I don't know N'Sync, nor do I know that much about them, so excuse me if I make any mistakes or imply anything about them which isn't true. This is all a product of my imagination, and shouldn't be taken literally. Also, if it is illegal for you to read this, wherever you are, then don't cos you might get in trouble, and who knows? The karma might just come back and bite me in the butt for some reason! Without further ado, please enjoy my new story...'Human, all too human'.
Human, All Too Human - Chapter One
It was the day back from Spring Break, where Charlie Hardt, had had the best day of her life. Originally from Texas, Charlotte Hardt had moved with her dad to Miami four years ago. Her younger sister was about to start High School, and her did figured that as Charlie was going to college in Miami, he could just uproot the three of them, and move there. Charlie's Dad was a business accountant, so he'd kept a few of his clients who had branches in Florida. Charlie's Mum died six years previously. Now it was three years after the family had moved to Florida and Charlie had made it to the infamous MTV Spring Break. The beaches had been beautiful, it was sunny everyday, and the men... well, let's just say there were men. One of the most incredible experiences for her though was seeing N'Sync. She had adored them ever since she first laid eyes on them, and now she had been hugged by all of them! She had competed in an on-stage competition where she had to slide across the stage on her tummy, use a water pistol to fill a balloon through a clown's mouth, and dive from a high-dive board. She had won all three rounds, which meant that not only did she get to have dinner with N'Sync that night, but when she went back to college the following week, they spent a whole day with her, going to all her classes, eating lunch with her, and basically making her queen of the campus for the day. The guys still thought it was hilarious that she was called Charlie.
Monday morning, Charlie woke up and remembered what day it was. All her bags and books were packed ready, so all she had to do was get to class on time, an easy task when she only lived five minutes from campus. As she ran out the door, she kissed her dad goodbye and shouted goodbye to her sister who was still in the shower. She ran to the administration building, where she was supposed to meet the guys, and register them for a day pass. Thank god she was pre-registered for her courses this semester otherwise she'd have to be queuing for herself already. She arrived easily in time, and, heading into the building, she bypassed the long queues and picked up ten visitors' passes, one for each of the guys and their bodyguards. As she exited the concrete building, a limo and a minivan pulled up in front of her.
"Charlie!" Lance shouted out the door of the limo as it opened. She smiled at the guys as they climbed out. The bodyguards quickly went defensive and sectioned off the area of sidewalk the guys were on.
"Hi, guys, these are your passes." She handed them out and as she did each of them gave her a hug, causing her to blush deeply. "Well, I hope you guys are ready to be bored!"
"Huh?" Chris yelped.
"Well, I'm a third year physics major, the stuff I'm doing is gibberish to me." She laughed, as the guys realised they were in for a very long day.
"Well, what's first?" JC asked.
"Theoretical Physics with Professor Carey." She replied.
"Theoretical Physics?" Justin questioned. "So, that's physics that they just make up and can't prove?" Charlie hesitated, then nodded. "Ok, why couldn't we have got say, a music major?" Justin asked jokingly. Then seeing the dejected look on Charlie's face, he went over and hugged her. "Hey! I'm just kidding!" He kissed her on the forehead, and without removing his arm from her shoulder, asked her where the lecture was.
"The far side of campus. It's a long walk."
"And that's why we have a limo." JC said with a grin.
"Really? We can ride in that?" Charlie asked.
"No. It's just for us celebrities. We'll meet you over there." Chris grinned as he got in.
"Oh." Charlie said in a once again dejected tone.
"Hey! He's kidding!" Justin said again. Charlie perked up a bit. "Look, we're jokers, don't take anything we say seriously. And besides the contest says we have to be with you for the whole day, no matter what, so you're stuck with us." Justin grinned, and held the door open for her.
"So who's gonna join me in the bathroom, cos I don't think we'll all fit." Charlie said as she climbed in the limo with a smirk on her face. Justin was taken aback by the snappiness of the remark, and just stood there with his mouth open, then started to climb in.
"I didn't mean everywhere!" Just as he was climbing in, Joey came up behind him and shoved him. He fell across the backseat which shut him up until they were all inside.
The limo pulled up in front of the Negri Physics Building. "Professor Carey's in lecture hall 3." Charlie told them. As they got out, the fifty or so students hanging around outside with nowhere to get to saw who they were, and started following them, though at a safe distance so as not to be stopped by the bodyguards. All through the corridors, more and more students followed the gaggle, and soon over a hundred people were following behind.
