as he returned. “There’s a…” He looked around. “Where’s all the food?”
“In the fridge,” Brem replied, unconcerned.
“Even the ice cream?”
“Yeah.”
Matt looked in the fridge, then at Brem. “But how did you…?”
“Science, Matt,” he said, solemnly. “Now aren’t we supposed to go to this activities fair thing?”
“Yeah,” Matt agreed, dazedly, looking back at the ice cream. “But…”
“Come on, Mr. Schedule. We’re going to be late.”
He managed to get Matt out of the room and down onto the Yard, where all of the organizations had set up booths. Brem moved through the crowds of students; Matt immediately went up to the booths that interested him, but Brem, aimless and uncertain, stood back and just observed. He had no idea what he wanted to do. There seemed to be a profusion of student papers, and he thought he might like writing. He certainly wrote constantly as it was.
He wandered toward the papers, but was intercepted by an impossibly perky blonde girl who demanded, “Do you want to join Owtvfa?”
It sounded like she was coughing up a hairball. “Do I want to join what?”
“Owtvfa,” she repeated, sunnily. “Organization to Welcome Those Visiting From Abroad. Owtvfa.”
“That’s…hard to say.”
“We know! Isn’t it awesome?”
“Er, I guess?” offered Brem. “But I think I’m all set, I don’t need to-”
“Aw!” The perky blonde pouted. “But you’re visiting from abroad. Don’t you think you should join your own organization?”
Brem ruffled his hair. “Yeah, but I’m not very…welcoming. I’m…rubbish at casseroles and things like that. I’m sure there are a ton of other Londoners who could-”
“But I’m not talking about London,” smiled the girl.
“Sorry?” said Brem.
The girl’s smile never wavered. “I’m talking about much farther abroad than London. Aren’t I?”
She now had Brem’s complete attention. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.
“Oh, sure you do,” she grinned. “You’re from off-planet. I can spot them a mile away. That’s why they send me out to do recruiting. I’m Yun’ip’julikum. Yunny in Earth terms. And don’t you want to join Owtvfa now?”
“I…” Brem looked beyond her, to the Owtvfa booth. He was the center of attention, and he didn’t like it. He didn’t want these other aliens asking uncomfortable questions about exactly what sort of alien he was. Time Lords weren’t always warmly welcomed, he was aware. And if they were warmly welcomed, then it usually wasn’t for good reasons. “I’m okay,” he said, smiling at Yunny.
“Aw, don’t be like that!” protested Yunny. “C’mon, we’re tons of fun, we have Stupid Human pools to see which of them will do the stupidest thing. Sometimes one of them dies, they do something so stupid.”
Brem winced a bit and took a step away from Yunny. “Yeah, doesn’t sound like my kind of thing,” he said. “But you lot have fun with it.”
He walked away from the Owtvfa table but he could feel them watching him the whole way, and he had never been more grateful for the sonic screwdriver in his pocket that he closed his hand around.
Next Chapter
Author - earlgreytea68
Rating - General
Characters - OCs
Spoilers - None
Disclaimer - I don't own them and I don't make money off of them, but I don't like to dwell on that, so let's move on. (Except for the kids. They're all mine.)
Summary - Brem goes to university.
Author's Notes - jlrpuckis my wonderful beta. She's remarkable.
Many, many, many thanks to Kristin, for all the ideas. Thanks also to bouncy_castle79, who once again gave it the first outside-eyes read-through.
The gorgeous icon was created by swankkatfor me, commissioned by jlrpuckfor my birthday.
I'm not sure when I'll steal time to answer comments, so thanks in advance for your patience!
1 - 2 - 3
Chapter Four
Brem decided it was best to be upfront about it, and told Matt that he didn’t sleep much, when what he meant was that he didn’t really sleep at all. But at least it would take the pressure off having to pretend to sleep.
So he spent his first real night at Harvard in the common room of the dormitory, while people came and went around him, with a listing of Harvard’s concentrations. He went through the list, placing a star next to any that appealed to him. And then he realized he’d placed a star next to all but three: “Special Concentrations,” because he didn’t know what that meant, really; “Visual and Environmental Studies,” because he didn’t fancy himself much of an artist; and “Women, Gender and Sexuality, Studies of,” because he thought it possible he’d fail that concentration.
Brem frowned, and went through the list again, culling as much as possible, but he still had an impossible number of concentrations that he couldn’t decide between.
Sun began creeping into the room. Brem sighed and gave up, showering and then commencing, in front of the mirror in his room, the process of fixing his hair.
