Dear people who are pissed off about the scientist with the pin-up girl shirt being called sexist by certain feminists and use the argument "he landed a satellite on a comet and you're bitching about his shirt?":
I will preface this status by saying that I personally do not find his shirt offensive. I think it's silly and while I suppose there is some base form of objectification happening there, pin up art is considered art and much as I don't consider liking porn a sign of you hating women, tasteful sexy art is not a bad thing.
That being said, if the structure of your argument is "you hating on his shirt [that signifies possible sexism] is ignoring his great achievement," and you consider yourself a supporter of equal rights for women, you are performing a bit of logical fallacy there.
Let's suppose the dude had on a shirt with Nazi insignia. Or something patterned with the N word. Chances are that you would be disgusted by his bigotry and prejudices and you would immediately call him out on it. Those are touchstone "bad" things in the mainstream culture. Yet somehow something that is sexist is feminists overreacting, and not a true bad thing. This begs the question: do you really support equal rights for women?
And before you dismiss this as me reading into this the wrong way, remember that you started it: you used a structure of defense that tacitly acknowledges the sexism at hand, but claims that his achievement is monumental, so that wipes out the error of his sexism. After all, if you're not defending his shirt as not sexist but cutting straight to his achievement and chiding your opponent for wasting their time focusing on the shirt, that's exactly what you're doing. In short, you're doing it wrong. That is, if you don't consider yourself sexist.
Sincerely,
C
Wednesday, November 19, 2014
Friday, May 2, 2014
Paying to Play; Or the Question of Unpaid Internships
Note for visitors from #mac15: this post is a bit outdated as far as my current circumstances. I am now gainfully employed in my field as an archives assistant at an university in New Haven (yes, the one that starts with a Y). However, I think the comments on the internship are still relevant.
--
During the weekend of April 24-26, 2014, the Mid-Atlantic Region Archives Conference (MARAC) spring event took place in Rochester, New York. While I certainly should have been there being professionally developed, I couldn't take the time off from my day job, nor could I afford the fees. However, I follow folks on Twitter who were there. And this is leading me to comment on a "funny" joke that is endemic to our profession.
During Session 8, "Going Virtual! Extending the Reach of a Project Once Funding Ends," panelists discussed their outreach methods after the initial funding is finished for creating and informing the masses about the project. According to Twitter updates, the conversation turned to how work continued without funding. That’s when someone cracked a joke about exploiting unpaid grad students. Because, you know, that’s what grad students are for.
Naturally, my friends who are grad students and recent graduates took to Twitter as well as the conference to strike back at this “hilarity.” I wish I could have been there. I also can point out the “exploitation” from personal experience.
As a graduate student in the Queens College GSLIS program, I had to take an internship course. Of course it’s a good idea to intern—it’s the best and almost always the only way to gain experience in the field these days. I had previously done an internship at the Louis Armstrong Archives, part of Queens College in an attempt to get this experience (ironically as I settled in there, I managed to get a part time job as an archival technician at the Municipal Archives in New York City where I received paid experience in the field). No matter what though, I was required to take this internship course.
The course consisted of interning for 150 hours in the semester, keeping a journal (some of the entries can be viewed on this blog), and writing a final paper and doing a small presentation. We met four times in the semester. Near the end of the semester I had a visit from one of the professors to review my workspace and to evaluate my competency. I did all of this without many qualms. I found a placement at the archive mentioned in this blog (albeit not by name), and did my processing. I passed the course, and I received valuable experience. I also am still at the archive, interning once a week to continue gaining experience.
This sounds like a good experience but let’s explore the qualms.
Let’s start with the course itself. It’s a required course at my school for archives students. You must take the course, or you don’t get the archives certificate. You do not get this course for free. While the school is cheaper than most (Queens College is part of CUNY, and I am a New York City resident, so I paid the lowest bracket tuition), it’s still a graduate school program, where it costs roughly $333 a credit. So I paid approximately $1,000 for a course that met four times in a semester, and with minimal oversight by professors.
