ROBIN WILSON
THE MEDIATED FACULTY
ONE APRIL MORNING NOT long ago, in our green old college town of Granger City,
California, two alien sophomores violated campus regulations. Attending our
university under the one-sided intergalactic student exchange program imposed by
our Rigelian "visitors," they had been peaceful enough, busy with the mediated
courses we supervise (now most of our curriculum), until that morning when they
fell out over some trivial question of miscegenation. The two had become
involved in an intricate and-- we are informed-- sometimes painful roman a
quatre with a native Californian and a hairy quadruped from a small planet in a
minor system, one so insignificant as to bear only a catalog number(Bonn
Durchmusterung +16 Degrees, 2257).
Faculty Dictum: Miscegenation has ended racism on our planet, and we find it
incomprehensible that until well into the past century it was illicit in much of
what was then the United States. Now we are confident that coitus among our
newer students will do the same for intergalactic amity. It also strengthens the
genetic feed stock when it produces viable issue.
And so they resolved to settle their differences in one of the dreadful duels --
the Rigelian "visitors" romantic amalgam of the chivalric code, German students'
dueling Verbindungen, and American wild west shootouts -- that are now such an
integral part of the college scene. The sports-loving aliens have become
obsessed with their odd version of our cowboy mythos and have enlisted many of
our domestic students in their competitions.
Faculty Dictum: Duels on our campus are proscribed as false replications of
historical practices, as are intoxication, plagiarism, the consumption of live
fish, and the theft of undergarments belonging to students of any gender.
The weapons the duelers chose were conventional repeating quarkers; their mounts
were the small, quarter-ton ground-effect utility ductors they had stolen, to
the ire of our university groundskeepers, from our motor pool. These are the
lively little quasi-military vehicles that are the latest in the enduring
General Purpose (G.P. or "jeep") series extending back to Earth's
next-to-the-last planetary war, fought near the midpoint of the last century.
Faculty Dictum: Affectionate tales of the "heroic" little vehicle that was
readily stolen unless disabled by removal of the distributor rotor are also
false historical replications, and are discouraged, as is speculation about the
meaning in this context of "distributor rotor.'
The duelists met at dawn on our nearly deserted quadrangle, the whine and swoosh
of their machines reverberating among the mirrored carbofil facades of our
buildings and echoing down from the misty blue of the Granger City Dome, which
is low over our campus. The racket woke our students in their dorms and
disturbed our handful of animate faculty and communications technicians in their
cells and cloisters. We too were awakened -- that is, powered up from standby
mode -- by the noise, sound being one of the few sensory perceptions left to us.
The Rigelian Tau, who had started the quarrel by making rude jests about the
multiple and colorful penes of the Rigelian Gamma and the comically lustful
noises of his quadruped lover, was the more skillful driver and soon forced his
opponent's jeep head-on into one of our fine old Sycamores. These were planted
back in the time of the second ozone scare and the beginning of the Great
Reforestation Movement in the twenties.
But the Gamma was for the nonce lucky. As he fled on foot, chaps flapping and
spurs jingling, his callous pursuer cut a bloody swath through a newly gathered
gape of spectators and struck hard upon our low, wrought-iron drinking fountain
(gift of the class of '04) hidden among his victims. Our little jeep flipped,
tossing the Tau and his quarker in a low trajectory over our fountain and into
the white stone lintel of our Language Arts building, where his horned head
deposited a gelatinous burst of scarlet and gray, which are, incidentally, our
school colors.
The Rigelian Gamma, thus delivered from threat, screamed his native cry of
triumph, thrust forth his iridescent bacula in an uncontrollable spasm of joy,
and performed his race's traditional victory celebration seriatim -- upon the
supine forms of three student cowgirls, the star forward of our men's field
hockey team in his regulation snakeskin boots and knee-length jeans, and one
crinolined professor of Xenolinguistics, whose pleas for gentleness delivered in
the Rigelian's own language inordinately excited him.
A moment later, spent and dazed from his busy early morning, the Rigelian Gamma
was lassoed and violently pulled apart by our angry students, faculty, and
groundskeepers.
Faculty Dictum: Summary, on-campus execution of malefactors is Item (b) in
Section 4 of the List of Disapproved Campus Celebratory Activities, along with
the destruction of goal posts (a), student occupation of administrative offices
(c), and ritual defloration (d).
Now all this would have amounted to very little, just another student hijinks
story reported in our carefully monitored campus newspaper, had it not been for
an ambitious young student leader named Henry Najeeb. A large, muscular man with
much dark facial hair in stylish bobs about an aquiline nose and full lips, he
was the scion of one of Southern California's powerful Amerarab families whose
enormous fortune derived from a chain of up-scale connivance stores and
feely-plug rental outlets in Riverside County. Partly because one of the
Rigelian Gamma's cowgirl victims had been Najeeb's sometime lover but mostly
because he knew a good political cause when he saw one, he roused first our
campus and then the town. By nightfall chanting lynch mobs had left no alien
alive in Granger City, although their torches occasioned some substantial
air-quality problems within our dome.
