Every week, Eleanor would come over to visit for Allie's piano lessons. Some days she'd stay the night if her schedule was free. One day, she requested a strange favour from Nola.

"I have only ever attended the Conservatoire in my youth," she said, "show me what it's like to attend a normal university."

"Like, you just want to walk around it?"

"No, I've been to universities. I teach in one. What I want to do is attend the classes."

They walked to college together the next morning. It was all well and good except she dressed in a ludicrously high class concert dress that drew the looks out of every eye, male and female.

Nola covered her face with her handbag. Her face was flushed from embarrassment from drawing all the looks.

"Nola, you are easily embarrassed. You will never become a performer," Eleanor said. She carried the air of a queen among peasants. She let out a high haughty laugh, laughing at the childishness of Nola's flustered self.

"Aren't you embarrassed?"

"By the age of three, I was performing all thirty Goldberg Variations by Bach in concerts and reading dissertations on music."

Nola had much doubts that she could read at three years old but with Eleanor, anything was possible.

"At four, I had already written my first composition in pianoforte. Five, I had composed nine symphonies and by six, I was personally conducting them in the courts of aristocrats."

"Really!?" Nola's eyes were wide with amazement.

"No, I'm joking. Have you lost your sense of humour?"

Nola had a great sense of humour and Eleanor's remark rubbed her off the wrong way. She had always laughed when appropriate and even at times when it wasn't. Such an occasion occurred at her grandfather's funeral. Her sister Silvie's favourite food was beans on toast. When she was happy, she had beans on toast. When she was sad, she had beans on toast. When was stressed, she also, had beans on toast. Beans on toast was her coping mechanism and drug to happiness. The hotel they stayed at that had a breakfast buffet. She was in beans and toast heaven as she told Nola. In the solemn and grave silence of the funeral hall, she had held Nola's hands and looked at Nola with bottomless abyss in her eyes. "I can't hold it in anymore," and proceeded to let it rip the biggest and loudest fart she had pent up in death's ceremony. She farted so hard she felt herself propelled up into the air. Nola laughed her tears out.

"I guess you're right. I think I'm starting to lose it these days. There's something weighing in my mind." Nola looked to Eleanor with a fresh face full of confidence and laughed.

"Why are you laughing now when my joke was ten seconds ago," Eleanor looked bewildered at her sudden outburst. "You've always been weird."

They went into a dark lecture theatre hall and sat at the back row.

"So this is what being normal is like," she said the lecture. "How do you bear to live like this?"

Nola excused themselves from her social circle who were all dying to know who this strange princess sitting at the back of the class was. They grabbed lunch at the canteen in the Concourse. It was rare that they were alone together. Allie was usually there.

"I see that you are friends with everybody as usual," she smiled icily. "Why are your closest friends foreigners though?"

"Your words are cold as ice," Nola played along, "as usual."

"Those Indians, how can you stand their accent! Can't you pick better people to be good friends with?"

"I'm a foreigner myself!" Accents were the last thing she was worrying about. No doubt they would keep asking her for Eleanor's number tonight with how incessant they were.

"You are?"

"Belarusian. I speak Russian as well."

"You do? I must ask Allie about that too."

"Ah, he doesn't speak it. We started speaking English mostly by the time he was born here."

"No wonder. That explains your slight accent. I always thought it was your weird lisp." She forked a sausage and cut it neatly into eight divisions. "This college's food is quite poor. How can they charge so much for this as well?" Nola threw her a packet of ketchup.

"Ketchup goes with everything. I used to eat sandwiches just with ketchup. My sister prefers beans on toast." Eleanor scowled.

"Who's that guy in the far corner of the class all by himself? I feel an unsettling presence from him."

"You're one to say." Nola wiped her mouth, satisfied with her heavy carb meal. "Who? Which guy?" She knew exactly who she was talking about.

