Center of Center (8)

a serialized novella-in-flash by Chris Wiewiora

I used to tell my students to come see me during office hours if they had a question, especially since I didn’t do holo-link conferencing like their other instructors. Before they could protest, I told them I wanted them to be physically present without distraction like our classroom speeches; plus distance-speech was an upper-level communication course for majors only. And so I didn’t like taking questions in class, thinking it was questioning my teaching and then making me doubt where I was, losing my place. I had my lesson plan set and I wanted to follow the track without any stops.

Usually the answer to their question could be found in the Panoptic-findable syllabus or by asking a classmate or just by critically thinking about it. I said that once at the beginning of one semester and I noticed by the end that my audio-distorted evals said I was unhelpful and unavailable. So, instead I started asking my class when someone had a question, Does anyone know the answer?

It’s cold but sunny and the light bounces glare off my windshield. I can get sunburn while blasting the heat in my bus. A cloud curtains over the sun’s rays and only its warmth radiates from the thawing asphalt. Now, I can focus on being in the driver’s seat safely taking students who forgot me to school.

Creeping Charlie carpets the lawns across town in purple, but C.U. has coatings of green spray covering all its muddy patches. The fertilized seed soon will sprout in roped off areas that have been used as throughways across campus when it was covered with snow.

CENTER of CENTER is a serialized novella-in-flash by Chris Wiewiora. Go here to start at the beginning. Paid subscribers have access to every installment of our serial fiction.

Installments: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32

---

Fiction Attic Press accepts submissions from emerging and established writers. Go here to submit your work.