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Welcome to the world of the divide! It takes place in a parallel universe of our own, where the Eurasian continent is separated by a fence that marks the border between human civilization and vast uncharted lands. Not a single person who ventured there has ever returned. It is a world in which humanity has grown over most social problems that we experience ourselves. However, the divide gave way to new issues. In the story we follow an aspiring student who accidentally ended up in a position to become the first to uncover the secrets of the world beyond the divide that will change history forever.
I have to admit, I never really read any books or watch any films or series. I am not sure if topics, events, names or characters have occurred in any other fictional world, but in this world they are all the result of my own imagination. I am also quite an unexperienced writer and English is not my native language, so if you have any feedback on that it is always appreciated. The entire story will stay SFW, but with a few swearwords and a little bit of mild violence.
Link to chapters:
Prologue - https://www.furaffinity.net/view/44696663/
Chapter 1 - you are here
Chapter 2 - https://www.furaffinity.net/view/44696915/
Chapter 3 - https://www.furaffinity.net/view/44696989/
Chapter 4 - https://www.furaffinity.net/view/44716958/
Chapter 5 - https://www.furaffinity.net/view/44760319/
Chapter 6 - https://www.furaffinity.net/view/44839669/
Chapter 7 - https://www.furaffinity.net/view/44927717/
Chapter 8 - https://www.furaffinity.net/view/44941237/
Chapter 9 - https://www.furaffinity.net/view/44998449/
Chapter 10 - https://www.furaffinity.net/view/45015943/
Chapter 11 - https://www.furaffinity.net/view/45027925/
Chapter 12 - https://www.furaffinity.net/view/45073316/
Chapter 13 - https://www.furaffinity.net/view/45169699/
Chapter 14 - https://www.furaffinity.net/view/45199701/
Chapter 15 - https://www.furaffinity.net/view/45219588/
Chapter 16 - https://www.furaffinity.net/view/45321654/
Chapter 17 - https://www.furaffinity.net/view/45358876/
Chapter 18 - https://www.furaffinity.net/view/45390378/
Chapter 19 - https://www.furaffinity.net/view/45429295/
Chapter 20 - https://www.furaffinity.net/view/45494588/
Epilogue - https://www.furaffinity.net/view/45509586/
For some reason the website could not generate a text preview so here it is as well, so you don't have to download the file:
The morning after the revelation I was standing at the station, waiting for the metro. There were only a few other people, because the town the station is in has only a few thousand residents. The town was not allowed to grow because it was surrounded by protected forests. Housing prices are relatively expensive because there is the combination of close proximity to the city and the silence of the forest, if you ignore the fact that it lies right beneath the flight path for landing airplanes. At least the trees filter out most of the noise and pollutants.
There were puddles all over the platform and drops were dripping from the pine trees that stood by the station. It has been raining very intensively last night, but the morning started sunny and dry. The sun was shining through the trees, which caused the first bits of the puddles to evaporate. A fresh morning breeze blew on the side of my face and I felt that the ground softly started to vibrate. I heard the sound of distant wheels clenching on the rails in front of me. That could only mean that the train was approaching. It looked at it and saw that was one of the older types, which was manufactured in the time when Rusland was still more isolated.
I could hear the old metro gearing down loudly in order to slow, combined with the squeaking noise of the brakes. I counted the carriages and stepped in a specific one. There I was glad to see Stefanos. The day before we were assigned to the same group in a practical, because we both followed the same course. We got into a conversation and we found out that we lived rather close to one another. He lived in the center of a suburb close to old Kyiv, which sits at the end of the metro line. For that reason we could meet on the way to the university.
"Were you able to catch some good rest last night?" I asked to start the conversation.
"It was fine" Stefanos replied. "If this is about the student from yesterday, I didn't know him of course so I could handle it fine, I guess"
I sat down on the bench opposite of him and looked down before saying something, because I still found it difficult to talk about it.
"Well, it became a bit more personal for me" I said before looking back at him. "We wanted to play some football yesterday, but we were sent home by the police. It turned out that that guy crossed the fence very close to my house."
It was silent for a few seconds. I saw that Stefanos was looking to find the right way to reply.
"I know how you feel" he started. "I believe that I have never told you where exactly I come from."
"Athens, right?" I asked.
