That Thursday, I was ready. Union County was going to show up and we were going to have to fight against their star player.
They might show us up but what could one player do against a determined team? I was about to find out.
As is usual, they were going to send someone to set up the tech building and I was going to have to be there when the association set up. Oh, the dangers of hosting college students was really getting to me. I knew exactly how rowdy they could be at a cellular level.
This of course was going to be right after my last class. This meant that I actually had to eat my breakfast on time and my lunch and time before all this happened. I didn't like people telling me what to do, as you can imagine.
Class times? I pick them.
The department asked me to pick something reasonable and I said sure but I want the rest of my day for me once I'm done. I don't want to have one in the morning and then one in the evening. Give me a block and I will you thrive. I had seen too many students spread out their courses to their detriment.
So, they gave me a block in which to work. I took that and I will be running with it for the rest of my career if possible.
It was a pretty warm day, all things are considered. Fall had yes to really arrive even though we just gone through the changeover of the seasons. Some was definitely done. Paul was just thinking about making her appearance. And honestly, I didn't blame her. It was shaping up to be a really weird year.
In my first class that morning, I went over the bladen cartridge method again briefly and then went back into some of my more well tread topics that I knew were going to be in the exam before I gotten a new stuff. Even though I love the job, there are times that when I did it that it just felt very perfunctory. Like I was there and I was doing a job. But also I done the shop a lot and I got very good at it. The dean told me that I was an excellent Professor, which having seen my peers was an honest assessment. But she always wanted us to keep working towards something and keep learning. I said yes. Yes I will keep learning but I didn't want to do it in higher ed. I had wanted to get some real on the ground experience. Which is why when I took my last sabbatical went to go do a startup business. It hadn't lasted that long but it had told me a lot. That led me to think about why most small businesses fail and ads include that in there. Even though a lot of these students decided that they wanted to work for big companies, I felt it was important to give back to those little communities like the rotaries like the rotarians. It was all too easy to just say I'm going to just Silo myself out and do theory all the time for my Ivory Tower.
The time and a place for being the Ivory Tower. And I had passed that time. Now I was fractal advice for actual teaching and do the thing multiple times so you could fail here and not in the real world. At least that's what I told my students. The more that you fail in my class on the concept of your assignment, the better you'll do in the real world. Even if failing Project would still get an A if it explained their decisions. Like a business would fail but the idea behind it could be sound because it's just no customers that want that. And if that's the case then you have to go back to your Market research and say it was a really to build this hardware shop to supply tools and such to people in between a Lowe's and Home Depot? Chances are that it's not the best use of your time. But you should be building extra Lowe's in Home Depot. Is a taco truck stand or banana stand. See that right? There would be appreciated by the contractors that come in a lot and have have to buy stuff there. There's also lots of parents handyman that come through that might just want a tamale. That want to get tamales at Home Depot. Because those are good people. In fact, those are my people. If there was a tamale guy at my Lowe's? You'd best believe that I would get him that some money and buy a couple extra.
In my second class today, it was more the same. A couple of students asked me about the business of politics and I said that I had a very non-combittal answer to that and a very personal answer and which one were they asking for. When they sheepishly took the question back I nodded.
I went to lunch and listened to a podcast trying to pregame that night's activities.
Just came in and indicated that she wanted me to take my earbuds out. I shut my head now and then she was very . I took them out and glared at her.
What is it I said
Well the teens looking at some of your students here and it looks like you've had a couple people requesting any sports scholarship? She said
Yes and?
Well it's just that this isn't a thing, Bonnie said. She held up a piece of paper which is clearly an email that had been printed out and underlined several times in red ink.
What you're saying is that it's not a thing yet, I said. It might be soon.
I don't really think that we can do this kind of scholarship. If you have any industry contacts that are willing to donate that kind of money, then we could do it. You can do the thing while you set up a 501 charity and then we funnel it through you or through them till they get that tax discount.
