Professor Harrison Lee walked into the room at 7:13, wishing for the hundredth time that the university would finally eliminate the 7:30 slot for classes. Only a handful of students bothered to come earlier than he did. Most sat slumped in their chairs, using the hard and immensely small desks as pillows. A small group exchanged a few languid words before giving up and staring at the front of the room. One diligent student was reading the textbook, or at least pretending to.

Professor Lee set his bag down next to the podium and turned on the projector before sitting down and fiddling with his phone. He fired off a few quick emails before looking up.

7:20 struck. The class was growing and starting to show signs of intelligent life. Almost half the seats were filled, and the occasional student was clacking away on their shiny new laptops. A low babble filled the room, and every now and again a tinkling laugh rose above the chatter.

7:28. A last minute rush of students came into the room, but the 230 seat lecture hall was mostly filled. In the back left of the room, a small circle of students had formed. A young man in the center was trying to impress a small clique of girls by making sparks fly from his fingertips. It wasn't quite working.

At 7:31, Professor Lee moved to the podium, and the class got quiet.

"Wake up, ladies and gents. This is An Introduction to Mechanics of Magic for non-commercial magic majors, course number MAGC 121. If you're not supposed to be here, now's the time to leave."

A skinny boy near the front turned bright red and quickly left the room as the class chuckled quietly.

"Since this is the first day, we'll quickly go over the syllabus before we get started. I know," he said as his students groaned, "I know. I'll make it quick.

"These two," he motioned two students that had gotten up from the front row, "are your TAs for the semester. Guys, if you could give a wave when I call your name, that'd be helpful. They are..." He referenced the syllabus in front of him. "James Clark and Mo So Min. They'll be passing out copies of the syllabus, so just take one and pass the stack along.

"My name is Harrison Lee. I worked hard on my doctorate, so I prefer Professor Lee, but Doctor Lee also works. For those who are interested, my thesis was on patterns in macrotransmutation of third-order metal alloys in the presence of significant amounts of non-metal molecules. There's a link to my paper on my webpage, which you can find right at the top of the page with my email address. Office hours are Monday and Wednesday at 1:30, and I'm willing to schedule something else if that doesn't work for you."

He picked up a book and showed the cover to the class. "Our textbook is technically Foundations of Magic by Binns, Brown, et al, fifth edition. If you don't have it yet, you can get it online or at the bookstore. Legally, I can't mention if it is possible to find the fourth edition online for free, but if you happen to find a pdf, you might find that it will work just as well as the fifth." The class laughed.

"Attendance is optional but good luck passing without it. The rest of this is mostly schedules, grading scales, two exams and a final, et cetera, so on and so forth, Bob's your uncle. Any questions?"

"Sir?" A bespectacled girl in the fourth row raised her hand. "What about the lab portion?"

"Good question. I have no control over the lab, and the coordinator has failed to give me a copy of the materials, so you probably know more than I do. However, if it's like recent years, you'll probably be analyzing one or two simple cantrips, like what the gentleman in the back was unsuccessfully trying to woo a few of you with." More laughter, and the culprit flushed a bit, looking down at his desk.

Professor Lee looked at the clock. "We've got only twenty minutes left, and I'm not going to take up all of that, so bear with me while I rush through this introduction. This is all of the stuff in chapter one, for those of you keeping track." He started to flip through slides of a presentation. Half of the class pulled out notebooks and pens; the other half stared into space as their eyes glazed over.

"Now, we throw around the word magic a lot without any context. People have struggled to define it for centuries, but most scholars today agree on this: 'Magic is the field that deals with any and all human manipulations of matter and spacetime that cannot fit into the current models of physics.' That means that 'magical' beasts are not actually magic, no matter what your BIOL 142 professors tell you." A few of the students who had heard of this small dispute laughed.

"Rather, they fall under the category of animate phenomenology, which also upsets the philosophers. As you can tell, we magicians are a contentious lot. To wit, in the last five minutes, we've upset physicists, biologists, and philosophers, and we're just getting started.

"Back to the subject at hand. Generally speaking, magic falls into a few neat categories with a handful of exceptions. The basic categories (and you'll want to know these) are destruction, transmutation, telekinetics, telepathy, conjuration, and illusion. A lot of people combine the last two, but our textbook does not. Another note of interest is that the major difference between the fourth and fifth edition is that in the fields of telekinetics and telepathy are just referred to as telepathy in the fourth edition."

