“Thank you, sir.” I asked the members of the judicial board to take a closer look at the problems on Professor Muldoon’s test. I pointed out that every problem involved the solution of a simple right triangle or a common Pythagorean triple. I saw Professor Muldoon’s face go blank. He knew I had him. The members of the committee were not convinced, however.
Professor Fries frowned and interjected, “Would you please go to the board and solve this problem.” He read from the exam. “The real component of the voltage is 21V, the reactive component is 72V. What are the phase angle and the power factor?”
I walked to the board. “Would you please time me also?”
The other professor looked at his watch. “OK.” He paused a moment and said “Go.”
I wrote “ = 78.46o; PF = 28%” on the board and said “Stop! So how long did I take?”
“Five or six seconds,” said the professor. “You may have a remarkable memory, but that’s entirely consistent with having advance access to a copy of the exam, like Professor Muldoon claims.”
“I did memorize certain solutions, sir,” I answered, “but I had no access to the key. Actually, I worked it out while walking to the whiteboard.”
I saw skeptical looks. “How did you memorize solutions and work out the answer so quickly if you didn’t have access to the key?” the dean asked.
“That’s a Pythagorean triple,” I explained. “The problem is just a 7-24-25 Pythagorean right triangle scaled up by a factor of three: 21-72-75. The net voltage is 75V, and the power factor is the cosine of the phase angle. Adjacent over hypotenuse is 7/25 or 28/100 which is 28%. I did memorize the angles in a 7-24-25 right triangle. The skinny one is 11.54 degrees and the fat one 78.46 degrees. Memorizing fifty different problems would be very difficult. It’s much easier to learn the half-dozen triangles Professor Muldoon uses and figure out how he applies them in each problem. You’ll notice he likes using 7-24-25 triangles as well as 3-4-5 right triangles in problems involving power factors, because it’s particularly easy to calculate percentages.
“Every single problem on the test has a simple, straightforward solution like that,” I explained. “The reason the test was so difficult and time consuming for most students was they had to set up the problem and key the numbers into their calculators. It took the other students the better part of a minute to do what I could do in my head in seconds.”
Professor Fries leafed thoughtfully through the exam. “I think he’s right,” he told the dean. Then, he looked at me. “Why didn’t you explain this to Professor Muldoon?”
“I tried,” I confirmed, “but Professor Muldoon refused to listen. He said, ‘I do not suffer fools; I make fools suffer.’”
I saw the professors on the panel smile. Muldoon must have said something similar to them in the past. “Appears someone may have been a bit too hasty in accusing his student of cheating,” Professor Fries said, dryly.
I felt relieved to have an ally on the committee. There was a long pause. Professor Muldoon finally spoke. “Mister Burdell has admitted his duplicity in employing a trick to give himself an unfair advantage over his fellow students. This is an open and shut case of academic dishonesty.”
“Duplicity, Harmon?” Professor Fries countered. “I see no dishonesty or any reason he should be penalized. Mr. Burdell here merely figured out the shortcut you used to make it easier to grade your exams.”
Professor Muldoon was not giving up so easily, though. “The dean is well aware that the policy of this institution is to give deference to the judgment of faculty to evaluate academic performance at their sole discretion,” he countered. “In my opinion, even if Mister Burdell can be excused for applying an… an unorthodox shortcut to solving my exam questions, he showed insufficient work to justify his fortunate guesses.”
“With respect, sir,” I replied, “I correctly answered each question you posed, and I committed no acts of academic dishonesty to do so. Your specific instructions were to answer as many questions as quickly as possible, not to show work and justify each solution.”
“I will be the judge of that,” Professor Muldoon insisted.
“Harmon,” said Professor Fries with an exasperated tone, “you got lazy. You got sloppy. You got caught. Don’t take it out on your student. If there’s any fault to be found, it’s yours.”