Here’s another fun part of the internship course. You could not take a paid internship. It had to be purely for credit. Occasionally a student could bend that rule if their site had very firm rules about paying their interns, but this was not publicized by the department, and it was written in all the paperwork that it should be an unpaid internship for credit only. So I was paying the school to work for another institution for free.
Final consideration: this internship had to be 150 hours spread out over three and a half to four months (give or take). While it was up to us to figure out the timing, for many of us, we had to intern at least twice a week to make up that amount. I had a day job while doing the internship, and was also taking two other classes. I was stuck negotiating with my boss to go from approximately 24 hours a week to approximately 18 hours a week so I could intern and take my other classes. I was therefore paying to work for free, and losing other pay I could receive when I already don’t make a lot. I live with my parents, and they do charge me rent and I pay my bills. They wound up forgiving me my rent and a bunch of my bills so this way I could get by. However, I was lucky. I had a safety net. A good portion of my peers in library school do not necessarily have that net.
The final calculation: I lost 6 hours a week in pay during that semester-long course. A semester equals 15 weeks of this modified work schedule. I made $15 an hour at my job. Doing the math, I lost $1,350 in potential income (before taxes). We already established that I paid roughly $1,000 for the course. Therefore, I paid approximately $2,350 to work for experience.
The economy and the job market sucks. We all know that. Often to get any experience anywhere, you have to give time. More and more, entry level positions are becoming unpaid internships. This is especially true in cultural heritage institutions where they are dependent on grants, donors and budget allotments to keep their lights on, let alone have someone doing the processing for pay. For example, the librarian at my site likes me and wants to give me a paying job. Unfortunately, they do not have the budget to pay for an archivist. However, I am doing the work of an archivist--I am the de facto archivist in fact, because they don't have an official one at my site. This is great for the institution, but I don’t get paid, and I don’t get institutional privileges. In fact, it is still a form of paying to play as I need to buy myself the MetroCards to get to the archive. See how I didn’t get to attend MARAC? I didn’t have enough pay from my day job to do it myself, and I couldn’t get funding from the institution for professional development because, well, I’m not officially part of it. I have to worry about food and rent instead.
So the next time you want to joke about exploiting grad students, think about the math of free internships that just give experience. Because, yeah, you’re right, I was and am pretty darn exploited.
Tuesday, December 24, 2013
Tuesday, December 10, 2013
Postage Geekery
Postage geekery at the archive today: while we are used to the concept of a flat fee for postage based on weight and country, back in the 1800s, they charged by the distance traveled. If I remember correctly, they also used to charge the receiver. Our current system makes more sense, and is actually fairly hard to cheat versus this old one.
Wednesday, November 20, 2013
Paper Geekery
At the archive yesterday, I got a nice lesson on paper durability.
Here is a document from around 1715:
Even accounting for the document being mounted on tissue paper, the paper is in pretty good shape. It's slightly yellow (it's hard to tell from my crappy cell phone camera), there are few rips, except for near the very edge, and none of them affect the structural integrity of the paper, and the paper is pretty thick. In other words, this is in pretty good shape for something that has been bouncing around for about 300 years. It will probably continue to last. While I'm not a paper expert, this was probably produced with cotton rags and straw, and was most likely handmade, which allowed for long, strong cotton fibers.
Here is a document from the 1840s (I think it's 1846, but I could be wrong. I'm not at the archive now):
The paper is thinner than the paper from 1715, and the paper is fragile. There is a tear that affects the structural integrity of the paper (in fact, another page of this document is nearly split in half). I had to put the paper into mylar, so this way it would not split more from handling. This would have been made after the advent of industrial papermaking, but before wood pulp was used (it was used for newsprint at the time, but this appears to be a diary page). In other words, this paper probably also involves cotton rags. However, industrial paper making cuts the fibers shorter, allowing for more acid hydrolysis, which causes paper to break down. This is apparent in this example.
