Stephen dropped the huge report on Magus' desk. He said, "Here it is."
"I can say one thing about it. It is thick," Magus said eyeing the stack of papers.
"Yes, it is."
Magus asked, "Why are you giving it to me?"
"You said you wanted it," Stephen said.
"What is it?" Magus asked.
Stephen answered, "It is my homework paper."
Magus said, "For which class?"
"History," Stephen said. "It is my report on a proper approach to understanding history."
"I wanted to read that," Magus said picking up the stack of papers.
"That is why I gave it to you," Stephen said.
"See how nicely that worked out," Magus said. He lifted the cover sheet and said, "Nice. You've got a table of contents. A good report should always start with one of those."
"I agree," Stephen said.
Magus flipped to the back of the report. He said, "Over three hundred references. That's a good number for a report this size."
"I had to balance thoroughness with reasonableness. I could have done a little more, but it would have gotten stale in places," Stephen said.
"Hey, you even put in an index. I am really impressed," Magus said.
"It was easy enough to do," Stephen said.
Magus said, "I'm sure it still took a little time."
"It did, but I felt like it completed the report," Stephen said.
"I agree," Magus said. He started flipping through the pages of the report. After a few minutes, he frowned and then said, "Hold on a second."
"What?" Stephen asked getting worried.
"Have you turned this in yet?" Magus asked.
"No," Stephen said. There had to be a horrible mistake in the paper somewhere for Magus to be asking that question.
"Good," Magus said.
Stephen asked, "What's wrong?"
Magus pushed the button on the side of his desk. The desktop lifted up and then slid forward. The screen was projected on the far wall. He said, "You need to fill out a little paper work before you turn it in."
Stephen turned to look at the screen. He asked, "Nondisclosure Agreement? Copyright Form? What are you doing?"
"I'm busy protecting your interests," Magus said typing away furiously.
"It is a homework assignment," Stephen said a little confused.
Magus looked over at Stephen and said, "This goes well beyond a little homework assignment."
"I went a little too far?" Stephen asked.
"I would expect no less," Magus said. He looked over at Stephen and said, "I'm still collecting royalties on my homework assignments."
"I didn't know that," Stephen said.
"Now you do," Magus said. He left the office and then returned a minute later with a stack of papers. He said, "Sign these."
For the next few minutes, Stephen signed the various forms that Magus had printed out for him. Once he had finished, Magus said, "You need to replace the cover page on the one that you want to turn into your professor with the one that I printed for you. Once that is done then you can deliver it. I'll mail this one to the publisher."
"Okay," Stephen said.
On the walk to the university, Stephen kept having a feeling that he was being watched. He stopped several times to look around, but he couldn't spot anything unusual. The sidewalks of Cambridge were filled with harried students rushing off to an exam and frazzled students staggering back from one. After about the fifth time he had paused, he said, "I must be getting paranoid."
The feeling of being watched accompanied Stephen up until he reached his destination. He knocked on the door of the office of Professor Sigmond. A tired voice called out, "I'm grading papers in here. Come back later, preferably after I retire."
"Professor Sigmond, I'm Stephen Osfeld. You asked me to write a paper on a proper approach to understanding history and you told me to deliver it at the end of the semester," Stephen called through the closed door.
Professor Sigmond threw open the door and brusquely said, "Give me your paper."
"You need to sign an NDA first," Stephen said holding out the form.
"An NDA? You want me to sign a Nondisclosure Agreement on a homework assignment?" Professor Sigmond asked incredulously.
"Magus insisted," Stephen said.
"Very well. Give it here," Professor Sigmond said rolling his eyes.
After the NDA was signed, Stephen held out a bound copy of his paper. He said, "Here it is."
"What is this?"
"This is my paper," Stephen said.
"That's not a paper. That's a book," Professor Sigmond said looking at it. There was no way that he was going to be able to grade it before grades were due. He opened it up and glanced at the table of contents. He flipped to the end and looked at the references. He went to the index and looked up a term and then turned to the indicated page. He read a little bit of the page. Mumbling, he said, "Come in."
"Thanks," Stephen said.
Professor Sigmond looked at the stack of papers remaining to be graded on his desk. He said, "Nearly every one of these papers is garbage. I should give them all zeros except for one or two of them."
"I thought that Mel's paper was pretty good," Stephen said.
"She's the shining star in that class," Professor Sigmond said. He paused and asked, "You read her paper?"
"She's my study partner for the class," Stephen said.
"I can tell. She actually learned something," Professor Sigmond said. He sat down and looked at Stephen's paper. After reading a couple of pages, he said, "You've got an A on it. Who are you sending it to for publication?"