"Look behind us." Justin said in Charlie's ear, who he still had his arm wrapped around the shoulder of. Charlie glanced over her shoulder and in between the gaps in the rank of bodyguards following them, and saw the crowds of students, male and female who had filled the corridor and went as far back as she could see.
"Oh dear." She said, then turned back. "Well, they won't follow us into Professor Carey's hall, his lectures are legendary for no one understanding them, they won't put up with 90 minutes of pure boredom."
"You'd be surprised what people would put up with to see this face." Joey said from her other side as he held his chin in his hands.
"Man, you're delusional." Charlie said with a straight face. Justin immediately started laughing. Joey got a pitiful expression on his face, and Charlie started laughing too. Joey joined in too. Soon enough they arrived and one of the bodyguards held the door open while the other ten filed in, and then he followed. The door shut behind them, and they all went and sat in the centre of the lecture hall, the bodyguards sitting behind the N'Syncers and Charlie. A moment later though, the crowds started coming in. There were originally about forty people in the room, by the time the doors shut again, there were closer to two hundred, people were standing along the back, and sitting on the stairs leading down the podium. Another five minutes passed, and a door to the left of the podium opened, and in walked Professor Carey. The room fell silent. It seemed that everyone knew how harsh Professor Carey was. In his late twenties, Mark Carey was the youngest professor at the college, and it showed. He stood in the centre of the podium, behind the high desk and laid out a collection of papers. He then rolled the blackboard, so that a clean surface faced him.
"Welcome back everyone! Today we're starting on...what the hell?" Professor Carey turned around at that point, and saw the people crowding around the edges of the room. "This class only has sixty registered students, if the rest of you are taking this as an optional, then this is the most people I've ever had sit in on this class. All of you can't be qualified to take this course!" Justin sniggered, and Charlie nudged him in the ribs. Professor Carey started looking around the room.
"What's going on? Why are there so many of you in here?"
"He's very young looking for a professor isn't he?" JC asked Joey who he was sitting next to. "He can't be much older than 25." Joey nodded.
"I wonder if it's ok for us to be in here, maybe management didn't think this through, the number of people who may follow us." Joey whispered back.
"You!" Professor Carey pointed at a girl in the sixth row, just in front of the guys. "What's the gravitational constant on earth?" The girl paled.
"Err...7?" She hazarded a guess.
"Out!" He ordered, and the girl left, practically in tears. "Would anyone else like to leave before they're ordered out?" Ten or so people at the back of the room quickly shuffled out. "Come now, there's no way the university even has this many people qualified to take this course!" He looked around again, and his eyes fell on a dark-haired girl standing along one of the side walls, incredibly enough in an excellent position to see the members of N'Sync. "You." She froze. "What's Planck's Constant?" Her mouth dropped open. "Out." He ordered again. "Am I going to have to go through every one of you, or are you going to start leaving yet?" He shouted as the girl picked up her bag and walked out. A few more people left, about a hundred remained in the room.
"So, there are... about forty people choosing to do this course? Of their own free will?" Professor Carey glanced around again, the group of eleven in the middle of the room consisting of five young men, a girl, and five very large men sitting behind them caught his eye. "You." He pointed to one of the bodyguards, and walked part way up one of the aisles to be closer to him. The bodyguard looked up.
"You, what's your name?"
"Err...Professor?" Charlie started to interrupt him, and was going to explain, but Justin stopped her with a hand on her arm.
"My name's Lonnie, sir." Lonnie said with a smile playing on his lips.
"Well Lonnie, are you supposed to be in here?"
"Yes. I am." Lonnie replied.
"Well, anyone who's supposed to be in here should be suitably qualified, having done a certain course last year. Tell me, what are the implications of Charles's Law?" Professor Carey looked on expectantly.
"Well, Charles's Law implies that there is an equality between the coefficients of expansion of all permanent gases at constant pressure." Professor Carey stood there with his arms crossed and his tongue touching his top lip. He looked around again, as Lonnie and the other bodyguards started chuckling at the expression on his face.
"Charlie? Charlie Hardt?" Professor Carey started.
"Yes Sir?"
"Now, I know you're supposed to be in here, I pre-registered you last semester. Can you please tell me why there are so many people in here?" Charlie shifted uncomfortably.
"Well, I'm sorry sir, but it's probably my fault. You see, I won a competition over the spring break which means that this famous pop band spends a day with me today."
"Ok, and this pop band, where are they?"
"They're right here." Charlie said, signifying the guys sitting around her.