“What are you doing?”
Brem looked at Matt. “Oh. Sorry. Didn’t mean to wake you.” He looked back at the mirror, tongue sticking out of his mouth in concentration. “I’m trying to get my hair to look presentable.” He pushed it this way and that, adding more gel.
Matt, yawning and shaking his head, pulled himself out of bed. “I’m going to take a shower. We still going grocery shopping after your advisor appointment?”
“Yeah,” said Brem.
“So that’s your schedule for today, Lord of Time. Advisor appointment at ten, then grocery shopping, then the activities fair. Got it?”
“Got it,” said Brem, a bit irritated.
“Hey, I wouldn’t bother you with this if you hadn’t told me you can’t keep to a schedule.”
Brem watched Matt leave the room, then turned back to the debacle of his hair. Giving up on that for the time being, he grabbed his concentration list and a blank notebook and headed out.
It was another beautiful late summer day, and Brem, typically, got lost trying to get to the advisor appointment, all turned around, and he wondered if there would ever be a time when he knew where he was in this bloody place.
“Sorry I’m late,” he said, when he finally found the office.
Professor Choate, an older man with an enormous moustache, smiled kindly. “Did you get lost?”
“No, I…” Brem decided the lie wasn’t worth it, especially since Professor Choate looked as if he knew it was a lie. “Yeah, totally lost.”
“Happens to everyone. Come on in, Bremsstrahlung, and close the door.”
“It’s just Brem,” he corrected, closing the door.
“I figured you must shorten it, but it’s a lovely name. Your parents must be scientists, to have named you after electro-magnetic radiation.”
It was the first time anyone had ever known what his name was. Brem was astonished almost to the point of speechlessness. “Er,” he managed. “They are. Kind of.”
“Have a seat,” said Professor Choate. “Your schedule’s a bit all over the place: a little here, a little there.”
“Wellllllll,” began Brem, trying to determine how to defend his idiocy.
“It’s quite alright,” said Professor Choate. “You’re getting your core curriculum requirements in. Good plan, considering you’re undecided.”
“Yes,” said Brem, relieved. “Exactly what I thought.”
Professor Choate smiled at him as if he knew Brem had thought nothing of the sort but that was quite alright, too. “Do you have any idea what you want to be?”
He knew exactly what he wanted to be: a Time Lord. He already was one. “Yes.”
“And what’s that?”
Brem hesitated, trying to think of how to put it while sounding sane. “I want to be…what I already am.”
Professor Choate gave a delighted laugh. “A philosopher among us! What a noble sentiment! Have you looked at the list of concentrations? Have you any idea what you might like to do?”
“Yeah.” Brem handed across his list. “I’ve whittled it down to twenty-six.”
Professor Choate blinked at him. “Twenty-six concentrations?”
“Yes,” Brem affirmed, staunchly.
Professor Choate regarded him a moment, then pulled out reading glasses remarkably like Dad’s and read off the list. “Anthropology, Applied Mathematics, Astronomy and Astrophysics, Biochemical Sciences, Biology, Chemical and Physical Biology, Chemistry, Chemistry and Physics, Classics, Earth and Planetary Sciences, Engineering Sciences, Folklore and Mythology, History and Science, History of Art and Architecture, Human Evolutionary Biology, Linguistics, Literature, Mathematics, Molecular and Cellular Biology, Neurobiology, Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Philosophy, Physics, Psychology, Comparative Study of Religion, Sociology.” Professor Choate looked at the list for a moment in silence. Then he looked at Brem. “You can’t have twenty-six concentrations.”
“Why not?”
“You can have one. If we stretch it you can have two. Maybe even three, if you can persuade everyone you can do it. But twenty-six? It’s unheard of. You wouldn’t have time to sleep.”
“I don’t need time to sleep,” said Brem.
Professor Choate smiled at him again. “Let’s see if we can get this down to five or six by the time we meet next semester.” He handed the list back across.
“Five or six?” exclaimed Brem. “It took me all night to get down to twenty-six.”
Professor Choate chuckled. “You have plenty of time before you have to make a decision. You’ll see: you’re not going to like everything.”
Brem, displeased, took his list back, but politely thanked Professor Choate for his time and met Matt on the steps of Widener Library.
“You look disgruntled,” commented Matt.
“It’s utter folderol,” said Brem, as they walked toward the drugstore that apparently was a ‘grocery store’ to human students.
“It’s what now?” asked Matt, sounding amused.