"Magus knows a publisher," Stephen answered. Actually, the head of the publishing house was obliged to accept calls from Magus.
"I look forward to reading it in print," Professor Sigmond said. "Will this be the second book with your name on it?"
"I guess so," Stephen answered. He thought he heard a shuffling noise from outside the office.
"There aren't many students with your talent. It is a shame that you aren't a history student. I would have enjoyed seeing you struggle through one of my independent studies. You're too good for regular classes; way too good." He sighed and said, "Did you know that Bicameral Legislation is a law written about camels that are attracted to both sexes?"
Stephen laughed. He said, "That's a good one."
"I found that little jewel in one of the papers that I just graded," Professor Sigmond said.
"I don't even know how that fits in with the topic of the paper," Stephen said. The paper was supposed to be about whether or not Waterloo was actually Napoleon's downfall.
Professor Sigmond said, "Neither do I. Well, I have to get back to grading this garbage."
"Okay," Stephen said.
"You know, I really expected about a ten page paper from you," Professor Sigmond said.
"I guess I got carried away. I assumed that since you gave me almost the whole summer to work on it that you wanted something substantial," Stephen said.
"Enjoy your break; you earned it. School starts in ten days," Professor Sigmond said. He sighed, "It is a pity that you're not a history major."
Stephen was scheduled for his English final examination an hour after leaving Professor Sigmond's office. During the entire hour he waited for class, he had the feeling that he was being watched. The problem was that he didn't spot anything out of the ordinary. It was really starting to unnerve him. By the time he settled into his chair for the exam he was in a state of mind that wasn't exactly conducive to making a great score.
His English final was his last test of the summer session and he was just ready to get it over. Looking over the test, he realized that he could finish it in fifteen minutes. Of course, this professor believed that good grades took just the right amount of time to earn. She would mark it with an F if he handed it in too early. He pitied the poor student who turned in his paper at the very last minute. It was doomed to an F as well. He had to hit the magic time at which to turn in his paper in order to get an A.
Magus was right that half of solving a problem was in knowing what people wanted (or in some cases didn't want). Of course, not everyone wanted something that was good for them or even possible. In that case, solving the problem was more a matter of convincing them to accept less than what they wanted. Applying those lessons to his current situation meant that Stephen had to dawdle until his professor started looking around with an expectation of people turning in their papers.
Stephen slowly worked his way through his exam. He would read a question, stare off into space for a few minutes as if thinking about the question, and then answer it while writing slowly. All went well until the very last question. It was a simple question and one that he had initially thought would take a few minutes to answer. The question was — what is the most essential element of good storytelling? His first thought was to suggest that there wasn't a single most essential element to storytelling, but he knew that his professor wouldn't like that.
He reread the question. With a sick feeling settling in his stomach, he noticed that this one question counted as ninety points. He looked at the first ten questions and realized they were only worth a point each. The last question was worth ninety percent of the grade. His mind went blank.
After a few minutes he looked over at the professor. She was looking around the class with an expression of expectation on her face. He knew that expression. It was time to turn in his test and he couldn't think of an answer for the last question. He chewed on his lower lip for a second thinking that his time was running out. He looked over at his professor realizing that she was starting to look impatient. He just needed a little more time. It dawned on him what answer she was wanting — timing. He wrote down the one word and took his paper to the front of the class.
He handed his test paper to the professor. She flipped open the test paper to where he had answered the last question. She smiled while writing an A on the test paper and said, "A bit brief, but straight to the point."
"Thank you," Stephen said leaving the room.
"Enjoy your break; school starts in ten days," she said.
Walking back to the offices of Solutions Incorporated, Stephen began to get that weird feeling of being watched again. The hair was starting to stand up on the back of his neck. He paused in front of a store and looked around, but didn't spot anything too abnormal. He walked down a few more stores and paused at another store window. He casually looked around and still didn't see anything suspicious.
Trying to shake off the feeling, he walked quickly down the street thinking that he could separate himself from whatever was causing him to be uneasy. He went about half a block and stopped abruptly in front of a store window. Rather than trying to be discrete, he openly looked around. It was at that time that he spotted her. He squawked and then took off running.
He reached a corner and took it. He stopped and peeked around the corner. She was looking in his direction with an expression of disappointment on her face. Stephen practically ran to Magus' office. Once there, he said, "I have a stalker."
"I wondered when that was going to start. You are too smart not to collect a bevy of brain groupies," Magus said.
"I thought I was getting paranoid, but I wasn't," Stephen said. He knew it only made sense for Magus to assume that it was a female.
