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You walk into the mall like a bored god descending to Earth. The lights overhead flicker once — not from you, just faulty wiring — but it still feels like the world is bracing for you to twist it. You stroll past a smoothie place and a pretzel stand, your footsteps making no sound, like even the laws of acoustics pause to see what you’ll do next.
Then you see them.
A table of five college girls, giggling, fresh from the salon — hair curled, gloss shining. You don’t know them, not yet. But you already feel the itch of absurdity rising behind your eyes, the urge to warp something beautiful and ridiculous into existence.
You focus on the blonde in the middle. Curled hair, big sunglasses, pink tote bag, and the unmistakable sparkle of someone who’s never had to take anything seriously.
**Jordyn Holloway**, your mind supplies. She’s the one.
You blink once, and suddenly, she’s a tenured professor of Classics at the state university — *the* youngest ever. At twenty-one, with an utterly baffling academic trajectory that no one’s quite managed to explain, she has a corner office in the Humanities Building and a reputation that walks the tightrope between scandal and satire.
Of course, Jordyn remembers *every bit* of it. The all-nighters in Latin III (which she doesn’t actually understand), her chaotic dissertation on “Gender Identity in Homeric Similes” (which she copied mostly from Reddit summaries), and somehow — miraculously — a BA, an MA, and a PhD by the time she could legally drink. No one believes it, not really. But the documents say it happened. The faculty can't do anything about it.
She sits at the table now, furrowing her brows at an open laptop, clearly deep in her lesson planning. You peek over her shoulder.
Her syllabus for “CLAS 210 – Early Greek Thought” includes a week-long module on *Percy Jackson’s* philosophical impact and a midterm essay prompt that just says, *“Explain Plato but make it cute :)”*
Perfect.
She’s wearing thick tortoiseshell glasses that scream “adjunct who drinks too much Malbec,” a tight button-down blouse tucked into a pencil skirt that’s fighting to maintain professional decorum against the threat of lip gloss and cleavage. Her heels click when she crosses her legs — the kind of sharp, trying-too-hard click that screams, *I’m totally a real professor!*
And you can’t help yourself. You keep going.
To her left, **Casey** suddenly becomes hotter — sculpted like an Instagram model doing STEM cosplay. But she now peppers her sentences with the word *“ontologically”* and insists her favorite movie is *Primer* — which she’s never understood but will *die* defending. She pushes up her comically perfect glasses and sips a matcha latte like it’s a science experiment.
**Ursula** adjusts her anime pin-covered backpack and mumbles something about finally cataloging her dice collection. She’s stunning, like a Photoshopped bookworm come to life, but she can’t make eye contact with the cashier for more than two seconds without blushing crimson.
**Betty** clutches a leather-bound copy of *Gödel, Escher, Bach* she bought yesterday and hasn’t opened. She keeps referencing *“Nietzsche’s lesser-known theories”* in a voice that’s two octaves lower than her real one. Her fashion screams fake-deep, hot-librarian-core, and she loves it.
And **Kim**, ah — Kim is radiant, but insists she “doesn’t believe in nerd labels.” She rants about how nerd culture is too mainstream while proudly wearing a *Star Trek* crop top and quoting Alan Turing out of context. She’s basically a paradox in heels.
None of them remember being any different. They've always been like this. In fact, you retroactively made it so they all met Jordyn in her *Intro to Ancient Epic* class last fall. That’s where their bond formed: a shared trauma of enduring Jordyn’s wild, rambling lectures about "how Odysseus is like, kinda the first f-boy."
You don’t say a word. You just stand there, unnoticed, sipping your soda while the universe realigns itself around your whim.
Jordyn suddenly announces, “You guys, does anyone remember if Athena was, like, related to Hercules? Or was that just the Disney version?”
Casey replies without missing a beat. “That’s a loaded question, ontologically speaking.”
And you smile. The world, once again, has become just a little dumber — and a whole lot funnier.
Then you see them.
A table of five college girls, giggling, fresh from the salon — hair curled, gloss shining. You don’t know them, not yet. But you already feel the itch of absurdity rising behind your eyes, the urge to warp something beautiful and ridiculous into existence.
You focus on the blonde in the middle. Curled hair, big sunglasses, pink tote bag, and the unmistakable sparkle of someone who’s never had to take anything seriously.
**Jordyn Holloway**, your mind supplies. She’s the one.
You blink once, and suddenly, she’s a tenured professor of Classics at the state university — *the* youngest ever. At twenty-one, with an utterly baffling academic trajectory that no one’s quite managed to explain, she has a corner office in the Humanities Building and a reputation that walks the tightrope between scandal and satire.
Of course, Jordyn remembers *every bit* of it. The all-nighters in Latin III (which she doesn’t actually understand), her chaotic dissertation on “Gender Identity in Homeric Similes” (which she copied mostly from Reddit summaries), and somehow — miraculously — a BA, an MA, and a PhD by the time she could legally drink. No one believes it, not really. But the documents say it happened. The faculty can't do anything about it.
She sits at the table now, furrowing her brows at an open laptop, clearly deep in her lesson planning. You peek over her shoulder.
Her syllabus for “CLAS 210 – Early Greek Thought” includes a week-long module on *Percy Jackson’s* philosophical impact and a midterm essay prompt that just says, *“Explain Plato but make it cute :)”*
Perfect.
She’s wearing thick tortoiseshell glasses that scream “adjunct who drinks too much Malbec,” a tight button-down blouse tucked into a pencil skirt that’s fighting to maintain professional decorum against the threat of lip gloss and cleavage. Her heels click when she crosses her legs — the kind of sharp, trying-too-hard click that screams, *I’m totally a real professor!*
And you can’t help yourself. You keep going.
To her left, **Casey** suddenly becomes hotter — sculpted like an Instagram model doing STEM cosplay. But she now peppers her sentences with the word *“ontologically”* and insists her favorite movie is *Primer* — which she’s never understood but will *die* defending. She pushes up her comically perfect glasses and sips a matcha latte like it’s a science experiment.
**Ursula** adjusts her anime pin-covered backpack and mumbles something about finally cataloging her dice collection. She’s stunning, like a Photoshopped bookworm come to life, but she can’t make eye contact with the cashier for more than two seconds without blushing crimson.
**Betty** clutches a leather-bound copy of *Gödel, Escher, Bach* she bought yesterday and hasn’t opened. She keeps referencing *“Nietzsche’s lesser-known theories”* in a voice that’s two octaves lower than her real one. Her fashion screams fake-deep, hot-librarian-core, and she loves it.
And **Kim**, ah — Kim is radiant, but insists she “doesn’t believe in nerd labels.” She rants about how nerd culture is too mainstream while proudly wearing a *Star Trek* crop top and quoting Alan Turing out of context. She’s basically a paradox in heels.
None of them remember being any different. They've always been like this. In fact, you retroactively made it so they all met Jordyn in her *Intro to Ancient Epic* class last fall. That’s where their bond formed: a shared trauma of enduring Jordyn’s wild, rambling lectures about "how Odysseus is like, kinda the first f-boy."
You don’t say a word. You just stand there, unnoticed, sipping your soda while the universe realigns itself around your whim.
Jordyn suddenly announces, “You guys, does anyone remember if Athena was, like, related to Hercules? Or was that just the Disney version?”
Casey replies without missing a beat. “That’s a loaded question, ontologically speaking.”
And you smile. The world, once again, has become just a little dumber — and a whole lot funnier.
What do you do?
Create your own Path!