Chapter 12
Professor Pravus was late again.
It was Friday afternoon and he was supposed to be here at 13:00. It was 13:15 and everyone was becoming restless, including myself. If he wasn’t going to come, he could have informed someone.
I had things to get ready for tonight. I had to pick out my clubbing outfit. I had to make sure it disguised me well enough so Meredith wouldn’t recognize me, but it also had to be practical enough so I could follow her afterward wherever she went and eventually grab the jewels.
In addition, I wanted to get another search going on my Search the Universe software before I left because I didn’t want six hours to pass without it working for me. I just hate wasted time, don’t you?
The door to the classroom swung open and a windswept man stormed to the front of the classroom. “Sorry I’m late. You wouldn’t imagine what a fascinating discussion I had with Professor Salum about his sea exploration program. You wouldn’t and couldn’t imagine because he has yet to release any of the information to the student population, which you are part of. And since he won’t tell you anything about what he’s doing, I surely can’t because you are all students, but I will tell you that the sea exploration program has some quite interesting logic dilemmas which tickle the brain and energize those little grey cells.
“And such interesting logic dilemmas are part of today’s class. Though your logic dilemmas are completely different than those of Professor Salum’s because we are not working in the sea exploration program, or will have anything to do with it. If you’ll give me a second, or more likely a few minutes as that would be more chronologically accurate, I’ll hand out your semester project instructions.”
Pravus dug into his bag, pulling out different stacks of papers. Of all my professors, he was one of the few that clung to the tradition of giving out paper assignments. I knew other students had begged him to just email the assignments to us, but he refused, saying, “The only way to get the assignments is to be in class because if you aren’t in class, you should be and thus don’t have any care for assignments you are obviously missing. I refuse to stand or sit for those who won’t come to class.
“Logic dictates they won’t learn the material well, or at all, if they don’t attend my lectures. Thus, I pass out the assignments in paper form increasing the probability that those students who want to learn will come to class. Those who don’t attend, and as a direct consequence don’t receive the assignments, don’t have the drive to learn or else they’d be in class getting said assignment.”
Yes, a logic teacher who was a stickler for…well…logic.
And attendance.
And paper assignments.
“Here they are as you can obviously see for your own eyes,” he said triumphantly as he pulled a monster stack of dead trees out of his bag.
He gave the pile to the person in front of him, who in turn passed it to the rest of us. “This semester, well in reality every semester since I change my lesson plans very rarely, I have an exciting project I want you all to do. And by want, I really mean must insist you do or else you won’t get a passing grade and a less than passing grade means you’ll never graduate in this field of thought.
“This failure aside, however, I want you to pick something interesting, any topic at all which interests you, or a topic you believe will greatly interest me, and create a logic problem from said topic.” His smile widened as our confusion grew. “I can already see the moths flowing into your brains as you panic, unable to comprehend what I mean. Let me give you two examples before you are completely unable to grasp what I want.
“Last year, a student took his love, or should I more accurately say obsession, for minerals and extrapolated, through logic and the vast scientific knowledge he’d come to gather through his years of study, as to where minerals should be present on a planet which had yet to be explored.
“Another student, in the same class incidentally, who was almost insanely interested in archaeology did his project on the most logical place for King Mater of Livens to have been buried.
“Neither project had any real results for such an archaeological excavation would cost more money and time than any of us have, and wouldn’t have been feasible to expect in such a short a time as a semester, but it was the process by which he came to his conclusions which gave him the grade he finally received. Which was very high for your information, because of the excellent work he did.
“I would like you all to email me your topic by 09:00 on Monday and then have a write up as to how you plan on completing you’re project for next week to turn in. Turn in as in on paper, in person. I will not accept any plan which is electronically submitted, or submitted by a friend and/or classmate of someone who designs not to show up for class. There are a plethora of ideas and information in the packet which has been passed out to you by your fellow classmates.
“I’m letting class go early so you all have plenty of time to logically figure out what you’re doing as a project topic. If any of you have any questions, please feel free to come talk to me until I leave this room. If you don’t have time, or inclination to wait that long, you may also see me during my posted office hours, which are posted on the door to my office. Or, if you have even more questions, you may see me during both times. I would never wish for anyone to say they didn’t have the time to work through their logical conundrums with me present in the room.”
While everyone in class was grumbling and packing up their things, I stayed in my seat. An awesome, unbelievable thought had crossed my mind. My search for the Planet of Riches. Could it…? Would he allow me to…? I had to know before I left because if he let me then I was home free. Hell, I already had some of the project done!
I waited until the few people that had questions finished before I approached Professor Pravus. “Professor, I had an idea, a wild idea, and I was wondering if it would be something I could do for this project.”
“What is this idea you had?” His eyes were gleaming as they always did when he was intrigued.
This was my one chance to sell him on the idea, so I’d have to be careful with my word choice. “I’ve always been interested in the Planet of Riches and my idea was, that is if you’ll allow me to do it, to see if I could find it, through logic of course.”
“The Planet of Riches…a very interesting topic, if I do say so myself.” He paused for as second, stroking his tiny, almost nonexistent beard. “Never had a student even think of tackling it before, not that I know what my students are thinking. Do you realize how difficult it will be? And by difficult, I do mean impossible.”
“I’ve got some idea, but I don’t have to actually find the planet, do I?” I needed this point to be crystal clear. If I had to find the planet, I’d do my project on something very easy, like how to find certain plants on other planets.
“No,” he said slowly, “you don’t have to find the planet, but I would like you to have some possibilities as to which planet it could be.”
“What if I gave you a list of planets, say a couple thousand possibilities. Would that be fine?”
Pravus frowned. “It would be but I’d have to see that you’d made every effort to narrow it down further. In this case, I’d like you to keep me apprised at every step of the process because you may not even be able to get down to that few of a number. I’ve read a few books on the subject and even the best scholars can only narrow it down to a few hundred thousand possibilities.
“Yes, the more I think about it, the more I like the idea of making your project be more effort based and less results based as the others will be geared toward. If, that is, you are serious about doing this as your project because if not, then this entire line of thinking is speculative at best.”
Not to seem too eager, I said, “At this point, I’m pretty sure that’s what I want to do. But I think I’ll sleep on it and make my final decision this weekend.”
“Good, good. Let me know by Monday. Do you have any othe
r questions which I can answer in this room?”
“No, I think that’s about everything. Thank you.”
I wasn’t able to keep the bounce out of my step as I left the classroom. He’d gone for it, and more importantly, wanted to be part of my project. If I played my cards right, I might be able to get him to do some of the work for me and end up with a great grade because of the work I’d already put in.
This newest development just made me want to work harder to find the POR. Could this day get any better?
Then I remembered tonight and I felt like I was floating. Yes, this day could become much better.