Despite our best efforts and those of local, continental, and planetary
governments, word of the Granger City massacre spread quickly around the globe,
converting to violent xenophobia a humanity whose hatred of the aliens had been
repressed in the name of interstellar amity reinforced by a prudent planetary
cowardice. Within a week, almost all the thousands of alien traders, protoplasm
collectors, students, adventurers, and diplomats who had come to Earth (named
psarkit djah, "our new frontier," in middle high Rigelian) were gone. Many were
murdered by angry mobs; most were able to escape via one of the dozen or so
spaceports housing the aliens' strange, organic spacecraft.
Faculty Dictum: Genocide, however merited, is strictly prohibited on campus
for nearly all ethnic groups.
Young Najeeb, widely acclaimed the prophet of a new order, rose to power as
swiftly as any media creation in history. He was quickly appointed to leadership
in governing councils at the local, state, continental and planetary levels,
although we did not make him president of our student body. By the summer of his
twenty-fourth year, six weeks after the Granger City duel, Henry Najeeb was the
most admired and hence most powerful person on Earth, and it was to him that the
dire message from the Supreme Galactic Council was delivered.
Thereupon -- clad in full evening Western, from ten-gallon Borsalino to
cock-heeled Ferragamos -- he finally came to the dais before us to seek our
wisdom and counsel.
"Sirs and madams," he said in the formal studentspeak we require of petitioners,
his drawl reverberating among the vaulted arches and formerets of the great dome
that is the ornate Memorial Faculty Club where we hold sway. "Profs, deans, an'
docs: Ah, Henry Najeeb, Senior Second Class in the College of the Way Things Go,
do petition y'all for aid and counsel. Ah have paid the ten-credit fee and had
my student Ah.D. card stamped."
"Speak, Senior Second Class Najeeb!" we thundered with oracular resonance. We
use our cave-of-winds voice with petitioners; it is built into our circuitry and
tends to obscure the fact that we are one hundred and seven kilograms of silicon
and rare earth oxides (mostly field-effect opto with some hydronics at the front
end) and a few more than twelve hundred sealed and wired Erlenmeyer flasks
containing our soft dark selves twitching in deliciously comfortable amber
fluid.
"Ah have got mah ass in a crack," said Najeeb in his meticulously archaic
student lingo, "and maybe yours and ever'body else's too."
We have an Aha! circuit useful in both studentspeak and facultyspeak. "Aha!" we
said. "While we tolerate youthful hijinks on our campus, some things can be
carried too far. What have you been up to, Mr. Najeeb?"
"It's the massacre of them aliens last month. The Galactic Council has written
us that they're more'n a little pissed and gittin' kinda tired of our planet
anyways, and fer starters, they're gonna go ahead and destroy Granger City."
"When?"
"Thursday next. At 11:30 in the morning."
We have a most impressive administratorspeak hmmm circuit little used in
studentspeak and facultyspeak. "Hmmm," we said. "This will require thought and,
of course, consultation. We will hear our several constituencies, Mr. Najeeb,
and let you know our findings through regular campus channels."
"But there's nothin' to decide!" Najeeb cried, darting his eyes around him at
the dim and vastly domed mosaic of our faces, scanned from the faculty sections
of old yearbooks and restored pixel by patient pixel to faultless
eight-by-ten-foot glossies. "Them Galactic sumbitches think they're a bunch a
ol' Indian fighters and we're a bunch a ol' Indians, and we gotta do somethin'!"
Our impressively vaulted chamber echoed his final syllable: thin -- thin --
thin.
"Through established university channels!" we thundered. "In the meantime you
are excused."
Najeeb left, muttering, and we set to work.
The first step for us, of course, was to dis-integrate, which instantly brought
the babble of twelve hundred voices, each belonging to a learned individual who
considered him- or herself to be an original thinker with a proprietary interest
in truth and virtue. These are the qualities that made us proud to be professors
and led generations of students in annual popular referenda to select us t
sometimes snatching us from graves dating back almost to the founding of the
institution in 1927 -- as the university's finest, and thus appropriate
candidates for reconstitution into our current selves, the Mediated Faculty.
Twitching. In our glorious amber fluid.
There followed the usual spirited flow of debate clustered by academic field.
The life scientists proposed a biological weapon that would eliminate all life
on the aliens' home planets or at least make their spaceships ill, but the
physical scientists could not agree on an appropriate delivery system. The
social scientists suggested normative and summative studies of cross-cultural
patterns of aggression. They had a title, "The Transmogrification of Exogenic
Chi-Factor Determinants in Strife Resolution: A Vertical Exegesis" and sixteen
co-authors before pen (speaking, of course, metaphorically) was set to paper.