Intrigued as I was by her idea, I was really trying to get the administration to take notice of my guys.
Getting the administration to pay for my scholarships for the Bergen County Bulldogs esports team but it's just my latest pest project. But as had dutifully accepted all of
---
So the thing about being a hater is that I'm trying to find something to criticize not out of love. If you're on my side that's different. When the union kids walked in they had a certain amount of swagger, let's just say too much. Union isn't even that big of a county and I was wondering how they fielded such a team.
Their School was like a school for ants.
Not that Bergen was any bigger.
The actual name of the collge, Union College of Union County NJ was a bit of a mouthful. They shortened it to UCNJ but come on. It was too much.
Three men and two women walked in. I could see the one in the front, strutting as if he had this in hand. That had to be Jalil. Esther had combed through his socials and was going to sacrifice herself in a head to head match up against him.
He played Mid or Jungle frequently. I got a glimpse of his stats and they were pretty good. He had a AP of 90 and a AC of 68.
I checked Ester and she was at her expected AP of 100 and despite all of the training her AC had only risen to 50. It was a meteoric rise and you could see the difference between what she did and what the rest of the team did, but that was hers.
Rachel had given us all of her coaching advice. In fact, once again her company had gotten the contract for this from the NACE. The problem was that if one computer was not up to spec then they could say that the game had been thrown due to that. As such, both sides agreed upon the third party. The vendor made money off the rental, enough to pay someone like Rachel to setup, and we were all happy at the end of the day.
Jalil was working up his team. Honestly there was a poor showing here, but it was to be expected. We were on our home turf, which just meant that we had less of a commute.
"Professor Thomas?" A man in a tweed jacket said. He looked like he was trying hard to give off the air that he was old. He wasn't. I wondered if he'd ever had shaved yet, despite his slowly balding head.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.
"Ah! Professor Brody, I presume? Welcome to Paramus," I said, reaching out to shake his hand.
"Let's have a good match, tonight, then?" he said. "Jalil is excited to face Esther."
You could have heard a pin drop.
Have you ever looked into the void? At that moment, I realized that while I was doing research on our opponents, they could be doing that same thing to us.
"He's been following her?" I said.
"Yeah, she's pretty good. You know that she streams sometimes right?" Professor Brody said.
"I did not know that," I said. "I might have to watch her stream."
The referee approached us. Finally, a lady referee. Her NACE hoodie looked official in all the ways that counted. "You both ready to get this on the road?"
I nodded.
"I'll speak with my team, Professor Thomas will speak with hers and we can start in...? " He trailed off.
"Five minutes?" the referee said.
"That works," I said, stepping back to the team. "Hey guys, bathroom breaks if you need em. Game faces. Esther?"
"Yes?"
"A word?"
We stepped over to her computer.
"So bad news," I said. "Jalil has been watching your streams."
She sat there stone faced. "So?"
"So, he had been telling his manager and..." I leaned in. She frowned. "He's trying to go against you."
"Isn't that what we wanted?" she said.
"That was what we wanted when they didn't know that was what we wanted."
She tapped her forehead. Now she was getting it.
---
It started with the strangest ban round that I'd ever seen before.
Esther had intentionally looked at his streaming and his social media. She had worked her streams around his streams and that had been working for her. Still it had only been a week. This left us with certain expectations.
It was apparent that even after we banned his top five avatars, he was still chuckling. Their team banned her top five played avatars.
I knew that Esther was a fill. She would take any role and based off of her stats she would do well.
UCNJ though, I didn't know what their game was. It was avatar denial.
In short order, basically every role that she regularly played on stream was down its top two avatars in the current meta. Our picks and their picks cleared those off.
"Esther," I said siding up next to her. "Have you ever thought about how well you and Raquel work together?"
Rachel was with me and she was talking to Murph. We had the same idea. The banned avatars had been removed and now it was time to choose roles.
"What the heck are you talking about right now, Professor."