Moral of the story: if you want your paper to last better for 300 years, hand make your paper with cotton rags.
Here is a document from around 1715:
Here is a document from the 1840s (I think it's 1846, but I could be wrong. I'm not at the archive now):
Moral of the story: if you want your paper to last better for 300 years, hand make your paper with cotton rags.
Wednesday, October 2, 2013
Journal 8
10/01/13 10:00am to 4:00pm 47 hours
The government shutdown did not affect my internship that much. Since the library/archive is privately funded, it was open, and I went in to process some more. M was out, but the person who is technically in charge of the archive was in, so she let me into the back room. I then started on my work.
It turned out that the government shutdown did affect my work enough. Some of the fields that we fill out in PastPerfect include creator, people, and subjects. To make things official and to preserve a standard vocabulary, we use LC Authorities for their name and subject headings. Thanks to the shutdown, the Library of Congress website was down. Along with their catalog and authorities.
Thus came my challenge: to make nice sounding subject headings and name headings, using biographical websites (preferably not Wikipedia). I had learned about assigning subject headings back in my technical services class, but we used LC Authorities. I knew how they tended to form them, at least with names (last name, first name, birth year-death year). I could, in theory, find these people and get their years, and create their headings. Subjects were going to be even less precise, as they tend to get more detailed, depending on how you do it.
I tried. I don't think I did a horrible job. But just because someone might have published something does not mean that there is a biographical page for them on Biography, or even Wikipedia. So often I had to leave the years off for people. Even worse was when I was doing subject tags for institutions. How exactly do you form them? Sometimes LC likes the years; other times, they seem to assume that a name change is enough, with a note that the name has changed somewhere on the MARC record. By the end of the day, I was getting why folks copy catalog off Authorities. Also, I wanted to kick Congress and make them agree on a budget so I could get the site back. Hopefully next week?
The government shutdown did not affect my internship that much. Since the library/archive is privately funded, it was open, and I went in to process some more. M was out, but the person who is technically in charge of the archive was in, so she let me into the back room. I then started on my work.
It turned out that the government shutdown did affect my work enough. Some of the fields that we fill out in PastPerfect include creator, people, and subjects. To make things official and to preserve a standard vocabulary, we use LC Authorities for their name and subject headings. Thanks to the shutdown, the Library of Congress website was down. Along with their catalog and authorities.
Thus came my challenge: to make nice sounding subject headings and name headings, using biographical websites (preferably not Wikipedia). I had learned about assigning subject headings back in my technical services class, but we used LC Authorities. I knew how they tended to form them, at least with names (last name, first name, birth year-death year). I could, in theory, find these people and get their years, and create their headings. Subjects were going to be even less precise, as they tend to get more detailed, depending on how you do it.
I tried. I don't think I did a horrible job. But just because someone might have published something does not mean that there is a biographical page for them on Biography, or even Wikipedia. So often I had to leave the years off for people. Even worse was when I was doing subject tags for institutions. How exactly do you form them? Sometimes LC likes the years; other times, they seem to assume that a name change is enough, with a note that the name has changed somewhere on the MARC record. By the end of the day, I was getting why folks copy catalog off Authorities. Also, I wanted to kick Congress and make them agree on a budget so I could get the site back. Hopefully next week?
Sunday, September 29, 2013
Fortunately, the Journals
Note: my internship class received this email about a week ago:
I am missing several documents, some already overdue. I need several student profiles, site profiles, and action plans which are, in many cases, now overdue.
Get them in ASAP. And your next asssignment, your first Journal Submission is due by email by midnight on 9/29. As for the yet to be delivered profiles and action plans: the assignment is being changed as of Friday. I need a story as to why these are late. I am not interested in some sad tale of confusion, woe, or distraction. The assignment is now to entertain the professor. The story is to be a real "story." Something creative, entertaining. Veracity has no significance here; your professor expects to be entertained. The assignment will be judged by that criterion.