“My teaching is not on trial here,” Professor Muldoon insisted smugly. “As the course instructor…”
“This is not a trial, Professor,” I interrupted. I was angry at his intransigence. I couldn’t believe he was still gunning for me. “Think of it more as a counseling session in which members of the university community come together to discuss academic dishonesty. After all, degrees from Georgia Tech are a precious commodity, and lazy or slipshod teaching shortchanges me and my fellow students. It cheapens the value of the diploma so many of us work so hard to earn. It’s the same as stealing something of great value.”
The professors on the review board were amused. Muldoon was angry. The dean looked strangely… smug?
“The evidence does not support the allegation of academic dishonesty,” the dean concluded. “You’ve taught Linear Circuits, before, haven’t you?” he asked Fries.
“I have,” the professor acknowledged.
“Under the circumstances,” the dean explained, “I’m going to have to ask you to take over as our young Mr. Burdell’s instructor of record for Linear Circuits. I think a transfer would be in the best interests of both parties.
I met Professor Fries after the meeting. “I understand you’re considering pursuing either physics or electrical engineering,” he started off. “I hope you won’t judge us engineers by the example of Professor Muldoon. You’ll complete the same assignments and take the same final as the rest of the class, only I’ll be grading them and assigning your grade.” We exchanged contact information, and I made arrangements to get the homework to him that Professor Muldoon had refused to grade.
I hadn’t realized the pressure Professor Muldoon had placed on me until I felt the enormous relief of its absence. I felt almost giddy with joy. Not only was I going to get through the semester, but our efforts continued to have repercussions, not just nationally, but also locally. A student named Erin McCracken wrote a brilliant column in the Technique about avoiding this new social media website called Facebook, and how it was tied into an NSA program called “Echelon” that monitored everything on the Internet.
The Tuesday before Thanksgiving break, I walked into chemistry with my head held high. I didn’t have a particularly great aptitude for the subject, but I was getting a solid A, because I’d seen the material in high school. The first time I struggled through it, I thought my mother was an awful teacher, expecting me to know every atomic weight and ionic state. Finally, I’d begun to appreciate her perspective. There were certain basics all chemists knew and took for granted. Now, I had memorized them, too. Chemistry, for me, was just a matter of showing up, completing the homework, and taking the tests. It was my least stressful class. Also, it brought back so many memories of my mother. It was like she was there with me. It helped me be at peace with her loss.
Plus, there were so many amazingly cool demonstrations!
Today, for instance, our professor was demonstrating liquefied gases. He froze a hot dog in liquid nitrogen and shattered it. He froze a rose and did the same. I wish I’d known about all those tricks back when I was working for Uncle Rob in his liquefied gas business. Then, my chemistry professor brought out a Dewar of liquid oxygen and demonstrated how pouring liquid oxygen on objects made them highly flammable.
“It makes most anything burn with a particularly intense flame,” my chemistry professor explained.
Whoosh! The burst of heat on my face punctuated a sudden epiphany.
I squinted at the brilliant flame greedily consuming the old textbook my professor was using for a prop. The puzzle pieces fell like dominos in a chain reaction. A particularly intense flame. A particularly intens
e fire. Consuming a book with amazing speed. Using liquid oxygen. Which my uncle had in abundance.
Suddenly the mysterious fire at the Tolliver Library did not seem quite so mysterious.
I didn’t need some phantom ally who just happened to know the Civic Circle’s Technology Containment Team was on the way to confiscate the proscribed books. I didn’t need some mysterious counter-cabal with the ability to successfully execute the largest single arson Tennessee had seen in decades on incredibly short notice. All I needed was good old Uncle Rob. Occam’s razor. The simplest explanation.
“Don’t look into the fire,” Rob had insisted. “Don’t seek out the potential ally who burned down the library before the Civic Circle’s Technology Containment Team could arrive. Keep your head down. Stay safe.” And the cruelest manipulation of all, “Your carelessness killed your parents. You’re not ready to join the fight.”
That last one stung, because it was true, if only in part. He’d been using it as a club to pound me into submission whenever I started looking into the Tolliver Library fire. He took my love for my parents, my grief at their loss, and my guilt for contributing to their murder, and he fashioned it into weapon to use against me.