“Did you know they’ll only let you have, at most, three concentrations?”
“Three?” echoed Matt. “Why would you want as many as three? You’ll kill yourself with work.”
Brem decided Matt would not understand if he said he wanted twenty-six.
“Which three did you want?” asked Matt, conversationally, as they walked.
“What?”
“Which three concentrations?”
“Oh, I…Well, I wanted twenty-six.”
Matt paused in front of the door to the drugstore. “That’s your dry sense of humor again, right?”
“Absolutely,” agreed Brem, and walked with Matt into the drugstore.
“I was thinking snacks,” said Matt. “And maybe some soda or something. To keep in the fridge.”
“Good idea,” said Brem, surveying the thoroughly human offerings for food. He settled on ice cream and teabags. He was skeptical about the teabags, but there was no other tea evident in the store. When he met back up with Matt, Matt looked at the teabags in chagrin.
“I was going to ask if you wanted to split money for a coffeepot.”
“I don’t drink coffee,” said Brem.
“Makes sense,” allowed Matt. “You don’t sleep as it is.”
They paid for their purchases and walked back to the dorm room to put everything away. The fridge was not nearly big enough; Brem’s ice cream did not even fit in its tiny freezer.
“I think there might be a common kitchen,” said Matt. “Let me check.”
Brem watched him leave, then fished into his pocket, pulled out his sonic screwdriver, and buzzed it around the refrigerator. “Sorry, Mum,” he muttered, as he slid his ice cream easily into the newly multidimensional freezer.
“Yeah,” said Matt, as he returned. “There’s a…” He looked around. “Where’s all the food?”
“In the fridge,” Brem replied, unconcerned.
“Even the ice cream?”
“Yeah.”
Matt looked in the fridge, then at Brem. “But how did you…?”
“Science, Matt,” he said, solemnly. “Now aren’t we supposed to go to this activities fair thing?”
“Yeah,” Matt agreed, dazedly, looking back at the ice cream. “But…”
“Come on, Mr. Schedule. We’re going to be late.”
He managed to get Matt out of the room and down onto the Yard, where all of the organizations had set up booths. Brem moved through the crowds of students; Matt immediately went up to the booths that interested him, but Brem, aimless and uncertain, stood back and just observed. He had no idea what he wanted to do. There seemed to be a profusion of student papers, and he thought he might like writing. He certainly wrote constantly as it was.
He wandered toward the papers, but was intercepted by an impossibly perky blonde girl who demanded, “Do you want to join Owtvfa?”
It sounded like she was coughing up a hairball. “Do I want to join what?”
“Owtvfa,” she repeated, sunnily. “Organization to Welcome Those Visiting From Abroad. Owtvfa.”
“That’s…hard to say.”
“We know! Isn’t it awesome?”
“Er, I guess?” offered Brem. “But I think I’m all set, I don’t need to-”
“Aw!” The perky blonde pouted. “But you’re visiting from abroad. Don’t you think you should join your own organization?”
Brem ruffled his hair. “Yeah, but I’m not very…welcoming. I’m…rubbish at casseroles and things like that. I’m sure there are a ton of other Londoners who could-”
“But I’m not talking about London,” smiled the girl.
“Sorry?” said Brem.
The girl’s smile never wavered. “I’m talking about much farther abroad than London. Aren’t I?”
She now had Brem’s complete attention. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.
“Oh, sure you do,” she grinned. “You’re from off-planet. I can spot them a mile away. That’s why they send me out to do recruiting. I’m Yun’ip’julikum. Yunny in Earth terms. And don’t you want to join Owtvfa now?”
“I…” Brem looked beyond her, to the Owtvfa booth. He was the center of attention, and he didn’t like it. He didn’t want these other aliens asking uncomfortable questions about exactly what sort of alien he was. Time Lords weren’t always warmly welcomed, he was aware. And if they were warmly welcomed, then it usually wasn’t for good reasons. “I’m okay,” he said, smiling at Yunny.
“Aw, don’t be like that!” protested Yunny. “C’mon, we’re tons of fun, we have Stupid Human pools to see which of them will do the stupidest thing. Sometimes one of them dies, they do something so stupid.”
Brem winced a bit and took a step away from Yunny. “Yeah, doesn’t sound like my kind of thing,” he said. “But you lot have fun with it.”
He walked away from the Owtvfa table but he could feel them watching him the whole way, and he had never been more grateful for the sonic screwdriver in his pocket that he closed his hand around.
Next Chapter