The engineers designed a complex subterranean shelter complete with a
state-of-the-art sanitary leach field. And the English Department -- as it had
on every issue since the invention of the DNA recovery process that reanimated
us and, incidentally, made possible the third Reagan administration -- voted to
secede from the university.
When all departmental proposals had been aired, all opinions expressed in
exacting detail -- and then repeated -- our chair, wise and experienced, struck
her gavel (again, metaphorically) and reactivated integration.
Faculty Dictum: Campus regulations and policies will be formulated strictly by
means of democratic processes, and in full consultation with all members of the
campus community, whenever time allows.
We called for a top administrator, and when he had been released to our custody,
we instructed him to solve the problem. Only a decade older than Student Second
Class Najeeb, President Hwang-Ng was stooped and balding after three years in
office. Dressed in his customary blue pinstripe jumpsuit, he assumed the dais. A
beam of yellow light reserved to honor persons of rank cascaded dramatically
down upon him. His pate gleamed.
"Learned friends and colleagues," he began in the polished administratorspeak
that had convinced our search committee to recommend him to our Board, "you
honor me with your confidence. As always I defer to the wisdom of the faculty,
but I have seen the letter from the Supreme Galactic Council and I have informed
the Board that Najeeb is right when he says our ass is in a crack, that the
Council intends to destroy us all next Thursday, and that this may be just the
first step in a more massive, planetary retaliation."
Hwang-Ng paused a moment to allow his final syllable, "shun -- shun --shun," to
cease its echoing, and then he added: "The Board extends you its best wishes and
assures you of its confidence in your governance of the university while they
and my administration are on retreat for the next week or so down in Disney
County or maybe further south in the Baja Protectorate, we haven't yet decided
which would be safer...uh...more conducive to our task -- ask -- ask -- ask."
WE AGAIN DIS-INTEGRATED and this time we listened to individual Erlenmeyers,
particularly those from the Libertine Arts. We heard painters and holographers
who debated post this and retro that. We listened as a nasal flautist did
variations on Von Webber's Casuistry Cantata, and -- to our eventual profit --
we took telling testimony from Professor Mizkitti, the xenolinguist who not only
had newly joined our number at the hands of the lynched Rigelian Gamma but also
understood the aliens' fascination with our western mythos.
"Spin this," she said. "Gamma killed Tau in a duel, and then he himself died
when someone defended my -- uh-- honor. Maybe we ought to offer our invaders
another contest with my champion."
At this we re-integrated, put our heads together-- an unavoidable act
considering our circuitry -- and agreed upon our course of action.
We called Mr. Najeeb back before us. "Senior Second Class Najeeb," we intoned.
"Hear our formal resolution:"
WHEREAS the Supreme Galactic Council intends to destroy this university in
retaliation for the extra-duel death of a Rigelian student, a probable first
step in the ultimate destruction of our planet as our visitors tire of their
"New Frontier;" and
WHEREAS our visitors have amply demonstrated their regard for the field of honor
as the means for conflict resolution; and
WHEREAS the victory of a champion chosen by the university to represent it will
likely satisfy the Council's demand for honorable redress and return us to the
just barely bearable status quo pertaining before the Granger City massacre; and
WHEREAS, on the other hand, the defeat of said champion is just as likely to
convince the Council of our utter inferiority and render us uninteresting for
further exploitation by their traders, protoplasm collectors, students,
adventurers, and diplomats; therefore be it
RESOLVED that you, Henry Najeeb, Senior etc. and Most Admired Man on Earth, do
forthwith go forth with fortitude and with our assurance of our gratitude and
procure a suitable gauntlet to throw down before the Galactic Council's
champion.
Mr. Najeeb, suddenly illuminated by our honoring beam of yellow light but wise
to his problematic future, turned to leave our dim amber presence, his shoulders
hunched in resignation. He did not even then, however, abandon the impeccable
studentspeak that had taken him so far and now made him our last, best hope.
"Aw shit," he said.
Our dome echoed, it -- it -- it.
Early on Thursday morning, well before Granger City's scheduled destruction, the
jeeps -- first two and then one -- again whined and swooshed across our grassy
quadrangle for a few short minutes. By that evening, the last of the aliens'
spaceports had been disassembled and packed into their strange, vastly swollen
organic spacecraft. They were followed aboard by the remaining "visitors" led by
the Council's triumphant champion, a Rigelian Lambda with a new notch added to
the many on the quarker holstered against his fringed chaps.
We had a little more silicon and a new Erlenmeyer, its occupant luxuriating in
amber contentment, and we were eager to learn how this addition of a vigorous
young student voice would improve our deliberations.
We had already learned something new that day, that our ground. effect jeeps
cannot be disabled by removing the distributor rotor. They have no distributor
rotors. But as our fine groundskeepers demonstrated, they have other parts of
equal vulnerability.
Faculty Dictum: Students distinguishing themselves in extracurricular
activities such as competitive sports which bring renown to our campus community
can expect swift promotion and early commencement.
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