The Litagent and Professor Kemp

© Daniel Verastiqui

Ethan was ignoring the stack of term papers on his desk when the buzzer on his phone sounded off. He heard it vaguely, somewhere off in the distance, but it seemed to lack any meaning. His eyes were instead glued to the monitor in the corner of the room, where the swirling green and yellow showed a storm moving in over the city. Rain, for some reason, excited him. Perhaps it was the variance, the fact that no two storms were really alike. Sometimes it was a heavy downpour, other times nothing more than a light drizzle. The truth was that it operated randomly—a rarity in a world where control was the norm.

“Professor Kemp?”

It was Mrs. Hart’s voice, tinny and distorted through the second-hand phones, the most advanced equipment the university could afford to buy. Ethan wondered why she was bothering him, what sum of knowledge one receptionist could hold to rival that of an incoming storm. It was just rain ...