Bec sat in a lecture hall with about fifty other students. The professor was late. Really late. She was almost ready to leave when the door swung open and, in a cloud of papers, a bookish-looking man came in loudly apologizing.

“Sorry. Sorry people. I lost track of time.”

He dumped a pile of papers on the desk. He was floundering with sheets and looked around in confusion. He looked straight at Bec before gathering all the sheets into a pile and cleared his throat.

“Students, please come down to gather your questionnaires. These will be turned in at the end of class. It will ask you a series of questions based on your Word and how you use it. Please give as much information as possible, I am bound by Hass rules not to divulge information, and the more detailed the outline, the better I can personally consult you. I will know if you peek at other people’s papers so don’t try it.”

Bec realized immediately that, if she wanted to, she could read the sheets of everyone in direct line of sight to her, which, thanks to the concentric half-circle of ascending seats, meant virtually everyone. For the first time ever, she narrowed her view to the light that hit her eyes. Her world became but a pinprick of what it used to be.

She watched as people shuffled down to grab their papers. She saw her turn to go grab a questionnaire and walked down the steps with a sense of unease. She wasn’t used to the feeling of just seeing what her eyes saw. It had been over a year of her seeing everything and almost six months of the crisp clarity she gained from her near-death experience and now she was pretending to be normal. It was weird and disorienting.

She managed to work her way down to the desk and started to take her sheet and a pencil. The professor grabbed her wrist as she was about to leave. Looking her in the eyes, he whispered, “No funny business. Keep doing what you’re doing for now, and we’ll talk after class.”

Bec was somehow already in trouble with the professor, and she didn’t like it, not one bit. She struggled to keep her balance as she climbed the steps and found her seat again. She looked at the paper through her tiny lens of the world and it felt barely enough. She actually felt dizzy after focusing her power this way. It wasn’t like she was making her vision clearer; it was fairly clear to begin with. It really just was… lesser.

“I am Professor Vido, head of Lexicon in Akasha. I’m sure some of you already know who I am, but I run the database of all known Words in cooperation with AmiGo and the Akashian Board of Deans. You are probably wondering why did I choose to teach in this Hass? I couldn’t tell you. I feel like I need to make this clear right away. I am not a career educator, nor do I intend to be. I feel like I am in a rut regarding my studies and, thus, I am taking a break from my current life as a Lexicographer.

I was disappointed to see how few people chose this course, but that is merely because I will make no pretensions when I say that this class is not your average Wordplay course. I find the idea of hoarding information to be anathema to my way of life, and so I will start today by telling you that everything I know about Words is on the table. This class will be recorded and archived, and while you are the first to sit through it, I know that the knowledge that comes out here will change Dust. The ideas I choose to share with you will be the first time they have ever been shared in a classroom, but won’t be the last. I believe this will set a new precedent for Wordplay courses from now on.”

Bec wanted to say this guy was full of it, but head of Lexicon sounded like pretty hot shit. A thought crossed her mind about her Word manipulating fate. Vido said he was compelled to make a change in his life, and Bec felt a chill run down her spine. Was that her? For something O’Malley emphasized was ‘just a theory,’ Bec really couldn’t get it out of her head.

“To prove I am serious about sharing information with all of you, I will say this.” Vido looked at all of them and opened his arms out wide. “My Word is perspective.”

Everyone in the lecture hall was dumbfounded. Well, Bec wasn’t sure, but she quickly looked around to see a handful of people with their mouths hanging open.

“Yes, yes. I know it’s shocking to hear a person proclaim their Word so cavalierly. But I believe that if you are clever enough, wise enough, witty enough, that all of that won’t matter. Flexible use of a Word is literally the most important part. Your families have taught you to hide your Word. I believe that is wrong. This will be addressed as the class progresses, but, please, finish your questionnaires. We’ll call it there for today since I’m so dreadfully late, and you all may have more classes after this. The next meeting is scheduled in your calendars. That’s the calendar in your rulebook if you don’t know. Sorry again people!”

Bec sat and waited as everyone shuffled their way down and handed Professor Vito their questionnaire. She waited until there was no one left before handing in her questionnaire. “S-sorry Professor, you wanted to talk to me?”

Vito smiled. “Yes, yes.” He looked at her questionnaire for a moment. “Gray? Your Word gives you an incredible perspective of the classroom. My Word is useful for a lot of things, but it sometimes needs to breaking line of sight. Basically, if I ask can you to close your eyes, please do so because I can’t work my magic with you watching. I was hoping to WOW everyone by putting the papers in front of them, but, darn it, I couldn’t do it with you around. You don’t even blink!”

Bec flushed red. “Y-yes Professor.”

“That’s all I wanted to talk to you about, Gray. I look forward to seeing more of you as this class progresses. Oh! And maybe you seeing less of me if you catch my drift.” He laughed, putting Bec at ease.