Good luck
While I did hand in all my paperwork in time, I really liked the concept of writing an amusing story for my professor. So, when handing in my journals on time tonight, I also added a story, in the style of Neil Gaiman's Fortunately, the Milk. It is seven pages long, double spaced, in Word. I decided to post it here. I did change identifying names of my archive and my supervisor, but otherwise, this is what my professor received.
Dear Professor,
You may notice that I am just submitting this under the wire, with just enough time to spare. “Those darn students,” you may be thinking, “they leave everything to the last minute and expect me to accept some sad tale of confusion, woe, or distraction.” However, you might understand better what took me so long if I tell you my tale of adventure.
I was working in the archive where I do my internship. I was just stopping in on Sunday to pick up a completed timesheet, when the archivist asked me for a favor.
“Christy,” she said, “we just received this box. I have to tend to a researcher. Can you look through this real fast?”
I was holding my keys, with the flash drive that holds my journals. I then put them down and picked up the box, snagging the keys with my pinky.
“Sure thing!” I chirped, and then took the box of mysterious contents into the processing area.
I opened the box. I immediately smelled dust, deteriorated paper, and the dreaded smell of rotten bananas and smelly feet.
“Uh-oh,” I said.
Out came a dust-covered skull, shedding bone on the desk. Out came a book, shedding red rot and acidified paper. And out, as I feared, came deteriorating cellulose nitrate film.
“Oh dear,” I said.
It was warm and exposed to light as it flaked. This was trouble.
“M—“ I started. Then stopped.
On the top of the skull, little cracks were appearing at the top. They were outlining a little diagram around the bumps.
I looked at the book. It was a Spurzheim tome about phrenology. I looked closer at the cover. Why there was a diagram like the cracks on the skull!
That’s when M walked in. “Christy, you called?”
Then she screamed at the cracking bone and swiped it off the desk in fear, taking the flash drive with it.
Fortunately, the journals bounced away from the skull towards me. Which was especially fortunate as the skull started to glow, blinding us both. I felt around, picked up the flash drive and watched in horror as the glow encircled M. Then, abruptly, it stopped.
M shook for a few seconds, not focusing on anything. Then she looked at me, and made a bow.
“Hello my dear lady. And who may you be?”
The voice was not quite hers, the manner of standing not hers either.
“Um, I’m Christy. Your intern?”
“Good heavens, you’re a student of phrenology?”
“Er, no. A student of archives?”
“Archives? Like government records? Are we in a government building? How interesting!”
I looked at her strangely.
“No,” I said carefully. “This is a medical archive for medical students. You are the special collections librarian. Are you feeling okay?”
“OH, my dear Madam Christy, I see you do not recognize me through this body. Allow me to make your acquaintance. I am Herr Johann Spurzheim, and I am now free to continue my work. Tell me, have you had your personality determined yet? Knowing your weaknesses might help.”
I looked at her. Or him. I was not quite sure.
Spurzheim? The phrenologist? Wordlessly I shifted through boxes, and came across a folder containing papers related to him. I pulled out a photograph of his skull and showed it to M. Or Spurzheim.
S/he looked at the photograph strangely. Then I noticed the skull again on the floor. I picked it up and showed it to him/her with the photograph.
There was a delighted laugh. “Oh, how curious! You have this picture of me. Tell me, was this done by camera obscura?”
I was talking to Spurzheim! “No. Later technology. Do you know what time you’re in?”
“No, Madam. Could you tell me?”
“Well, this is 2013. In the United States. New York City. How did you come to possess my supervisor?”
“2013? And man looks so similar. The clothing is odd, though…” he said, pointing at my Doc Martens and pants with the many buckles. But he then went, “ah yes. You see, when I was slipping into death, I was aware of the many organs that I could possibly reside in. I focused my soul on the part of the brain that governs the occult. There I stayed, waiting for someone to release me. This could be done, if my skull and my book reaches the open air, united in deep magic by examination by a curious mind.”
I then realized that flash of light was his soul. I had released him, and caused my supervisor to become possessed.