"The good looking guy that was messing with his laptop for the entire class. He should be doing modelling for teenage girl magazines instead of being here." Nola's mouth was agape. She did not expect Eleanor to be thirsty for anyone who did not play a musical instrument.

Nola's head slumped down into her hand. "I have to tell you about that guy. I think that guy hates me. He's actively avoiding me. Whenever I try to go up to him, he's gone."

"Have you set your sights on him? You're always looking for boyfriends in those gyms and bars."

"N-n-no!” she blushed. "You've seen my previous boyfriends-"

"Yes, to my deepest regrets. They're like mirror images of you. They're like-" Ella looked ponderously upwards to find the right words, "-like golden retrievers. Stupid and silly! Total goofballs. I'm amazed you're still single since they were all your splitting image."

"Rude. My goofball exes were all great except they were always secretly suffering from depression."

"I guess being around you would burn them out."

Nola laughed. Eleanor wasn't joking though. There's something about being around somebody who was one hundred and ten percent a ball of energy that would burn anybody out except kids. There was nobody better to take care of Allie, Eleanor thought and she was jealous of this fact.

"That guy looks like the opposite of you," she paused to remember his face. "He's dreamy looking though. Now, if only his intelligence matches his looks." She shrugged in an out of character way, "They say opposites attract."

"Yes." A look of madness glinted in Nola's confused eyes. She didn't understand his character at all. His boyish good looks and mysterious aura that drew her in, his joke which clearly targeted at her to make her shoot coffee out of her nose and his avoidance of me! It had become a gnawing doubt eating away Nola's self-confidence. It had occupied the back of her head for months, eating away bit by bit. Something must be done.

They put their heads together and schemed a plan against him.

Then the opportunity came.

As the weeks progress, the Research and Project course had dwindled down to a few. Nola told the ones in the MSc messaging group that she'll attend it for them and let them know if anything exam related was said. There would only be two in the class now.

The class was on today and she was running a few minutes late. She power walked to the lecture classroom in the main building.

She was opened the door and heard laughter erupting as she entered. The laughter suddenly stopped.

The normally chill lecturer looked at her gravely. He was a jolly, fat old man with tiny half crescent slits for eyes. His tremendous beer belly always caused Nola to stare in wonder. The button at the belly of his shirt always looked to be straining to the point of bursting. He smiled at her and Nola nodded her head.

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She saw Ben at the very right back corner of the empty class. There was an unusually awkward tension and she felt unwelcomed in a strange way for the first time in her life. She quickly chose a seat two rows from the front and sat on the outside. She didn't wear her glasses nor her contacts today.

For so long, the ever elusive Ben had evaded her subtle attempts to talk to him. Her beta orbiters that she surrounded herself with were finally out of the way. Now she was alone, just the two of them, and she felt an oppressive air, stronger than ever, still parting them. There was something ominous about him, like he was hiding something. A malicious and mysterious aura that drew her in.

Her beta orbiters did not surround her now, limiting her movement. There was no better chance, she thought.

"-And that's how you solve Fermat's Last Theorem in less than fifteen minutes," the lecturer ended his monologue.

Nola felt like she missed something incredibly important.

"There's that. Now! Let's talk about the projects. I think we can go into specifics here. You at the far back," he pointed to Ben who was at the very corner of the corner typing something furiously into his laptop. "Tell me about your-" he clapped his hands and frowned his eyebrows, "-project."

"Okay." he nodded." Let's say hypothetically, I created an A.I. that can scrap every bit of data of a person I'm looking for. That's only one of its features. Basically a super advanced self-learning A.I. that powers itself by breaching other computers in a peer-to-peer system."

"So it's illegally using the processing power of unaware computer users."

"In a way yes, hypothetically. The A.I. thinks it's borrowing and has no concept of stealing or human laws since it exists in a different plane in regards to morality. I also don't control its methods. I ask the questions and it finds it for me using algorithms it derives on the spot. How would I market and sell such a service?"

