“Giant death mechs are really cool, though. I love mechs. Mechs, with giant lasers and turrets and fire and death,” Anne mumbled to herself, taking the test on stochastic processes. “No, Anne. You are not evil. You do not want to build a giant death mech.”
“Ms. Prichard?” the stochastics professor said, putting his hand on Anne’s back, leaning in a little so as to not disturb the other students. “I’m going to have to ask you to keep your volume to a minimum. You’re disturbing the other students, and I want them to have a quiet place in which to take the test.”
“Oh, sorry,” Anne said. “Actually I think I’m ready to hand mine in.” Though she didn’t want to be an asshole and admit it, she’d finished the test in the first ten minutes it’d been handed out. The last twenty minutes had been spent drawing up some ideas and calculations for her new death robot.
Not that she was going to build it. As she tried explaining to herself, she couldn’t build another death robot. That would be bad, wrong, and oh who are we kidding she was totally going to build the robot and it was going to be awesome.
Turrets. Lasers. Other robot things. Who could resist?
She moved to hand the test to her Professor, but stopped, saying “Wait a sec.” She tore the last page off the test, where she’d written in all the robot shit. Then she handed it to her Professor.
“I’m going to need that last page, for grading.”
“I need it more,” Anne said. “Sorry, but you can just take those points off. Let’s be real, I’m kind of a burnout anyway.” With that, she walked out of class.
As she passed through the doorway, she didn’t notice the German student with the metal hand. He sure noticed her, though.
“Ms. Prichard,” he said, leaning against the building Anne had just walked out of. “I vould have vords vith thee.”
MEGAPULP 