The bastard. My uncle lied to me. He looked me in the… well, come to think of it, he didn’t lie directly. He deliberately deceived me by withholding information, though. A half-truth is a full lie. It was a lie of omission. He let me squander my valuable time researching this mysterious potential ally all the while he knew damn well who’d burned down the library. A lie that is half-truth is the darkest of all lies. He did it. He betrayed me. He had me chasing my tail for no good purpose.
He had the motive. I knew exactly what he was thinking. Keeping me in the dark would keep me safe. It would keep me out of trouble, and he probably didn’t want some kid knowing he was guilty of arson, even if that kid was his nephew. No “need to know.”
He had the opportunity. In my mind, I replayed the events of the night the Tolliver Library burned down, the night my parents were murdered. As soon as we got out of the library, Rob abandoned Amit and me, telling us to go to hide out at Amit’s hotel while he stashed the books. Yes, hiding the books we stole from the library was important, but if the hotel was a safe enough place to hide me, it was safe enough to hide the books. It was all an excuse to get us out of the way.
He had the means: means my chemistry professor had just demonstrated. Rob drove back to his place, loaded up with liquid oxygen using the tunnels I had so helpfully shown him to avoid detection, and set the library on fire. That’s why the fire was so intense. That’s why the investigators couldn’t prove arson – because there was no accelerant in the usual sense. No wonder the sprinklers couldn’t stop the fire. He had already disabled the alarms when we entered the first time, and the way we rushed through the door back into the tunnel, he didn’t have time to try to cover our trail by turning the alarms back on. He was already planning on returning. When he’d come back, he probably drained the sprinklers long before starting the fire. All the pieces of the puzzle were tumbling together in a vast cascade.
By then, class was over. I hoped my professor hadn’t disclosed any additional aspects of liquefied gases, because I’d been completely lost in thought. I suppressed my first inclination to rush home immediately and confront Rob. I continued on to my Differential Equations class. I needed to complete my “OODA” loop: I’d Observed and Oriented. With Rob convinced he’d fooled me, I had all the time I wanted to take to Decide and Act. How would he respond? How would I counter his response? I needed to calm down and stay focused. Diffy-q was tough enough under ordinary circumstances. Also, I had chemistry lab after lunch, and the last thing I needed was to blow something up by mixing together the wrong chemicals. I left my school work distract me from my problems with Rob, so I could focus on them fresh, after class.
By the time I got back to the dorm room, Amit was already on his way home to Tennessee for Thanksgiving. Pity – it would have been helpful to discuss the situation with him, but there was no way I could discuss something this sensitive by phone. I needed time to think and time to plan. I had all day Wednesday, and not much happened in class with half the students taking off early for Thanksgiving, like Amit. I stayed Wednesday night in the nearly deserted dorm. I let Uncle Rob know I’d be driving up first thing in the morning. I’d head to Uncle Larry’s for Thanksgiving dinner mid-day before continuing on to Robber Dell to confront Uncle Rob.
Chapter 5: A Tale of Two Uncles
I left campus first thing Thanksgiving morning for the drive up to Tennessee. I swung by the Berkshire Hotel on my way into town so I could tell Amit what I’d figured out. He didn’t need much persuading. “Of course,” he said. “I should have seen it before.” We ran through our recollections of the night the library burned. Amit pointed out more evidence. “Come to think of it, it took your uncle a couple of minutes to pick the lock on the way into the library from the tunnels. He didn’t bother taking the time to lock the door on the way out.”
“Because he was already planning on returning,” I drew the obvious conclusion. “I’ll let you know how it goes with both my uncles.”
I drove to Grandma Tolliver’s house. The doorbell gonged when I pressed the button. Grandma’s maid, Cookie, answered the door and almost bowled me over with her enthusiasm. “Mister Pete! So glad you could make it!”
“Hi Cookie, good to see you, too!” her zeal was infectious.
“You come right on in here, sir, and let me take your coat,” she insisted, barring the way until I let her fulfill her mission.
“None of the other men have on suit jackets?” I asked, handing it to her.
