Teaching Experience - Aristide Twain

The classroom was made of glass. It was traditional—a way to teach the young to tread lightly, as beings like them must do, once they were unleashed into the outer universe. Gods’ lives must be spent walking on eggshells—now more than ever, in these dangerous times when the fabric of reality was worn thin by constant battle. All terribly symbolic. 

But that was the people he worked for. The people who’d built this hidden place, long, long ago. The teacher was human, or close enough, and with every step he took toward the desk, he couldn’t help but fear he’d misjudge his strength, and fall right through the floor. Not that he was afraid of getting hurt, of course—not physically.

He slowly made his way across the room, desperately hoping he looked ponderous and not absurd. When he finally dared to look, thirty identical smirks answered his question.

Chris Cwej glared at himself in decatriplicate, then tried to revert to a neutral, welcoming sort of expression. 

“Ah… hello, students,” he said. “My name is Mr.—”

“Cwej,” a voice interrupted him. “Yeah. Join the club.”

The voice was identical to his own in pitch and timbre. It would take a while to get used to that. The troublemaker was a student in the front row, identical to him in all respects save for his apparel; where Chris had been given the flowing robe of a schoolmaster, his duplicates wore simple blue uniforms—streamlined versions of what he had worn himself in his younger days, the light armour of an academy cadet. His masters had never been renowned for their creativity, but this was all beginning to feel uncomfortably Freudian.

“Um, now, listen—” he began again, effortfully meeting his twin’s gaze. “I know this is a little strange…”

“Oh, sure,” another Cwej agreed, two rows behind. He’d put his feet up on the glass desk, and his arms were crossed. “Hundreds of us, all diffracted from your time-stream to fight in some kind of primordial brawl, and we’re meant to take lessons for you. It’s a little strange. Just a bit.”

“Listen to me,” Chris asserted again, trying for ‘friendly yet firm’. “I didn’t ask for this, and I didn’t realise… I mean, when they said you’d be copies of me, I didn’t know they wouldn’t… let you keep your memories. My memories. Whatever.” He blinked. “Er. I’ve got that right, yeah? You don’t have my memories? …If I say Kent Lankin, second year, does that ring a bell, or—”

“Boyfriend?” a Cwej in the back row guessed.

Chris stared at him, suddenly regretting the question. Could the Cwejen see him blush? He could see the ghost of his own reflection on the back wall, but it was too faint to tell, so he settled for staring, lost for words, at the student who’d spoken.

“No, we don’t have your memories,” the latter finally admitted. “Wouldn’t be much of a point in having you as a teacher if we did, right? It was just an easy guess. We might not be you, but we’ve got a lot in common. We know your face. Your tells.”

Chris took a deep breath.

This job used to be fun. More or less. He used to travel about. Go on missions, see the stars… Help people, on a good day. 

Couldn’t he just do that? Why… this? They’d said he was due for a workcation—a chance to fulfill less dangerous duties in a quiet, scenic locale. As if. They were making him train his own replacements. Replacements who shared his face, his speech patterns. Some vacation. Cruel and unusual punishment, that’s what it was. Was this how artists had felt when humans had invented the first A.I. generator?

He lay his hands flat on the desk, took another breath, and spoke. 

“Look, for our first lesson, I thought we’d talk about stealth missions. Precision interventions at crucial historical pressure points.”

The technical term felt odd in Chris’ mouth; he could only imagine how it felt for the students, his own younger selves, to hear it in what each of them would term their voice. Talk about a role model. He waved a hand informally, trying to put them at ease, as he went on:

“You know the sort of thing—‘Martians are interfering with Beethoven’s love life, we’ve got to save the Fifth Symphony by going undercover as the bratwurst salesman across the road’. The first thing you’ll want to do, if you’re travelling alone, is select a—” He stopped himself; he’d almost said companion. “A mission partner. Someone you like, someone you trust. Then you brief them—”

He paused. Yet another Cwej had raised a gauntleted hand. His expression was blank, unreadable even for Chris. 

“… Yeah? D’you have a question?” He tried a smile, and made a beckoning gesture. “It’s okay, you can stop me anytime. Ask away.”

Too late, he realised his mistake as his duplicate’s face split into a grin.

“Well, just wondering—it was kind of our body too, so I think we’ve got a right to know… Kent Lankin. Was he any good?”

Chris put one fist in front of his face, in a doomed effort to hide what he knew must be a less than dignified-looking expression—took one, heavy step back--

—and fell through the glass floor he’d cracked. 

He didn’t quit right there and then. After all, one did not simply quit service to the Superiors of Totality Itself. Even if he tried, They wouldn’t stand for it. He wondered, sometimes, if he’d quit a hundred times over, and the powers that be had simply rewound his timeline, each and every time, however many turns it took, until he chose to stay. 

But Chris Rodonanté Cwej did promise himself one thing as he hoisted himself back up from the maintenance floor and into the crystal classroom.
​
After this was over… he was never--ever—teaching again.