Stone walked toward the north side of the campus, where the professor who had accused him of being a shoe-rapist told him to go. It looked no different than any other part of Barklee; it was covered with trees that were themselves covered with protest signs. Spotting a young woman, Stone stepped in front of her.
“Hi. Excuse me. You wouldn’t happen to know where the conservatives are hiding, would you?”
The girl stopped walking, but continued chomping on her gum. Her eyes glanced off in the distance as she tried to understand what Stone was saying.
“Con…what?”
“You know, the students who like to talk about old dead white guys.”
“Oh, them,” she said. “Yuck. ESL, room B2.”
“You have them all stuck in one room?”
“One room too many, if you ask me. Maybe we could pump some gas in there during one of their meetings, you know? Sounds like a solution to me.”
“Yeah, I’m pretty sure that’s been tried somewhere else,” Stone said. “Where would Room B2 be?”
“B2 is the basement,” the girl said, pointing to a large, cream-colored building. After seeing Stone’s puzzled look, she clarified. “ESL is the Earth Sciences Library. It’s right behind the saber-tooth cat statue.”
“That ugly walrus thing?” Stone said with a chuckle.
The girl glared at Stone. “Double yuck. I bet you’re one of them. Hashtag: left swipe!” she said, storming off.
“What did I do?” Stone asked aloud to no one in particular.
A passerby of indefinite gender, but definite homeliness and girth, rolled by him on a skateboard, shouting “You’re the oppressor! Isn’t that enough?”
“Tough crowd,” Stone muttered, kicking aimlessly at the gravel on the road. A pebble somehow lodged into the axle of the androgyne’s skateboard, causing him/her/it/zhim to tumble onto its ample backside.
Stone walked toward the building until he saw the saber-tooth cat statue. He tried his best to ignore it, but he could not take his eyes off of it. Much like the skateboarder, the “tiger” statue looked like someone had taken a walrus’s head and attached it to a gorilla’s body, then applied a thick coating of lard around the neck to hide the seams.
Quinton had a few hours to kill, and decided to spend it handing out some Weak Power! pamphlets. When he saw the white student appreciating the classic Eocene-era sculptural representation of the saber-tooth cat, he recognized a kindred soul.
“Weak Power!” he shouted, handing Stone a pamphlet. “My name is Quinton, and Homo Magis is the future!”
Stone looked at Quinton. He had tightly cropped orange hair, and wore a Che Guevara shirt, emblazoned with a logo that said WEAK POWER: ART IS INFLUENCE.
“You realize that Che hated artists, right?” Stone asked.
“That’s where you are wrong, my new friend!” Quinton said overenthusiastically. “My man Che ended slavery in the western hemisphere and freed artists from American gulags! Do you know why Americans do not teach this in school?”
“Because it didn’t happen?”
“Because ‘the Man’ does not want you to know The Truth!” Quinton said, his voice rising in intensity. “Your teachers have lied to you, my friend! They have filled your head with white voodoo — now it is time to free your mind!”
“My job doesn’t allow me to free my mind that way. Who teaches you this stuff?” Stone asked.
“A man whose words you need to hear,” Quinton said.
“Which words? Please tell me it’s not another gender-neutral pronoun.”
Quinton frowned for a second, then handed Stone a pamphlet.
Stone opened it, and immediately recognized the professor from a picture in the classroom. Unlike that photo, however, this picture showed that he had bright orange hair. He posed with his fists on his waist as if he were a superhero.
Was orange hair some kind of new fad?
Stone suddenly felt old.
It was too much of a coincidence for the professor to have the same hairstyle as the clown girl who had torn apart those men — the same grotesque color as the cretin who now stood in front of him.
“Tell me, why do you think the Americans imprisoned those artists in Guantanamo?” Quinton asked defiantly.
“Because they liked to paint people with AK-47’s,” Stone said.
“No, no! That is what they tell you. See, these artists are being held in front of the whole world to show America’s intolerance for creative freedom.”
Stone closed the pamphlet and folded it. He was about to put it into his pocket when he saw the front: it was red with a white circle in the center. Inside the circle was a thick black ‘Z’ drawn across it. It was the same pattern as the tattoo on the clown girl’s arm.
The pamphlet was emblazoned with the phrase ‘WEAK POWER: Homo Magis Lives Matter.’
“Hey, one last thing. Who is your professor?” Stone asked.
Quinton recognized genuine interest in Stone’s voice.
“His name is Dr. Kwame Afolayan, and he will soon change the definition of what is human,” Quinton said, smiling. “Weak Power is the future.”
“But I thought you just said that Homo Magis was the future.”
Quinton felt a sharp sting. He looked down at his hands. All of his pamphlets were gone. The mean man must have somehow stolen them, but when Quinton looked up, he was nowhere to be seen. Disgusted, Quinton turned and left.
Stone quickly trekked back across campus to Kwame’s office.