Less than one week before the day when you make first contact with alien life, you are sitting in the SLC picking at the remnants of a shawarma bowl and wondering whether it is actually humanly possible to pass organic chemistry. You squint at the diagram in front of you for the tenth time, hoping that this time the correct sequence will become clear. “Hexane, nonane, decane,” you mutter under your breath.
“That’s a weird spell,” says a voice. You look up to see Alex grinning at you, a smoothie in one hand and a laptop in the other. With their mop of curly hair, round tortoiseshell glasses, and collection of vintage wool blazers, they always look like they took a wrong turn in 1955 and wound up here by mistake.
You sigh and lean back in your chair, massaging the tense muscles of your neck with your fingers. “Please say you’ve come over here to tell me that the world is ending in the next thirty minutes and I won’t have to take this quiz this Friday.”
“Sorry,” Alex says, plopping down in the chair next to you and placing their laptop on the table in front of you. “Best I can do is a distraction.”
You and Alex are always making puzzles and games for each other; you first met at a game of Blood on the Clocktower your first year and have been inseparable ever since. Lately, however, you haven’t had much time to hang out; your coursework has been kicking your ass, and Alex has been busy with an undergraduate research assistantship for a hotshot professor in the Astronomy department. “When did you even have time to make this?” you ask, looking at the screen.
“Let’s just say that my work has left me inspired.”
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