She was totally thrown off by him being so bubbly and friendly and… well… candid with her. She was expecting him to be angry or something, but instead, he seems to be treating her like a peer rather than a student. She relaxed and let her view grow again, letting out a sigh of relief as she turned away to leave.

“Oh and Bec. This really is an intriguing Word you’ve got here.”

She didn’t need to turn to see him looking at her questionnaire again.

“Yes Professor!”

“Be careful with it…”

A chill ran down her spine, and she quickly exited the classroom.

~~~

Bec looked at her rulebook and sighed. “Really? We’re doing this crap?”

She was looking at a door painted on the wall of an Akashian building called Loki Hall. She never needed to pay much attention to the naming conventions of the classroom halls in this labyrinthian school dimension, but suddenly, she felt like a real fool. She came early because of how excited she was for this particular class and groped a flat wall dumbly for far more time than she’d like to admit.

It was a fairly convincing painting of a door clearly labeled to indicate that yes, this was indeed the building she needed, and this was the door she needed. This was a puzzle that needed to be solved. Would she be able to solve this before the other students come? Did it matter? Probably not.

Bec pressed her head to the wall and knocked, listening for hollowness. Not only did it seem hollow, it seemed like there was nothing at all special about the room on the other side. Bec was fairly satisfied with this technique she just improvised out of the blue. Scarlet told her that her fine control over her Word would be fantastic after relying on it for years and Bec was now really feeling that. She would rap the wall, and a floorplan practically whisked itself into her head on instinct. Confirming that there was a room helped, but how to enter it?

Bec walked around to the neighboring rooms and opened one up. She saw that the room was like a boring old class. No help there.

“Any ideas, Al?”

“Not exactly, but I actually am working on a visualization of the room on the other side of the door.”

"Oh, trying something new?”

“Not exactly new, I was always designed to use you to create a scan of the terrain you see. That was one of my original designs. What I’m doing now is routing your sense of hearing into the system and building an image from that. I lied to my original programming and said that the data I was sending was visual.”

“So, can I see it?”

“I need more data. Ideally, I’d want to calibrate this technique using the room once we see it, but I think we could get a render of the room if you applied this technique, can you knock on the neighboring classroom’s adjacent walls?”

Bec did so from both sides of both empty classrooms. Standing in front of the door, she watched Al stitch layers onto a 3D model. Rows of desks became clear, a desk more fit for a professor, some wall materials she couldn’t really picture, and a tall block in the middle of all of it. Bec’s breath hitched. What was that odd block… a human?

“What is that?”

Bec jumped out of her skin and turned to a young-looking guy who reared back in horror.

“Oh, I am so sorry. I snuck up on you, didn’t I?” The guy looked genuinely distraught at alarming Bec so badly.

Bec’s heart started to slow as she sized up this person who actually snuck up on a person with 360º vision and amplified hearing. “No, no, no. It’s fine. You here for Puzzles?”

The guy nodded and, now that Bec calmed down, seemed to be an actual kid. A kid with dishwater blonde hair and big brown eyes made him seem like he would fit perfectly in Oliver Twist. His cockney accent and plaid tweed hat did nothing to dissuade Bec from this image. In fact, it seemed like he was embracing that image.

“Yes! I am!” He ran his fingers down the painted door wall. “I see we’re stuck in that old cliché of demonstrating a baseline competency in said class to even enter said class. Doesn’t it seem a little backward to expect us to solve a puzzle before we’re taught about this? I hope, for all that Founds, that we don’t have to solve puzzles to find the next class. That’d get very annoying very quick.”

Bec was inclined to agree. “Here, look. I have scanned the interior of the room on the other side of this wall to the best of my abilities.”

Bec was not enthusiastic about handing her phone over, but it was a far better solution than handing off the Timelet. The boy nodded and rubbed his chin. “You thinking the key is this big thing in the center of the room, yeah?”

“Yeah, I was thinking it could be a human.”

“I don’t think so, it is human sized, but I doubt it. The scan you did is primitive, but the detail wouldn’t be quite so bad as to mistake a human for a block. See the tables look fairly clear."

“It’s a rough approximation. It could have blocky if it was in motion.”

“Hmm. I guess we could just blow a hole in the wall, yeah? I have no trouble getting in there, but maybe we should figure out the real answer. I doubt damaging Akasha property is wise.”

Bec nodded. “We should think about this systematically.”

“Every side of the room is free game for an entrance. You and I should check the adjacent rooms right here really closely. My name is Lau, by the way.”

Bec nodded. “I’m Gray, and maybe we should figure out if there is a classroom on the other side.”

Bec took the right room and started feeling the wall. There was a screen embedded in the wall. She knocked on the surface and Al confirmed to her that it was a clear box. No movement or anything. Bec started to wobble every loose item expecting to pull a switch pretending to be a book and have the wall open up. No luck.

Eventually, Lau came into Bec’s room and said he was fairly certain that this wasn’t the solution.

“I can’t help but think that this is far too random and difficult to be the solution. Let’s check out the other rooms. I am starting to worry that this is going to start hurting our grades.”

“Yeah… The third room… Maybe we should check on the second floor first. I think that block in the center has something to do with it. I would feel really embarrassed if there was just like some kind of hatch on the floor above us.”

Lau nodded.

