Paranormal Psychology, Part 2

The next morning, I awoke unhappily. My first class was the usual monotony that I had become accustomed to since the fascination and naivety had worn itself out in my freshman year. The professor droned on about certain aspects of the culture of a small group of pigmies that I could certainly care less about, considering most likely they were going to disappear into the annals of history filed under the category of "things we killed off", in the section marked "that we probably shouldn't have."

Fortunately, just before I drifted into a fantasy of being a custodian for all of history, the professor dismissed the class. I made my lazy way out, looking down at my new schedule to see which building the next class was in. My eyes widened with sudden recognition. The memory of the email, the strange customer at the cafe, and the cursed coin flooded back and locked itself in place in my mind. Perhaps my day would be interesting.

Heading towards the Fjord building, I must confess a certain foreboding. After all, it's not every day you have to comply with a Non-Disclosure Agreement for a college course. I shrugged it off, though, or at least I did in the way one can shrug off a winter's chill, and entered the building. I found the classroom, which seemed to have been a library until very recently since it was filled with bookshelves, and found a seat in a small clearing among the shelves. Fifteen other students sat near me, spaced out among the array of seats in the classroom. One thing about the classroom irked me- It almost seemed like it wasn't a classroom at all, but the study area in a long-forgotten and ill kept archive room. Mounted on the row of bookshelves that the chairs pointed to was a large screen, and on one of the desks in the middle was a projector, which was attached to a laptop which hummed lightly in the silent room. I took up my college-trained stance of staring at the screen dutifully.

The seconds ticked by, conveniently aided by a large grandfather clock which loomed down one of the corridors of bookshelves. Slowly the seconds became minutes, and then half-hours, and finally I had been staring at a screen for a full hour, resisting with all my will the urge to make up sleep lost the previous night due to that damned coin.

"Class was supposed to start half an hour ago." Spoke a mellifluous voice which carried with it a slight exotic accent that I vaguely identified with curry and large, domed palaces. I turned and, against my long-developed training to ignore my peers, began to notice the effectively full room of students who had just spent an hour staring at nothing. The one who spoke was a slim slip of a girl, dressed in tight fitting clothes probably popular in nearby New York. He skin was a dark-ish color which I finally decided defined her as Indian.

"Perhaps Abode canceled the class by email and we all simply missed it?"