Better Judgment:
The Dr. Wily Story

By Hadrian (Hardman) Howell

Chapter 2

199X

Monsteropolis Engineering University placed a high value on time spent in the presence of professors. I usually only had two classes a day during the week, but those classes were in excess of four hours long on the schedule, and we normally ran over. Thankfully, there was a two hour block of time budgeted in between these marathon sessions for lunch and a chance to unwind slightly before moving on to the next subject,

Mondays and Wednesdays saw me taking Computer Engineering under the tutelage of Dr. Gary Cain, a brilliant man with every bit the bright personality as Thomas (although Tom swears there is no relation). Later on I would attend my World History class, a somewhat loathed scholarly prerequisite for some of my later educational ambitions. World History was taught by a somewhat forgettable woman I would only ever remember as Mrs. Fisher.

Tuesdays and Thursdays, I would attend a Theoretical Physics course (a part of the Applied Physics degree I was working for, I was assured) taught by Professor Richard Reed. He was a scatterbrained man who, while brilliant in his own way, often overlooked the little things like shaving or eating when working or excited about his work, I was sure this annoyed his wife Susan to no end. I would also take my Applied Physics class, taught by Mr. Cave Johnson. He insisted on the 'Mr.' instead of Professor, and I have no idea why. This class was the most exciting, and it took place virtually every day in a laboratory with many, many exciting pieces of equipment that I was eager to get acquainted with.

Friday and Saturday mornings, I actually shared a class with Thomas and Mikhail called Building The Future, a class that confused me by its inclusion in my curriculum. I was assured it was a class that almost every MEU attendant took at some point, but despite the size of the campus, this class in particular was actually quite exclusive, and it was taught by Alfred Gibbs, a man as mysterious as my inclusion in the class.

I had my folders for each class, but I also had downtime during certain lectures where my mind would wander, and I would use this time to fill a smaller notebook that I would carry with me at all times. I'd fill it with odd ideas and stray thoughts, as well as interesting topics and ideas I would hear or talk about with others.

The rest of the time was mine to do as I pleased, which was a welcome change from my time at Cambridge. In the first week, I used the time to walk the MEU campus and learn where everything I thought I would need to know was, and the following week I repeated this process with the surrounding area. It was only after that second week that I stopped wandering quite so much and began to spend more time in the company of my fellow students, who had all taken the time to get to know each other instead.

This had the odd effect of making me the new guy in a group of friends, even though we'd all met each other on the same day.

Thomas was my roommate, of course, and knew me the best. We were rapidly developing a habit of staying up late and trading stories about classes and ideas we'd had, and some of the intersections between our two areas of study were proving quite gripping, despite my earlier reservations. Through our conversations alone over the course of the semester, I filled up four personal notebooks, each of them packed with strange and exciting ideas and projects. He was a brilliant man, and it wasn't hard to see how easily greatness might come to him, because that intellect was coupled with a compassion and a personal warmth that was, at times, almost cloying.

Mikhail was a different sort. Still getting the finer, more nuanced points of English down, he was a reserved and quiet individual, and much more contemplative than Tom. He possessed a dry, caustic wit and a sense of humor that bordered on abusive when he chose to use it, and I imagine he thought of himself as our token 'cool foreigner,' but I'm not sure if that was the case.

Mikhail's roommate, a rather rotund, slightly older man by the name of Isaac Vincent Oleander Kintobor was possessed of a rather impressive mustache and a sort of manic energy that gave the impression of a whirlwind personified. It was an occasion of note when he actually finished a thought before moving on to the next one. His field of study overlapped with Tom's, but bled more into bioengineering and medical treatments than the purely mechanical, although his interest in the subject was no less vivid than Tom's own.

One of Tom's co-ed classmates, Noele Lalinde (which is a hell of a name), also took to hanging around us when her schedule allowed it. Studying robotics as well, she was tempering her practical education with a minor degree in Philosophy. She was also, not going to lie about it, kind of a bitch most of the time, but she would warm up and become quite personable around Tom and his absolutely viral good nature.

We made a strange group of friends, no doubt, often taking lunch times to sit on one of the four open fields contained within the MEU campus and talk as intellectuals are inclined to do: About little to nothing of value or importance, and certainly not about anything that might actually ever get done. Under the surface of us all, though, there was the undeniable spark of will to soak in all of the knowledge we were being given and to use it in fantastic ways.

Six months of this would go by before the events that would cast the rest of my life into the inflexible molds of destiny would begin to take place. And they flew by so very quickly...

20XX

As you get older, you wonder where the time has gone. I know I spent years on my education, and even more time as a pioneer in the field of world domination (and a fine craftsman of examples of how to best not accomplish that goal), and I was acutely aware of the time I had both spent and wasted with Tom in all of our interactions, but more specifically, I was confused as to where most of my last week had gone. It seemed like a scant few hours ago, it had been June, and now my bunker's atomic clock was attempting to inform me that is was, in fact, August.

I'd make some allusion to the idea of time flying when you have fun, but I was having much less fun these days. Perhaps time was making use of some frequent flier miles it had accrued. I rubbed a building twitch out of my eye and sighed as a rumble shook the bunker from the lower levels. Why did I have to design my biggest Robots to also be the least pleasant, personality-wise? Then I might have an easier time forgiving them for all the things they eventually break...