System Architect

The rest of the exams on the first day went well, as did the first of the exams on Tuesday. After a quick lunch between tests, I slowly walked to the exam hall. This one was the same auditorium I’d had the first class in all those weeks ago. It was big enough to handle the smaller number of students taking the exam.

I was one of the first to enter the room. I found an open seat and placed my backpack on the floor next to me after taking out a couple mechanical pencils. When I looked up from my backpack, I saw the proctor—a large, older man—staring down at me.

“What are you doing here?” he demanded.

“Huh?”

“What are you doing here?!” he said more loudly.

“Taking an exam?” I said with a no shit, Sherlock attitude.

“You’re not a student,” he answered firmly.

“Yeah I am. There was a whole news thing about it a while ago.”

“Bullshit. Where’s your ID?”

I bent down and rifled through my backpack to find it before showing it to him. He roughly grabbed it from my hand and carefully examined it.

“It’s fake,” he determined.

Before I was able to say anything in my defense, he bent my ID and snapped it in half.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” I exclaimed.

“Your ID is fake, so I’m confiscating it. Leave before campus security makes you leave.”

“Give me back my ID!”

The man ignored me. He walked away while I tried desperately to get his attention. When he got to the front of the room, he looked back at me and sneered before dropping the remains of the ID into a garbage can.

I knew I wasn’t going to get anywhere with this asshole. I stood and shouldered my backpack. I stuffed the mechanical pencils into one pocket and turned toward the exit. Silent rage-filled tears streamed down my face as I carefully walked up the steps and out of the room. Several classmates entering as I left gave me confused looks, but I knew I was in no shape to say anything—that would just give the asshole his satisfaction.

Once outside, I sat on one of the steps leading to the front door of the building. I put my head down and screamed into my hands. Most of the students gave me a wide berth while I screamed and cried. Just as I was beginning to exhaust my shits-to-give, a woman came over. I recognized her as Kate from the one of my classes.

“Are you hurt?” she asked.

“N-no,” I said, wiping the tears from my eyes.

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah,” I choked out.

Kate sat next to me. She didn’t say anything more but just kept me company until I felt calm enough to fish my phone from my backpack. I was mad—very mad—but I was determined to channel that rage productively. I considered who to call and eventually decided on Mom as Dad would have a harder time answering than she would. I stood up and walked away from the building for some privacy.

“Hey, Eddy,” Mom said when she picked up. “Do you need something?”

I explained what had occurred. Mom was pissed. So pissed that she couldn’t make a coherent sentence for several seconds. Eventually she had worked through it and came up with a plan.

“I’m going to call Grandpa Joe,” she said. “You need to see the Dean or whoever’s in charge immediately. He will help you and support you. This whole situation is complete bullshit—if you’ll excuse my French. Make sure you’ve got your phone on so you two can meet up. I’d come myself, but work’s too much right now.”

“Thanks, Mom,” I said, hanging up after we said our goodbyes.

I ended up pacing back and forth for nearly an hour—anxiety having replaced my anger. Finally, my phone buzzed when Grandpa Joe called to ask where I was. We agreed to meet outside the admin building.

By virtue of where I had gone to take the test, I had a farther walk to the admin building than Grandpa Joe. He waved as soon as he saw me. He was well dressed and carried himself with purpose.

“Hey Eddy,” he said, giving me a hug. “Mom told me what happened, but I want to hear it from you.”

“Ok,” I said, recounting the story again.

“I see,” he replied, thoughtfully stroking the stubble on his chin. “Let’s go find the Dean.”

I followed Grandpa Joe into the admin building. After consulting the directory, we took the elevator up one floor. As we walked down the hallway towards the Dean’s office, Grandpa Joe spoke to me.

“You did nothing wrong,” he said. “It might take some time to get sorted, but you’ve got the truth on your side.”

“And you, too,” I cracked a smile.

“And me,” he agreed.

We arrived at our destination. The office was more than just a door into a private office. There was an open space with two occupied desks in front of the a door to the Dean’s private office. The eyes of the two workers locked onto Grandpa Joe as we entered. I followed him to the closest desk. The man behind it addressed Grandpa Joe.

“How can I help you?” he said in the most generic bored cashier style.

“My grandson here,” Grandpa said, waving his arm in my direction, “was attempting to take an exam today when the proctor denied him access to the classroom, thus denying him the ability to take his exam.”

The man looked at me with a critical eye.