"You are paranoid but it is with good reason," Magus said correcting him. "Did you see her?"
"She's gorgeous," Stephen said.
"They always are," Magus said shaking his head. He said, "It is the curse under which all intelligent men suffer. Gorgeous women can't resist us."
"So what do I do?" Stephen asked.
Magus asked, "Did you get a picture of her?"
"No. I panicked and ran off," Stephen said.
"Don't be embarrassed about that. It is a matter of self preservation; not cowardliness," Magus said.
"I looked up and there she was. I could actually feel my brain shutting down," Stephen said.
Magus typed for a moment and said, "Let's see if we can get enough of a description to identify her."
"Ah, you're using the police identification kit," Stephen said when the program finished loading.
Magus nodded his head in the affirmative. He said, "It is the improved police identification kit. It uses pictures of famous beautiful women instead of generic facial features."
"I can see that," Stephen said.
He said, "Which face type most closely matches the suspect?"
"That one over there," Stephen answered pointing at one of the pictures of movie starlets.
"She's got a Nicole Kidman face; the young version of her face. Nice," Magus said.
"It is; isn't it?"
"What color hair?" Magus asked.
"She's a dark cool blond," Stephen said looking at the hair color chart.
"Personally, it is the women with medium mahogany brown hair that get to me," Magus said while typing Stephen's choice into the computer.
"That's nice too," Stephen said. "Of course, that's the color hair that my mom has."
"Uh, let's not talk about that," Magus said cutting off that line of discussion. He asked, "Her hair style?"
Stephen answered, "That one over there."
"Oh my. That is tasty," Magus said. "How long is her hair?"
"It comes down to the middle of her back," Stephen answered.
"I find long hair like that nearly irresistible," Magus said.
"I don't know. Those bangs of hers kind of got to me more than the length of her hair," Stephen said shaking his head.
Magus said, "What color were her eyes?"
"They were soft brown. I kept thinking of that term ... doe eyed. Her eyes were so large, soft, and innocent looking that I just wanted to grab her and protect her," Stephen said.
Magus studied the picture looking worried. He said, "She's going to be a tough one to resist."
"Yes," Stephen said.
"Nose?"
"That one," Stephen said.
Magus said, "I hope her mouth is ugly because you're in trouble otherwise."
"It isn't," Stephen said. He pointed to one of the full luscious lip examples on the screen and said, "That one."
"Those lips make you want to kiss her, don't they?" Magus said.
"Definitely," Stephen said.
Magus said, "Does that look like her?"
"Yes."
"Let's see if we can find out who our beautiful mystery lady is," Magus said. He started another program and fed it the image they had created. A dozen images appeared on the wall.
Stephen pointed to one and said, "Her."
"Bridgette Lefevre. She's a beauty queen and a smart woman. Her IQ is almost as high as yours," Magus said. He brought up some pictures of the woman. He said, "Wow! Look at that picture of her in a bathing suit."
"What can I do?" Stephen asked. He was beginning to wonder why he had run away from her. Images of him painting her toenails while she ate bonbons flashed through his head. All of a sudden he was very uncomfortable.
Sadly, Magus answered, "I might as well write you off now. You're doomed to get stupid."
"There's got to be something I can do," Stephen said getting very worried.
Magus hemmed for a second and then hawed for another. He rubbed his chin deep in thought. Finally, he said, "Well, there is one thing that might protect you from her."
"What?"
"Sometimes you have to fight fire with fire. You need a woman who will fight for you. She's got to have strong feelings for you to give her the strength necessary to challenge a beautiful woman like Bridgette. The right woman will keep her away from you," Magus said.
"How about Mel?" Stephen asked after thinking about it for a second.
"She's perfect," Magus said. "There's only one thing you can do. Call her, take her to your house, and make mad passionate love to her all afternoon. You're going to have to make her feel like the most special woman in the world."
"What about Cathy?" Stephen asked.
"Don't worry about her. Jake can take care of Cathy from now on," Magus said. Leaning forward, he said, "This is a life or death emergency! Get to Mel before Bridgette gets her claws into you and turns you stupid!"
Once he was sure that Stephen was gone, Magus picked up the phone and made a call. When the other party answered, he grinned in a self satisfied manner and said, "You can quit following him now. You'll be pleased to know that there is a young lady who will be very happy soon."
Magus frowned and then said, "I said that you can quit following him now."
Worried, Magus said, "Really, I mean it. You ... You can quit following him."
"No. Don't ... Don't say that," Magus said. "No ... He's ... Don't ... This isn't funny."
Magus slammed down the receiver. He exhaled loudly and then said, "I better call Mel."