Hidden In Plain Sight

“Another day, another degree!” President Smith greeted the staff cheerfully as he entered the Kincaid building. In return, he received the regular half hearted smiles and sleepy “good morning sirs” that he had grown accustomed to over the past eight years of running McClaren College. Customary bookbag and steaming mug of chai tea in hand, he strode down the long second floor hallway towards his office. The President’s office was a spacious room with the same dark hardwood floors as the rest of the magnificent old building. The only furniture in the room was his sturdy ornately carved wooden desk, his cabinet full of trinkets and treasures on the far side of the room, and his lavishly comfortable leather reclining thinking chair sitting by the fireplace. There were no chairs for guests, as this office was his private space and he preferred to have meetings of any size in the boardroom on the floor below. Privacy was important, and his many years in management had taught him most employees equated sitting in the bosses office to jumping into the shark tank at the aquarium. They were just asking to be eaten alive. He wanted to provide as low stress of a work environment as possible and is a big believer in the theory that culture starts at the top. He gave high fives for jobs well done, kept the break room stocked with good coffee, brought in donuts on Fridays, and arrived at work the same time as his staff in casual polos and slacks.

Walking to the beautiful stone fireplace in the corner of his office and tossing in the front page of his newspaper Archibald lit a match and nursed a small fire in the remains of the log from the day before. This office, unlike all of the others in the building, still had the original working fireplace dating back to when it was first built. He sat in his chair, took a sip of his chai tea, and closed his eyes. Taking deep breaths, he relaxed the muscles in his neck and jaw and focused on the aroma of hickory wood that had begun to fill the room. He listened to the fire crackling and popping and tried to appreciate the pleasant warmth coming from it. Archibald had been feeling anxious as of late. As if he had a deadline approaching, but couldn’t remember what for. Taking another deep breath Archibald rolled his shoulders up and back and slowly let it out, trying to imagine that he was blowing out all of the tension and negative feelings with the slow exhale. Half forcing a smile, Smith committed himself to having an anxiety free, positive day.

With another sip of his chai, Archibald reached for his bag and took out his laptop. He missed the days where computers were giant boxes that screamed in protest when you tried to use the internet and always stayed at work. Some of the departmental staff had desktops in their offices and Archibald joked truthfully that he was jealous. Steve, his therapist, believed that like a number of highly important business executives Archibald had trouble shutting off and relaxing because his mind was always at work. The ability to actually pick up his computer and take it home with him did not help him “leave work at work” as Steve had put it. Now making a conscious effort to leave work at work, after arriving home for the day Archibald had gotten into the habit of putting his bookbag in the trunk of the car so that it was locked away for the night. Occasionally, he would go out to the garage and get his computer because something was keeping him from sleeping, but he was proud he had made some progress in this area of his life. He had also started trying to be more socially involved in areas outside of work giving him other things to focus on. He joined a golf league at the country club, tried to schedule drinks or phone calls with his brothers, and had even put together an online dating profile to try and rekindle that part of his life after years of burying himself in work.

Moving to the far less comfortable rolling chair behind his ornately carved wooden desk, Archibald removed his laptop from his book bag and opened it revealing the glowing screen. Like most days, his first virtual stop was his email. Opening the inbox he was pleased to see there was an email from Dr. Emily Ahsante from his Neuroscience department in bold at the top. The subject read “Andrew Warzhow writes another masterpiece.” Clicking the message Archibald’s eyes scanned the short email. Reaching the bottom he smirked and shook his head in subtle disbelief. The dark haired young woman sneaking in to listen to lectures and selling papers to well off undergraduates continued to blow the minds of his world class faculty like they were first graders at a magic show. Smith printed the email and the copy of the paper Emily had attached. He removed the documents from the low profile personal printer sitting on his desk and skimmed through the paper Emily had raved about. With a degree in civics and a lifetime in academia he didn’t know the first thing about Neuroscience, but he could appreciate good writing and Emily was right, this was a masterpiece. He grabbed his keys out of the side pocket of his bookbag and used one of them to unlock the bottom right drawer of his desk. Flipping through a few dozen manilla folders, he pulled out the one labeled “Brilliant Shadow” and added the two documents to the stack of papers inside before returning it to the drawer.

Smith had been keeping tabs on the girl for over a year now. First becoming aware of her existence through a college wide sting to crack down on upper class students selling their papers from intro classes. He had created a task force of administrators to pose as Freshman students looking to purchase papers for gen ed and intro classes online. The task force would scour campus social media for advertisement of paper sales and had found a ring of collection and sales disguised as a McClarenville garage sale site. Her case was brought to his desk, because she had been flagged for posting an ad with an email to reach out to on the site, but none of the papers the task force purchased from her were in the database they had created of those that had been submitted in the previous three years. All of the papers she had sold were thought to be originally written, and they were magnificent. Smith had chosen to remove the “Jane Doe '' as the task force had labelled her from the list of persons to take action against, and had been personally buying her papers in whichever classes she was selling for that semester for the last few semesters. Every paper written received glowing remarks from the faculty. Except for the paper she wrote for Ed Johansen. He was not a fan of her view of social morality calling it “cold and sociopathic”. Smith had read the paper and disagreed, he felt her take was a breath of fresh air and gave some insight into this young beautiful mind. The Shadow argued that the current idea of social morality is a construct to keep the individual from achieving through the false ideology that their sacrifice to the community would raise up all of them. Her argument was so eloquently described and rock solid Smith couldn’t understand why Ed was so upset about it. That is, until he read that the assignment was to argue for or against the implementation of a set of global morality principles. The Shadow had argued that doing that was impossible because social morality is a construct of an elitist upperclass to keep “good” people in check. Smith had to agree with her. A group of the world’s people got to play by a different set of rules than others because of their wealth, name, or position and that wasn’t right. It was unfair and even if it isn’t going to be corrected, it would be foolish to pretend it didn’t exist.

Smith had high hopes for the Shadow and had put a great deal of thought into how to approach her. A mind as independent and free thinking as hers didn’t come around everyday. McClaren had seen thousands of great minds come and go. The number of doctors, lawyers, scientists, philosophers, and professors that had come from McClaren over the years was innumerable. Smith was willing to wager this young woman, who didn’t appear to even be an enrolled student, may be one of the best and brightest to attend classes at the college in a very long time. The time was not right however, and she was clearly far too clever to be easily deceived into making a friend.

A beep on his cell phone brought Smith out of his day dreaming. An alert from the front desk, his 9am meeting was here. Smith closed his eyes, rolled his shoulders, and took in another deep breath. Exhaling he opened his eyes and put on his best smile. “Time to have a good day.”