"When a product you're trying to sell is in a moral grey service, there's only one simple answer. Asymmetric Dialectic Media Power."

"Ah, right," Nola nodded, "of course," completely lost.

"I see," answered Ben slowly. "So what you are saying is using the systemic topology derived from the Curran approach."

"Yes, yes. Similar to that but if the consumer uses an asymmetrical one that privileges the former then you'll find yourself in jail and with a hefty fine slapped on top."

Nola looked back and forward at the speakers as they spoke mumble jumble in her ears. She could only nod to appear less loss.

The professor continued, "-If you looked into the empirical research using Castell's Falsification theory based on the prosumer notion notwithstanding Tosser's uncritical option then you might be able to form some paths which you can take." He took a deep breath after finishing tongue twisters of hefty sentences.

At last they finished their back and forth which felt like an eternity to her. The professor turned his gaze at her.

"So! Your turn."

She took a deep breath. She had not put a single shred of thought into the project let alone come up with a fantastical idea like the genius at the back. Think Nola, she thought to herself. She knew she had a whole summer and next year to slowly trudge through it. Not to mention that her thesis project was in conjunction with her company. Though they did tell her that she should come up with some ideas herself.

"I'm working with my company for my thesis and they have to get back to me on the project details unfortunately so I can't start my research yet." It wasn't an excuse but she couldn't help feel that it sounded like one. Never had she felt so out of place before.

She sat in silence for the rest of the lecture doing her best to push away her feelings of not belonging. She wished she had her beta orbiters around her or her girl friends.

When class ended, she slowly packed her notebook into her bag. With lethargy she looked to the back of the class, there was nobody there. Ben had slipped out from her once again.

Her chance to get to know Ben was gone. He simply existed on a different plane compared to her. It was stupid anyway. I don't have to force myself to befriend everyone especially not the antithesis of myself.

"Don't worry about it, it'd come naturally," the jolly fat man spoke. He had a soft look to him. Nola saw the tiny slits of eyes that his flab was starting cover.

"Hmm?"

"The ideas."

"Oh right. Thanks," she muttered with annoyance at herself and those around. "See you next week," she forced a smile and left the room.

...

Ben stared up at the sky, pondering the meaning of his existence. He decided to sign into this course hoping to learn how he could make some money with the A.I. he developed over the past four years. So far, the only thing he learnt was that college was a huge waste of money.

In this city, there were two major colleges. One in the city centre and one on the outskirts.

The other college was an institute and was filled with second rate students and master students doing the lecturing instead. He was sure it was filled with gang wars, unwanted pregnancies, drugs and drug addicts. Maybe he would have enjoyed that culture more, he thought.

There were stories of gangs setting doors on fire for absolutely no reason, robberies and break-ins, animal blood sports, bare knuckle fight clubs where traveller gangs would provoke each other over social media, illegal underground sulky races on the motorways and the such.

Ben didn't choose this university because it was more prestigious or anything of that sort. He chose it because it was a five minute cycle from his home. In a way he was apathetic to the point of self-destruction.

Today was the first day he opened his mouth to a lecturer and he was glad that this college was closer. He had been able to converse with someone that could elegantly break his concept down into scientific basis. He also stood there thinking of dropping out.

The first three years in his Bachelor of electronic engineering, he did nothing of value. Neither did he apply himself to learn anything. He would pass exams on achieving exactly the bare minimal grade. As they taught him in engineering school: any fool can build a bridge that stands, but it takes an engineer to build one that barely stands. He took it to heart quite literally. It seemed that nobody caught his genius and humour and it disappointed him greatly. He thought it was amusing at the very least.

As such, nobody hired him during his work placement year as he had the worst grades of them all, not counting the ones that failed. If nobody picked up on his genius joke, he didn't want to work for them anyway. A keen sense of humour was the most important characteristic in a person.