“You are the one that discovered me, I can tell. Would you like to become my student? You could learn so much!”
“Er, thank you, that’s very kind. However I’m already a student in a different field. And I need—“ I lifted up my flash drive to show him “—to send in my journals to my teacher.”
"What…is…that?” he asked, grabbing the flash drive. I pulled it away.
“It’s called a flash drive. People can store documents on them.”
“How strange and bizarre! I must have it to keep!” He started trying to pull it away from me again.
Fortunately, the journals stayed in my hand in a very tight grip as he pulled at my fingers and shoved me. I grabbed desperately at my desk with my free hand and knocked a notebook off the desk. This caught Spurzheim’s attention.
“What is that?” He picked it up.
Grateful that he was no longer trying to wrestle the flash drive away from me, I looked at what he was looking at. I smiled when I saw the back.
“Oh, that’s a L.N. Fowler notebook, analyzing a patient. I don’t think the two of you got along—“
He made a sound of disgust. “Curses upon the Fowlers! Both of them stole my noble work and vulgarized it!”
That’s when the growling moan reverberated through the archive. We looked up, startled.
We did not know what it was. But soon a shuffle came along with it.
It came closer and closer, and we felt our hearts pounding and pounding.
Then we saw the hands outstretched, and the arms outstretched, and then a face.
It was rotted and gray, and I recognized it as a zombie. I backed away, trying not to scream. That’s when the zombie moaned a single word.
“Spurzheim….”
“Oh no! It’s that dastardly Fowler! Why he came back again by occult means as well. What is this thing? It’s not elegant like my soul arriving. You see, this is what I meant by vulgarizing my work—“
Zombie Fowler let out a yell, and I screamed, “Not now—run!”
I held my flash drive, and grabbed Spurzheim’s skull. Spurzheim picked up the book and the film. And we ran. Unfortunately, we ran into a dead end. The hallway did not have an exit down the end we had ran.
I raised my hands in the air, hoping we could somehow negotiate with Zombie Fowler. “Sir, please!”
Zombie Fowler stopped, and stared. More specifically, he stared at my hand.
“Huuuuuuh?” he asked, unable to form more words than that.
I looked at my hand. He was staring at my flash drive.
“Oh, that? Just something I use to hold things. You wouldn’t understand. Sir, can we please discuss this?”
He reached towards my hand, trying to take my flash drive.
Fortunately, the journals did not go over to him. I threw the flash drive over Zombie Fowler’s head and it went down the length of the hall, skittering over the floor. Confused, Zombie Fowler turned around. And that’s when Spurzheim and I ran past him, and went back down the hall, me stopping to pick up the flash drive.
We ran out into the reading room, and ran out the door. We then stopped and looked at each other.
“Where shall we go?!” wailed Spurzheim. “That monster will destroy us both!”
That’s when we heard the growling moan again. Zombie Fowler had just shuffled into the reading room.
“The stairs!” I cried. We opened the door to staircase 9 and ran down the steps to floor 11. Unfortunately Zombie Fowler was close behind.
We ran through the first Pavilion, pushing past the interns. We made it to the second Pavilion and the amazed people on their stretchers. Zombie Fowler doggedly pursued us through the hallways, screaming over and over again “Spurzheim!”
Soon we were panting, and we barely could continue. We had reached floor 3, and we had no escape in the building. This got even worse when a hallway ended at a window.
We turned around as Zombie Fowler shuffled forward, his gray face twisted into a hideous grin. We knew this could be the end.
I looked at the window. It was glass, with no bars.
“We’re going out the window,” I told Spurzheim.
“What?”
“We’re going out the window.”
“But where will we go? We’ll get caught outside!”
“We have no choice.”
I kicked out the window with my steel toed boots, and it shattered, and the sounds of the traffic came in. Zombie Fowler stopped, confused. I then grabbed Spurzheim by the hand.
We jumped.
“AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH!” we screamed as we fell the three flights.
We landed, sliding slightly.
Fortunately, the journals were in a tight grip in my hand and never touched the ground. We got up and continued to run.
