Your Paper Is Dope (8)
Your Paper Is Dope (8)
Faded memories.
Tracing back the fragments of those memories, my old self from my integrated master's and PhD days surfaced.
Back when I hadn't even spent two full years in the lab, one of my senior labmates brought up an interesting topic while smoking at the booth outside the College of Science building.
— Do you know what it means to get scooped?
— Yeah, I know.
Back then, I was just a newly hatched grad student who'd barely gotten a handle on research methodology, but I knew perfectly well what scooping meant.
— Apparently, it happened in the lab next door.
— Figured as much. That's why I heard them throwing stuff around at night.
The mood in a lab that had been scooped was grim as a funeral.
Well, of course it was. A child conceived after months of racking their brains had been stillborn.
— Was it China, or Taiwan? Not sure of the details, but seems like their research team was working on the same topic. Our guys had finished all the experiments with government funding and were just about to submit to Physical Review, but guess what? That other country got approval first.
— So what happens to the paper our lab people wrote?
I already knew the answer. Even so, I'd asked out of a sliver of hope that some light might shine on those people too.
My expectation wasn't wrong.
— It's toast, what else. If you try to publish the same content, nine times out of ten you'll be accused of plagiarism. Best-case scenario, it ends with something like "similar studies were conducted at the same time."
They say it's a comedy from afar, but a tragedy up close.
At least in this field, that was true. No one here was not floundering. Just watching each other do it was a tragedy in itself.
We'd entered this place pursuing values more important than money, but it was a graveyard for those who ultimately couldn't do a thing without money. That's what the academic world was like.
— A damn shame. They said they'd poured a whopping five years into it.
Hollow words of comfort wouldn't have reached them. Only time would heal that wound. As a fellow human, the only thing I could do was watch from a distance.
Half a year after that conversation, when even that senior colleague—whom I'd thought was mentally rock-solid — couldn't hold on and left with a master's degree by arrangement with the professor, I felt in my bones that this world ran deeper than the Mariana Trench.
So if you didn't want to drown in this sea, you had one of two choices.
Climb out onto dry land.
Or learn how to swim.
**
So Aether had learned how to swim.
She had learned to handle work faster than others, and how to thrash so no one could steal her piece of the pie. That included monitoring the research activity of the people around her and setting her next direction accordingly.
While no one was unaware that Professor Haspelt was obsessed with Flare, Aether had had more than enough opportunities over the past three years to witness that fact firsthand.
In other words, she knew.
She knew that if she slowed down even a little, it might be stolen right out from under her.
Of course, from Aether's perspective, having her research achievements stolen didn't matter much. She wasn't going to live in this world forever, and filling the Magic Compendium in the Hardcover Book was a higher priority than racking up research results.
But Haspelt was the one person she didn't want stealing her "achievement."
Most humans are driven more by negative emotions than positive ones. Just as a test-taker terrified of failing to get into college studies harder. In a society of infinite competition, showing even a sliver of complacency meant being culled.
And now, the golden-eyed girl realized she had won the Flare research and development race.
The trumpet of victory began with the sound of something falling — a soft plop.
The thesis papers Professor Haspelt had been holding succumbed to gravity and dropped. The sound was so utterly deflated that Haspelt let out an involuntary, hollow sigh.
A trembling voice leaked into the air.
"Just now... what does that mean......?"
She must have misheard. She must have misheard.
She had to have misheard. Wasn't Haspelt repeating that thought to herself?
"Ah, Professor Haspelt. I was actually meaning to ask you something if I ran into you. That... why didn't you attend the convocation of fire mages the other day?"
"...There was a convocation?"
"Yes. This student here, well — she completed Flare, if you can believe it?"
Chairman Robespierre chuckled softly as he continued.
"So I invited every authority from the scholarly circles and requested an emergency review. Excluding those who said they were too busy, of course."
"That......."
The review of Aether's thesis had been carried out smoothly over a little more than a week. It was because a top-grade Magic Art capable of countering Extinction-class threats demanded the fastest possible verification.
It wasn't just Aether's thesis. The Philiut Empire had a habit of ramming new Magic Arts through lightning-fast reviews and immediately deploying them to the front lines.
Whenever such a review took place, experts in that field were summoned all at once. But when the person from the academic society had asked about attendance, Professor Haspelt alone had refused the invitation.
