Uselessness

This is the university in its uselessness. This is the wreckage.


What if this were all just the Bug’s lair?


This was paragraduate base camp. – for a time at least. This was their base of operations, perhaps not for very long. They’re the ones who stripped it back to nothing.  


Piles of books, festering.

They’re kind of mouldy. Don’t the paragrads mind mouldy books?

What use do they have for books?


Stop it – the paragrads don’t exist.

Of course they don’t! The paragrads don’t deign to exist. They’ve got better things to do than exist. They’re better than existence. They’re otherwise than being. Without fucking essence!


The paragrads have been here. That’s enough – that should be enough. The paragrads passed through here. That should be all we need.

All we need for what?

To hope! To have something to hope for, when all hope is gone.


They’re the ones you pray to when you fail to get your scholarship. When you give up your PhD. When you’re sacked from your academic job.

They’re the ones In lieu of angels, where angels would be, if there were angels of study.

Of course, they’ll never heed your prayers. They won’t act upon your entreaties. They’re indifferent to our kind – perfectly so. And that’s how it should be. Because no one should listen to us! No one should heed our prayers! We’re basically unsavable. We’re actually those who everyone else should be saved from …


All we can know is their absence. The blast radius of their passage.

When the angels come, they’ll have paragraduate faces.

Of course, no full-timer lecturer ever believes in paragraduates.
So how come we do?
We’re special.