"Counter play."
Initially we had slotted at Esther for the mid lane. We wanted to play her opposite Jalil.
It would be a good idea to match them. But based off of his choices, he had picked an avatar that was good for support or for playing mid lane. My little short list of his choices was dwindling as we went back and forth picking roles and avatars.
It was a strange choice but I was kind of getting that they were going to go off script at that exact moment. That was fine, I could go off script. My current script required me to push Murph into a position he hadn't played much and pull Esther into support roles.
She would be great at support. I'd seen her there before at least twice.
"You want me to play support and have Murph move to mid lane? Or do you want me to play bot?" she said.
"Support."
You see when you select a role in the game, the game doesn't force you to be in that role. It's basically just a thing saying hey, I know that this is a role in the game and I as a player intend to play that so that the team can work this out beforehand.
There was a time before they had lane roles where people would just get assigned stuff or they would call it. You could see it in the chat where people would say I call bottom. I call top I call mid and then it'll be the first person had that had dibs on. It would take it. Now, in competitive play you announce what you had and very rarely did. You not follow up on that. In casual play it was a dibs system.
Again, this was just to signal intent to your team. Things might be different in game, like the last week's top support guy.
"All right, so I'll play support with Raquel," Esther said. "You think that he's going to play support as well? Is that what's going on?"
"Maybe."
I looked over at him. One of the things that I wish I could tell them was that there was a preference option. His preference was apparently support. This didn't strike me as the most savvy option for UCNJ but I accepted it as hey if he's going to go through that then that's on their team.
He would probably do well as a support. Because he would do well at any position. His manager, the professor that was already grading papers in the back, something I should have been doing was just letting him do whatever he did. Julia was running roughshod over his entire team's operation. To be fair, they accepted it and what he chose support and then it chose to support Avatar. That was kind of mid-tier. It had thrown us so much that we were compensating.
I moved over to Murph. Murphy you get with this plan?
He nodded. Ready and willing boss. Do you want me to be the top laner then?
I took a second to examine his statistics. For the first time ever I'd seen a preference that was blank.
I'd seen redacted preferences before or unknown preferences, but right now, was he changing his personal preference based off of this?
We would appreciate it. They're doing some kind of fuckery over there and we are going to fuck with them equally as well.
Next to him, Raquel sang a line from Adele. "What kind of fuckery is this..."
I smiled. See Adele had the exact work schedule I wanted.
She worked hard for about 6 months and then disappeared for about 4 or 5 years. But she wasn't icon in terms of work and work performance. My icon was Beyoncé.
Once she was on a set for 3 days and rumor says that she forgot to eat. Because she wanted to succeed.
I would never forget to eat because I love food but that that determination and that grit? I saw that flash across Racquels eyes briefly. With a super supportive ally in her corner, she was on fire.
Her match rating was a nine. Esthers was a ten.
Jalils match rating was also a ten.
Esther was sitting in the center close enough to Raquel that they could easily swap what they were doing. Esther was in the center, on her left was Raquel and on their left was Murph.
Either way, the team was assembled and we were about to try something that had never been tried for us. UCNJ had played their cards. If tried to do something, we would have someone exactly in that position.
"You know what," I said. "I think that he's trying to prove that he can win this even when he's in a support role."
Esther, ever the opportunist, smiled. I can see the little clockwork cogs spinning in her eyes.
And then it was the game. We were in it.
I had bought these strategies for rounds 2 and 3 so I thought that that would be set up to really not have to
Then I saw that their strategy was going to be offense in Phase 1 and I was confused. I set our strategy to farming.
We were going to play the long game here.
"Esther, Raquel," I said. "Farm and deny."
"Yes boss," they said at the same time.
Rachel and I step backwards to observe the first couple of minutes. It was all pretty on level and our jungle, Bob was able to get something moving just by having the assist of Esther and Raquel at the same time. No one appeared on the lane until the first minute and a half.
