Veritable was the best at grading homework out of any professor. Check for name and date, check if they wrote the right answers, skim their work if not the to see if they at least had the right idea, repeat. All in the dead of night, while the kid was off doing who knows what, so he wouldn’t be disturbed. All with a Bob Dylan record spinning and a cigar between his lips. Easy listening, easy work.
Sara, the last song, was finishing up. Veritable was about to stand up from his desk to flip the record, but Hurricane started playing on its own. The professor shrugged and resumed his work. Landon had probably teleported home and flipped before him. They were being oddly quiet if so, but he didn’t want disturbances so he didn’t care.
Veritable was grading for a large class, 250 students, but he’d divvied up this work amongst himself and his TAs. Only about 50 sheets for him to grade in total. Yet, as his digital alarm clock ticked to 12:00 AM, he found it curious that he hadn’t finished grading. He’d only started at 10:00 PM, but he was a fast worker. For a brief second he considered that he was trapped in a time loop, but that was a dumb idea. One, time loops didn’t exist, and two, he was a statistics professor and the viya of probability. There was no chance of him, of all people, being caught in a time loop.
An hour and far too many papers later, Veritable reached into his desk drawer and took out a half-empty box of cigars. He was something of a chain smoker, and it was about time to light another cigar. He was about to dump the cigar butt hanging out of his mouth in his ashtray when he realized it was just as long as when he’d started smoking it. Even the best cigars only lasted a couple of hours, tops, and this one was clearly lit. How long had he really been smoking it?
Maybe Veritable was missing something. Maybe he’d been so focused on grading papers that the cigar between his lips was new, and he’d lit it without thinking. Maybe his alarm clock was broken and that’s why the time on it didn’t seem right. Veritable peered through his office’s curtained window out of curiosity. It was plenty dark with nothing but stars and streetlights to illuminate the city. The clock was at least right about it being nighttime.
“Landon? Come over here, I gotta ask you somethin’,” Veritable called out. Like him, Landon didn’t need to sleep, and they were always off doing something or other in the middle of the night. But they were good at using their connection to speakers and microphones to keep an ear out for Veritable; whenever he called their name, there was a decent chance they’d stick their head into a nearby TV so they could listen.
Sure enough, Landon crawled out of the alarm clock a moment later, appearing as staticky sludge that materialized into a lanky black kid wearing all black and amateurishly applied heavy eyeshadow. Veritable made a mental note to show them how to properly put on makeup later.
Landon bent down to sniff at Veritable’s neck, their way of greeting and checking on him, before asking in American Sign Language, “Did you finally finish grading homework?”
“Not yet. I was wonderin’ if you could peek in that there clock for me and lemme know if it’s broken. Somethin’ about it ain’t right,” Veritable signed back. There was nothing odd about its appearance. It had the usual bright red, angular letters, cheap wooden paneling and buttons to set the time and alarms — but it still felt wrong.
Landon picked up the clock and poked their head into the tiny screen, an act that should have been physically impossible. Veritable tried not to think about it too hard. When they emerged they shrugged and said, “It looks fine to me. Why d’you ask?”
“I just…” Veritable sighed. How was he supposed to explain that he just didn’t like the clock? He wasn’t the type of man to base his feelings on vague superstitions. It felt like he needed to give a concrete justification for his logic, but he simply didn’t have one. “It ain’t right. Been at 12:00 for too long,” he finally settled on. At least Landon wasn’t as logical as he was.
Landon set the alarm clock down and giggled. “Actually, it’s at 1:05 now. But I guess time would start blending together now that you’ve been grading for a whole day.”
Veritable blinked, and he got the inexplicable sense that his reality had been cracked. Intact enough that it wasn’t shattered, but undeniably broken nonetheless. “What?”
Landon stared back, goofy smile still plastered onto their face. “What?”
“I mean, whaddaya mean a whole day? It ain’t been that long. The time would be different, or my cigar woulda ran out, or I woulda switched to doing somethin’ else.”