"So, definitions. I'll just cover the layman's definitions for now. Conjuration is essentially creation of what wasn't previously extent. For example-" Professor Lee focused and muttered under his breath. A block of wood appeared in front of him.

"This wood was not here before. Correct?" The class laughed and confirmed his assertion. "Now, illusion." He focused some more. A second block appeared in the air above the first and fell on top of it, creating a loud clattering sound.

"Would the lady in the green shirt please come forward? Yes, you. Please pick up that second block." The student he pointed out reached to touch the block, but her hand passed straight into it. "Illusion is creation of visual and auditory effects.

"Telepathy is pretty straightforward, but also the most difficult. I'm personally not any good at it, but I can tell you that this young lady is not at all impressed or surprised by my illusion." The class, including the girl that had resumed her seat, chuckled.

"Telekinetics is similar, but we've found recently that it's an entirely different process. Basically, it refers to movement of existing objects without physical contact. Exempli gratia-" The block lifted off the ground, circled over the heads of the students, and returned to the floor in front of the podium. The class clapped politely, and Professor Lee bowed sarcastically. "I know, I'm fantastic. Tell your parents." They laughed again.

"Transmutation, the oldest field, previously known as alchemy. Chemists hate us for this one." He looked at the block, and it turned into gold. The class gasped.

"Obviously, this could be very profitable if it weren't so difficult. I'm one of the world's best transmutators, if I can be so bold, and it took a magnificent amount of both training and effort to just turn the nanometer thick layer of that block into gold. It's easier with more similar materials, according to the aptly named Principle of Similarity, but we'll get to that later.

"Finally, destruction." The professor wrenched his face into a terrible and frightening visage, and the block exploded loudly into dust that floated softly to where the block was.

"This is the most dangerous and well regulated branch for good reason. It is highly volatile and is very difficult to do unless the magician is feeling strong negative emotions, which has its obvious drawbacks. Most of the conflict between magic users and ordinary citizens arises when a magician allows those feelings to twist them and change them for the worst.

"Let that serve as a warning to all of you. What we do here is neither safe nor easy. A quarter of you will be incapable of doing anything but the simplest tricks, and a further quarter will not even manage those. Among the half that is left, mutilations and deaths will occur, and most of you will face discrimination of some sort. I'm sure most of you remember the Columbus riots about ten years ago." A few students nodded grimly. All of them looked nervous.

"And on that grim note, we are adjourned." The students started to pack their bags and shuffle out. Professor Lee raised his voice. "We'll start chapter 2 next week, so try to get your books by then, because there WILL be homework!"

He looked over the room, which was mostly empty, and the line of students that were advised to talk to every professor they see. He felt a strange mix of satisfaction and trepidation.

Another year had begun.

Professor Lee sat quietly at a desk in the back of the darkened lecture hall. It was the lecture hall he had just used earlier in the day for MAGC 342, Advanced Transmutation, and the room was scattered with bits of dropped papers, forgotten textbooks, a plethora of pens, and a chalkboard full of notes he had forgotten to erase.

It had been a very forgetful day for Harrison Lee. He had forgotten to erase the notes because he had forgotten about a meeting with a graduate student immediately after the class, and he had forgotten to end the class on time in the first place. He had remembered that he forgot his laptop in the classroom while he was jogging to his office for the meeting to discuss a research project, but he forgot that he remembered that he forgot his keys after the meeting the subject of the meeting, of course, was also forgotten, despite his remembering the existence of the meeting.

Fortunately, he did eventually remember that he forgot his laptop. Unfortunately, he remembered it about ten minutes into his commute home at 5:40 PM. With a sigh and an internal curse, he had made a u-turn of dubious legality and started the drive back to the university.

Thus, he ended up in a room desperately in need of cleaning, and while the janitor was present, he was certainly not cleaning anything. Professor Lee had been watching for ten minutes while the janitor stood in front of the board, solving one of the problems he had added to the class's assignment that was due the following week. Finally, he stood up and walked to the front of the room.

"Impressive," he said. The janitor jumped, dropping the piece of chalk. He was an older man, and he grunted as he bent down to pick it back up.

"S-sorry, sir. I'll clear that away. I was just- anyway-" he stammered, shaking as he reached for a spray bottle and eraser.

"No, no, please. Let me take a look at this," Professor Lee insisted, moving to stop him. He studied the board for a moment before turning back to the janitor.