That was when Raquel started her campaign of terror.
It ticked over to a minute 45 before Jalil arrived with his other botliner. Clearly they had helped out their jungle.
See the thing about DOTA is that you have a perfect detail description of what they're buying. If you go into the status screens you can see what everyone has. He had bought a support item. This is the kind of item that gave you gold based off of assisting in killing minions. It was good for a supporter but eventually you would want something to replace that or you would want to lean into it more.
If only one person can get gold from killing a minion, then it made sense for someone to buy something that would get you extra gold for assisting killing minions.
In fact, it was the same item that Esther had bought.
I was going to bet that he had played this game ever since Warcraft 3 days when he probably had to get his parents to buy it.
I imagined the conversation for what had to have been a 10-year-old Jalil and his mother.
'Hey Mom, Dad buy me this already game so I can play RTS stuff. Oh and it's got this special mode that lets you play this MOBA.' I could see his parents eyes glazing over and them just saying like sure son as long as you do well in school and then he would just get straight A's because he wanted to play this game so much.
And there it was. He instantly tried to exhaust all his resources on a gank attempt. It would have worked on just about any other player, but my girls knew their stuff.
It looked like he was whispering to his partner from across the way. Even though they all had headphones on, them, being next to each other meant that they could just not listen to the team chat and just whisper. They would have to mute their mics, but it made sense..
I wondered if he would be directing his bot laner and if their mechanics were going to be good enough to support it. I quickly scanned around looking for the botliner and looked like they had a mechanic's level of 13. This was good for a start because it meant that they understood the game really really well and they had some teamwork. They redacted number was 20 though. That gave me pause. I never seen that fifth score to be a 20. I really needed the shop to give you some sort of discount or something like that.
Maybe at some point in time, the shop would give me an option to go into debt. I scroll to my screens and saw that there was a unused one that I hadn't checked yet. And it said retire. I blinked several times and then briefly considered it. But I was only in my thirties. Late '30s at that, I had time to retire.
I didn't know what that would mean. If this was some sort of demonic curse or some devil curse, did that mean that I was going to lose my soul or something? That was a question for a Mystic or something like that. I had more pressing concerns.
"Is he playing an aggressive support?" I said.
"He is playing an aggressively supportive support. I'm guessing that he Is having some deep plan here that will turn into nothing," Rachel said.
We were watching from a few steps behind the team.
Four minutes in and Racquel was steaming. For as much as we were denying them, that lane was locked down. No one was leaving.
They had turned the match into two one of two parts. Murph and the top two thirds of the map were playing standard DOTA. The bottom lane was helms deep.
They moved forward. We stepped back getting into cover. Just as soon as they got comfortable, our jungle appeared to take a pot shit at them. Then he stuck out so Racquel or Esther could go shop. They kept this holding pattern up. When their jungle arrived they reset back to the tower.
It was a masterwork class on how to avoid conflict with making as much of it as possible. They pushed until they couldn't. Our guys didn't have a chance to have a breather and they kept that pace up. Sure we got the occasional hit, but no ganks. It was like they were playing into our trap just as much as we were playing into theirs.
For every inch we gained, we paid in virtual blood. Esthers match rating briefly went to nine and I nearly panicked. Who would I tell? How could I even explain that. Well I've got this patch that lets me see things about people that they wouldn't have to always be able to see. And it lets me take a look at this statistic inside of someone 's player profile which oh yeah I will take territory of the psych hospital as soon as possible.
"They're clearly trying to get you guys to expend your energy of fighting him since we're going to take the kill. Don't let him. Get it."
After that rabble rousing first two turns, we didn't have good chilling. I could feel a team really working as hard as I could to see what they could do but I felt all futile. UCNJ knew what they were and they were really great material. The average batch of players couldn't compete against them.
But tonight, we would try.
We might lose this first match, but we do lots of matches before. The important part right now was for us to learn from this match.