Then fourth year hit and he found himself needing to create something for the final year project. He spent all day burrowing himself under books with his genius intellect and he managed to crank out theories and algorithms in neck breaking speed. He was sure that a switch in his brain flicked into savant mode in order to graduate. Once the algorithms and technology and been designed and built, he reverted since to normal human being mode. It was a pain to be too smart. The obsessive nature of overanalysing and being overly sensitive was a drain to his brain.

Humourless autists were the common archetype in engineering school. The few that weren't, graduated and left the industry for good. He never spoke to anybody. He was an outcast even among the autists. Nicole was in his previous course and also in the current MSc in marketing. When he first saw her, he thought she looked familiar. It's said that those on the spectrum suffer from face blindness, but that wasn't really the case with Ben who had a great memory. It was because the memory of those four dark years in purgatory were blacked out in his brain.

He turned twenty-five a month ago and he celebrated it alone like every year. This year he made a culinary burger that wouldn't have been out of place in a six star Michelin restaurant. Six stars because that's how good it was. He squirted ketchup on top of the chips the numbers 11010. It was an engineering joke. That was the one time he ever applied the useless knowledge he learnt into the outside world. It wasn't very funny.

Ben had prayed exactly two times in his life. The first time he prayed was on the first day of primary school.

When the teacher explained about god and his miracles, the gullible child devoutly believed in the mysticism. He prayed with all his heart for his parents to die and it didn't happen the next day and so lost all faith in exactly a day and night.

His father's had an incredibly small head and Ben was sure that it was most likely the result of the zika virus. His premature brain had led to stunted mental growth and attention deficit disorder. It was very likely he was on the spectrum since he was retarded.

His mother wasn't much better, even dumber than his father. In her childhood pictures, she had the phenotype of a person with Down syndrome. Luckily or not, she had grown out of the look and became attractive as she reached adulthood. Her mental capacities however stayed at the level of a six year old.

His prayers on the first day of primary school did not come through and his parents remained retarded as much as he wished they weren't. It was as if they were destined to be a curse hovering over Ben forever.

Then a pandemic occurred last year and it was then he prayed for the second time in life. His father had succumbed to the pandemic's virus and died. He thanked whatever deity in the sky that had set forth this blessing.

The death of his retarded father set the household expenses to him. He lived paycheck to paycheck at the beginning doing odd jobs but life was finally bearable now living with only one pea-sized brain instead of two constant bickering morons. There was an incredibly oppressiveness being surrounded by subhumans. An oppressive darkness that had whittled away the light in him.

Ben had done various odd jobs in his life but he always ended up back to honest and good work in delivering food. He was a food courier. Nothing like handing a hot out of the oven pizza to a rosy cheeked fat women for less than minimal wage. Food was a tangible good that he could see. A primal chore that even an animal can understand. Better than being smart and stuff, he thought.

When times gets desperate, he freelances in low level programming work like web development. Since the work was low level grunt work, Ben had to compete with Indians. They numbered in the hundreds of millions and being grunt work, Ben's prodigious intellect did not matter, not when they sold themselves for a couple of cents each. The idea with competing as another code monkey threw him off.

His hobbies consisted of photography, books especially mystery novels, poetry, films and stalking people. He had found out where everybody in his course lived. Some of them he could deduce from their photos on their social media with a little detective effort.

Out of all the people, the bubbly blonde, broad shouldered Nola held his interest the most and he couldn't pinpoint exactly why. He had saw a photo with her and who he assumed was her little brother and not her son. He had deducted a fair amount of information about her including where she lived and how they lived. When he saw them in person from a far off safe distance, it took him by surprise that her brother was disabled from the waist down. It was like a twist in a movie. He could see she was a friendly and bubbly person from observation even in class, not to mention all the goofy party pictures in the class drinking sessions posted in the group chat.

Possibly her good nature and humour drew him in. Maybe it was her burden. She was the anti-thesis of him.