"Yes, that is where I study" he continued. "But I was born on Samos and I lived there until I was halfway in high school. The island is well-known for being very close to the coast of Byzantium. In elementary they already taught us that often people travel to Samos in order to sail across the divide into the unknown land. Most of them are caught by the coastguard and sent back. But some people slip through. When I just started in high school, I saw a small group of people board a rubber boat at an isolated beach. I could have called the police, but I was confused."
Stefanos paused for a brief moment and looked through the window of the metro.
"The next week video footage leaked of the coast guard that fired bullets at the venturers, who just reached the coast. It is still unknown if they made it into the forests there, but they are probably dead anyways. At least the coast guard's actions were condemned and they are more strictly controlled now, but I recognised the boat from that footage as being the boat from that night. It kept me awake for a long time, knowing that I could have stopped it."
"But you couldn't have known it" I said to him.
"Yeah, everyone keeps telling me that" Stefanos said ignorantly. "But that wasn't even the worst. We still have a long time ahead together so I guess that you can know what I'm about to tell."
I nodded at him to indicate that he could trust me.
"Remember when the sea level was still rising in the Mediterranean" Stefanos continued. "Our house was close to the beach. It got destroyed by a flooding during a storm some years ago. It was all that my family had back then. We could at least live at my grandparents' house further up the hills, but the whole situation was too difficult for my father to handle. He became addicted to drinking and after a few weeks he disappeared, only leaving behind a note that he followed some other venturers to the world beyond the divide. We did not hear anything from the coast guard, so he is still out there, either alive or dead. By the time that I realised that, I had nothing left on Samos. I moved with my mother to Athens, where I was one of the few fortunate people from the refugee camp to go to university."
"I don't really know what to say about your father, but at least I can see why you chose this study" I said after a short silence.
"You don't need to" Stefanos said while shaking his head. "It has been some years ago since then. I have grown over it."
"But there is one thing that I still can't get over" I said as an attempt to switch the topic. "So much money has been invested to construct new neighbourhoods to house all the climate refugees, yet Athens is known for not doing anything about it."
"You know how it goes" Stefanos replied. "The money always ends in the pockets of those who have an interest in it. These suckers don't realise the need to spend the money that they received from the IC. It happens more often than you might think. This situation is way different than the relocations like Kyiv back in the day."
What Stefanos said was very much true. Ever since the medieval ages the divide has mainly been the Dniepr river in continental Europe. We learned in history class that people knew that they would certainly be safe west of the river, but still some settlements were erected on the eastern banks. The ones that were closest usually managed to survive, but the ones further away eventually became ghost towns overnight. The biggest cities were built closest to the river. They often included walls and other types of defences, but since the beginning of the twentieth century people started to disappear anyways. Because of that, it was forbidden to live on the eastern banks from the forties.
For a decade that seemed to have solved the problem, but people continued to venture to the other side. In the sixties the Rusish government voted in favour of the comprehensive division law. A fence with a state-of-the-art security system was built all the way from the Eastern Sea to the Black Sea, with a distance of several kilometres east from the Dniepr river, for as long as it ran alongside it. This meant that the residents of many towns and cities were displaced westward. The biggest displacement project of all was Kyiv. All of the neighbourhoods within five kilometres from the river were closed in 1965. An entire new city was constructed further westward. That city was then known as Novograd-Kyiv, or Nokiv, as it's residents liked to call it.
I looked through the window of the metro as we approached the airport. It was the last part that was above-ground. The airport was massive and created a big open space, that gave a good view and beautiful approach to Nokiv. Practically everything in the city was either named after the politicians that set the plans in motion, or after the engineers and planners who designed it. Both the airport and the state university were named after Artyom Reznikov, the head of the design team. Both facilities were on the same line, so the university was given a slightly different name than the airport.
Once the train stopped at the airport station there were many tourists that boarded the carriage. That made it more difficult for me and Stefanos to have a conversation. That was not too big of a problem, because two stations later we had to get off the metro.
After exiting the station we had to walk up the stairs to the square in front of the university. Every time I was amazed by how perfectly this approach was designed. Across the square there proudly stood Artyom Budivelnyk University, or Artyom The Builder, as I have been told what it should be in English. It resembled some of the totalitarian architecture that can be found all over Nokiv, because that represented the ideas of the country when it was still relatively isolated at that time. The building had a big footprint and reached up to the sky in the centre, with at the top the icon of the planning team.