~~~

“Wow, Gray, you were totally spot on!” Lau laughed as he pulled a terribly conspicuous rug off the floor of the second-floor classroom to reveal some kind of hatch. Swinging it open, he hopped down onto the black box and lowered himself onto the floor. Bec joined him on the floor of the mundane-looking classroom. She walked around the black box and groaned. “Is this another puzzle? Is our professor in there?”

“No, I’m not. That box was just there to protect your knees.” The classroom door swung open, and a man strode in. “I wouldn’t want my students to hurt themselves climbing down into my classroom, would I?”

“How did you… that’s the painted door, isn’t it?”

This Asian-looking man with a gray suit reminded Bec of a man who walked straight out of some heist movie. He was meticulously groomed with his black hair slicked back with wax. He even had an embossed pocket square that said—

“I am Sang Ee. I am your professor for Puzzles. Let’s get to work!” He grabbed the black box and collapsed it into a perfectly flat, black square that looked almost cartoonishly thin, like Bec would fall into it if she stepped on it. He slid it under his desk and started to write out his name on the screen with his finger. Bec was fairly certain that it wasn’t a black board, but he wrote on it anyways. “Sang Ee. Remember this please.”

“Are we not going to wait for the other students?”

“There aren’t any other students.” Sang kept writing.

“People didn’t find this class appealing. They are stupid. I think this may be the most important class in all of the Hass, but people would rather punch each other than learn how to win before the fight begins. Always with the fighting, never with the thinking. Even the thinkers can’t stop fighting before they do their thinking. Anyway, please take careful note of this, because this is the most important part of this class.” He underlined the header on the board with two underlines.

Basic Problem-Solving Steps

Identify thepuzzle and its issues. Gather data including understanding why the puzzle exists. List the options and possible solutions. Evaluate the options. Select an option or options. Observe the results of approaching the solution using the option or options Resolve the puzzle or return to step 3.

Bec already liked this Professor. Opening with a list was exactly the systematic problem solving she was looking for. She was acquainted with problem solving stages, but this was a bit modified.

She was about to open her mouth when Lau beat her to the punch. He raised his hand, and, without waiting for the Professor to acknowledge him, blurted out a question.

“What does ‘understanding why the puzzle exist’ mean exactly?”

“I’m glad you asked. Every puzzle is there for a reason. Even pointless ones like puzzle cubes and ring puzzles. All of them are there for a reason. If you were confronted with an enemy and all the lights go out, you ask yourself why, and, suddenly, you are very nearly there to solving the puzzle.”

“Enemy?”

“You didn’t think this would be a class about crosswords, did you? Words are confusing and often abstract powers and, if you want to defend yourself from them, knowing how they work is vital. I consider them the greatest puzzles.” He wet his lips like he was hungering for a challenge. Bec was pretty creeped out, but the optimist in her conceded that it was a sign that he was… motivated? Yeah, that was a good way to look at it… until Bec finds him fogging up her apartment window from the outside. She shuddered at the image.

“You should learn how to break apart the problems you face before you die, which is a fairly common problem if you manage to escape the bubble you have been wasting your life in. That reminds me, we will have a test every month, and you will be expected to perform these problem-solving skills under pressure. Do NOT slack on practicing them. They should be instinctive. I will provide you logic games on request that should dip your toe into the problem, but, if I am going to be honest, I believe practice in the field is the only way to make it reflexive.”

Lau had the same look that he had when he accidentally startled Bec before class. “I don’t like fighting.”

Sang looked him in the eyes and said, “Well, you better get good at running away.”

Lau nodded like that was a good answer.

“That is a very important point.” Sang leaned on his desk and looked at his students with eyes that were half worry and half sorrow. “What would you two say is the most important part of solving a puzzle?”

“Looking at all the options?” Bec asked.

“Having an open mind?” Lau followed Bec.

“You both are close, but I’m afraid I will have to harshly force you both into the cold, unforgiving air of reality with this homework.” He placed two solid black cubes on each of their desk. “I want you to solve this puzzle for next class. Please give it your best shot. I’m calling it for today. Good luck.”

He strode out of the room once Bec and Lau thanked him. For a moment, Bec panicked and thought that he had trapped them in the room again… but no. In fact, the door was absolutely there and function as both she and Lau examined the door and frame upon exiting. Very interesting. Bec looked at the solid black cube in her hand and felt a resolve that none of her classes would be a mistake. None at all.