"Clans of the Alphane Moon"

By the blogger @ ShrinkWrapped:

When Michael C was 18 and in his first year of college, he began to have academic difficulty. He had been an excellent student in high school and was admitted to a prestigious college in the Northeast. He had started college well and received high grades on his first few exams but then began to have difficulty understanding the material in several classes. His grades began to slip; by the end of his first semester he had received 3 C's and an F. Over the Christmas break (winter break was still called Christmas break in those days, the late 1970s) he thought long and hard about his poor performance. His parents were angry at him and threatened to withhold his tuition for his sophomore year if his grades did not improve. He began to notice tell tale signs that things were not quite as they seemed. He noticed a slow increase in the number of red signs in his neighborhood. When he asked his friends and relatives about this, no one else seemed to be aware of the creeping redness. Certain numbers began to appear with much more than the usual random frequency. He found that when he watched TV, the newscasters often had messages of special importance to him. After pointing this out on a few occasions and receiving dismissive responses, he realized that other people did not recognize what was happening. When he returned to school in the winter, things only got worse. He understood his classes perfectly well yet his professors failed him. His puzzlement grew. He knew he was extremely smart; he knew he was destined for great things. After all, he had been told how smart he was and how important he was going to be from the time he was a little boy. Why, he wondered over and over, would his professors try to thwart him?...

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Sat. 08/05/06 08:21:49 AM
Categorized as More Than Blogworthy.