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"peers." His black hair had yet to accumulate a year's
worth of grease, though it still hung unruly down past his
ears.

His hands dangled limp at his sides, his binder of
notes emptying on the floor. His PowerPoint, oblivious to
its audience's reaction, plowed on, still illustrating the
effects of Higgs particles on tachyons. Desperate,
hopeless, the inventor looked to the gallery, and saw how
the laughter of the board paled compared to the hooting
of the uneducated mob. Then his eyes fixed on the girl he
loved. She was hunched over, her daffodil-colored curls
thrown over her face in an attempt to hide, but he was a
second too quick. He saw her cheeks, once white as fleece,
now glowing red from humiliation and shame. He could
not read her mind, but he knew what he saw in her face,
in the emerald eyes drowning in tears of hate. And the
deepest cut of all was how, even with all that pity, his
empty eyes still saw how the corners of her mouth fought
to curl upward. He must have sounded so funny.

But I WILL put my life back together! The dream
vanished and he wrenched himself away from
sentimentality, from anything that distracted him from
his true love, his treasure, the one thing that still
mattered to him, the only thing he still had left in the
world.

At least, in this world.

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