Landon remained utterly unconvinced. “Nuh-uh. I saw you still grading last night and I was gonna say hi, but you said you don’t like being bothered when you’re busy so I decided to leave you alone. I checked out a rave instead. Do you like my outfit?”
Landon was wearing platform boots that made them even taller than they already were, a black band t-shirt and matching ripped jeans. “It’s a great outfit,” Veritable said honestly, “but it ain’t the focus of this conversation. Also, take off your shoes.”
Landon sat down in Veritable’s chair to take off their boots. The things were incredibly impractical, covered in haphazardly arranged buckles, and it took Landon a bit to pull them off. “Oh. Well, I didn’t bother you, but I peeked into the room every now and then. You didn’t look up at all, you just stayed hunched over that homework, even when the sun started rising. I was thinking maybe you’d get hungry at some point, but you don’t like my cooking and it’s a Saturday anyway, so I figured you’d get something to eat when you were ready.”
Veritable dragged his hands down his face, then picked up the stack of homework he’d been grading. As he’d thought, there were only fifty sheets, but only half of them had the grades and corrections he wrote in red pen. Even some of the sheets that he distinctly remembered grading, the homework by the star students and the strugglers, were untouched. “I can’t believe it,” Veritable muttered under his breath, shaking his head back and forth in disbelief. “The proof’s in the puddin’, but what’re the odds?”
“You’d know better than me,” Landon shrugged. “Maybe your powers made it happen by accident.”
“Nah, that ain’t how it works. I didn’t make no bets or contracts. I guess it’s a… a spurt of bad luck?”
“You smell humiliated. Do you want a hug?”
Veritable was humiliated, because he still didn’t understand how he’d gotten caught in a time loop. In his five thousand-odd years on this earth he’d never caught a whiff of time-travel tomfoolery, let alone orchestrate it himself, and now he’d fallen victim to it. A whole day wasted, and for what? “Yeah, I’ll take a hug. Thanks, kiddo.”
Landon pulled Veritable into a tight hug, nuzzling his bearded cheek as they did so. Their hug lasted nearly forever, and when they finally let go they asked, “What’re you gonna do about the time you lost?”
“Dunno.” If Veritable was back in Sekharu, maybe he could ask someone how the time loop happened, or get advice on how to escape loops more quickly. But the states were nearly devoid of knowledgeable people like that. Barely any humans knew how magic really worked here, and he didn’t know any enMahyeta besides Landon. Praying to the Third seemed like the only viable option, although there was a decent chance she wouldn’t answer. He could deal with that later, though. “For now, I ain’t touchin’ none of my work for the next twenty-four hours. Gonna fix myself some breakfast— dinner— whatever. Gonna fix myself a meal instead. You eaten lately?”
Landon shook their head no. “I was swimming in Radiospace looking for someone when you called me.”
“Go back to doin’ that and I’ll make some jello for when you get back.” Veritable snubbed his cigar in the ashtray and dumped it in the trashcan. This time loop mess had killed his mood for smoking and increased his appetite. It wasn’t good for viya to go without eating for so long.
Landon gurgled excitedly and hugged Veritable again. “Thanks, Dad!”
“Don’t mention it.” Just as Landon started squeezing themself back into the little alarm clock, Veritable placed a hand on their shoulder and added, “And you can disturb me if I ain’t actin’ right, kid. It ain’t the end of the world if I get a little annoyed.”
“Really?” Landon’s grin grew even bigger. Unlike most people’s, Landon’s eyes didn’t disappear when they smiled. Their eyes seemed to widen, white pupils filled to the brim with mischief and curiosity. Veritable knew that they had a very different definition of “actin’ right,” and that he could expect them to interrupt him when everything was fine even more than they already did, but now he didn’t care anymore. Anything to stop himself from getting trapped in another time loop.
“Yeah, really. Go on, get yourself a human to feed on.” Veritable patted Landon’s shoulder twice and with that, the viya was on their way.