We heard a thud as we ran, and realized that Zombie Fowler was in hot pursuit. We were doomed.
But then I looked at the cellulose nitrate in Spurzheim’s hand, and got an idea.
“We’re going to the river!” I screamed. “Follow me!”
We ran to the river and reached the edge. Spurzheim followed me and stopped.
“We’re done!” he wailed.
“No we’re not!” I responded.
Zombie Fowler stopped too. We stared at each other.
I then grabbed the cellulose nitrate. I pulled my lighter out of my pocket. I then waved my flash drive in the air.
“Come and get it!”
Zombie Fowler got closer. He was soon right against the river.
And that’s when I pushed him in. As he swam up, I lit the cellulose nitrate on fire and tossed it in after him.
Flames leapt to the surface as it combusted in the water, and burned up Zombie Fowler. I coughed from the fumes and buried my face into my trench coat.
Spurzheim was coughing horribly too. As he coughed, a glow started to come off the body. Soon M was rolling on the ground as the bluish light left her. Finally, she was still.
I rushed over to her. “M, are you okay?”
She coughed again, and slowly got up. “I think so. What just happened?” She then looked at the flaming river. “Oh my God, we need to call the fire department!”
“Wait. We need to do something first.”
I took the skull and the book. I tossed them into the fire, so that no one could raise Spurzheim again.
“OK, let’s go. You see, it’s a long story…” I trailed off as I realized that I wasn’t holding the flash drive, and hadn’t been since I tossed in Zombie Fowler.
Fortunately, the journals were in my trench coat pocket. I must have just slipped them in automatically, which I should have done from the beginning.
I am missing several documents, some already overdue. I need several student profiles, site profiles, and action plans which are, in many cases, now overdue.
Get them in ASAP. And your next asssignment, your first Journal Submission is due by email by midnight on 9/29. As for the yet to be delivered profiles and action plans: the assignment is being changed as of Friday. I need a story as to why these are late. I am not interested in some sad tale of confusion, woe, or distraction. The assignment is now to entertain the professor. The story is to be a real "story." Something creative, entertaining. Veracity has no significance here; your professor expects to be entertained. The assignment will be judged by that criterion.
Good luck
While I did hand in all my paperwork in time, I really liked the concept of writing an amusing story for my professor. So, when handing in my journals on time tonight, I also added a story, in the style of Neil Gaiman's Fortunately, the Milk. It is seven pages long, double spaced, in Word. I decided to post it here. I did change identifying names of my archive and my supervisor, but otherwise, this is what my professor received.
Dear Professor,
You may notice that I am just submitting this under the wire, with just enough time to spare. “Those darn students,” you may be thinking, “they leave everything to the last minute and expect me to accept some sad tale of confusion, woe, or distraction.” However, you might understand better what took me so long if I tell you my tale of adventure.
I was working in the archive where I do my internship. I was just stopping in on Sunday to pick up a completed timesheet, when the archivist asked me for a favor.
“Christy,” she said, “we just received this box. I have to tend to a researcher. Can you look through this real fast?”
I was holding my keys, with the flash drive that holds my journals. I then put them down and picked up the box, snagging the keys with my pinky.
“Sure thing!” I chirped, and then took the box of mysterious contents into the processing area.
I opened the box. I immediately smelled dust, deteriorated paper, and the dreaded smell of rotten bananas and smelly feet.
“Uh-oh,” I said.
Out came a dust-covered skull, shedding bone on the desk. Out came a book, shedding red rot and acidified paper. And out, as I feared, came deteriorating cellulose nitrate film.
“Oh dear,” I said.
It was warm and exposed to light as it flaked. This was trouble.
“M—“ I started. Then stopped.
On the top of the skull, little cracks were appearing at the top. They were outlining a little diagram around the bumps.
I looked at the book. It was a Spurzheim tome about phrenology. I looked closer at the cover. Why there was a diagram like the cracks on the skull!
