Page 3149

Another coffee--Jason's fourth. Resigned to a perpetually filling bladder, he shuffled back to his office and glanced at out at the parking lot. His Suzuki stood alone, warmly bathed by the sodium lamps. Everyone else was home; silence reigned over the department. Almost. A single, periodic sound lurked at the threshold of Jason's hearing--the plastic clatter of a printer loading tray.

Clutching his Starcraft mug, Jason prowled through the department, past dark offices and locked doors. He tracked the sound to the Office of Tech Transfer, to a lone laser printer, churning out page after page of text. The air reeked of toner; pages littered the floor surrounding the machine. Each new page pushed another onto the ground.

Curious, Jason grabbed the latest printout before it was lost in the chaos. Hot to the touch, packed with miniscule text, it read:

"INTEGRATION OF INSTITUTIONS OF HIGHER LEARNING: All American universities will be relieved of tenured faculty. Professors will have thirty days to transfer research projects to subordinates. No subsequent communication will be permitted.

Once internalized, these scholars will act at the crossroads of the neurological sculpting process, regulating the traffic of information. They will cultivate the newborns like their own children, preparing them for a new social order..."

"What the hell?" Jason asked the copier, for lack of a suitable culprit. The page was numbered: 3149. Who wrote this? He tapped at the printer’s touch-screen display, navigated to current print jobs. Only one user was logged in--Friedrich.

Jason frowned. Friedrich hadn't worked here for months, not since...

The sound of crumpling paper startled Jason. He whirled in time to see a lean body, a weathered face, hair streaked with bands of white. A blur, a burst of pain, and the department went dark.