"Thomas Burl, is it?" he said, eyeing the man's nametag. Thomas nodded nervously.

"Relax. It's not illegal to do magic, you know."

The janitor glanced around nervously. "No, but... my family, you know, they're quite conservative. My dad, he was in Columbus when..."

Professor Lee held up a hand. "I understand. No worries." He looked back to the board.

"You realize that you've drawn all the magical symbols perfectly, without a ruler or a protractor."

"Professor?"

"It's not impossible, of course, but very difficult for someone who's never studied before. Have you? Studied, that is."

"No, sir. Not magic." Thomas looked around the room again.

Professor Lee wasn't paying attention. "I didn't finish the equations on the board," he realized. "Did you do them in your head?"

"I, uh... what?"

"The equations, the first order equations that would allow these transmutations. They're not simple and they're not written down anywhere. How did you know how to finish the symbols without the equations?" Lee tapped the board.

"I don't know anything about any equations, not unless you mean math. I just finished the drawings up there so that they looked right."

"Looked r- Ah." He turned to Thomas. "Here I was thinking you were an exceptionally gifted transmuter. Of course that's not correct."

"No sir, not me, I'm no magic doer," Thomas said vehemently.

That's not what I said. I said you're not a transmuter, Lee thought.

"It doesn't matter what you call it, I don't do magic!" he insisted.

Lee stood silently.

"...Oh." Thomas looked horrified.

"You can be taught, you know. There's no age limit for learning."

"I can't. My wife, kids, my mother... what would my mother think? She's already furious with me for working here. She thinks I'll be corrupted. Damn it, she's right!"

"Relax, relax. It's fine." Professor Lee picked up his laptop and began walking toward the door. "I'm not going to force you to do anything. Of course, telepathy is one of the most subtle magics there is. Not that it matters. If you insist you don't want to use it, that's perfectly alright."

He opened the door and stopped.

"Of course, if you do... you know where to find me."

The door slammed shut.

Do you know why you keep coming back? Professor Lee thought.

Thomas sat in a desk in the third row, totally silent.

Do you mind if I take a guess?

Thomas slowly nodded. “Go ahead, Professor. Analyze me.”

Professor Lee sighed and disappeared into the office attached to the lecture hall. He reappeared a brief moment later holding two bottles of beer.

“You know,” Lee said out loud, “ten years ago, I was studying mathematics.” He popped open the bottles on the desktop and handed one to Thomas.

“I would have laughed you out of the room if you said that magic was going to appear in the world. I would probably have punched you if you told me I was going to be one of the world’s foremost experts on a particular field of magic.” He laughed. “Magic. Even saying it now feels weird, like I’m just some character in an elaborate story.”

“Damn boring story,” Thomas muttered.

Lee chuckled. “Life is rarely as exciting as we think it will be. When I was an undergrad, I was in love with the romance of it all.”

“The romance of mathematics?” Thomas scoffed. “You are insane.”

“Maybe,” Lee admitted. “But I’m sure you know what I’m talking about. I dreamed of being the guy that could walk into a room, tell everyone a story about equations, and have everyone leave with a slightly better understanding of the universe. I dreamed of being the guy that would hear about some career-defining problem and solve it the next day on a chalkboard for God and all his angels to witness.”

“So what happened?”

“Reality happened. I stumbled through undergrad, occasionally understanding the material but mostly just parroting what my professors said. I graduated with a 2.79 average and became an accountant.”

Thomas choked on his beer. “No shit. You, the professor?”

“Me, the professor. Nobody ever just walked into a room and got it, certainly not some middle of the road student from Maryland. I worked at my firm for damn near seven years before this all happened.”

“I always thought accountants were weird scrawny nerds with six foot sticks up their asses,” Thomas said. “Never pictured you as one.”

“Didn’t you also think professors were weird scrawny nerds with six foot sticks up their asses before you worked here?”

Thomas snorted. “Still do, mostly. Present company excluded, of course.”

“Awful gracious of you,” Lee said, raising his bottle in a mock toast.

“You’re stalling. Why do you think I keep coming back?”

Lee took a long drink. “Because you and I aren’t so different,” he said finally. “I think, on some level, you’re as much a contrarian as I am. You wonder what it’s like to be different. Special.”

“Doesn’t everyone want to be special?”

Lee shook his head. “Not at all. Oh, sure, they’ll say that they wish they were rich and famous, but at the end of the day almost everyone would rather have a spouse, two-point-four kids, and a fuel efficient car parked in the garage of their two story house that they took out a thirty year mortgage for.”