“No, sir, none of that silliness this year,” she said disdainfully.
Once Grandpa Jack died, Grandma Tolliver insisted on inviting her daughter, my mother, to Thanksgiving dinner over the obvious objections of Uncle Larry and Uncle Mike. Grandma Tolliver got her way, but the event was always a kind of social minefield. Larry and Mike seized every opportunity they could get to belittle or insult my father. One year, the Tolliver men all wore their best suits and ties to dinner, making my father seem to be an ill-dressed bumpkin. The next year, Dad wore a suit and tie, and the Tolliver men wore jeans and polo shirts, making my father seem like an over-dressed poser. I’d worn jeans and a nice dress shirt and brought along a tie in the pocket of my suit jacket, so I could dress up or down as needed.
“Sir,” she said just standing there, holding my coat and beaming at me. “It’s good to be calling you, ‘sir.’ All growed up and off to college, yes, sir!”
I was getting a bit uncomfortable with all the sirs. “Thank you, ma’am,” I replied, returning her formality with my own.
“Pah,” she exclaimed. “Don’t you go gettin’ so fancy with me.”
The joy on her face evaporated, and she softened her voice, “I never did get to tell you how sorry I am for your mother and father. Your father was a good man. He was quality, no matter what some might say against him, or your mother would never have had him.”
I thought she was about to cry. I reached out and gave her a hug. She sniffled and controlled herself. Truth be told, the room did seem to be getting just a bit dusty for me, too.
“Now you just walk on in there to the kitchen and hold your head high, you hear me?” she said, just like she used to lecture me when I was a boy. “Sir.” She added with a smile.
“Yes, ma’am,” I said deliberately, following her instruction. She stepped back to hang my coat up, yet somehow managed to get back in front of me in time to hold open the door to the kitchen and announce my entry.
“Mister Pete is here, ma’am,” she said to Grandma.
Grandma pushed right past Uncle Mike, and Cookie slid right behind her to take Grandma’s place at the stove. I noted Uncle Mike had made no move to greet me.
“Hello, Peter!” Grandma said, kissing me on my turned cheek. “Did you drive up all the way from Atlanta just this morning?”<
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“Yes, ma’am,” I replied.
“You must be hungry. Don’t be shy, help yourself to an appetizer,” she insisted, sweeping her hand over a buffet loaded with sandwiches, cookies, and treats. “Would you like a cup of coffee?”
“Yes, ma’am. Thank you.”
Grandma turned away to get a cup of coffee for me. “Michael,” she said sternly to her still-motionless son, “greet your nephew.”
“Hello, Peter,” Uncle Mike said coolly, carefully timing his offer of a hand for just after I’d already picked up one of Grandma’s little sandwiches. Jerk.
“Good to see you, Uncle Mike,” I lied, transferring the sandwich to my other hand and shaking his. “How’s business been?”
“Complicated,” he replied. Too complicated for the likes of me to understand, apparently. He turned his back to me and walked off.
Grandma brought me a cup of coffee. “No cream, no sugar,” she said. “Just like your father took it. My boys are to be on their best behavior today,” she said. “And if anyone gives you a hard time, you let me know, you hear?”
“Yes ma’am,” I replied. I heard her, but there was no way I would whine to her about my uncles or my cousins being mean to me. Mean was exactly the right word: not just nasty and spiteful, but in a particularly base or low way. Dad would never have come to Thanksgiving dinner at the Tollivers if Mom hadn’t insisted on defending her place in the family. If Mom wanted to sit at the table as Grandma’s daughter, Dad was going to back her up as best he could, even if it meant suffering the slings and arrows of Mom’s brothers. Dad mentioned to me once that part of what got him through the annual ordeal was the realization that he and his family upheld much higher standards of courtesy and civility than those who thought themselves our superiors. I didn’t much care for that kind of game playing, but if I had to be here anyway, Dad’s game gave me a chance to turn the slights and snubs into a way of running up the score against the Tollivers. And I did have to be there.
A Rambling Wreck: Book 2 of The Hidden Truth Page 10