“May I see his ID?”

“The proctor snapped it and threw it away.”

I could see the flash of annoyance on the man’s face before it went away. He questioned me of my name, birth date, address, etc and verified that they matched my profile—and that my face matched the picture—in the school’s system.

“Alright,” he concluded, “I see you are who you say you are. I will pass this along to the Dean. He will have to do some investigating, but expect him to reach out by the end of this week.”

Grandpa Joe pressed the man for assurances that the Dean would address it as soon as possible because the exam was worth a significant portion of my overall grade for the class. The man swore that he would and so the both of us left the office.

Friday morning, Grandpa Joe and I were back at the admin building. Thursday evening, I had received an email back from the Dean’s office—after bothering them for an update, of course—that I was to meet the Dean the following morning. We took the elevator up and walked down the hall to the office. The man we had lodged our complaint with recognized the two of us and ushered us through the door.

The office was well decorated. There was a leather couch on our right as we entered as well as two chairs to our left. A trio of paintings hung on the walls while large windows let light in behind a solid wooden desk where the Dean sat waiting. The Dean was an older, tall man with a thick white beard. He wore glasses and a navy suit.

“Welcome,” he said. “Sit, sit.”

When we did, he continued.

“I want to apologize on behalf of the school for what happened the other day. It took some time to verify your story. I have spoken with your professor and she gave me a copy of the exam you were supposed to take. If you are prepared, you can take the exam here today. Or, if that doesn’t work, we can schedule a time that would be better.”

“Um… I’m ready now,” I said after collecting my thoughts.

“Very good,” he said, clapping his hands together.“

The Dean led me out of the room and into an office across the hall. Inside was an empty desk. He made sure I had everything I needed for the exam before setting a timer and letting me start.

The exam itself was rather easy. I had studied more than enough, and most of what I needed to do was to write a couple short essays and answer some reading comprehension questions. Writing was overall slower than answering a bunch of multiple choice questions, so I ended up using most of the allotted time.

When I was done, I stood up and walked the exam back across the hall to the Dean and handed it to him. We all sat down while the Dean read through my exam for about five minutes. He placed it on the desk in front of him and looked up at me.

“That was some mighty fine work there, young man,” he said. “How old are you again?”

“Five.”

“That’s right, you’re the one from the news story a while ago! You write better than most of the students we have. Why did you choose to go to community college when any university would welcome you?”

“A few reasons,” Grandpa Joe said. “The first is that he needed something close by that he can get to and from with working parents. The second is that no university knows he exists. He hasn’t taken any of the exams they look at, so a couple of years in community college would sort that out. Finally, it comes down to money. His parents barely have enough to get by, so without some kind of scholarship, it’s practically impossible.”

“I see…” the Dean said thoughtfully. “I might be able to help with the second and third issues. A friend of mine is a department chair at one of the best schools in the country. I’ll see what I can do.”

Grandpa Joe and the Dean talked some more about the details. I could have listened, but my mind was drained after taking the exam. I closed my eyes and almost dozed off while I waited. Finally, I felt Grandpa Joe shake my shoulder.

“It’s time to go,” he said.

I stood up and held his hand. We walked towards the door and out into the hallway.

“It was good to meet you,” the Dean said as we left.

I nodded and waved back to the Dean before disappearing down the hall with Grandpa Joe.

“I need a new ID,” I said when we got to the elevator.

Grandpa nodded.

The office where I’d gotten my ID a couple months earlier looked much the same except there was only one person behind the counter. As the current week was primarily exams, this was the prime time for people to take off if they could.

“Can I help you?” the man behind the desk asked.

“I need a new ID,” I said.

He looked me over. I saw a flicker of recognition in his eyes.

“What happened to the old one?”

I explained the situation. He picked up the phone on his desk and confirmed my story with the Dean’s office before he busied himself creating my new ID. It took a handful of minutes, but eventually, I had a—slightly warm—shiny new ID that I put in my backpack’s front pocket where the old one used to be.

I thanked the man for his help and left with Grandpa Joe. He dropped me off at Dad’s house once he confirmed Dad was there to watch me. I gave him a big hug when he left.

That night, I checked my email before going to bed. I saw that I had an email from a professor I had never met before—or so I thought until I opened it. The email was a written apology from the proctor—Kevin Brown—expressing just how sorry he was and how it wouldn’t happen again and so on. I stopped reading halfway through and deleted the non-apology apology email.

Fucking Kevins.