To many, the university and the city were an icon for Rusland's power and capabilities at the time, to others they are a disgrace from the past. The current, progressive government identified with the latter. Kyiv was Rusland's first capital, then it was moved to Nokiv, along with most of its residents. After a decade the city attracted more people than predicted, which led to uncontrolled urbanisation. That is why the city is sometimes seen as Artyom's failure. This overcrowdedness and the past ideals were the main reasons for the government to move the capital to Minsk around the turn of the century.
The university square took about a minute to cross. Once Stefanos and I entered the building, we could already feel that the atmosphere was rather grim.
"Do you remember in what lecture room we have to be" Stefanos asked.
"I don't know, the only thing I remember is that it is a different one than yesterday." I replied. "Let's see what the info screen says."
We walked over to the screen and spent a few seconds searching for our course among the long list of courses that were scheduled that morning.
"There it is" Stefanos said. "Climate politics in room... B7!"
The university was the biggest in all of Rusland. The main building on the main campus could facilitate ten thousand students alone. There were ten lecture halls that had room for eight hundred students and there were four halls that were even bigger. All of these halls were located on the same big, long corridor.
Our lecture of that day was scheduled in the seventh room on this side of the corridor, in one of the bigger rooms. Programmes that were related to the climate and the environment gained a lot of popularity in the past few years because the impacts from climate change could then finally be felt. Everyone that studied in the field of climate had some sort of background related to the issue. When Stefanos and I arrived at the lecture hall we could see that almost all of the three hundred seats were filled with such students.
I saw that there were hardly any seats free that were sitting next to each other. The first pair that I could see were on the third row. I pointed at it and told Stefanos that we could sit there. But right when we wanted to move there, Stefanos was pushed out of the way by the lecturer, who came storming into the room.
"Don't go standing there in the doorway" the lecturer snarled, already after she pushed Stefanos.
"Hey! Do you think that it is acceptable to treat your students like this" Stefanos called after her. He wanted to approach her as well, but I withheld him.
"I think that she had a tough day, Krisztina was not like this last time" I said to him.
Stefanos sighed and turned around, towards the stairs. "Yeah yeah, let's blame everything on yesterday. But I will confront her with this after the lecture."
We walked to the seats to let it rest. On our way we had to squeeze between the students who were already sitting there behind the desk.
Once we arrived we saw that the lecturer had already equipped the microphone. She started talking while she was still unpacking her stuff.
"Good morning everyone" she said in a flat tone and with her eastern accent, while struggling to get her laptop out. "I know that it still is a few minutes before the time starts, but today's topic takes a bit longer than usual and I need to talk about something first."
The lecturer took a few seconds to switch her laptop on and had difficulty to connect the cables.
"For those who were not here last time, I am assistant doctor Krisztina Horvath. Sorry for my accent, but I still struggle with the language, especially on days like these. The chair group called for a meeting very early this morning. They asked me to tell that you have a mandatory meeting with the programme director and a psychiatrist from the university during your lunch break."
This statement was already enough to cause chatter among most students. Everyone knew what it would be about. The lecture then finally finished assembling her laptop. She had to raise her voice in order to be audible amongst all the students.
"I know that this is undesired, but they greatly value your well-being! What happened yesterday left a big mark on some of you and they want to make sure that all of you feel safe and know who to talk to whenever you feel troubled."
The chatter became somewhat less noisy and the lecturer was briefly distracted by a small group of students who walked inside the room.
"I won't talk much more about it, the psychiatrist will do that" Krisztina continued. "But for now I must urge that you should never even consider crossing the border. No matter which reason you might have, it is apparent to you which results such actions will have on others. Even then, look at history, look at what happens now. There is no reason to go there."
"Do you even believe that yourself!" a voice said behind us.
A student that sat two rows behind Stefanos stood up and certainly didn't mind to be in the spotlight with that statement.
"Please sit down!" the lecturer called while she pointed at him and made fitting gestures. "There is no time for debate!"
"I'm sure that we all know why that fence is there" the student said a bit louder.
"Not now, am I clear!" the lecturer said, now almost shouting. "One more word and you are out!"
