A Short Story: The Lecture Room

 

The Lecture Room

The room smelled of chalk dust and old varnish. Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, casting a sterile glow on the rows of desks—each one occupied, each student hunched over notebooks, eyes glazed, pens moving not with curiosity but obligation.

At the front, Dr. Ellison stood like a relic. His jacket hung loose on his frame, the cuffs frayed, the collar stained with years of coffee and indifference. He spoke without inflection, his voice a low drone that filled the room like fog. Behind him, the blackboard bore the scars of past lectures—half-erased equations, ghostly outlines of diagrams, and today’s fresh scrawl: a mess of symbols that might once have meant something.

He didn’t look at the students. He didn’t ask questions. He simply wrote, spoke, handed out the assignment, and waited.

The scripts came back in silence. He marked them in silence. Red pen. Tick. Cross. “Incomplete.” “Correct.” “See notes.” The rhythm was mechanical. The names meant nothing. The handwriting blurred together. He didn’t read—he processed.

Outside, the world moved. Leaves fell. Rain came. But inside the lecture hall, time was fixed. Each student had their place. Each lecturer had their role. The bounds were clear, the expectations clearer.

Once, years ago, Ellison had tried something different. He had paused mid-lecture and asked, “Why do you think this matters?” A few students had looked up, startled. One had even answered. But the department chair had called him in later that week. “Stick to the syllabus,” she’d said. “We’re not here to philosophize.”

So he stopped asking.

He stopped wondering.

He stopped trying.

Now, he taught the way he was taught. He marked the way he was marked. He existed within the system, a cog in a machine that neither welcomed nor punished deviation—it simply ignored it.

One afternoon, a student lingered after class. A quiet boy, always in the back row. He approached the desk and said, “I think I understand the equations. But I don’t understand the point.”

Ellison looked at him. Really looked. The boy’s eyes were tired, but not dull. There was something there - something reaching out.

He opened his mouth. Closed it. Then said, “The point is to pass.”

The boy nodded slowly. “Right.”

He left.

Ellison sat alone in the empty hall. The blackboard still bore his scrawl. The scripts still waited to be marked. He stared at the chalk in his hand, then at the board, then at the door.

He thought of saying something different next time. Of writing something that wasn’t part of the syllabus. Of asking again.

But he didn’t.

Because he remembered the meeting. The memo. The silence that followed.

And so he picked up the next script. Tick. Cross. “See notes.”

Alas for he that tries to be human.