That’s when M walked in. “Christy, you called?”
Then she screamed at the cracking bone and swiped it off the desk in fear, taking the flash drive with it.
Fortunately, the journals bounced away from the skull towards me. Which was especially fortunate as the skull started to glow, blinding us both. I felt around, picked up the flash drive and watched in horror as the glow encircled M. Then, abruptly, it stopped.
M shook for a few seconds, not focusing on anything. Then she looked at me, and made a bow.
“Hello my dear lady. And who may you be?”
The voice was not quite hers, the manner of standing not hers either.
“Um, I’m Christy. Your intern?”
“Good heavens, you’re a student of phrenology?”
“Er, no. A student of archives?”
“Archives? Like government records? Are we in a government building? How interesting!”
I looked at her strangely.
“No,” I said carefully. “This is a medical archive for medical students. You are the special collections librarian. Are you feeling okay?”
“OH, my dear Madam Christy, I see you do not recognize me through this body. Allow me to make your acquaintance. I am Herr Johann Spurzheim, and I am now free to continue my work. Tell me, have you had your personality determined yet? Knowing your weaknesses might help.”
I looked at her. Or him. I was not quite sure.
Spurzheim? The phrenologist? Wordlessly I shifted through boxes, and came across a folder containing papers related to him. I pulled out a photograph of his skull and showed it to M. Or Spurzheim.
S/he looked at the photograph strangely. Then I noticed the skull again on the floor. I picked it up and showed it to him/her with the photograph.
There was a delighted laugh. “Oh, how curious! You have this picture of me. Tell me, was this done by camera obscura?”
I was talking to Spurzheim! “No. Later technology. Do you know what time you’re in?”
“No, Madam. Could you tell me?”
“Well, this is 2013. In the United States. New York City. How did you come to possess my supervisor?”
“2013? And man looks so similar. The clothing is odd, though…” he said, pointing at my Doc Martens and pants with the many buckles. But he then went, “ah yes. You see, when I was slipping into death, I was aware of the many organs that I could possibly reside in. I focused my soul on the part of the brain that governs the occult. There I stayed, waiting for someone to release me. This could be done, if my skull and my book reaches the open air, united in deep magic by examination by a curious mind.”
I then realized that flash of light was his soul. I had released him, and caused my supervisor to become possessed.
“You are the one that discovered me, I can tell. Would you like to become my student? You could learn so much!”
“Er, thank you, that’s very kind. However I’m already a student in a different field. And I need—“ I lifted up my flash drive to show him “—to send in my journals to my teacher.”
"What…is…that?” he asked, grabbing the flash drive. I pulled it away.
“It’s called a flash drive. People can store documents on them.”
“How strange and bizarre! I must have it to keep!” He started trying to pull it away from me again.
Fortunately, the journals stayed in my hand in a very tight grip as he pulled at my fingers and shoved me. I grabbed desperately at my desk with my free hand and knocked a notebook off the desk. This caught Spurzheim’s attention.
“What is that?” He picked it up.
Grateful that he was no longer trying to wrestle the flash drive away from me, I looked at what he was looking at. I smiled when I saw the back.
“Oh, that’s a L.N. Fowler notebook, analyzing a patient. I don’t think the two of you got along—“
He made a sound of disgust. “Curses upon the Fowlers! Both of them stole my noble work and vulgarized it!”
That’s when the growling moan reverberated through the archive. We looked up, startled.
We did not know what it was. But soon a shuffle came along with it.
It came closer and closer, and we felt our hearts pounding and pounding.
Then we saw the hands outstretched, and the arms outstretched, and then a face.
It was rotted and gray, and I recognized it as a zombie. I backed away, trying not to scream. That’s when the zombie moaned a single word.
“Spurzheim….”
“Oh no! It’s that dastardly Fowler! Why he came back again by occult means as well. What is this thing? It’s not elegant like my soul arriving. You see, this is what I meant by vulgarizing my work—“
Zombie Fowler let out a yell, and I screamed, “Not now—run!”