"Oh, I see." He went down to the front of the hall. "I would've appreciated being told about something like that Miss Hardt." Charlie nodded.
"Yes sir, sorry."
"As for everyone else. As you've all chosen to take this class as an optional, I'm taking all your names and you will be required to hand in a paper on today's topic by this Friday or you will all receive an F on your records. You have thirty seconds to get out if you don't want that." That did the trick, the mad rush for the door left a total of just under sixty people in the room. "Ah, that's more like it.
"So, did everyone have a good Spring Break?" A chorus of yeses came from the audience. "Good. Today we start Hyperion physics. I know you're all going to love this, it's my favourite topic, and...hmmm, for those of you who are members of pop bands, could you come down here please and assist me with my demonstration?" Professor Carey asked with a smile. He looked down at his papers and started laying something onto an overhead projector. Looking up again, he realised that N'Sync were just staring at one another with questioning looks on their faces.
"Charlie? Are your friends a little slow."
"Err... I don't think so Professor Carey."
"Well get them down here then!" So the N'Syncers stood up and made their way down the stairway to the podium. "Can you all line up at the front of the stage?" So they did. "Right, now there's the atom. Consider the atom with protons, neutrons and electrons, three parts. But we've known that atoms have three parts for what? A hundred years? Who can name a sub-neutronic particle?" Three hands went up.
"Yes?" He pointed to a guy in the tenth row.
"A Quark?"
"Yes!" Professor Carey shouted, and he walked over to Chris who was on the right hand side of the line. "You are now a quark!" He said to Chris. Chris couldn't help but start sniggering, as did everyone else in the lecture hall who realised who Chris was. The bodyguards were in hysterics. "Now all sub-neutronic particles spin, so how does a quark spin? Same person?" He said without turning around.
"It has a singular positive spin."
"Right again!" And Professor Carey started rolling his hands one of the other like the old seventies disco dancers. He indicated that Chris should do the same. "Who knows another sub-neutronic particle?"
"A lepton!" Shouted out one of the students to the left of the stage.
"Very good, but next time don't shout out. And what way does it spin?"
"Err... singular negative."
"Very good!" And he came up to Joey. "You are now a lepton." Sniggers followed. Then he indicated that Joey should do the same as Chris, but in reverse. "Right, we have two fundamental particles up on stage. Who's next?"
"Me." Shouted out Lance.
"Yeah, funny man, I meant the next fundamental particle." Laughter rolled around the lecture hall and a few hands went up.
"The Bolon. And it has a single positive spin."
"Very good." Prof. Carey started. "But what makes it different to say that... that one?" He said pointing to Chris.
"Err... it's in a different direction." The student answered.
"More than that, it's rotated at 90 degrees to the others. So..." He came up to Lance. "You are..."
"A Bolon?" Lance asked distastefully. "I even get the geeky particle name." Everyone in the auditorium laughed, even professor Carey.
"Trust me, you don't want to be what the next guy is going to be." He said, and then he started spinning around and around on the spot. He told Lance to do the same. "Right, that's our third fundamental particle. Who's got our fourth?" Charlie raised her hand.
"Ah, the one who supplied my visual aids for the day, tell me, what is the fourth fundamental particle?"
"The Muon?"
"Yes! This is very good, did you lot revise over spring break?" Everyone looked down at their desks. "I'll take that as a no. Muon, that's right Miss Hardt, now how does it spin?"
"It's got a singular negative spin, at 90 degrees to the first two."
"Yes! So this fundamental particle spins in the same plane as the bolon, but in the opposite direction. Err...?" He came up to the fourth one in the line, Justin. "Don't I know you? I must have seen you on TV or something. Anyway, you, spin that way." And he directed Justin's spinning, in the opposite direction to Lance's. "Now, these are the four fundamental particles you learnt last term. But, we all know there's a gap, there's a logical gap in the math, so, there must be something else. And besides we've got another pop band member to use, so there's gotta be another particle!" Professor Carey paused. "Ve must find ze last particle!" He said in a mad professor type accent. The lecture hall went silent, apart from JC who was standing behind the professor, chuckling. "What? Mad professor accent too much?" A few people in the audience nodded. "Look, he found it funny, and he's famous! You should all find it funny too!" Then professor Carey got a pout on his face. "Ok, I'm only gonna show you this cos there's a pop singer here who's feeling left out from his group cos he's not a fundamental particle. Once I've done that you can all just go away." Professor Carey said then grinned at his students.