“Sounds depressing when you put it like that,” Thomas said.

“Maybe,” Lee admitted, “but no less true for it. Almost everyone prefers content over exciting.”

“I’m fine with content,” Thomas protested. “It’s not like I was trying to get Good Will Hunting-ed.”

“And yet, all the same, you were working at a university known for teaching magic. It’s not like other places don’t need janitors.”

“It was the first place that offered me a job.”

“How many did you apply to?”

“Look, it’s the obvious choice when you live near a university.”

“Maybe,” Lee allowed. “But even then, you chose to come into a room and write things on a board.”

“And I was going to erase it immediately after. I didn’t exactly anticipate you forgetting your stuff and coming back for it…” He trailed off. Did I? Does it even work like that? He glanced at Lee.

Lee studied him, head in hand. Truthfully, I do not know. The human mind was one of the least understood aspects of nature before magic awoke, and now is no different. Those gifted in telepathy are rare.

Thomas frowned and stared at the back wall of the room.

“I admit it, you’re right. My motives are far from pure. I think, with your help, we could make some great advances in the field that could set humanity very far forward.” Lee leaned forward. “But I won’t pressure you. That’s not my place.”

“So you did watch Good Will Hunting.”

Lee leaned back and chuckled. “I like Robin Williams, and it’s a good movie. But that’s beside the point. I’m an academic, not a fascist. I’m not so attached to some mystic concept of forwarding the human race that I’ll potentially throw away your life for the chance at progress.”

“How kind.” Thomas drained his bottle. “I suppose I have to recycle this myself now. And you’re going to say that in the future, I won’t have to.”

“Very good,” Lee said, impressed. “You’re getting better.”

“I’m aware of it now. It takes as much effort to not read minds as it does to passively read things, and as you say, it’s like exercising. Work is work.”

“Not all work is equal.”

“Sure. Some types of work are only slightly embarassing to my kids and wife, whereas another kind might cause them and the rest of my family to disown me entirely.”

Lee let the room fall into silence for a moment as he took a thoughtful sip.

“What happened to your father?” he asked suddenly.

Thomas stiffened. “What do you mean?”

“A month ago, when we first met, you said he was in Columbus. What happened?”

Thomas glanced at him with suspicion. “He died in the riots.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Don’t be. It was ten years ago, and we had had our differences before then.”

“Still, it’s no small thing to lose a father, even a decade past.”

Thomas exhaled heavily. “A decade. When you say it like that, it seems like ancient history.”

“It was history ten minutes after it happened,” Lee replied. “Everyone thought something was going to happen. We just thought it would be Poland or China or…”

“Anywhere but the U.S.?”

“Anywhere but the U.S.,” Lee agreed. “It makes sense in retrospect, but at the time…”

“Where were you when it happened?” Thomas asked.

“A few hours outside Memphis, actually,” Lee said. “I was taking a few days off work, supposedly for mental health reasons, but actually to sort out the fact that suddenly I could do magic.”

“So you weren’t…”

“No. I was never much of an activist, and back then I barely identified as a magic user. I certainly didn’t feel like an oppressed magic user.”

“Ah. Go- I see.”

Lee kept his thoughts carefully guarded. “What about you?”

“Indiana,” he said briefly. “Fort Wayne.” But my father was on a business trip, he thought.

To Columbus. Lee carefully allowed the thought to slip out, small enough to feel subtle but large enough for Thomas to realize he was telepathically active.

Yes, Thomas thought in reply. He got caught in the middle of the protest. And when the fires broke out…

Thomas’s thoughts became less coherent, but instead of words he could still pull out emotions. Anger. Fear. Grief.

Pride.

But it doesn’t matter how many he saved. At the end of the day, he wasn’t there for you, Lee thought.

Guilt. It’s selfish.

“That doesn’t mean you’re wrong,” Lee said. “You only get one dad. It’s not a crime to be upset if they’re not there when they should be. But you can still remember the times he was there, and be happy about those, and be proud for the lives he saved.”

Thomas choked out a sound halfway between a laugh and a sob. “I thought I came here for magic lessons, not therapy.”

Lee smiled. “You’re here because I think you can study minds better than anyone else. But it’s hard to learn about the minds of others if you don’t know about your own.”

He stretched and stood. “You might as well head home, Thomas. I don’t think we’ll get anything else done today.”