"I really don't get people like you," the student continued to provoke the lecturer, "how can you still look in the mirror everyday, knowing that you are a gigantic crook."
This statement caused a lot of surprise among the other students in the lecture hall. That led to a boisterous atmosphere. The person two seats next to the provoking student immediately stood up and firmly confronted him.
"Man, where is your fucking sense of reason!" he said with an intimidating gesture. "You are ruining it for all of us!"
Another student, who was sitting behind them, also stood up and started to interfere in the argument.
"Leave him alone, he has a right to make you aware of this!" she said.
"I didn't ask you anything!" the other student answered.
Two other students also stood up and also squeezed into the conversation. I turned my head forward and saw that the lecturer was already concerned about where the conflict was going, so she started to call security.
When I turned around I could hear some more nasty words fly over before conflict took a turn for the worst. The first punches sent a shock through the lecture hall. Even the lecturer looked away, knowing that she had no power to stop it. When even more students started to interfere in the fight, some people started to scream and others wanted to get out of the room as soon as they could. But most were just watching the fight, either terrified and helplessly or filming it with their smartphones.
When I saw that someone got kicked in the face so hard that blood started to spill from a wound, I knew that I couldn't stay there any longer. I briefly looked at Stefanos and he looked back. I could read from his expression that he felt exactly the same.
We stood up in order to get away, but right at that moment someone who came jumping from a row below us to the row above us pushed me out of the way with such a force that I lost balance, bumped my head on the desk beside mine and fell on the floor.
The bump was so hard that everything around me turned silent for a few seconds. Only after that I could start to feel the pain. When I started to become aware of my surroundings again I slowly grasped for my head. I rolled over a bit so I could vaguely see what was happening around me.
I saw that Stefanos came rushing back to our seats. He kneeled and reached for a piece of cloth in his pocket before handing it to me.
"Shit man, you are bleeding as well" I could vaguely hear him saying.
Before taking it from him I was distracted by heavy footsteps approaching. Three security guards were rushing up the stairs at the end of the row. They were followed by some police officers who were screaming something in the direction of the fight.
Stefanos turned around to see them marching up the stairs as well. He forced the piece of cloth in my hands and gestured that he would get help. I dabbed the cloth on the wound and saw that it was indeed covered in blood. I placed it back on my head and rolled over to a more comfortable position, hoping that it would be over soon.
I have to admit, I never really read any books or watch any films or series. I am not sure if topics, events, names or characters have occurred in any other fictional world, but in this world they are all the result of my own imagination. I am also quite an unexperienced writer and English is not my native language, so if you have any feedback on that it is always appreciated. The entire story will stay SFW, but with a few swearwords and a little bit of mild violence.
Link to chapters:
Prologue - https://www.furaffinity.net/view/44696663/
Chapter 1 - you are here
Chapter 2 - https://www.furaffinity.net/view/44696915/
Chapter 3 - https://www.furaffinity.net/view/44696989/
Chapter 4 - https://www.furaffinity.net/view/44716958/
Chapter 5 - https://www.furaffinity.net/view/44760319/
Chapter 6 - https://www.furaffinity.net/view/44839669/
Chapter 7 - https://www.furaffinity.net/view/44927717/
Chapter 8 - https://www.furaffinity.net/view/44941237/
Chapter 9 - https://www.furaffinity.net/view/44998449/
Chapter 10 - https://www.furaffinity.net/view/45015943/
Chapter 11 - https://www.furaffinity.net/view/45027925/
Chapter 12 - https://www.furaffinity.net/view/45073316/
Chapter 13 - https://www.furaffinity.net/view/45169699/
Chapter 14 - https://www.furaffinity.net/view/45199701/
Chapter 15 - https://www.furaffinity.net/view/45219588/
Chapter 16 - https://www.furaffinity.net/view/45321654/
Chapter 17 - https://www.furaffinity.net/view/45358876/
Chapter 18 - https://www.furaffinity.net/view/45390378/
Chapter 19 - https://www.furaffinity.net/view/45429295/
Chapter 20 - https://www.furaffinity.net/view/45494588/
Epilogue - https://www.furaffinity.net/view/45509586/
For some reason the website could not generate a text preview so here it is as well, so you don't have to download the file:
Chapter 1
The morning after the revelation I was standing at the station, waiting for the metro. There were only a few other people, because the town the station is in has only a few thousand residents. The town was not allowed to grow because it was surrounded by protected forests. Housing prices are relatively expensive because there is the combination of close proximity to the city and the silence of the forest, if you ignore the fact that it lies right beneath the flight path for landing airplanes. At least the trees filter out most of the noise and pollutants.