"Well, as the name of the science suggests, the last particle is called a hyperion, now would anyone like to guess which way it spins so that this guy here can start spinning?" A couple of hands jerked slightly upwards, but then back down when they realised that all the options were taken. "Would it help if I told you there were two types of hyperions and their spin has something to do with fourth dimensional planes?" The faces remained blank.
"Fine! The hyperion has a half spin, then it flashes out of the third dimension into the fourth, then half spin later it flashes back in, and does another half spin in our dimension then flashes back out, and so on. So, to get... what's your name?" He asked JC.
"Josh." JC answered.
"Ok, to get Josh to do this, we're gonna have to imagine a little. Ok, can you spin like one of these guys?" He pointed to Lance and Justin, so JC did. "But slower." Spinning around very slowly, JC did as asked.
"Right, now he's in third dimension, now he's in the fourth, now the third, now the fourth. The opposite hyperion..." Professor Carey stuck his hand out, stopped JC and started to spin him the other way. "The opposite hyperion is exactly the same, but the opposite direction. Now he's in the third dimension, now the fourth, now the third, now the fourth." Professor Carey sat on his desk behind the guys.
"So, five fundamental particles. Well, six, but I don't think Josh is schizo, so we can't get him to show both types of hyperion at once." The class laughed again. "I want you to research the properties of the fundamental particles, and next class we'll be going into the other hyperionic particles, you know for instance that a quark has 16 theoretical sub-particles?" The class groaned hearing the news of hundreds of sub-particles to learn. "Right! Class dismissed, and can I speak to you Miss Hardt afterwards?" The class started to file out, and at that moment, Lance fell over.
"I feel sick!" Lance said, as he stumbled and sat on his haunches.
"Oh yeah, sorry, you can all stop spinning now." Justin also fell over, after having spun for about ten minutes. The bodyguards came down to the front, and leant against the front row of desks to wait for the guys. Charlie came down just before them. The rest of the class had left.
"Thanks for the help guys, I hope it wasn't too much trouble.
"Nah, it was kinda fun actually. My arms are aching though!" Said Joey after having spun his arms around and around for about twenty minutes.
"Err... Charlie?" Professor Carey started. "Did you manage to read that article? Did it make sense?"
"Yeah, I read it off the internet archive, I think it put forward some highly unorthodox views but you could see there was some underlying truth there, it wasn't all gobbledygook." Charlie laughed at her choice of words.
"Err...right. What are your other options this year?"
"Practical physics with Dr. Clare."
"Oh no! She's an idiot!" Professor Carey started. One of the N'Syncers stood up for her though.
"She can't be that dumb she's a college teacher." Joey started.
"She thinks the ballpoint pen is the greatest invention ever given to mankind."
"Oh." Joey shut up after that.
"What else Miss Hardt?"
"I'm actually taking your other class, 'quantum technology and applied physics'." She filled him in.
"Excellent!" He smiled broadly. "Then I'll see you in that class... tomorrow morning?" Charlie nodded. "Gentlemen, I hope you know that you are in the presence of genius!" He looked around at N'Sync and the bodyguards. "Why yes! Charlie here theorised the possibility of a Spherical Blast Trachtometer six months before the US government even released that it was working on one. The worst thing was, I was working on the damn project, and she told me about her research and the viability of the project just as I was coming to the same conclusion!" He said with a hint of aggravation in his voice. The guys laughed, the awkward laugh of someone who has no idea what a spherical blast trachtometer is. Charlie started blushing.
"Yeah well, only the smartest people could win a competition for a day with us!" Justin said with pride.
"Just, she managed to slide, on her stomach across the stage at Spring Break, it probably didn't require that much brain power." JC added in.
"So let me get this straight, one of my top students slid on her belly across a stage?" Charlie nodded to Professor Carey. He took his head in his hands and pretended to start sobbing. Then he started laughing and all the guys joined in. "Oh for God's sake! Get outta here! I have to start setting up for next class, would you believe first day back and I get four lectures in a row. I'll see you tomorrow Charlie, nice to meet all of you."
"Hey professor, we're performing at the student bar tonight, why don't you come along and watch?" Justin asked as he again put his arm around Charlie who started blushing again.
"Errr....I don't know, what time?"
"Around 9."
"I'll see what I can do, see ya around, Muon." Justin was just turning around and grinned at the professor at his use of the nickname.
End of Chapter One TBC...?
I know, it's different from On The Streets, my long-running story, but all the same, tell me what you think, and tell me whether you think I should carry on writing, also any ideas on who it is I'm gonna set up and who with?