章 3: CHAPTER 3 - PROFESSOR HOOK

Later the following week Priya sat in a waiting area along an empty hallway of south wing when a door creaked open, "The committee is ready for you". Clarence Hook sat in the middle, white tufts of hair gracing the tops of his ears, like strained, pallid vegetation eking out a meager existence in some cracked, throat-drying, impassable desert. Priya set up a defense and carefully relayed how the chamber did not meet the parameters necessary for human use, and would have to be dismantled, but as she watched them whisper amongst themselves, she realized it was all for naught. "Seeing how your recent activity has not met the markers set in place for the progress of this department, we will be cutting your funding for eighteen months" Hook intoned, meting out the punishment. A brokenhearted neuroscientist waddled out of the room, downcast, counting the square tiles that passed on the way to the far door, as if their census was a profound vocation.