I held my flash drive, and grabbed Spurzheim’s skull. Spurzheim picked up the book and the film. And we ran. Unfortunately, we ran into a dead end. The hallway did not have an exit down the end we had ran.
I raised my hands in the air, hoping we could somehow negotiate with Zombie Fowler. “Sir, please!”
Zombie Fowler stopped, and stared. More specifically, he stared at my hand.
“Huuuuuuh?” he asked, unable to form more words than that.
I looked at my hand. He was staring at my flash drive.
“Oh, that? Just something I use to hold things. You wouldn’t understand. Sir, can we please discuss this?”
He reached towards my hand, trying to take my flash drive.
Fortunately, the journals did not go over to him. I threw the flash drive over Zombie Fowler’s head and it went down the length of the hall, skittering over the floor. Confused, Zombie Fowler turned around. And that’s when Spurzheim and I ran past him, and went back down the hall, me stopping to pick up the flash drive.
We ran out into the reading room, and ran out the door. We then stopped and looked at each other.
“Where shall we go?!” wailed Spurzheim. “That monster will destroy us both!”
That’s when we heard the growling moan again. Zombie Fowler had just shuffled into the reading room.
“The stairs!” I cried. We opened the door to staircase 9 and ran down the steps to floor 11. Unfortunately Zombie Fowler was close behind.
We ran through the first Pavilion, pushing past the interns. We made it to the second Pavilion and the amazed people on their stretchers. Zombie Fowler doggedly pursued us through the hallways, screaming over and over again “Spurzheim!”
Soon we were panting, and we barely could continue. We had reached floor 3, and we had no escape in the building. This got even worse when a hallway ended at a window.
We turned around as Zombie Fowler shuffled forward, his gray face twisted into a hideous grin. We knew this could be the end.
I looked at the window. It was glass, with no bars.
“We’re going out the window,” I told Spurzheim.
“What?”
“We’re going out the window.”
“But where will we go? We’ll get caught outside!”
“We have no choice.”
I kicked out the window with my steel toed boots, and it shattered, and the sounds of the traffic came in. Zombie Fowler stopped, confused. I then grabbed Spurzheim by the hand.
We jumped.
“AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH!” we screamed as we fell the three flights.
We landed, sliding slightly.
Fortunately, the journals were in a tight grip in my hand and never touched the ground. We got up and continued to run.
We heard a thud as we ran, and realized that Zombie Fowler was in hot pursuit. We were doomed.
But then I looked at the cellulose nitrate in Spurzheim’s hand, and got an idea.
“We’re going to the river!” I screamed. “Follow me!”
We ran to the river and reached the edge. Spurzheim followed me and stopped.
“We’re done!” he wailed.
“No we’re not!” I responded.
Zombie Fowler stopped too. We stared at each other.
I then grabbed the cellulose nitrate. I pulled my lighter out of my pocket. I then waved my flash drive in the air.
“Come and get it!”
Zombie Fowler got closer. He was soon right against the river.
And that’s when I pushed him in. As he swam up, I lit the cellulose nitrate on fire and tossed it in after him.
Flames leapt to the surface as it combusted in the water, and burned up Zombie Fowler. I coughed from the fumes and buried my face into my trench coat.
Spurzheim was coughing horribly too. As he coughed, a glow started to come off the body. Soon M was rolling on the ground as the bluish light left her. Finally, she was still.
I rushed over to her. “M, are you okay?”
She coughed again, and slowly got up. “I think so. What just happened?” She then looked at the flaming river. “Oh my God, we need to call the fire department!”
“Wait. We need to do something first.”
I took the skull and the book. I tossed them into the fire, so that no one could raise Spurzheim again.
“OK, let’s go. You see, it’s a long story…” I trailed off as I realized that I wasn’t holding the flash drive, and hadn’t been since I tossed in Zombie Fowler.
Fortunately, the journals were in my trench coat pocket. I must have just slipped them in automatically, which I should have done from the beginning.
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