There were puddles all over the platform and drops were dripping from the pine trees that stood by the station. It has been raining very intensively last night, but the morning started sunny and dry. The sun was shining through the trees, which caused the first bits of the puddles to evaporate. A fresh morning breeze blew on the side of my face and I felt that the ground softly started to vibrate. I heard the sound of distant wheels clenching on the rails in front of me. That could only mean that the train was approaching. It looked at it and saw that was one of the older types, which was manufactured in the time when Rusland was still more isolated.
I could hear the old metro gearing down loudly in order to slow, combined with the squeaking noise of the brakes. I counted the carriages and stepped in a specific one. There I was glad to see Stefanos. The day before we were assigned to the same group in a practical, because we both followed the same course. We got into a conversation and we found out that we lived rather close to one another. He lived in the center of a suburb close to old Kyiv, which sits at the end of the metro line. For that reason we could meet on the way to the university.
"Were you able to catch some good rest last night?" I asked to start the conversation.
"It was fine" Stefanos replied. "If this is about the student from yesterday, I didn't know him of course so I could handle it fine, I guess"
I sat down on the bench opposite of him and looked down before saying something, because I still found it difficult to talk about it.
"Well, it became a bit more personal for me" I said before looking back at him. "We wanted to play some football yesterday, but we were sent home by the police. It turned out that that guy crossed the fence very close to my house."
It was silent for a few seconds. I saw that Stefanos was looking to find the right way to reply.
"I know how you feel" he started. "I believe that I have never told you where exactly I come from."
"Athens, right?" I asked.
"Yes, that is where I study" he continued. "But I was born on Samos and I lived there until I was halfway in high school. The island is well-known for being very close to the coast of Byzantium. In elementary they already taught us that often people travel to Samos in order to sail across the divide into the unknown land. Most of them are caught by the coastguard and sent back. But some people slip through. When I just started in high school, I saw a small group of people board a rubber boat at an isolated beach. I could have called the police, but I was confused."
Stefanos paused for a brief moment and looked through the window of the metro.
"The next week video footage leaked of the coast guard that fired bullets at the venturers, who just reached the coast. It is still unknown if they made it into the forests there, but they are probably dead anyways. At least the coast guard's actions were condemned and they are more strictly controlled now, but I recognised the boat from that footage as being the boat from that night. It kept me awake for a long time, knowing that I could have stopped it."
"But you couldn't have known it" I said to him.
"Yeah, everyone keeps telling me that" Stefanos said ignorantly. "But that wasn't even the worst. We still have a long time ahead together so I guess that you can know what I'm about to tell."
I nodded at him to indicate that he could trust me.
"Remember when the sea level was still rising in the Mediterranean" Stefanos continued. "Our house was close to the beach. It got destroyed by a flooding during a storm some years ago. It was all that my family had back then. We could at least live at my grandparents' house further up the hills, but the whole situation was too difficult for my father to handle. He became addicted to drinking and after a few weeks he disappeared, only leaving behind a note that he followed some other venturers to the world beyond the divide. We did not hear anything from the coast guard, so he is still out there, either alive or dead. By the time that I realised that, I had nothing left on Samos. I moved with my mother to Athens, where I was one of the few fortunate people from the refugee camp to go to university."
"I don't really know what to say about your father, but at least I can see why you chose this study" I said after a short silence.
"You don't need to" Stefanos said while shaking his head. "It has been some years ago since then. I have grown over it."
"But there is one thing that I still can't get over" I said as an attempt to switch the topic. "So much money has been invested to construct new neighbourhoods to house all the climate refugees, yet Athens is known for not doing anything about it."
"You know how it goes" Stefanos replied. "The money always ends in the pockets of those who have an interest in it. These suckers don't realise the need to spend the money that they received from the IC. It happens more often than you might think. This situation is way different than the relocations like Kyiv back in the day."
