The microphone hummed once.
“Test… test…”
The sound struck the auditorium ceiling and returned a beat late. The room was wide enough to make even two syllables travel. Varen Io sat in the front row, just below the stage, listening. He had held microphones like that countless times. Today, before it was even in his hand, his fingers remembered the chill of the metal.
At the front of the auditorium hung a large banner.
PROFESSOR VAREN IO
Department of Mechanical Engineering
Retirement Ceremony
The black letters sat neatly against the white background. The banner was clean and proper—so proper that Varen felt slightly out of place beneath it. Professors filled the front rows, while students scattered themselves across the seats behind them. Some sat upright, ready to applaud. Others stared down at their phones, fingers moving restlessly. The room felt warmer than he expected. Without noticing, Varen lowered his shoulders.
Retirement ceremonies followed a familiar order. Titles and dates came first. Time was polished into something smoother than it had been. Then came two safe jokes, polite laughter, and the microphone. It wasn’t his turn yet, but his eyes kept drifting back to it. How many times had he stood there? He would begin with machines and end with choices. A lecture on design would become a question about the standards people used to decide whether a design was good.
A whisper came from the rows behind him. It was low enough to be private, but his name carried.
“He’s a great professor… but sometimes I get confused.”
“About what?”
“Whether I enrolled in engineering… or philosophy.”
A small laugh followed. Without turning his head, Varen spoke calmly. “You’re in engineering.” After a brief pause, “Don’t worry. Your tuition isn’t being wasted.” Laughter spread farther than the whisper had. Several students looked up from their phones.
On stage, the department chair continued speaking, but Varen found himself listening to something else entirely. Someone said Dr. Io sounded more like a philosophy professor. Someone else said he was Socrates wandering around Einstein’s neighborhood.
“The funnier part,” another voice added, “is that Dr. Io’s family is supposedly from Venus.” “Born on Earth,” someone said, “still adjusting.” A small laugh moved through the back rows. He neither denied nor accepted any of it. Instead, his gaze drifted somewhere far from the stage—back to a night long ago, to a worn desk, to two sheets of paper lying side by side.
It was the evening before college applications were due, during his final year of high school. His father wanted him to study medicine. Varen wanted philosophy. Mechanical engineering stood between them: respectable enough for his father, far enough from the smell of disinfectant for Varen.
Two application forms lay on his desk. One was for philosophy. The other was for mechanical engineering. Under the fluorescent light, the two sheets looked equally white. In his hands, they weighed the same. Only one felt like a choice his father might accept. From beyond the door, his father’s voice lingered in the room.
“Can you even make a living with that?”
Varen sat there for a long time. Then he turned the philosophy application facedown and moved his pen to the mechanical engineering form. Only after signing his name did the tension leave his fingertips. That was how he stepped away from scalpels and chose machines instead.
He never thought engineering had been a mistake. It had given him a profession, a classroom, and a front-row seat as machines grew more capable. He had not forgotten his treasure. He had simply built an entire career in front of it. It came back into view when machines started getting a little too smart.
One day in the lab, a student said, “Professor, the AI is more accurate on this one.” Varen studied the screen. The result was correct. The model was confident.
“Then why did it choose that?”
The student did not answer. The AI did not answer either. From that day on, calculation was no longer enough. Philosophy had returned—not as a subject waiting in a classroom, but as a question inside the machine.
“And now, we invite Professor Varen Io to say a few words.”
Applause rose, then settled quickly. Varen stood, glanced once at the bouquet in his hands, and walked up to the stage. When he took the microphone, his fingers recognized the chill. He took a brief breath, then began.
“I’m not here to talk about retirement.” Chairs creaked. A few heads lifted. “I’m changing jobs.” A few people chuckled. “Where to?” someone called out. Varen let the question hang for a moment.
“A novelist.”
For a second, no one reacted. Then a few people laughed. Others followed, taking his announcement for another one of his philosophical detours. Varen waited for the laughter to settle.
“A new kind of novelist, apparently—one who tries to weld engineering to philosophy. Machines calculate faster every year. But calculation does not decide what is worth doing. That question still belongs to us.”
He looked across the auditorium.
“I’m not leaving engineering behind. I’m taking its unanswered questions with me.”
This time, no one laughed. Several people kept looking at him. The room had stopped waiting for the joke. After a brief silence, the applause returned. Varen handed back the microphone and left the stage.
When the auditorium door closed behind him, the applause became a dull pressure on the other side. The hallway was empty and overlit. His footsteps sounded evenly on the tile.
In the lobby, he stopped in front of Einstein’s photograph. Einstein stuck out his tongue as usual. Today, he looked less like a monument and more like an old colleague.
“Stein, old friend,” he murmured.
“I’m heading out.”
Varen gave the photograph one last look.
“It was fun.”
He pushed open the outer door. Cold air met him. His shoulders loosened, as if he had finally taken off a coat that had kept him warm for years but had grown too heavy to keep wearing.
His phone vibrated in his pocket.
Moogum’s name lit the screen. “The Silence Coach?” Varen looked at it for a moment, then declined the call. “Later.”
Students passed him on the campus path—laughing, distracted, hurrying toward classes. Varen watched them with the odd sense that, at fifty-seven, he was leaving by the same gate through which they were still arriving.
“What is your treasure?” he murmured. No one heard him.
“I knew mine,” he said. “I just kept calling it later.” It was not regret. Only a late start—with more in hand than he would have had at twenty.
By the time Varen reached the main gate, his stride had lengthened. He crossed it with the barely contained excitement of a child who had finally been told he could choose where to go next.
When Varen arrived home, Caffrey was waiting by the door. As soon as Varen stepped inside, Caffrey sprang up, tail wagging. Varen slipped off his shoes.
“Feels like I just became unemployed, doesn’t it?” Varen said. Caffrey tilted her head. Varen studied her for a moment, then corrected himself. “Right. Not retirement. A transfer.” Caffrey’s tail thumped once against the floor.
“Alright. First day on the new job—let’s get to work.”
Caffrey disappeared down the hall and trotted back a moment later with the leash in her mouth.
—
That’s all for today.
Thank you for reading.
Believers, let the treasure hunt begin.
— The Cult Leader —