"A pity, really. Had you attended back then, Professor Haspelt, you could have witnessed firsthand the historic process of Flare being presented to the academic world."
"F...lare.... The... one I was researching... that Flare......?"
"Yes. The very Flare your family has been researching all this time."
Confirming the kill.
Her complexion, unbefitting a fire mage, turned deathly pale before draining entirely to a chalky white.
"Ah, and I'll answer your question from just a moment ago, Student Aether. Patents on the scrolls that comprise Flare are granted not only to the lead author but also to co-authors, so the authors will need to conduct thorough internal discussions among themselves."
"I don't care about that. Generating profit wasn't even the main goal anyway."
"Then we'll leave the technical-patent discussion here.... Would you be able to present your research findings sometime today or tomorrow?"
The golden-eyed girl nodded and answered that it was possible.
Kleis's mind went blank in an instant, like a sheet of white paper.
It was as if a Flare had detonated inside her head, and the flash was slowly, slowly fading away. An emptiness that no existing language system could describe snipped apart her neurons and synapses strand by strand.
Haspelt shook off the two of them and ran toward the desk. The hem of her robe tangled around her feet and made it difficult to pick up speed, but if it was in order to get her thesis reviewed, she could endure this level of inconvenience.
The corridor was quiet. There were no obstacles to block Kleis, and there shouldn't have been.
"......."
Watching Haspelt suddenly bolt back in the direction they had come from, Aether bit down lightly on her lower lip.
**
In front of the desk, there were submission slots for each category of thesis. From the left, in order: Fire Magic, Water Magic... no, she didn't have a single second to waste on crap like this.
"Hello, Professor. Are you submitting a thesis?"
She acknowledged the administrative staff's greeting with a silent nod. The employee's eyes had a color as if brewed from cinnabar.
Red eyes. They were clearly the same eye color as her own, yet they felt foreign for some reason.
Now that she thought about it, Chairman Robespierre's eyes earlier had been the same. Eyes that seemed to pity Haspelt herself.
"...This, please."
Professor Haspelt held out the envelope containing her thesis.
Before undergoing a full-scale review, every thesis passed through a process at the desk where it was checked for formatting issues. The time that process took was a mere five minutes. Professor Haspelt, having spent years in the academic world, had a probability converging on zero of being flagged for incomplete thesis formatting.
Every thesis she had submitted so far had passed, and all of her future submissions would as well. Haspelt was certain that this thesis would also pass without a hitch.
The Flare research she had conducted would astonish the academic world and earn recognition from many. As a bonus, it would be more than enough to deliver a burning backhand slap to the cowards who had turned their backs on Fire Magic, doubting its power.
It had to. Absolutely, absolutely. It had to happen, and it also had to happen.
It had to happen, but.
"...I'm sorry, but I can't send this up for the main review."
"Excuse me...?"
The desk employee who had been skimming the thesis let out a deep hum and said that.
"What are you talking about...? Is there a problem with the formatting? Are you sure you checked it properly?"
"Well... if this goes wrong, it'll get flagged for plagiarism."
Plagiarism. She had to be speaking nonsense.
"I conducted this Flare research alone. If you majored in Fire Magic in the Empire, you know this too. Our family is the only one researching this...!"
"Ah, you haven't heard yet......."
Haspelt's voice grew sharp, but the desk employee's eyes as she looked at her held only a distant wistfulness.
"Not long ago, someone submitted a thesis on the same topic as yours, Professor.... That person developed the method for outputting and using Flare first, so even if you submit this, the probability of rejection is high."
The desk employee couldn't bring herself to look straight at Kleis's face. Kleis, unable to contain her fury at the employee who kept sneaking only sidelong glances, jerked her head around.
The two people from earlier had come all the way here.
The Chairman seemed to be observing this situation with a bit of distance, and in front of him, a golden-eyed girl was tucking her hair behind her ear and staring back at her.
"Ah, aah...."
Haspelt's eyes shook violently. After the briefest of dreams — which she'd believed were mere auditory hallucinations — had been devoured and consumed, only reality remained in the space it had left.
"Ah, aah, ah, aaah......."
Someone once said.
"No......."
Of the five stages of accepting despair, the first is.
"This is impossible—!!!"
Denial.