What Stefanos said was very much true. Ever since the medieval ages the divide has mainly been the Dniepr river in continental Europe. We learned in history class that people knew that they would certainly be safe west of the river, but still some settlements were erected on the eastern banks. The ones that were closest usually managed to survive, but the ones further away eventually became ghost towns overnight. The biggest cities were built closest to the river. They often included walls and other types of defences, but since the beginning of the twentieth century people started to disappear anyways. Because of that, it was forbidden to live on the eastern banks from the forties.
For a decade that seemed to have solved the problem, but people continued to venture to the other side. In the sixties the Rusish government voted in favour of the comprehensive division law. A fence with a state-of-the-art security system was built all the way from the Eastern Sea to the Black Sea, with a distance of several kilometres east from the Dniepr river, for as long as it ran alongside it. This meant that the residents of many towns and cities were displaced westward. The biggest displacement project of all was Kyiv. All of the neighbourhoods within five kilometres from the river were closed in 1965. An entire new city was constructed further westward. That city was then known as Novograd-Kyiv, or Nokiv, as it's residents liked to call it.
I looked through the window of the metro as we approached the airport. It was the last part that was above-ground. The airport was massive and created a big open space, that gave a good view and beautiful approach to Nokiv. Practically everything in the city was either named after the politicians that set the plans in motion, or after the engineers and planners who designed it. Both the airport and the state university were named after Artyom Reznikov, the head of the design team. Both facilities were on the same line, so the university was given a slightly different name than the airport.
Once the train stopped at the airport station there were many tourists that boarded the carriage. That made it more difficult for me and Stefanos to have a conversation. That was not too big of a problem, because two stations later we had to get off the metro.
After exiting the station we had to walk up the stairs to the square in front of the university. Every time I was amazed by how perfectly this approach was designed. Across the square there proudly stood Artyom Budivelnyk University, or Artyom The Builder, as I have been told what it should be in English. It resembled some of the totalitarian architecture that can be found all over Nokiv, because that represented the ideas of the country when it was still relatively isolated at that time. The building had a big footprint and reached up to the sky in the centre, with at the top the icon of the planning team.
To many, the university and the city were an icon for Rusland's power and capabilities at the time, to others they are a disgrace from the past. The current, progressive government identified with the latter. Kyiv was Rusland's first capital, then it was moved to Nokiv, along with most of its residents. After a decade the city attracted more people than predicted, which led to uncontrolled urbanisation. That is why the city is sometimes seen as Artyom's failure. This overcrowdedness and the past ideals were the main reasons for the government to move the capital to Minsk around the turn of the century.
The university square took about a minute to cross. Once Stefanos and I entered the building, we could already feel that the atmosphere was rather grim.
"Do you remember in what lecture room we have to be" Stefanos asked.
"I don't know, the only thing I remember is that it is a different one than yesterday." I replied. "Let's see what the info screen says."
We walked over to the screen and spent a few seconds searching for our course among the long list of courses that were scheduled that morning.
"There it is" Stefanos said. "Climate politics in room... B7!"
The university was the biggest in all of Rusland. The main building on the main campus could facilitate ten thousand students alone. There were ten lecture halls that had room for eight hundred students and there were four halls that were even bigger. All of these halls were located on the same big, long corridor.
Our lecture of that day was scheduled in the seventh room on this side of the corridor, in one of the bigger rooms. Programmes that were related to the climate and the environment gained a lot of popularity in the past few years because the impacts from climate change could then finally be felt. Everyone that studied in the field of climate had some sort of background related to the issue. When Stefanos and I arrived at the lecture hall we could see that almost all of the three hundred seats were filled with such students.
I saw that there were hardly any seats free that were sitting next to each other. The first pair that I could see were on the third row. I pointed at it and told Stefanos that we could sit there. But right when we wanted to move there, Stefanos was pushed out of the way by the lecturer, who came storming into the room.
"Don't go standing there in the doorway" the lecturer snarled, already after she pushed Stefanos.
"Hey! Do you think that it is acceptable to treat your students like this" Stefanos called after her. He wanted to approach her as well, but I withheld him.
"I think that she had a tough day, Krisztina was not like this last time" I said to him.
Stefanos sighed and turned around, towards the stairs. "Yeah yeah, let's blame everything on yesterday. But I will confront her with this after the lecture."
We walked to the seats to let it rest. On our way we had to squeeze between the students who were already sitting there behind the desk.
Once we arrived we saw that the lecturer had already equipped the microphone. She started talking while she was still unpacking her stuff.
"Good morning everyone" she said in a flat tone and with her eastern accent, while struggling to get her laptop out. "I know that it still is a few minutes before the time starts, but today's topic takes a bit longer than usual and I need to talk about something first."
The lecturer took a few seconds to switch her laptop on and had difficulty to connect the cables.
"For those who were not here last time, I am assistant doctor Krisztina Horvath. Sorry for my accent, but I still struggle with the language, especially on days like these. The chair group called for a meeting very early this morning. They asked me to tell that you have a mandatory meeting with the programme director and a psychiatrist from the university during your lunch break."
This statement was already enough to cause chatter among most students. Everyone knew what it would be about. The lecture then finally finished assembling her laptop. She had to raise her voice in order to be audible amongst all the students.
"I know that this is undesired, but they greatly value your well-being! What happened yesterday left a big mark on some of you and they want to make sure that all of you feel safe and know who to talk to whenever you feel troubled."
The chatter became somewhat less noisy and the lecturer was briefly distracted by a small group of students who walked inside the room.
"I won't talk much more about it, the psychiatrist will do that" Krisztina continued. "But for now I must urge that you should never even consider crossing the border. No matter which reason you might have, it is apparent to you which results such actions will have on others. Even then, look at history, look at what happens now. There is no reason to go there."
"Do you even believe that yourself!" a voice said behind us.
A student that sat two rows behind Stefanos stood up and certainly didn't mind to be in the spotlight with that statement.
"Please sit down!" the lecturer called while she pointed at him and made fitting gestures. "There is no time for debate!"
"I'm sure that we all know why that fence is there" the student said a bit louder.
"Not now, am I clear!" the lecturer said, now almost shouting. "One more word and you are out!"
"I really don't get people like you," the student continued to provoke the lecturer, "how can you still look in the mirror everyday, knowing that you are a gigantic crook."
This statement caused a lot of surprise among the other students in the lecture hall. That led to a boisterous atmosphere. The person two seats next to the provoking student immediately stood up and firmly confronted him.
"Man, where is your fucking sense of reason!" he said with an intimidating gesture. "You are ruining it for all of us!"
Another student, who was sitting behind them, also stood up and started to interfere in the argument.
"Leave him alone, he has a right to make you aware of this!" she said.
"I didn't ask you anything!" the other student answered.
Two other students also stood up and also squeezed into the conversation. I turned my head forward and saw that the lecturer was already concerned about where the conflict was going, so she started to call security.
When I turned around I could hear some more nasty words fly over before conflict took a turn for the worst. The first punches sent a shock through the lecture hall. Even the lecturer looked away, knowing that she had no power to stop it. When even more students started to interfere in the fight, some people started to scream and others wanted to get out of the room as soon as they could. But most were just watching the fight, either terrified and helplessly or filming it with their smartphones.
When I saw that someone got kicked in the face so hard that blood started to spill from a wound, I knew that I couldn't stay there any longer. I briefly looked at Stefanos and he looked back. I could read from his expression that he felt exactly the same.
We stood up in order to get away, but right at that moment someone who came jumping from a row below us to the row above us pushed me out of the way with such a force that I lost balance, bumped my head on the desk beside mine and fell on the floor.
The bump was so hard that everything around me turned silent for a few seconds. Only after that I could start to feel the pain. When I started to become aware of my surroundings again I slowly grasped for my head. I rolled over a bit so I could vaguely see what was happening around me.
I saw that Stefanos came rushing back to our seats. He kneeled and reached for a piece of cloth in his pocket before handing it to me.
"Shit man, you are bleeding as well" I could vaguely hear him saying.
Before taking it from him I was distracted by heavy footsteps approaching. Three security guards were rushing up the stairs at the end of the row. They were followed by some police officers who were screaming something in the direction of the fight.
Stefanos turned around to see them marching up the stairs as well. He forced the piece of cloth in my hands and gestured that he would get help. I dabbed the cloth on the wound and saw that it was indeed covered in blood. I placed it back on my head and rolled over to a more comfortable position, hoping that it would be over soon.
Category Story / All
Species Dragon (Other)
Size 120 x 120px
File Size 17.2 kB
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